A successful campaign to get a shirt taken from a front window display at a downtown Portsmouth shop. Within 16 hours, the store responded favorably. The letter gained over 200 signatures.
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To Joe Kelley and the management of I LIKE THAT —
We are writing to you about the T-shirt displayed in the window of your downtown Portsmouth shop reading: “TRUMP WEINSTEIN — NO PUSSY IS SAFE”.
While we do not think that you intentionally planned to have your business profit off of sexual assault survivors, that is what you are doing by selling this merchandise. These shirts are trivializing sexual assault — and making a profit by doing so.
Please consider the message you’re sending by displaying and selling these shirts. Consider how harmful and unfair is to promote a shirt making fun of women being unsafe around these powerful perpetrators of sexual assault.
Therefore, we request that you remove these shirts from your store and donate the proceeds of any which have sold already to HAVEN NH, a local organization who provides support services to survivors of sexual assault.
This is a chance to do the right thing and take proactive and positive action on a serious problem.
We are copying this letter to Debra Altschiller, a New Hampshire State Representative who is a tireless advocate for sexual assault survivors. She’s also a community liaison for Haven, so she could facilitate a connection with Haven if you’d like to make one.
We’d also like to share a quote from her remarks on the floor of the state House earlier this year, where she shared the definition of “rape culture”:
“Rape culture is ‘a society or environment whose prevailing social attitudes have the effect of normalizing or trivializing sexual assault and abuse.’ … Turning this culture around is on all of us.”
Displaying a shirt trivializing sexual assault in your window perpetuates rape culture. Selling this merchandise, and thereby profiting off the bravery of the women who have come forward with their personal stories of sexual assault, is wrong.
Thank you for considering our request, and we hope that you will do the right thing.
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Sent Saturday 11/4/17 at 4:40pm with 16 signatures. Updated letter sent at 6:30pm with 73 signatures. Signatures reached 183 by morning, through the online form, at which time we received this response from I Like That, Sunday 11/5/17 10:42am: “The tee shirt has been removed and we will be reaching out to Haven to make a donation.”