I’m willing to sit corrected. I’ll take you at your word. How did this play out in real life re a acquaintance or stranger rolling up on non-drinking or non-drunk adult woman out socializing, and saying (effectively) “I see that you are a female. You must not get drunk or you may get molested! Beware!”
No, actually you are conflating two things, and I suspect you’re doing it deliberately to avoid taking responsibility for your own posts.
I explicitly referred to one of your posts as an example of the sort of lecturing monstro talked about that gets directed at women. I also said that your post “wasn’t directed at a specific woman with a history of excessive drinking, it was directed at women in general.” In subsequent posts I also referred to your behavior here, in this thread, and talked about lecturing people one doesn’t know. I didn’t say anything at all about your real life behavior towards your personal friends, a subject I can know nothing about and that isn’t my business anyway.
I don’t see much room for genuine confusion as to whether I was talking about your real life behavior or your SDMB behavior. I think all this “Well, I don’t talk to women like that in real life!” stuff is just an attempt to distract from the fact that you do talk to women like that here.
There are probably quite a few non-experts out there who could manage to recognize when such advice is needed and convey it in a helpful and appropriate manner, but you are not such a person. Frankly, I do not believe that you even mean well. Whenever you decide to favor the women of the Dope with one of your lectures, you come across not so much as a man who’s concerned about women but instead like a man who wants to feel superior to women.
Please indulge me in this experiment. My goal is to see how much all here actually agree with each other and where the divergence begins.
Please answer each true or false.
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Sexual assault of young adult women (call it 18 to 24 years old) is a very significant public health issue in this country, in college and out of college both.
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It is inappropriate to tell a woman who has been assaulted that she “was asking for it” either explicitly or by clear implication.
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It is appropriate for a parent to discuss the risks of binge drinking with their teens.
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The risks of binge drinking include becoming a victim of sexual assault and that risk falls disproportionately on young women.
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There is no particular reason to believe that male rapists are extremely drunk and that they would not rape if they were not extremely drunk as a consequence of binge drinking.
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Young adult males should be taught that a drunken hook-up is risky in many ways, including that true consent may not be being given and that sex without true consent is rape, a serious crime. An accusation of rape can cause a male significant harm.
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Conversations about sexual assault that include discussions about how to reduce risks, from individual behaviors to system level interventions like the CDC’s proposed High School level healthy relationship outreach education, are not victim-blaming, even if someone who is raped hears it and is upset by it.
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Most sexual assaults are not the stranger raping a sexily dressed woman walking in a dark parking lot, but by a person known to the victim, and often in a date context. Advice that focuses on dressing modestly and don’t ever walk alone is not likely to decrease rape incidence much.
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Like men women cannot live completely risk-free lives. Women will make independent assessments of risk levels and decide which risks are for them worth taking and which are not. Some others think their decisions are excessively cautious and some others may think they are being reckless.
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Young men and women are at the same level of risk when they drink to excess at a social gathering and it is unfair to come to the conclusion that the same behavior has different risks for one group over the other.
My answers are 1 to 9 all True and only 10 False.
Does your mileage vary?
How do you think those of the “other side” than you will answer the questions differently than you do?
A) You just moved a goalpost. You didn’t say “non-drinking” or even “non-drunk”. You said:
Bolding mine.
B) It’s so pervasive that it’s hard to tell each instance as a story, because they all blur together. It starts when we’re toddlers, told to keep our legs together when wearing a dress, because god forbid anyone should see our underpants. And it just never ends. Dress codes in school that tell us how long our skirts have to be and which body parts need to be covered so as not to “cause a distraction,” advice in college orientation to walk in groups, and of course, the neverending chorus of chastisement not to drink to excess.
Re: drinking, in particular: The one that stands out as a specific event, I was about 26, and a guy in my circle of friends decided that I and several of our female friends were “getting out of control,” and he was “concerned for our safety.” We weren’t drunk, although we were drinking wine, and the only guys around were all our mutual friends, so I’m still a little unclear on who he thought we needed to “control ourselves” to be “safe” from. But he managed to so disrupt the entire community - more than half the men and a few of the older women agreed with him - that for an entire summer the topic of how we were “out of control” dominated the discussion. It was ridiculous, sitting there defending the right of grown women to have a few glasses of wine, while the men were filling their flasks with whiskey. And when I say “while,” I mean, actually at the time that we were having these “discussions.”
Now, it’s true that I spend most of my recreational time at Neopagan festivals, where there’s a LOT more talk about safety and consent than your neighborhood bar. But it still drives me batty that most of it is predicated on the notion that women need to be “aware” and protect ourselves and each other from “creepers”, men who are sexually predatory. Even in an environment that prides itself on egalitarianism, it’s still discussed as a hunt, and women told how they should act to avoid being the prey.
And even at the neighborhood bar or nightclub, I can’t remember the last time a bouncer didn’t say, “be careful, ladies” as we were coming or going. Now, maybe they say that to the guys, too, but after a lifetime of being warned to be careful, I hear it as yet another warning that I need to modulate my behavior to prevent someone else from committing a crime.
It’s…tiresome. I’m tired. And still, the only times I’ve been raped are in my own home, by someone I knew well, stone cold sober and wearing some decidedly unsexy sweatpants. So it’s more than tiresome…it’s useless.
What happened to the lions who didn’t eat something like a steak the very instant it was presented to them?
I am sorry but this is a very stupid statement. As a boy I was reminded to zip my zipper and reprimanded if I wore loose shorts without underwear. It was not because of fear I was going to provoke a sexual assault because my underwear or even scrotum was visible. And my wife teaching our daughter how to sit when wearing a dress was not out of fear she would provoke a molestation either.
C’mon.
You c’mon.
Or are you equating seeing underpants with seeing genitals?
I can assure you that “good girls” don’t sit with their knees apart in a skirt in my family of origin, only “girls looking for trouble”, even if their genitals are fully covered by underpants.
Ah, and there is the corollary to the “women are asking for it” argument: Men are all predatory rapists. That is just how it is, and damn it, how it should be, so there’s no point in educating them.
Misogyny, *and *misandry, all rolled into to one. So thanks for that.
The final stage of rape apologism. They’ve got an excuse for rape at every level.
“She wasn’t raped. And if she was, she was asking for it. And if she wasn’t, well, it’s not that bad. And if it was, well, it’s only natural.”
The poachers had to work harder to catch them?
If you would restate your point here in a non-metaphorical way, we all might learn something.
I haven’t read all the post so I am not sure whether or not I am being repetitive here.
From what I got reading the first posts, you guys are very close to something here, but you speak as if we lived in a different world. Recently I read an article on Upworthy that showed that some guys didn’t even realized that they had committed this crime. So my point here that we can have a discussion of me increasing my risks or not by behaving in a certain way, when the other side can be fully aware of their transgressions.
I have no statistic information, but I believe that most rape are premeditated or at least intentional, but I have also come to realize that some guys don’t actually know what they can or cannot do with a girl when she is incapable of giving a coherent sign of consent.
Going back to example of being in dark alley in a bad neighborhood, I am 110% sure that the person robbing is aware that they are committing a crime, so you can in that case say that by somehow changing your behavior you would have probably changed the outcome.
But when a guy doesn’t know that he is raping, harassing, etc., it becomes harder to minimize your risk by altering your behavior because the perpetrator is unaware of the crime, therefore I think he would go on with his behavior anyway.
And I realize that doesn’t speak to most cases of rape or other forms of gender based assault, but it would definitely change our lives in a significant way. Most women have come across a guy that buys you a drink or dinner and thinks that he is entitled to sex with you, or a guy that cat calls you and after some sort of discouraging answer turn violent.
Any way here’s the link to the Upworthy article
http://www.upworthy.com/whoa-4-questions-that-got-120-rapists-to-admit-they-were-rapists-5
Would you agree that the advice not to drink excessively as mentioned in the cites previously provided is coming from actual experts?
Correct. And excess drinking as a risk factor for getting sexually assaulted applies to women in general. Not just women with a drinking problem, not just binge drinking women - women in general who get drunk are at elevated risk for being assaulted. Therefore the advice applies to women in general, and is appropriately directed at women in general.
OK.
True, but with the caveat that risk of sexual assault is lower in college than outside it.
True. But I reserve the right to determine for myself what are my “clear implications” and what are not.
True.
True.
False. Excessive drinking raises the risk that males will engage in all sorts of stupid or criminal behavior, including rape and sexual assault.
True.
True.
True.
True.
False. The level of risk is the same, but what each group is at risk for differs.
Regards,
Shodan
I’m not Habeed, but what I got from his post was that human males have evolved to be more aggressive than human females. Therefore it is not entirely a matter of socialization that some males rape.
Most males in the US do not rape. A small minority do. IOW in most cases we as a society are able to socialize away the sexual aggression of most males. I do not believe we will ever be able to correctly socialize every male in the US, and therefore rape and sexual assault will continue to be a problem for the foreseeable future, including the future of every woman alive in the US today. Ought we not see if we can identify factors that increase the risk of being raped by the currently existing, poorly socialized males who rape, and advise women to avoid these factors? Or do you believe the women would be better served by telling people not to warn women, because some women would rather not hear it?
Although I agree that we could, as a society, do a better job of identifying the risk factors for rape and deviant behavior in general. One thing we could concentrate on is to reduce the incidence of males being raised by single mothers, since that is a pretty strong risk factorfor rape of various kinds.
Regards,
Shodan
WhyNot, would you consider, given what you have shared, that your family of origin’s attitudes might not be representative of the majority?
Little boys and girls are both generally taught to not let their underwear show and such is not victim blaming or having to do with provoking sexual assaults.
As to how “out of control” you and your friends were getting … there is little debate that the vast majority of societies have different behavioral expectations, norms, based on gender. American norms have been gradually becoming less rigid but of course gender norms still exist. We see it everywhere including in the workplace, in politics, and in media where a man’s natural resting expression that would be characterized positively as “serious” or “pensive” or maybe “tough” is characterized as a “resting bitch face” on a woman. And I am with you that astro is incorrect: hard drinking and getting raucous is more accepted as a male standard than as a female one and comments would be made for less drinking and less loutishness by women.
And “half of all college sexual assault victims do not define the incident as ‘rape’”.
But that said the upworthy article is discussing the very study that began this op: the Lisak one … which was complete crap.
Shodan,
Thank you for responding. I’ll hold on any comments for now as I’d like to see how others from each “side” of this discussion rate the truth or falsity of each statement as well first.
I’d be willing to *consider *it, but I don’t currently believe it. I’ve heard the same in classrooms and playgrounds. It’s not so much that parents are afraid that their little girl will be raped as a little girl, but they’re trying to enforce the cultural training that women in skirts don’t sit with their legs open, because…and that’s what they can never articulate to their girls. Because it’s not “ladylike” or “decent” are the words usually stammered out eventually.
If you mean because I was raped in my home, then clearly my parents had to worry about a rapist in the home, then no. You don’t have a full picture. I’m talking about two different households; the one in which you emphatically couldn’t sit with your legs open was not the one I was raped in, and no one in either household beside my rapist and me knew about the rapes until years after the events. So they weren’t trying to protect me from anyone in particular, they were trying to teach me how proper young ladies sit without attracting attention.
For what it’s worth, I agree with **Shodan’s **assessment of the statements you provided.
True.
True.
True.
True.
False. But context is necessary. In many cases, there’s no reason to believe this; I think that’s true. In many cases, though, there’s very good reason to believe exactly that. Any statement that begins “male rapists” and then categorically says who those people are or what they do is extremely problematic, in my experience. Viewed instead in terms of whether many sexual assaults would not occur if the men involved were not very drunk, I would say there is particular reason to believe that. That seems obvious to me but I’m sure it would be easy enough to substantiate.
True as to the first statement (sexual assault, not rape, but that’s a quibble), true as to the second but with an eyebrow quirked at it.
True. They are not categorically victim-blaming. They often are, though. Habeed is talking about lions and steaks, but he would presumably say that he’s discussing reduction of risks.
True.
True.
False. Just as it’s false to say that all young women or all young men are at the same level of risk.
Your post summarizes my feelings on this subject.
Taking public transit without an escort at night has marked me as a brazen dare-devil among some people. I’ve been tsked tsked for going to bars and parties and enjoying drinks without using an entourage to protect me. I’ve triggered gasps by revealing the fact I’ve traveled internationally solo. All because I’m a woman.
And yet, I see men do this and more all the time, without opening themselves up to raised eyebrows and lectures. This even though they are more likely to be the victims of violent crimes, fatal accidents, and other serious mishaps than women are. The imbalance is insane. Of course, the gallery keeps insisting that men are clobbered with “common sense” warnings and admonishments too. But I don’t see that anywhere close to happening to the degree it happens to women. We as a society are much more comfortable with curtailing women’s social freedom than we are with men.
Imagine two strangers of the opposite sex choosing to have a one-night stand with one another after meeting at a bar. Stranger 1 invites Stranger 2 over to their place and through some unexpected turn of events, winds up becoming robbed by their date.
If Stranger 1 is a woman, she is more likely to be perceived as a fool. “What were you thinking, inviting this person to your house without you knowing them!?” If alcohol was involved, that will be further evidence of their foolishness. “Why did you get drunk with this guy?!” And never mind the casual sex part. “What kind of low self-esteem having slut are you? This was danger just waiting to happen.”
If Stranger 1 is a guy, though? More ire will be directed at the crazy psycho hose beast that victimized him. Him having a few beers wouldn’t figure into the analysis (because a man can hold his liquor until assumed otherwise, amirite?), and his credibility wouldn’t be tossed out of the window due his sluttiness. Him inviting a stranger into his home will also matter a lot less than whether he was right in inviting this particular stranger into his home. In other words, I could see him being faulted for not seeing signs of crazy in his date, but I don’t see him being faulted for not * assuming* his date was crazy.
Does anyone disagree with this assessment?
Enough responders for me suggest that it seems that once the strawmen are unstuffed both “sides” actually agree fairly broadly. (Even with where they disagree with my answer!)
And on that one, I will concede that there is evidence that drunk men will be poorer judges of appropriate versus inappropriate behavior and become more aggressive. But FWIW my sense is that men who sexually assault do not need to be drunk to do so, although they will drink with their target, encourage excess consumption by her, and use their lesser impairment as an excuse. I believe assaulters are more likely more often not drunk to serious impairment level. There is however no solid evidence either way.