I agree with everything Bippy said.
Well, that’s just an outdated belief that women should be ‘protected’ by their big strong men. It continues to linger.
In essence, people who deliberately take unnecessary risks have to be prepared for the possible consequences, and should be armed with the awareness that how they behave can cause some unsavoury characters to act their worst.
Ya know - I’m going to be forced to refer some of you folks to the original thread where a boatload of guys came in and stated plainly that they find modestly dressed women sexy. It’s the women who aren’t showing a lot of skin that are the hot ones. The ones that get their juices flowing. I believe something about “more left to the imagination” was bandied around.
Soooo, does that mean, if some fella finds my conservative trousers and turtleneck sweater sexy (because I’m leaving so much to his imagination) that I’m partially to blame if he rapes me?
But wait! That’s not what we mean, you all cry. We’re talking about women dressing sexy in bad parts of town!
Humm - so does a college campus qualify as a “bad part of town” because a hulluva lot of women get raped on college campuses. Obviously, they’re partially to blame, because they went to college, and a lot of rapes happen on college campuses. They should have known better.
No, no, no, you say! We don’t mean THOSE women, who were modestly dressed, on college campuses - we mean those OTHER women, who were minding their own business, doing thier own thing, dressed in their own way who are partially to blame. Because SURELY, there are some women who are partially to blame for their rapes. Women who don’t realize that agreeing to a cup of coffee equals “I want to have sex with you.” THOSE women must be partially to blame.
How about women who wear baggy track suits - don’t they realize that some men find a baggy track suit so sexy, they can’t help but rape the woman wearing one?
Or women who insist on leaving the house at all. DON’T THEY REALIZE THAT MEN ARE POOR, USELESS CREATURES THAT CAN’T BE RELIED UPON NOT TO ATTACK RANDOM WOMEN?!?!? Obviously, those women are to blame, for not taking the necessary precautions.
In my experience, rape victims feel quite enough guilt - even when they did nothing wrong - without us judging.
Use common sense. Keep yourself safe. Whether from muggings or rape or robbery or just walking into a bar where they don’t like your look and beat you up.
Burkas for everyone!
Well, Alice, yeah, if you’re going to overgeneralize and assume that rape is the result of stimulus-reaction, sure whatever. Go for it.
Someone who wants to commit a crime is going to commit one when the opportunity arises, and they will actively increase the odds of that opportunity by waiting for someone to make a mistake or be in the wrong place at the wrong time. An innocent bystander can lessen their chances of being a victim if they use common sense: remain in a public place with ither nearby if they are meeting someone they don’t know; calling campus police for an escort from a campus building to home; actively leaving or calling attention to inappropriate behavior. Myself, Bippy andGuanolad are not suggesting that every rape or other crime is always the fault of the victim. We are saying that there are sometimes mitigating circumstances that lead to a crime of opportunity, decisions that the victim could or should have made because of prior knowledge that leads to the crime. No judgement, no blame. Simply an observation of the event.
Vlad/Igor
Vlad(Igor?) - I think you missed my point. I’m gonna try again:
Women dress hootchie, get loaded, strut their stuff in a bad part of town and don’t get raped.
Conversly, women dress in track suits, in their own homes, with the door locked, and get violently raped.
The fact of the matter is that when someone is attacked, it’s natural for others to somehow look for a mitigating circumstance that helped “cause” the attack, so that they can feel better/safer about themselves or their loved ones. “That horrible thing could never happen to me/my wife/my daughter, because I don’t dress sexy/attend college/leave the house.”
Totally natural. Also totally insensitive and incorrect. Sometimes a person does everything right and gets attacked - where are you going to draw the line at responsibility? If someone rapes another person, it’s 100% their fault and it makes no difference if the person was nude on a park bench.
It is a perseption that people who do everthing wrong are at greater danger than people who do everything right. It doesn’t mean that doing everything right insures you will have no danger at all. Nor does it mean that doing everything wrong makes you in any way at fault if something bad happens.
No one here disagrees with this one iota.
I agree with you that that is insensitive, incorrect, unhelpful, etc way to react. However, I disagree that that is a natural reaction. There has been enough education to change attitudes so that that reaction is no longer common. I believe a person’s reaction to such news is just as likely to ask what happened and how, not as an indication of pre-judgement but as a request for more information. Their assessment is now just as likely, if not moreso to be one of “I’ll be more aware of what might happen to me.” It is natural, too, to ask questions like “Was s/he alone, did s/he know the perpetrator?”, but again, that does not automatically mean that judgement has already been passed. It is a request for clarification.
I still don’t think you understand the disconnect between the guilt of the perpetrator in light of mitigating circumstance. The perp is going to be guilty no matter what, and the degree of guilt alone is based on their own decision to act. What is at issue is the fact that some crimes could have been avoided through exercise of common sense, and the police, crime victim counselors and courts are going to be seeking justice in a bad situation that could have been avoided. Therein lies the tragedy and my reaction to it.
Vlad/Igor
If a woman never leaves her house, and appoints around the clock security, then EVERY attack could be avoided - by discussing circumstances at all, in the context of a rape/attack, that’s what you’re advocating.
BTW - this:
is totally abusurd. This phenomenon (cognotive disonance) is as common now as it ever was, and continues to be a major area of research for social psychologists.
A rape has nothing to do with the woman (man) who was attacked, and everything to do with the attacker.
It seems to me we’ve gotten off track, here. Although this is an interesting subject, and I think we can probably learn quite a bit about the common misconceptions that surround rape, I’d like to remind everyone: We’re here to explain to prisoner6655321 that he is, in fact, a big dumb idiot. A judgemental, arrogant, misogynistic, clueless waste of human chemicals in desperate need of a karmic smack upside the head. Which I hope he will heed the first time he receives one, but I fear will actually take a few more than that just to get his attention.
Then I will amend my statement to read “However, I disagree that that is a natural reaction. There has been enough education to change attitudes so that that reaction is no longer as common as you suggest.” I have heard the sentiment you describe, but I have heard the sentiment I described more often both in private and in print.
In deference to Maureen,
[/hijack]
Vlad (may I call you Vlad?) - you (and every other person on the planet) employs cognative disonance every single day of their lives - to do otherwise would make live totally unliveable. You’d never leave your house, and live in constant fear as well as constant depression at your own shortcomings.
That being said, Maureen is correct - the point of this thread is to mock prisoner6655321, and to point out that he’s a big dumb poopie head.
Dumb as a bag of hair.
As moronic as a sack of hammers.
Able to misconstrue any situation into complete idiocy.
It’s impressive, really.
Whats impressive is the ability of posters in this thread to take a quote of context, ignore what the poster is saying and rant about it.
Really.
Care to elaborate?
No
Didn’t think so.
Are you being wilfully obtuse, or is there some other reason for your lack of reading comprehension?
No one here is saying that any woman deserves to be raped, no matter how she is dressed, or what part of town she travels. No one is diminishing the criminal responsibility of the rapist, no matter how the victim is dressed, or what part of town she travels.
What has been said is that people can, on occasion, foolishly increase their chances of become crime victims by making bad decisions.
If I get in my car tonight at midnight, and drive to one of the more dangerous neighborhoods on the West Side (of Chicago), pull $1000 out of my pocket and count it in full sight, or make a large withdrawal from a cash station under similar circumstances, I’ve made a stupid decision. If I’m robbed, people can legitimately say that my bad decisions contributed to that result.
If a jeweler or pawnbroker routinely leaves diamond jewelry in his unbarred storefront display window overnight, he’s made a bad decision. If a criminal smashes that window one night and steals the diamonds, the merchant’s bad decision contributed to that result.
And yes, sometimes a woman can make bad decisions that increase the chances that she’ll be raped. Saying that upsets some people, I know. Oddly enough, no one is ever bothered when police or women’s groups issue tip sheets (on how to avoid becoming a rape victim) that say exactly the same thing.
Every woman has the right to dress however she likes, and to travel anywhere she wants. But if a provacatively dressed college freshman gets drunk at 2:00 a.m. at a frat party, planning to walk home through a bad area, she’s being stupid, and I have no problem saying so. (Of course, if this were a friend or acquaintance, and she did become a rape victim, I’d never say any of this to her, or even hint at it.)
Oh, and let me say I’ve been informed a time or two that if I were to get gay bashed, it would be my fault for being visibly femme. Or out of the closet at all. Or both.
No, it fucking well isn’t. I should get to be who I am under all circumstances. If someone attacks me because I am doing something completely unobjectionable, I’m no more at fault than if I was standing there doing nothing.
Furthermore, I think it doesn’t do anywhere near as much good as it’s supposed to, to tell women all kinds of handy hints about “how not to be raped,” simply because rape is something you suffer, not something you do.
Think about it logically: if no women wore hoochie clothes or went out after dark, do you think rape would end? These are not precautions like locking your doors or having a fire extinguisher handy: things that directly impede the harmful event. They’re appeals to a notion of how rape most often happens that is both sexist and spurious.
The way to reduce rape is to set up society in such a way that there are as few rapists as possible.
I forgot to say one thing. I agree with the OP. Prisoner6655321 is in fact, a big dumb idiot