Those are conservatives, not Republicans. The two have not been synonymous for a while now. Do keep up.
Ironically, one of the statistically most likely situations for women to experience sexual assault and/or harassment is in their workplace. And one of the ways that harassers/abusers groom their potential victims is by emphasizing their vulnerability as women, acting protective toward them, and getting them to feel dependent on the harasser for support, sympathy, protection, etc.
If a young female acquaintance told me that an elderly male co-worker was making “odd” and “embarrassing” offers to walk her to her car alone after dark, constantly drawing attention to his “chivalrous” behavior and emphasizing the ways in which he treats her specially because she’s a woman, I would definitely advise her to politely avoid being alone with that guy whenever possible and document his behavior as thoroughly as she can, just in case of potential misbehavior in future.
Natch, nobody here AFAICT is suspecting Starving Artist himself of actually planning to molest or harass his co-workers. But sadly, if that turned out to be what he was doing, lots of people would be stepping right up to discuss how much his victim “bears responsibility” for “knowingly and willingly putting herself into a potentially harmful situation”.
“What was she thinking, walking out to a deserted parking lot after dark alone with that kinda-creepy old man who keeps telling her how chivalrous he is and how much he loves women?” “Didn’t she realize that by smiling and joking and chatting with him she was encouraging him to think she would welcome his advances?” “Hey, I’m not blaming the victim or anything, but women in those situations are responsible, to varying degrees depending on the circumstances, for the fact that they wound up in the situations that led to their victimization.”
Sigh.
Or a woman raped and murdered on her way home from work?
When women have to second guess every thing they wear, every thing they drink, every place they visit, every car-trip, every time they get on public transport, every time they leave work in the dark or arrive at work before daybreak, EVERY FUCKING THING THEY DO…and you reckon the responsibility for ‘staying safe’ is upon women?
Just fuck off. Take your sanctimony and shove it up your fucking arse.
If there’s no perpetrator to blame, then the recipient of the practical advice has not been victimized, and consequently giving advice is not “victim blaming”. I thought that was fairly obvious, and in fact nobody except you seems to have had difficulty understanding it.
Then if you don’t in fact believe that there’s a clear dichotomy in boys’ behavior between disrespectful rudeness and sexual misconduct, why on earth are you continuing to insist that encouraging girls to “influence” boys’ behavior has nothing whatever to do with sexual misconduct?
Sexual misconduct is, apparently by your own admission, part of the continuous spectrum of boys’ behavior that you’re insisting girls’ behavior has significant influence over.
Sounds like that’s the problem right there. Why aren’t we simply telling the boys that displaying rudeness and crassness is impolite behavior that will not be tolerated? Why are we expecting the girls to solve the problem of the boys’ unacceptably impolite behavior by sweetly soothing their hypothesized insecurities?
Why should we be encouraging girls to provide friendly behavior and liking and feelings of comfort to people who are displaying rudeness and crassness to them and being mean to them? Why should we treat boys’ rude, crass, mean behavior as something that girls have to accept and gently cure the boys of by responding to their meanness with friendliness and niceness?
And why is it the responsibility of girls to make sure that insecure boys don’t find them “threatening” or “foreign” or “intimidating”? Are the girls also supposed to pretend to be dumber than they are so they won’t make boys feel inferior, for example? That was very common advice to smart girls back in the day.
Really? Because as I noted, it is very common for women to be assaulted and harassed in very ordinary situations such as their workplaces. And it is very common, as I noted, for people to assume that women in such situations are at fault for somehow having “asked for it”.
Applause.
And what if the risks, as you assess them, are based on past experience? i.e. If you know of friends who have got into trouble and you use those experiences as examples.
Is that not implicitly saying that those people didn’t act in a way to reduce their risks?
Is that not then, very obviously, victim blaming?
A great example. If you know of a friend who was drugged in such a way by not watching their drink is it OK to use that as a learning point? And what is the difference between doing that and victim blaming your friend?
Absolutely, but there are vanishingly small numbers of people who do say “that’s their problem”. I think it is perfectly possible to consider perpetrator prevention and victim mitigation with equal weight without it being worded or intended as “victim blaming” and in fact it is vital to do so seeing as the world is not going to magically conform to how we wish it to be.
I am reminded of the old guy at my allotment (kind of a community garden) because he wanted to go home, but I was still there. He was so convinced that the ‘chivalrous’ thing to do was to not leave a solitary female there by herself, that he came over and started full on yelling at me to go home, I was there too late and I could get attacked if he left!!!
I was working as a bouncer at the time, in my 30s, he was 80 if he was a day. I just stood there and laughed, 'cos fuck that.
I had stuff to do, which did not include having my behaviour controlled by some guy. I’d never even spoken to him before, and he never spoke to me again.
It genuinely didn’t seem to occur to him that, in a locked site, empty except for the two of us, the only real threat there to me was him.
Helping our kids (daughters AND sons) navigate the big, wide and sometimes dangerous world out there starts when they are infants. As they grow, the risks become greater, so we warn them of ‘stranger danger’, crossing the road safely, and learning about personal bodily autonomy.
Teaching our kids should not just NOT start when they are teens…so by the time they ARE going out alone or with friends, they already should have a solid appreciation of risks and behaviours. Our (collective our) kids set up a DD when they are going out partying, or they make sure their friends are always safe by setting up meeting times and similar checks.
Teens and young adults don’t need to be told what to wear, where to go, what to eat or drink because really, they already know. They’re keeping an eye out for each other.
Now, you can do the usual parent thing like DRIVE SAFE, TAKE CARE, RING ME IF YOU HAVE PROBLEMS…that’s fine, for boys and girls alike. No victim blaming with that.
How many men get shot, stabbed, or beaten in aggressive, bullying confrontations every day? How many male middle school and high school students have their self-esteem ruined and start seeking alternate routes home because the school bullies have been attacking them after school? How many guys get intimidated on the road by tail-gating assholes who think they aren’t going fast enough, or fear for the safety of themselves and their families in their cars because they’ve inadvertently sent some asshole into road rage? Or having to deal with some asshole at a fuel pump spoiling for a fight because he thought you gave him a hard look when you were pulling in? Most men, if they’re not careful, face multiple instances every day where just looking at somebody the wrong way, or at least giving that impression, can result in getting their teeth knocked out, their nose broken or a trip to the hospital.
Men have to take responsibility too, in order to try to avoid this kind of crap.
Three hundred and sixty million people live in this country. Shit is going to happen. Women are going to get assaulted, men are going to get beaten. Both are going to get murdered. So are children.
Bad things happen to all groups of people. But reasonable people recognize that certain situations and certain behaviors create a greater risk that something bad might happen, and when people ignore that risk and proceed anyway, it’s not unreasonable to feel they bear a certain amount of responsibility for the consequences, even if the criminal act itself is entirely the responsibility of whoever perpetrated it.
What would you think if I, Starving Artist, were to decide for whatever reason stop at a bar in the bad side of town and proceed to get sloshed. I’m threaded out in expensive clothes. I have an expensive wristwatch on my wrist. I’m pulling wads of cash out of my pocket and paying for my drinks and everyone else’s with wild abandon. Then I stagger up to a booth filled with, let’s say, rough-looking gentlemen, and I ask them where to find the bathroom. They helpfully offer to guide me to it, but instead of going into the bathroom they take me out the back door into an alley and beat the crap out of me and steal my money and my watch.
Be serious now. Would you not feel that I bore considerable responsibility for the fact that I got myself into that situation and suffered the resulting consequences?
The reason you’re getting so much pushback is that your sentiment has been used to control and shame women for generations – shaming women for daring to wear what’s comfortable or stylish, or for choosing to date certain men, or for choosing to have sex, or for a million other things that women are shamed far, far more than men are shamed for. Even if your intentions are good, you are repeating the efforts of those patriarchal scolds who have been insisting that women are the root of all evil for centuries. 99.999% of this effort should be going to teaching boys that it’s unacceptable to assault or rape. But your approach, and the approach for centuries, has taught boys and men (unintentionally and intentionally) that some women aren’t worth treating with respect and decency. If you spent 99% of your time (when talking about rape and assault) criticizing boys and men who have these attitudes, then I doubt you’d get nearly as much push back for spending 1% of your time suggesting ways that women and girls can lessen their chances of rape or assault. But by my reading, nearly all your efforts on this are about the women and girls, and what they’re doing wrong, and that’s just making it easier for boys and men to pretend that some girls aren’t worth treating with respect.
All true. Wouldn’t argue with any of it and it is what I do myself. But…it doesn’t really answer any of my questions regarding the use of cautionary tales.
I don’t disagree with you here; certainly our focus needs to be on men & boys behaving badly. None-the-less, I taught my daughters to not put themselves in risky situations.
I can see where you are going with this (not that I disagree in practice) but cautionary tales are kinda like fairy-tales really.
You can read Hansel & Gretel and get the principles involved (try to avoid witches at all costs) but if your kid DID get snatched by an Evil Witch, would you then put it down to your lack of teaching, or down to the Evil Witch being cunning?
Chances are, your kid is never going to meet a witch and if he/she did, it was nothing to do with what your kid was doing at the time. It’s just witches doing what witches do.
I did not say I made “odd” and “embarrassing” offers to walk these women to their cars. What I said was that at first they felt it was odd or that they were a little embarrassed at having someone walk with them to their cars. The offer itself they thought was sweet and considerate. Then in short order they came to like the accompaniment and to count on it, and to thank me for it and to express curiosity as to why other guys never did things like that for them.
Classic Kimstu. (Are you paying attention, Ulf? Did you notice how Kimstu dishonestly took words I’d used to describe some of these girls initial feelings as we walked to their cars and tried to make it appear they viewed the offer itself that way, and how she included quotes to make it seem I’d said as much myself.)
It’s only a potentially harmful situation in the sense that any situation is a potentially harmful situation. There is nothing whatever about it, however, that is in any way indicative of an unusual degree of danger, as would be the case were they young, provocatively dressed, drunk as a skunk and flirting with every guy in the joint at a bar somewhere.
I’ve worked with most of these women for months or years. We interact constantly throughout the day (or evening, as the case may be). We are friends. I’ve been to parties at some of their homes, and to nights out at bars on occasion. I began offering to see them to their cars because one night it occurred to me how awful I’d feel were someone to attack or abduct them in the parking lot as they were leaving work by themselves.
So I asked if they’d like me to see them out to their cars, and the practice has been a hit.
As to how many are involved, we are talking one to three women a night. Sometimes I’m not there when they need to leave and this is much to their chagrin, although they’ve tentatively begun to follow my advice and ask one of the other guys there to walk them out if I’m away. But they seem to feel like it’s an imposition and they’re generally reluctant to ask.
Indeed. I think I’m about done with you.
Gotta go. I’ll try to answer, probably tomorrow night.
Off to a Chivalry Shift?
Well,yes and no. Violence, druggings, sexual assaults and crime happen to people we know. Real people, real situations with real ways in which the victims could have made themselves less of a target. Hansel and Gretel don’t come into it.
I agree that we must watch our language when we talk about these things and should ensure the blame lies 100% on the perpetrator, but every time we do use a real example as a learning point we are, pretty much unavoidably, saying that the victim involved could have done something to lessen their risk.
Personally I think that is not “victim blaming”
Exactly. If a young female acquaintance told me that that’s how they felt about an elderly co-worker’s offers of a safety escort, I would be taking those feelings of discomfort seriously.
But nowhere did I say or suggest that I regarded such feelings as potential warning signs in the particular case of your interactions with your co-workers. I’m paying you the compliment of assuming that your motives and actions are as benign as you describe them, even if similar actions might come across as rather skeevy if they were being described to me by a third party who felt somewhat uncomfortable about them. So you can stop being so defensive.
But as I’ve pointed out before, the problem with this attitude is that more sexual assault and harassment of women occurs in such everyday situations with nothing “indicative of an unusual degree of danger” than in these stereotypical “Skank Asking for Trouble” slut-shaming scenarios.
Just because you are uncomfortable with the fact that more women get harmed in ordinary, supposedly “safe” circumstances than through being “provocatively dressed, drunk as a skunk and flirting with every guy in the joint at a bar somewhere” doesn’t make it go away.
See above re: not being so defensive. I made it quite clear that neither I nor anyone else in this thread, AFAICT, is suggesting any nefarious intention on the part of you personally.
I’m just pointing out how easily the actions you described to us could also be consistent with the behavior of an elderly male co-worker who does have nefarious intentions concerning young women at his workplace.
Oh well. So much for the alleged power of ladylike behavior with “a confident, composed and considerate demeanor which projects both self-respect and a short leash when it comes to rude or abusive behavior from others” encompassing “poise, self-respect, discipline, proper manners, etc.” to inspire more gentlemanly behavior from men, I guess.
The chief trouble with this analogy is that you’re trying to use the scenario of a man’s deliberately getting sloshed in a bar at the bad side of town while wearing expensive clothes and jewelry and ostentatiously flinging large sums of cash around and recklessly accepting the company of a bunch of scary thugs as a counterpart to the scenario of…
…a woman’s walking unescorted to her own car at her own workplace after dark.
:dubious:
Fundamentally, the problem with this sort of “well everybody needs to bear responsibility for the situations they get themselves into” rationalization is that men are generally not required to “bear responsibility” when bad stuff is inflicted on them by others, unless they’re engaging in the kind of massively reckless behavior you describe.
Whereas women are expected to “bear responsibility” for far more minor and ordinary behavior choices when other people inflict bad stuff on them.
A woman gets assaulted when leaving her workplace after dark? Tsk tsk, you should have known better than to venture outside alone except in the daytime. A woman gets groped while riding on public transit? Tsk tsk, what were you thinking to be wearing a provocative skirt and heels on the subway. A woman gets harassed by a stranger whom she was talking with politely? Tsk tsk, you should have known better than to encourage him by being friendly. A woman gets harassed by a stranger whom she initially ignores? Tsk tsk, you should have known better than to anger him by being unfriendly.
:rolleyes:
Men who are undeservedly harmed by others get blamed for “putting themselves in harm’s way” pretty much only when they were behaving in an outrageously stupid and irresponsible manner. Women who are undeservedly harmed by others get blamed for “putting themselves in harm’s way” pretty much no matter what they were doing or not doing.
Laughingly ironic when you consider that their beloved conservative president has a “Trophy Wife” whose previous “career” wasn’t exactly that of a nun.