Unusual "safety certificate" from the 1940s

Christine of Feetlips writes: "This sits on top of my vanity. I found it at a flea market a few years ago, asked the guy how much he wanted, and he breathed, 'Just take it. Don't show it to my wife.'"

Safety Certificate

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Shazbot

You know what else is horrible, though? Getting raped. And as a (male) survivor of rape, I can say that most places are biased AGAINST victims, not in favor of them. There is a reason so many rapes go unreported.

No matter how bad stories of false accusations are, there is no way they can compare in aggregate deleterious social effect to the large number of unreported rapes that occur every day, often on children.

Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
Anonymous

I actually have one of these that my Grandfather owned!!! LOL Never saw another one until now!
Hendel

“Cop in the front seat, lawyer in the back
Gettin’ it on videotape…”

Meatloaf, “When The Rubber Meets The Road”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0JVgY08Zd4
Anonymous

This is not from Antioch College. It didn’t pass it’s ‘Sexual Offense Prevention Policy’ until the early 90′s and even then there were no ‘contracts’. See http://wiki.antiochians.org/index.php?title=Sexual_Offense_Prevention_Policy_%28SOPP%29
- Anonymous
  
  Nope, not from Antioch college, the standards of behaviour for sexual offense prevention was instituted in the 1990′s. It didn’t require any forms, they were just a written policy.
  http://antiochmedia.org/mirror/antiwarp/www.antioch-college.edu/Campus/sopp/index.html
  
  As some here have noted, it looks fake for the many reasons cited.
imag

News flash: Rape is a highly emotionally charged crime, and there is imperfect enforcement and policy on both sides.

Rick: I think of sexism as speaking against all people of a given sex, not some. If he had said, “There are plenty of horrific jerks (a term usually ascribed to men) who would absolutely lie about sexual assault” would you be claiming sexism? Both are true. There are plenty of jerks and bimbos. That doesn’t mean that everyone is one, if you know what I mean…
Anonymous

I think this is probably something that was used at a brothel. or some type of escort service.
Specifically where it says “entering into this business” makes me think that, also after reading about the Mann Act. I don’t think that this is something a man would just have a woman sign, maybe sometime after dinner and before they hit the hay. I think most women, probably all of them, would slap the guy in the face (and rightfully so) if he tried that, unless of course, it’s a working girl.
Anonymous

One of the problems with the Internet is that it brings _everyone_ together. You can get someone who has actually been raped and someone who has actually gone to prison on a false rape charge involved in the same discussion. Each is of course completely justified in believing that what happened to them is wrong, and each has exactly zero experience with what the other has been through. Alas, empathy is optional on the Internet, whereas ignorance of everything but your own personal experience is completely acceptable…
- saru
  
  “You can get someone who has actually been raped and someone who has actually gone to prison on a false rape charge involved in the same discussion. Each is of course completely justified in believing that what happened to them is wrong, and each has exactly zero experience with what the other has been through.”
  
  Actually, given the state of prisons, I think there are probably a fair number of the latter who quickly also gain the experience of the latter.
Anonymous

And now we have an updated version. Thank goodness for the internet!

http://LoveContracts.net
MadRat

I’d love to keep a pad of these next to our bed, but just like the original seller, my wife wouldn’t find it funny.
Anonymous

That is awesome! What a rare find! The Mann Act dates back to the 1910s i believe. Mostly had to do with slaves.
kyfho23

And, with just a few modifications, no single straight man should be without a similar legal notice on him at all times.
Xenu

The date format of 194_ makes the Y2K programming issues look good by comparison.
A New Challenger

The more things change…
Anonymous

Amusing, but I don’t believe for a second that this actually dates from the 1940s.

I would guess that someone made this as mock-up sometime during the “P.C. 1990s” or so. Whenever it was that some university was allegedly planning a similar contractual agreement form.
- Lester
  
  Amusing, but I don’t believe for a second that this actually dates from the 1940s.
  
  Really? Why? This is the exact sort of dirty humor your grandad traded with his friends at the office. Do you think they JUST drank and smoked at the office? We had to do something before the invention of the LOLcat.
  
  It reminds me of an old uncle that had a ton of this sort of stuff in his den (what they used to call the “man-cave” back in the day). A framed picture of Eisenhower on the wall, an “official” looking sign that said “In Case of Atomic Attack, Put Head Between Legs And Kiss Your Ass Goodbye,” naturist mags and a box of Louis L’Amour paperbacks.
- Umbriel
  
  I think the Mann Act reference is good support for its authenticity as 1940s vintage (it’s a little obscure for a contemporary joke, and what would be the point of making the joke historical?). I think #7′s reference to the Errol Flynn case makes the most sense in terms of context.
Antinous / Moderator

How come they cut off the logo?
DoubleTee

[something] [something] Assange
Anonymous

The Errol Flynn Bio “My Wicked, Wicked Ways” said a document like this was created by Flynn’s friends or studio lawyers after he got off a statutory rape charge. They apparently printed hundreds of them.
I Like Cake

In before the rush of men “joking” about how every single woman is just waiting to pin any man she can with a fraudulent rape charge, even though in fact rape is in general under-reported, and the rate of false rape reports are comparable to false reports of any other crime.
- DoctressJulia
  
  THIS.
Phlip

Modern versions of this give lip service to ages, protection, germ levels, and stork-proofing.

And they also mention the “safe word”. Because some role playing dabbles in refusal, “stop” won’t work, so you select a word like “Queen Elizabeth!” to mean you _actually_ need to stop.
- Anonymous
  
  This is the internet. Everybody knows what a safe word is.
Anonymous

Looks like something presented in a “house of ill repute” during WWII. Now someone needs to post some pictures of “whore-house dollars” which many establishments used in the late 1800′s all the way up to 1960′s. A lot of people collect them. I once saw a motorcycle saddlebag with these tokens formed to cover the rivets on the leather and polished to a high shine (as most are made out of brass)!
ahwoo

It’s real, I have the exact same one, given to me by my old landlord (86) who was a merchant marine sea captain during WW2. Man he had some crazy stories too.
toxonix

There does need to be some kind of stork-proofing going on. As much as little babies are adorable, they can destroy people who aren’t ready for it. A check box that says “I’m entering this business for: A: pleasure B: babies! C: all of the above”
Anonymous

I believe that it is from the 40′s. There is a reference to the Mann Act and a document like this would make a lot of sense. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann_Act

Is it so hard to believe that people thought like this even in the 40′s and wanted to try to protect themselves from prosecution somehow?
malek

Given the annoying trend of mature female teachers in sex relationships with teen boy students, we might need an updated version http://wp.me/pQ1Eg-1w4
BSD

Leaving aside the duress issue (duress sufficient to compel an unwilling partner into sexual congress is certainly sufficient to have them sign such a document), statutory rape is a crime of strict liability — it does not matter one whit what anyone believes about ages (except the finder of fact at trial) or what consent either party purports to give or to have received. The state has decided that persons under a certain age (varying from jurisdiction to jurisdiction) are incapable of giving consent to sexual contact and that having such contact is a crime (there are SOME exceptions, most notably “Romeo and Juliet” provisions, but those vary even more from state to state and can be alarmingly specific in regards to the genders and ages of the parties, the latter both relative and absolute).
Anonymous

Looks typed and copied to me. The letters are uneven in darkness, just as they would be with a typewriter, and there are too many hyphenated words which is what justification is meant to prevent. As for copying in the 40′s there were a few technologies, perhaps mimeograph.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Looks way too clean to be a mimeograph copy, but maybe my high school just had a crappy machine.
BSD

Also, just as a drafting issue (assuming enforceability etc. arguendo), unless I was especially sure of my abilities in this context, I would move the witness/Mann Act clause above the conditional clause, just in case.
Anonymous

I am very interested as to why folks don’t believe this is from the 1940s. The print work looks like a typical 1930s-1940s jobs.
it reads like a typical sold under-the-counter men’s magazine of this time. Do we just not believe that some men would think this was a fun thing to own?
PaulR

I had to look up what Mann Act is.

Interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann_Act#Notable_individuals_arrested

See who was arrested in 1944. Coincidence?
Anonymous

I would be about 99% sure this ISN’T from the 40′s. One thing it seems that no one has picked up on is that the text is perfectly justified. Having used typewriters extensively before PC’s became commonplace, I can tell you it’s extremely difficult to justify text like that on a manual typewriter. My guess, based on that, is that this a a facsimile produced on a PC.
- Senor Incognito
  
  I believe it’s a genuine ‘joke-novelty’ of the era: it’s referred to in this fairly scholarly work on the subject; originally published in the 70′s.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  It’s not typewritten. It’s printed. Like a book. How else would it have been reproduced using 1940s technology?
Nadreck

There are usually only two schools of “thought” on the subject of rape. One is that if you are a grandmother sitting in your rocking chair knitting the American Flag behind locked doors and a masked maniac breaks down that door with an axe and assaults you then that is rape – everything else is just bad sex. The other is that all non-gay sex is rape and there can be not be informed consensual sex (see Dworkin). There is little of that silly old non-black-and-white grey, reality-related thinking in-between these positions as it’s more fun to scream and shout.

I’ve seen multiple cases of episodic evidence to “support” both positions. An acquaintance was accused of raping someone 17 years ago when both parties were practically children. No physical evidence, no witnesses, no previous accusations against him, no other anti-character witnesses, and not even any time-and-place information specific enough to provide or disprove an alibi. Clearly time to arrest this boy at his job at a school, plaster his face on all the subway advert screens (“Possibly dangerous sex offender – do *you* have any information on any heinous acts in his past?”) and bankrupt the family with legal fees and bail money. Two years later, five minutes before the trial started the judge pulled the two sides into chambers and said to the Crown Attorney “So you have a 19 year-old he-said, she-said case. And your chances of proving a crime beyond a reasonable doubt are…”. “Well zero, but we were kind of hoping he’d confess in the meantime.” Then the accuser had a meltdown and let slip that this was her revenge plot for him dumping her. Oh well, mistakes were made so no hard feelings guy, eh?

On the other hand the local police force can’t be bothered to check if cops handling rape cases are defendants in domestic abuse cases and so on. And if you’re a woman of colour making any kind of assault accusation, let alone a sexual one, well good luck with that. Especially if you’re dressed in anything other than Amish or hard-core Muslim dress and the responding officers are also from your ethic group. (“Hey, I wouldn’t let *my* sister go out dressed like that!”) I also note the fact that if a miserable pittance was spent on going through DNA samples from cold-cases in the States that a couple of thousand rape convictions a month could be obtained for quite some time. Wouldn’t want to steal a penny from the War On Some People Who Use Some Drugs though, now would we?

What’s the incidence of either kind of behaviour? No one’s ever going to look into that as it is a Forbidden Question whose answer might interfere with *a* personal experience, interfere with Revealed Truths, and discredit and force reforms upon a lot of vested interests. Try and look for evidence before assuming the case before you falls into one of the above cases? Nah, too much like work.
- Anonymous
  
  As a female victim of 3 rapes I would like to respond.
  
  The first time, my first time, I was nearly-14, he was nearly-16, I had (surprise!) poor communication skills, he had (double surprise!) raging hormones. Had I run or screamed, he (probably) wouldn’t have pursued me. A quarter-century later, do I think he should face jail? Not on my account. Would I appreciate an apology? Definitely.
  
  The latter two cases are less than 2 years later and indirectly related. (They knew each other) One was similar, bunny-in-the-headlights behaviour on my account, but he was even pushier. I blame him for bad judgement at least, maybe a legal slap would have been appropriate.
  
  The third guy I bit his dick. I fought, I screamed, I cried. His girlfriend screamed at me. (I lived with her) I took him to criminal court. The Crown Attorney dropped the charges the day of trial. (He said, she said defense, even though they had testimony from rapist #2)
  
  Rape has subtleties; what pisses me off the most is media portrayals of rape where some (always male) asshole tells the victim “your life is over”
  
  Rape is horrible, but must *always* be less than murder, unless the argument is that rapists should murder their victims rather than let them survive ‘tainted’
Anonymous

I also believe this is a fake. Why is the title ‘Safety Certificate’ in a different color than the text body?
dequeued

hvn’t rlly hd tm t vt ths, bt t lks cmpllng ngh t m:

Wmn mks twnty fls clms gnst vrs mn, nd sh wll nt spnd mnt bhnd brs
http://flsrpscty.blgspt.cm/2011/01/wmn-mks-twnty-fls-clms-gnst.html

nd yh, thr r wmn wh wld stp t tht lw, ‘v mt thm.
sw wmn gt drnk nd thrtn t chrg hr byfrnd wth rp bcs h ddn’t rtrn hs txt mssgs fst ngh, T HPPNS, nd fr vry stpd ccstn, thr r vr-gr dtctvs wtng t frc cnfssn t f y.
Anonymous

Kind of risky as someone could still be coerced into signing it.

Problem is, there’s no solution to the problem this attempts to address.

Also, I’m 99.9% sure it’s not real.
Anonymous

Seems totally fake to me. The style of language used seems a little too modern.
dequeued

h, lt m clrfy my lst pst.
By “frc cnfssn”, tht mns thy cn cnfn y wtht wtr, thy cn l t y, nd thrws msld nd ntmdt y hwvr thy wnt, t gt y t sgn cnfssn.

drnkn ccstn trns nt y bng rrstd t wrk.
Thn n ntrrgtn.
Y wld nvr d tht!
Bt, t’s bn vr 20 hrs nd y’r s thrsty, nd f y jst sgn cnfssn fr mch lssr chrg f ggrvtd sxl hrssmnt, thy’ll lt y g hm.
nd th dtctvs sy tht thy hv ngh vdnc t snd y t jl fr 20 yrs f y dn’t cprt, RGHT NW, nd sgn tht cnfssn.
Sddnly, t sms rlly tmptng.

gn, try t mgn wht lf s lk fr vrg flks wh my nt b dctd, r knw thr rghts.
Thr r plnty f gys t thr wh wld vntlly cv, y mght.
nd thr r plnty f hrrbl bmbs wh wld bsltly l bt sxl sslt.
Thy my fl glty ftr th fct, bt thn t wld b fr t lt t tk t bck, nd vryn wld b ggng thm n t gv mr dtls.
t’s lkly th gy sh ccsd wld nvr vn g t trl, s sh wldn’t hv t tstfy, nd f sh ddn’t thnk bt t, t wld b sy t gnr th gy sh snt t jl.

t hppns, nd t’s prtty hrrbl.
- chgoliz
  
  I worked with rape victims for 5 years. Police officers almost never talk to accused rapists, even if they’re given a name and contact info. Virtually all rape cases I was witness to (by virtue of my position, these would be cases that started in a hospital as the victim was being medically treated) would not even make it as far as the police station. Only two cases made it to trial; one involved a voluntary confession…he came to the police station to turn himself in, despite the fact that they wouldn’t have caught him if he’d kept quiet.
  
  You’ve been watching too many crime shows on TV.
- millrick
  
  dear moderators
  
  is “there are plenty of horrible bimbos who would absolutely lie about sexual assault” an appropriate comment for this forum?
  
  it reads like sexism to me
  
  Rick M
Anonymous

Ha, feetlips here. Amused at the level of circulation this has reached. I assure you it’s real. The quality of the paper is certainly old enough to be 40′s era, but I know nothing of it’s origin beyond the dude that wanted to be rid of it.
Anonymous

I’m pretty sure this isn’t from the 40′s. I think it is from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. They have extremely detailed consent rules there and the founder of the college’s name was Horace Mann.

Then again, I might be completely wrong: http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Mann+Act