A few days ago an Etsy user brought to our attention to 'fyourt,' a shop peddling appalling t-shirts with shockjock lines like "Autumn is perfect for date rape," and "I'm a sensitive guy, I only rape pregnant women." The vulgar tees set off a firestorm of a forum on Etsy and incited the Rape Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) to create a Change.org petition to remove the user.
Etsy responded by removing t-shirts that incorporated outright sexual violence, rape, and abuse, although the user remains, and there are definitely some fucked up shirts still being sold on there. The shop itself like the T-Shirt section of Spencers, squared, minus the excitement of shitty plastic vibrators, posters of beer pong rules, and lava lamps. It's brimming with bro-ffensive gems like "Perky little titties will you marry me?", "Wake up girley I must fuck," and "You'd look pretty hot tied naked to a tree tennis ball in your mouth." You know, the kind that make you go, 'Whooa that guy is soooo edgy and I totally respect him for making such a bold statement about our overly sensitive culture!'
The RAINN petition is just past 5100 signatures and going strong. But as our tipster suggested, while it may not be possible for the hard-working admins at Etsy to be able to catch every single outrageously offensive item sold on Etsy, apparently just searching the word 'rape,' could be a good start.
Image from 'fyourt'
[RH Reality Check]
[Change.org]