What?
And you made this oh, so helpful observation is service of…what, exactly? And further, if my particular case didn’t inspire it, what, pray tell, did?
You know perfectly well the motivation behind that comment, and the image you meant to convey by it.
No, there’s no correlation. They are unrelated events. Thus there’s no problem in recognizing the potential for harm in situations known to be rife with risk.
I’m not the slightest bit uncomfortable with such a fact, and I’ve never given a moment’s thought to whether it should or ought to go away.
Well, for what it’s worth, I can pretty much guarantee you than no one, male or female, at my place of employment thinks of me as elderly.
But your comment makes me wonder what your response would be should I post about the young woman at work who just point blank informed me that I should take her home with me after work one night (“…and whatever happens will be whatever happens”). She said this right in front of several other people, including a couple of the men, and didn’t seem to care in the slightest who heard it.
Will you point out how easily such actions by young women might lead to rewarding relationships with older, more mature and stable men, as opposed to guys their own age who are “All on drugs! Or only want to play video games! Or are assholes!”, as she described them to me?
Somehow I doubt it.
Unfortunately, ladylike behavior, such as it may exist in this case to begin with, doesn’t count for much unless it’s also accompanied by honesty and integrity, both of which have been is short supply in our interactions ever since you first began stalking me.
I’m an old skank now SA, but I can assure you that EVERY SINGLE TIME I was molested or sexually assaulted in my youth was by an old bloke who I trusted to keep me ‘safe’.
Take that as you will.
What would you propose ‘society’ do, for example?
You’ve made comments similar to this several times in this thread. I cannot begin to imagine any scenario society can construct that will protect women everywhere and all the time. If every business and every road were under lockdown and armed guards were stationed at every entry and exit point, and fences and security gates lined every street and rural road, this still wouldn’t prevent every attack. People get attacked and beaten (and if popular lore is to be believed, raped) even in such tightly controlled environments as prison.
And also what precautions should women undertake in the meantime, or are all bets off because stating precautions of any kind is ‘slut-shaming’ so women should just do what they want and take their chances?
After all your talk about women being assaulted and harmed no matter where they are or what they’re doing, you ask this?
Just as one type of example, are you aware of how many female joggers have been murdered recently vs. how many men?
Or how many women out alone for any number of other reasons fall victim to abduction, rape and murder?
This is truly mind-boggling.
What is happening is that his daughter is at a significantly greater risk of abduction, rape or murder than is his son…for reasons that I hope are obvious.
It’s source? The problem at its source is that some men for a wide variety of reasons are driven to commit horrible crimes against women.
Exactly how is that you propose Crafter_Man, or anyone else, ‘deal’ with that fact at all…never mind quickly enough that he can begin to let his daughter roam the countryside alone?
It’s simple. ‘Society’ needs to educate their boys that women are not a vessel for fucking, and that women are equal members of this ‘society’.
When that is inculcated into boys from the earliest age, then maybe the situation might change.
Shit like, ‘Boys will be boys’ and the meme in the OP perpetuate the notion that girls and women are the ones who need to be instructing boys in appropriate mores. Ain’t gonna work…because we’re just women, remember?
It’s got to come from their dads, and grandads, and uncles and old women like me and younger women as well.
‘Society’ doesn’t need old farts like you SA. You are just perpetuating the odious status-quo. Just go away.
Sigh
Right.
And the problems of racism could be cured overnight if society just inculcated it into everyone that we’re all the same and equal members of this society.
And crime could similarly be eliminated if only society just educated everyone that breaking the law is bad, mmkay, and that we all have a right to live in a crime-free society.
And then eventually maybe everyone everywhere will think twice before they do something bad and we can all live Kumbaya lives forever and ever, amen.
No, it’s not that simple. Relations between the sexes is fraught with complexity and resentment and desire and frustration and embarrassment and defensiveness and misunderstanding and competitiveness and possessiveness and jealousy and fear and love and any number of other emotions all jumbled up and coming to the fore one or several at a time in an ever-changing response to whatever is going on between the individuals involved at any particular time. And this continues to be the case from childhood all the way through to old age.
These elements and more all play a part in the way men and women interact with each other, and why they sometimes treat each other badly. They also play a part in why some men sexually abuse women. Sex abuse isn’t as cut and dried as you seem to think, where men just abuse women because they think women are here to serve as handy receptacles for men’s sexual urges.
Men abuse women sexually for countless and complex reasons peculiar to them that often have very little to do with your idea of why they do it, and for that reason your solution will accomplish little, except perhaps a little less forwardness on teenage date night.
Not quite. If I were using it as a counterpart to anything, it would be to the stereotypical provocatively dressed drunk young flirt who passes out and gets raped behind a bar.
But the scenario wasn’t intended even for that. It was intended solely, and by virtue of having no woman involved, to get people to admit to themselves that people do indeed bear a degree of responsibility for the consequences if they engage in foolishly thoughtless and risky behavior.
It’s difficult to believe this point has to be argued in the first place, but here we are.
Your son has a few too many drinks at a campus party, gets anal raped by a gay man.
How responsible is your son for his rape?
Will you say, “Well, you were around other men, and you were drinking, so…a little your fault too!”
How will you feel when the papers imply it? And his friends at college believe it?
He’s already been pretty severely traumatized, how do you think that attitude will affect his ability to recover himself?
0%
no
bad
badly
But still, would you say there was any way in which he could reduce his chances of it happening again? Would it be fair to use this example as a warning to other people so that they might be able to reduce the chances of it happening to them?
Either these terrible things happen to people or they don’t. If not, then there’s no point talking about them. If they do (and they do) then there is every reason to critically assess both what we can do to stop the perpetrators and also what we can do to protect ourselves.
That last activity necessarily requires a critical assessment of victim behaviour.
Never did answer this, SA.
And you’re cool with a quote, on a junior school wall, that implies he was partly responsible because he wasn’t behaving manly enough?
Not at 30,000 feet for 20 minutes. 
How on earth do any of my answers even suggest that? I quite clearly said he was 0% responsible.
what about my questions
Well shit, that’s even worse. Is it the pressurized cabin air??
I find I must come into this thread simply to laud this epic burn. ::raucous applause::
That’s his usual MO: when he’s caught in a trap of his own making, he weasles out of it by claiming, “oh gosh, darn, look at the time, I’ll have to get back to you!”
What’s really retarded about it is that this is freaking message board, not a chatroom or anything like that – there’s no need to announce you’re leaving. I have no idea why he feels the need to do so.
Novelty Bobble, I have a different set of questions for you.
Are you teaching your children that their bodies belong to them? That no one has the right to touch them without their permission? Does your son know that when your daughter says “No” or “Stop” he needs to respect her boundaries? Does your daughter know she can say “No” or “Stop” to her brother if he’s doing something she doesn’t like, or if he’s touching her in a way she doesn’t like? (I’m not talking about sex stuff here – my sister used to sit and just…barely…touch…me with the tip of the dog’s tail, which was annoying to both me AND the dog.)
When one of your friends is injured or assaulted, do you point out that the person who was responsible – 100% responsible – for that injury/assault was the perpetrator of that injury/assault?
You can go ahead and say, to your daughter, “don’t leave your drink unattended because there are unscrupulous people in the world”, but do you tell your son “don’t ever mess with another person’s drink, even as a gag” when you’re having these conversations? Again: bodily autonomy – that drink is going in that other person’s body.
Do you respect your children’s stated boundaries? (and JFC, authoritarians, I’m not talking about situations like “I dowanna go to bed” but situations like “don’t touch me there, dad, I’m sunburned and it hurts.”)
Do your children, both of them, know that if something like a rape or an assault happens to them, that you won’t become “scary daddy” and fly off the handle in a way that will add fear for your safety to their trauma?
Have you made sure they feel they can come to you and you’ll believe them, without question, without ‘well, you shouldn’t have done that/gone there/dressed that way’?
You don’t need to answer these questions here on the thread. No one needs to answer these questions here on the thread.
Victim blaming isn’t telling just-so stories, and it isn’t giving stupid but well-meaning parental advice. Victim blaming is your daughter not coming to you if she’s raped because she knows you’ll just demand to know what she did “wrong”. Victim blaming is your son knowing he can tell you jokes about his friend who roofied a girl, because boys will be boys.
For the umpteenth time, Starving Artist, nobody here is trying to suggest that you personally are trying to use your “chivalry” practices for the sake of pursuing any nefarious purpose with regard to your co-workers. It is very clear to everyone here, and has been ever since you introduced this digression about your workplace situation back in post #94, that you want people to know that your young female co-workers regard you admiringly and have come to depend on your “chivalry” and enjoy your society and perhaps in some cases even find you personally attractive. And nobody’s suggesting that we don’t trust your word on this or that you mean any harm whatsoever by your behavior. So like I said, you don’t have to be so defensive about it.
I already explained that to you back in post #218:
It’s nice that you personally have benign intentions and all about your “chivalry” practices, but we should not lose sight of the larger issue that such practices have often been one of the main techniques that unscrupulous men with non-benign intentions exploit to harass and abuse women.
Well, to be candid, it may be the case that I don’t have the highest opinion of your honesty and integrity in our interactions either. But I can still argue against your assertions with “a confident, composed and considerate demeanor” expressing “poise, self-respect, discipline, proper manners, etc.”. I may not be equally polite and respectful in every Pit argument, but the point is that I don’t use my low opinion of you as an excuse to try to justify impolite or disrespectful behavior towards you, or to claim that you don’t qualify for respectful behavior.
This is another classic example of the sexist Catch-22 that is foisted on women by so many aspects of “traditional” gender expectations. A man claims that “ladylike” behavior exhibiting “a confident, composed and considerate demeanor […] poise, self-respect, discipline, proper manners, etc.” will produce “improved gentlemanly behavior” from men. A woman then disagrees with some of his arguments, carefully using a ladylike “confident, composed and considerate demeanor” with “poise, self-respect, discipline, proper manners, etc.”. The man then retroactively decides that her ladylike demeanor doesn’t in fact entitle her to “improved gentlemanly behavior” because he doesn’t approve of what she’s saying.
Surprise: the proposed implicit contract about “ladylike behavior”, like so many of the other implicit contracts that traditional patriarchal society offers to women, turns out to be unilaterally revokable and dependent on additional conditions that men get to specify after the fact. Well well, who’da thunkit.
Well, I don’t know the details of Crafter_Man’s local situation and he hasn’t been back to explain them, but I’ve already made several suggestions about how you, for example, might deal with the problem of threats to women’s safety at your workplace. Namely:
-
If there isn’t in fact any realistically significant security threat to women at your workplace, then there isn’t really a problem, and there’s no harm in continuing to perform your individual “chivalry” schtick for purposes of social enjoyment rather than real security enhancement. As long as you don’t encourage your female co-workers to believe that they’re in more danger than they actually are, or that they need a male presence for security when they actually don’t.
-
If there is in fact a realistically significant security threat to women at your workplace, then you should definitely work on finding more effective and consistent countermeasures than merely having one elderly man serve as a volunteer security escort who isn’t reliably available. Whether such countermeasures should take the form of improving physical security in your parking lot, or instituting a regular full-participation buddy system or escort system so that women can move around after dark safely without having to request their male co-workers as a favor to accompany them, or some other approach, would depend on specific details about your workplace that I’m not privy to.
But I just don’t see how it’s an acceptable solution to decree that we simply shouldn’t let women “roam the countryside alone”, even when “the countryside” actually consists of a low-risk workplace parking lot or a rural road in daylight within one mile of home. Where exactly are we as a society prepared to draw the line when it comes to trade-offs between avoiding potential risks to women’s safety and limiting women’s freedom of action?
The problem, though, is not so much with the “idea of why they do it” as the extent to which we normalize and accept it. In light of which, I’d like to ask you again how you’d respond to these questions in a previous part of this discussion, which you understandably may have lost sight of in the flurry of more recent posts:
Again, I hope it is clear from my previous posts that I’d answer all those questions in the same way as you would. You are right it is obvious stuff.
Your first example is definitely “victim blaming”, the second seems to be something else entirely. “being an arsehole” perhaps? but certainly I would read the riot act to my lad if I got even a hint of that attitude.
The answers I don’t seem to be able to get from people is whether they consider the use of real situations as learning tools as “victim blaming”
Not “just-so” stories. Not “stupid” advice but good solid practical advice based on real incidents that have happened, you know…the best kind of advice.
Using those to point out how people may have better protected themselves…is that “victim blaming”?
There seems to be general atmosphere that even any implied criticism of past behaviour falls under that rather cumbersome term. I don’t think it is helpful but few seem willing to address that specific point.
Even you have avoided responding to that and asked me questions in return on points I haven’t made and demonstrably don’t support (that I had already answered) Do you want to respond to my points?