Probably. Correlation isn’t causation. When I see “they shouldn’t have done that” accusations, it’s often irrational.
“If you didn’t buy a car, you wouldn’t have been in a collision!”
Good, I’m glad that’s settled. Now all that remains to be defensive about in this regard is your repeated use of the awkward and clunky term “chivalry practices”, in which you for some reason find it necessary to place the word ‘chivalry’ in quotes but not ‘practices’. Perhaps this is because having been called on the practice, you have decided to cease putting words I haven’t said in quotes in order to falsely make it appear I’ve said them. So now you’ve chosen to insinuate my use of the term “chivalry practices” as your next bit of verbal chicanery designed to make it appear I’m a dolt, but this time placing only the word ‘chivalry’ in quotes, as you know perfectly well I’ve never come close to placing those two words back to back and uttering that ridiculous phrase myself.
Yes, but again I have to ask why. You repeatedly used the term “elderly” to describe the men such women should apparently be forewarned about, but most elderly men lack the physical strength and testosterone-fuled desire which would be required to attempt to assault a young woman while seeing her to her car at night. They would be running the risk that the young woman might herself be carrying an alarm or weapon in her purse. And they would be putting their own employment at risk, and as I’m sure you’re aware, employment opportunities for the elderly do not exactly abound.
So all in all, I should think the likelihood that a woman may find herself under attack by an elderly male co-worker in the parking lot of both their places of employment is minimal, to say the least.
And then she should be advised to consider the relative risks involved in deciding whether to accept accompaniment to her car. Would she be safer to accept the accompaniment of a male co-worker she knows well and whose job is on the line should he misbehave, or should she take her chances that she won’t at some point in time fall victim to some passing piece of societal detritus who opportunistically decides to rob, assault, or abduct her? Another even more frightening aspect is that she may be being stalked by someone who’s become fixated on her and is either building up his courage or waiting for the ideal opportunity to abduct her. Having a male accompany her to her car each night would go a long way toward discouraging both threats
Also, given your repeated assertions as to how women are constantly being assaulted and harassed all the time and everywhere, I should think your awareness of this fact would make you hyper-aware of the dangers a woman alone in a dark parking lot at night faces, and that contrary to your current position you would be supportive of her having someone see her safely to her car when leaving work at night.
And lastly, why would you pick this particular scenario to warn women about, when it seems that killings while jogging and abductions from Walmart and shopping mall parking lots occur much more frequently?
Again with the “chivalry” practices!
I imagine you’re correct and that many a man in many a [different] situation has pretended to be chivalrous in order to get a woman alone in order to hit on her or attempt to force himself on her.
But it isn’t practical for women to avoid men altogether at all times. So guess what? It becomes necessary for women to assess each situation as it arises and use their own judgement as to whether accepting such chivalry would be advisable. And since they may not be familiar with such techniques, the men in their families or their social circle may attempt to offer helpful advise intended to assist them is making such choices. Hopefully you can see that it only has the potential to cause women harm to take the approach that for these men to do so amounts to ‘mansplaining’, ‘slut-shaming’, etc.
With regard to the three paragraphs above, in which you continue to exhibit dishonesty by dodging the true issue and attempting once again to make the issue one of hypocrisy on my part, I’ll remind you again of what I said yesterday:
Should the time come that you decide to drop the many dishonest rhetorical devices you employ in your attempts to discredit your opponents, I’ll be happy to behave in a more polite and gentlemanly way toward you. But you’ve obviously worked hard and devoted a lot of time and effort into developing your ability in this regard, and it’s obviously a skill you take considerable pride in, so I doubt that you’ll relinquish it easily. But all this carefully honed verbal trickery is in service of nothing more than creating a deceptive mountain of lies. It looks nice to the uncritical eye and can be counted on to garner applause from a biased audience, but in the final analysis it’s nothing more than lipstick on a pig.
So you’re NOT a skeevy old bloke grooming younger women to be sexually assaulted in the car-park?
Gotcha. :dubious:
Just that I think, from all your vehement protestations, you might be protesting too much. Methinks.
I suppose I should thank you for your suggestions as to how to deal with the “problem” of threats to the safety of women at my workplace despite the fact I haven’t asked, nor seen the need, for them.
Also I have to ask if my practice still qualifies as “schtick” on those occasions when I step outside to keep an eye out when one of our guys is leaving particularly late at night?
It seems to me there can be no such line, because the circumstances differ depending upon the…circumstances.
There’s simply no way to get around the fact that the best solution is for people to be made aware of areas and situations where a greater than normal degree of risk exists, and to moderate their behavior accordingly.
Well, first of all I believe a couple of corrections are in order: We’re not ‘expecting’ girls to do anything, we are ‘suggesting’. And we don’t know of any particularly unacceptably impolite behavior this suggestion is supposed to correct. We merely surmise that if the girls behave in a more ladylike fashion, the boys will respond in a more gentlemanly fashion.
After all, a boy can be perfectly normal in most people’s eyes and yet still not exhibit behavior that rises to the level of gentlemanliness. It’s not like boys are either gentlemen or assholes.
In my opinion, the quote above the lockers was intended to elevate the behavior of both sexes, with the expectation that the boys will follow the girls’ lead. And this because as I’ve already stated, most boys want girls to like them. This is why guys pick up guitars and start rock bands. It’s why they want to be football heroes. It’s why they try to be cool. Etc., etc., etc. The girls set the tone and the guys follow.
As to why we don’t simply ‘outlaw’ rude and crude behavior, that would be because such behavior falls on a wide spectrum and no bright line exists that would allow all objectionable behavior to be prohibited and only the desired behavior to remain.
And finally, in light of my previous post, I’d like to say that apart from the one little dig about my “schtick”, I found nothing in this post to be objectionable in the slightest. Credit where due.
You think many things I believe to be wrong. I’ll just mark this down with the rest of them.
But I’m not phrasing it as “you shouldn’t have done that” am I? I’m very careful with my words here.
To take your car incident. You get hurt in a collision that that was 100% the other person’s fault. you were sat at lights and they rear-end you. You weren’t wearing your seat-belt and it would have reduced or prevented your injury. Is it victim blaming to use your example when I tell my kids about vehicle safety?
Yes. Bad person who didn’t wear seatbelt got hurt. Just point them to the crash test statistics that wearing a seatbelt reduces the risk of injury and the type of injury. There’s no need to refer to any accident victim at all. And if the “cautionary tale” involves mere ideas and not something that has actually been researched and resulted in actual factual data, then it’s probably worthless. Bringing in some particular person involved in some scenario is just to try to give it more weight than it might otherwise warrant. Of course it implies that the person in the scenario was stupid, or negligent, or in some way responsible for what an offender did to them. Stick to facts. “Finish your drink before you go to the loo, never drink out of a glass that strangers have had access to” is reasonable advice. Offenders have been reported to have spiked drinks. There’s a basis to give that advice. “Mary Lou left her drink unattended, and look what happened to her!” is attributing blame to Mary Lou. If you want to “beef up” a warning, beef it up with statistics, look up the numbers of assaults involving stranger-spiked drinks and quote that. And if you are warning about absurdities like “she didn’t act ladylike, so he attacked her, if only she’d been ladylike, he’d have been a gentleman and left her alone”, then you are merely delusional.
You never did respond to this, SA, so here it is again:
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.
Who said they were a bad person?
those statistics are based on crashes and people that did and did not wear seat belts. By your own definition that is “victim blaming” because you are referring to multiple accident victims. Is it OK when they are anonymous?
true, but the opposite of what I’ve suggested.
It implies that a person was fallible and nothing more. (unless you choose to word it in some other way)
A victim is 0% responsible for the actions of the perpetrator.
In the scenario above would you say there was any reasonable way in which the victim could have reduced their chance of injury? If so, how would you term their failure to do so? irresponsibility? negligence? something else?
And when they say “yeah dad, like that ever happens” do you back it up with reference to real or theoretical examples?
Is there? aren’t you now pointing to real scenarios in which a person was “stupid and negligent”? aren’t you “victim blaming”?
And if you don’t mention her name and don’t identify her but still use that example in terms of “someone I know” doesn’t that carry some greater weight?
What statistics are available on such matters that don’t rely on actual harm suffered by actual people? You are “victim blaming” there aren’t you?
You’d be worse than delusional, you’d be an arsehole. But that is something that I’d never say and would actively speak against it.
That’s because “chivalry” is your designation for these practices, so I quote it, and “practices” is just a standard term designating a particular chosen set of actions guided by a particular set of principles or beliefs. E.g., “employment practices”, “religious practices”, “best practices”, “editorial practices”, etc. Is this sort of locution really so unfamiliar to you that you assume it’s somehow intended to be derogatory?
No need to remind me about your retroactively adding extra conditions to the criteria for “improved gentlemanly behavior”. That’s exactly the remark of yours that I was replying to.
Um, you asked the following question, to which the part of my post that you quoted there was a direct reply:
You are, obviously, part of the “anyone else”. And you’ve been volunteering information about dealing with potential threats to the safety of women at your workplace. So giving my opinions about how to deal with that is a legitimate part of answering your question. You certainly don’t need to thank me for them, though.
Well, you’re the one who made the initial claims about gratuitously and unacceptably impolite behavior on the part of boys:
Why are we suggesting that the way to deal with rudeness and crassness and meanness deliberately inflicted on girls by “awkward and insecure” boys is for the girls to “behave in a more ladylike fashion”, in order that the boys’ “motivation” for rudeness and crassness and meanness will hopefully “evaporate”?
Why aren’t we instead focusing on directly disciplining the boys’ behavior by telling them very clearly, "Don’t be rude and crass and mean to other people, because that will not be tolerated. Whatever your awkwardness or insecurity or other motivation may be for wanting to display rudeness and crassness and meanness, you need to find a different way to deal with that rather than taking it out on other people." ?
Certainly there will always be gray areas on the behavior spectrum. But it seems likely that directly disciplining boys for behavior that is obviously rude and crude would be far more effective—as well as far more just—than simply expecting girls to put up with the rudeness and crudeness until and unless they can manage to coax the boys to “respond in a more gentlemanly fashion” by being “ladylike” and “friendly” and making the boys “comfortable”.
ISTM that letting boys’ “rude and crude behavior” go unpunished, and encouraging girls to regard it as a problem that they need to address by being nicer and friendlier and more ladylike to the misbehaving boys, is just rewarding boys for bad behavior. As well as unfairly expecting the girls to accept and tolerate such behavior.
I do find it interesting how your conclusion about responsibility concerns those who take the brunt of “this kind of crap”, rather those who serve it.
I also find it interesting that when boys are victimized by other boys, we don’t see quaint little quotes put on the walls (or whispered inside of our heads), telling the male targets of abuse to modify their behavior so as to positively influence the behavior of their abusers.
Again, nobody’s saying that only elderly men or especially elderly men pose a danger to women. The point, as I keep telling you, is not that there’s something about you personally or your intentions which is intrinsically creepy or untrustworthy, but that a lot of creepy and untrustworthy harassers and abusers seem just as harmless as you—right up to the point when they don’t. A great many young women, as kambuckta noted, are harassed and assaulted by “old blokes” who were ostensibly concerned with and/or responsible for their safety.
This is exactly the sort of Catch-22 I’m talking about. Potential victims are told to “assess each situation as it arises and use their own judgement” about “situations where a greater than normal degree of risk exists” and “moderate their behavior accordingly”. But the stereotyped “risky” situations involving drinking to excess in a skimpy dress or a dark parking lot in a bad part of town, etc., don’t in fact constitute the biggest threats to women’s safety, statistically speaking. Most assaults and harassment of women occur in what would be considered low-risk, “normal” situations in public and/or in the company of acquaintances.
And the typical advice about “assessing each situation” and “using their own judgement” and “moderating their behavior” is so open-ended as to be meaningless. It also provides limitless opportunities for assigning responsibility to victims for having “put themselves in harm’s way”, by deciding after the fact that the victims should have done something different from what they did.
Returning again to your own workplace situation, because that’s what you’ve been repeatedly talking about: Are women indeed at significant risk of attack in your workplace parking lot after dark, or not? If not, what is the point of encouraging them to believe that they should have a security escort? If so, why aren’t you trying to establish more effective workplace security procedures than your own on-again-off-again services as a part-time volunteer escort?
What you’ve got now appears to be a situation where your female co-workers don’t really know if it’s unreasonably risky to go to their cars alone after dark. Their only readily available alternative is either to be dependent on your availability to escort them, or to impose a request for escort on another male colleague who hasn’t volunteered for “chivalry” duty. If one of them does get assaulted at some point while walking to her car alone after dark, she will doubtless be told at some point that she “bears some responsibility” for “putting herself in harm’s way” by not making sure that she had a security escort.
This sort of approach—which is not the fault of you personally but is very characteristic of the scattershot irrationality typically brought to bear on the issue of women’s physical safety—seems very effective at keeping women confused about risk levels, fearful of independent action, dependent on men’s willingness and availability to accompany them, hesitant to “impose” on men for assistance that may not be actually necessary, and inclined to blame themselves for having done something wrong if something bad happens to them. It does not seem very effective at all at actually making realistic assessments of threats to women’s safety and successfully minimizing them while not unnecessarily restricting women’s autonomy.
I’ve already answered your “victim blaming” question, but if I may chime in again, it seems to me that this is kind of missing the point. AFAICT, there’s nothing at all wrong with telling your kids something along the lines of “Some evil SOB put a roofie in Mary Lou’s drink when it was left unattended, and then assaulted her when she passed out. They made sure his rapey criminal ass went to jail, but of course Mary Lou would have far preferred if it had never happened at all. If you take care not to leave your drink unattended, that will make it much more difficult for some evil SOB to pull something like that on you.”
This way of framing the anecdote—focusing not on “what Mary Lou did”, but on what some evil SOB inexcusably did to her by exploiting a potential vulnerability, and how the listener could reduce that vulnerability in their own situation—IMHO combines an appropriate emphasis on perpetrator blaming with victim supporting and useful practical advice.
Whoever’s using them as a “cautionary tale”.
No, they’re not, they are based on crash test dummies being driven into walls at different speeds and using other different variables and then analysed.
No. "There have been X number of assaults in this area and of those X number, Y number involved drink spiking by strangers and W number involved drink spiking by those known to the victim. It says NOTHING about the victim.
Stick to facts.
Nonsense. It is easily possible to use examples without framing the person as a “bad person”. See Kimstu’s response.
Eh? data is collected on real worldcrashes and injuries (warning pdf). People don’t just run simulations and assume it’ll be borne out in the real world.
Unless you are saying that we should only talk abut the simulations and never about the real outcomes? I can’t imagine that is what you meant though judging by the example you give below.
It is still using the example of real people who were victims. Either you are telling people to behave in exactly the same way as those victims, which is pointless, or you are suggesting that there is a way to take better precautions, which is…?
I absolutely agree. That’s pretty much exactly the approach I would take. I’ve not engaged too much with you on this Kimstu because I think you have a sensible and nuanced view of how to strike that balance.
I agree with that as well. But when my kids inevitably ask “Why would she leave her drink unattended if she knows that people could spike it?” what’s the answer I should give?
Well, if it were me, that’s where I’d try to shift the balance back to perpetrator blaming and victim supporting. I’d make sure to reinforce the message “Look, Mary Lou didn’t do anything wrong. She’s not the one who tried to drug and assault an innocent victim: it was the evil rapey SOB who did that. There are all sorts of reasons why someone might not be constantly watching their drink, such as going to the restroom or being distracted by somebody talking to them, etc. It’s not a crime to leave your drink unattended, and it’s an unspeakable criminal outrage that evil rapey SOBs are deliberately trying to make it dangerous to do so.”
It might also help to start a discussion like “What are some other ways that bars and so on might help reduce the danger of rapists poisoning women’s drinks, without putting all the responsibility on women never to let their glass out of their sight? Maybe we could have a ‘drink check’ station where women could temporarily hand in their unfinished drinks and somebody else would watch them?” [AIUI, there are some establishments that will actually do that for patrons.] “Should we strip search guys entering the bar to make sure they aren’t carrying roofies? After all, it’s not the women who are committing the criminal actions here. Why are we placing all the burden of trying to prevent men’s criminal actions on women instead of men?”
The broader message would be “It is really sucky and unfair that potential victims in general, and especially women, have to be so concerned about the possible dangers of normal, ordinary actions when they aren’t doing anything wrong. I’m trying to give you information about realistic risks to your safety and some actions you can take to potentially reduce them, but I don’t want you to fall into the trap of thinking that you are responsible for preventing or controlling other people’s bad behavior.”
And therein lies the rub. I think we all have a responsibility to acknowledge that we’re all fallible apes. It doesn’t make the victims bad people or idiots and our language should reflect that and it should also ensure that any blame for the act itself is squarely on the perpetrator. (see kimstu’s post). Now doing that takes effort of course and how much easier it would be to dismiss the victims as complicit, but ultimately I don’t think that’s helpful.
However (and my core reason for pushing the conversation in this direction) nor is it helpful to ignore the real errors we make when trying to protect ourselves against those people and situations that may harm us. They are tragic, embarrassing, painful, but ultimately powerful examples that we can and should learn from and not doing so through a concern about “victim blaming” leaves us worse off I think.
For the same reason you park in a parking lot at the mall knowing someone could hide in your car to murder you on your return; you rely on the social contract that people shouldn’t do that to other people and that there are serious consequences when they do.