Apparently it better come in Black or White flavor because anything else eludes you.
OK margin, I’m back here in MPSIMS so that I can ask you a straight question without vitriol.
What do you suggest we do to stop rape?
As Vinyl mentioned upthread aways (and a position I agree with) it’s not an either/or situation. We can (and should) impose the harshest penalties upon rapists, study them, metaphorically disect their brains etc but that should not preclude also educating our children to recognise inappropriate attention from others.
Most parents instill into their children a clear message that ‘some’ touching is ok, but other touching is not ok. In most families it starts when the littlies are very young: running around without your nappy or knickers on is fine to a certain age, but come the time when the child’s natural modesty takes over, it is incumbent upon parents and other caregivers to a) respect that modesty, and b) reaffirm to the child that their ‘private parts’ are theirs and theirs alone. NOBODY should be looking at or touching their bodies whilst they are naked. And if anybody does touch them, they need to feel it’s OK to tell their parents about what has happened. Immediately.
Y’see, that’s what’s gone wrong for this little girl. She has done nothing wrong herself, but for whatever reason, the normal social mores have disintegrated in her immediate family/community. Her boundaries to understand what’s OK and what’s NOT OK were obviously very fragile, and she started off as a victim of sexual abuse, and ended a victim of even more horrendous abuse. Had she had the confidence to speak to her mum/dad/close family relative after the first occasion, maybe things might not have turned out like they did.
BUT SHE DIDN’T, and there’s (I would suggest) a very good reason for that. Children who become sexually active at an early age are often victims of familial sexual abuse. IOW, my wag was there was someone in her family or very close to it who was already abusing this little girl, long before she started having sex with the 19yr old.
So yeah, sure, lock up rapists for the term of their natural lives: I’ve got no problem with that.
But this little girl isn’t going to be so easy to heal. And there’s going to be more predators just around the corner waiting for a vulnerable soul like her to pounce upon.
So, what’s your solution margin?
Lit matches go out when thrown in kerosene. You need gasoline for that.
Well for starters you can drop the atttitude. If defending an eleven-year-old makes me vitriolic, what does NOTdefending her make you?
I guess you haven’t read anything I’ve said either.
The victim needs to stop being the focus of discussion. The rapist does. And do you have a cite for any of that crap that you just trotted out about rapists and children and culture? No, I bet you don’t.
Saying that the girl just didn’t have any boundaries is blaming the victim. Jesus. “This is what’s wrong with this girl. This is why she got raped.” And that kind of mindset assumes that there are crowds of rapists around, waiting to rape any woman or girl who unfortunately doesn’t have boundaries. Why do you hate men so much that you think they’re all rapists?
So, for starters:
- The victim didn’t do anything wrong. What this kind of victim blaming assumes, always, is that the victim did something wrong, and that by studying it we can prevent the rape of the next victim. People are exerting a lot of effort here in avoiding any and all discussion of the rapist, such as lamenting the lack of two-parent families, which obviously would have totally protected the victim. Girls from two parent families never get raped, just as men from two parent families do not become rapists, at least when Shodan and Starving Artist put their heads together.
The ‘advice’ and analysis on this thread is all about what the victim did wrong: according to the experts here, the victim didn’t say no, didn’t report promptly, and didn’t know any better. Several people have said, incorrectly, that the victim was having a ‘sexual relationship’ with a nineteen-year-old man. No. She was raped, repeatedly.
Giving stupid advice about saying no—OMG, cry rape victims, why didn’t I think of that?!—or reporting is stupid because in this victim’s world she obviously did not have either choice. Several commenters didn’t bother to read the story which indicates she was kidnapped, threatened, and so forth. This kind of advice assumes there’s a perfect world out there, in which a victim reporting or saying no is possible. It’s not. Which is why talking about the victim is stupid because here’s what your advice winds up to:
Victim: No.
Rapist: No?! Okay, I’ll go away now and rape some other woman who doesn’t know the magic world.
All this advice is stupid because it’s already been trotted out and it’s useless if it’s not realistically possible, plus it’s old. Heard it all before, don’t care to hear it again, thanks for wasting my time. Recognotion of that needs to be the first step. You’re not original and you’re not helping as long as you devote time to searching out what’s wrong with the victim.
Finally, this mindset demands that the victim be alert and on her guard twenty four seven. If she’s anything less, well, then, it’s on her, she could have prevented that rape otherwise.
I’ve said it before, numerous times: focus on the rapist, focus on the rapist, focus on the rapist. How did HE grow up? Where were HIS parents? Oh, he’s already a rapist, it’s hopeless to do anything, let’s just focus on the victim.
But there’s other people here. The people in this thread and in every rape discussion ever, who leap right into blaming the victim, who ignore the rapist. You want to stop rape? Stop being on the rapist’s side.
If you have discussions about this stuff in real life, I guarantee that there’s at leat one rapist in any large group, and while you’re blaming the victim, he’s getting all happy, because you’re on his side. When somebody tells a joke about rape, stop them. When somebody tells a joke about prison rape, stand up and say that that’s not funny. Because just as there’s probably a rapist listening, there’s undoubtedly at least a couple of rape victims, there, and that, right there, is why this victim didn’t report and didn’t think she could say no. I’ve yet to hear a rape joke that wasn’t about how the victim was either really glad she got raped, liked it immensely, enjoyed it, lied about it, exaggerated it because she was stupid and hysterical, and so on. Jokes about one’s prison ‘bitch’ are the same. You’re going to get raped in prison, how hilarious. Somebody who goes to prison deserves it, apparently, because I anticipate a wave of, “Humorless bitch,” rolling in any minute now.
Ending rape is not quick or easy. If you have a friend who makes sexist jokes—against men or women—stop them. Pay attention. There’s been several cases in the news of quick-thinking waittresses and waiters who stopped rapes from happening because they observed men putting stuff in their date’s drinks and called the cops and confiscated the drink.
And keep in mind that in some cases, you might not be a hero. You might be wrong. You might lose friends, including that annoying friend who apparently everybody has, the one who shows up in just about every discussion about rape, the buddy who was falsely accused of rape by some crazy lying bitch, or by some slut, or by some ex who wanted revenge. Crazy lying bitches…they get raped, too, and maybe what some people call lies are just the truth that they don’t want to hear.
Another thing that many commenters have refused to own up to is the fact that one is not off the hook by avoiding a clear, simple, declarative statement of blame. I cannot believe I have to say this again, but saying, “I hereby blame and attack this victim for participating in, acceding to, provoking, and asking for her own rape,” is not the only way one can blame the victim. You’re not being wronged when someone points out that obsessing over what the victim does is victim blaming. Some people were so eager to blame the victim that they apparently did not read the linked article. At all.
What, you wanted a simple solution? Well, there isn’t one, to the extent that this is an age old problem. But correcting the ignorance needs to be the first step, and once that’s done it’s impossible not to change the focus. Don’t blame the victim. Blame the rapist. Try reading some actual books about the subject. Accept that rape avoidance advice has already been offered, and it’s stupid, because built into it is the belief that rape is easy to avoid and that victims are just too damned stupid to get off their asses, so to speak, and keep themselves safe. “Oh, gee, this victim didn’t know she could say no!” Yeah, with eighteen men and boys around her, threatening her, saying No would have magically worked!
For reading, try this first: Meet The Predators |
Oh, but if it doesn’t get called ‘rape’ by the rapists, it’s not really rape, is it? I can hear the cries of outrage already.
I couldn’t agree more. My own rape was reported to my clergy by my parents… the clergyman proceeded to question me (much like the actions of the 11-year-old in this thread have been questioned) and then punished me with sanctions for not fighting to the death. Because the victim was blamed in my case, my rape was not reported to the proper authorities. In my family, the clergyman issuing punishment on me for getting myself raped closed the issue. It was considered “correctly handled.”
Had I gone straight to the authorities myself, I still would have been punished after the fact. I would not have ever considered it, because the blame-the-victim mentality is so prevalent in our society, that I knew I’d never be believed or the perp would get off scot-free anyway. Hell, I saw The Accused; I know what rape victims have to go through. No way was I putting myself through that. Nothing like reliving the trauma over and over and over again just to justify your own actions. Fuck that.
There is nothing that women can do to prevent rape. Women in taliban Afghanistan, who wore burkas and were confined to their homes, still got raped. Old women in nursing homes get raped. Babies get raped. There is no degree of confinement, no degree of modesty, no degree of protection that will stop rape.
I had someone on this board suggest that a woman should never walk outside at night in my (public-transit dependent) city. This was said in all seriousness.
The list of things women are not supposed to do is amazing- we are not supposed to go into parking lots, live on the first floor, use our voice on our answering machines, drink, drive long distances, work late or take night classes, flirt, jog, wear sexy clothes (but of course, you also don’t want to be a prude,) etc. All of us pick and choose from this list, in ways that really do constrain our lives, and we live in fear of the times we do try to live normal lives (which gets called “taking risks.”) And you know what? We still get raped.
We can’t be the ones who stop this. We try. We really, really, really don’t want to get raped. But we can’t live normal lives while also doing “enough” to satisfy people’s criticism when we get raped.
How about charcoal lighter fluid? Plenty of that in east Texas.
Actually, that is kerosene. It’s just more refined, to get the stinkier stuff out, and undyed. Then they charge you 3 times as much for it. Zippo lighter fuel will work. That’s Naptha, which is more refined gasoline, undyed and 3X the price, too.
Fuck it, I’m dropping napalm on everything between Houston and Shreveport.
Stop blaming the victim! Why do you continue to protect the rapists??
That’s rich - you come into the thread screaming and then complain about other poster’s attitude.
No it isn’t. She is eleven years old, and not responsible for herself.
No one has said this.
I and others in the thread have said this, over and over again.
You made up the words “totally” and “never” and dishonestly inserted them into the thread.
So it is not possible to say No to a man? So we need never teach our children to say No?
That is about as stupidly grotesque a statement as I have seen on the SDMB recently.
Why do you pitch a tantrum about my statement that rapists often come from single-parent, or abusive homes, and then repeat it here as an example of what needs to be done? Have you had a head injury?
No one in this thread is on the rapists’ side.
Do you think you can stop making things up and blaming other people for them?
Regards,
Shodan
The problem with answering “focus on the rapist” is that the question was “How do you prevent rapes?”. If we can prevent rapes, then there won’t be any rapists to focus on.
The whole idea of prevention is to hopefully stop it from happening. How do we do that? I have no idea.
Jesus Christ. Maybe you could make it more apparent that you haven’t read a word that anybody else here said.
Shodan, sweetie, why not just come out and say it: you won’t agree that anybody’s said anything unless they declare that in fact that’s what they’re doing. You’re arguing in blatant bad faith and there’s no sense wasting my time with you.
Apparently the answer to this -
is No.
Regards,
Shodan
NM.
This story is sad, but it isnt worth getting involved in this discussion. Some of you are amazingly ridiculous.
You edited out the part about Dio getting ‘emotional’ about somebody suggesting the victim used her feminine wiles’. And how she might have been having relations with ‘more than one’ person. What’s astonishing to me is how many people aren’t getting that that is not a relationship. That is rape.
You guys would shriek in outrage if somebody described a victim as ‘having a relationship’ with an abuser who was a Catholic priest. Yet in this case it’s okay. Nobody has said that they were just bringing up things to be said by the defense, and in fact, legally, the victim’s history can’t be brought up here or just about anywhere. She was raped more than once, yet so many of the guys here want to downgrade it and call it a ‘relationship’.
It’s very simple and none of the victim-blaming men here will answer it. Why? She was being abused by a much-older man. Why won’t most of you guys see it for what it was: a series of rapes?
Not sure I follow.
I haven’t interpretted anything said here as blaming the victim. A lot of eleven year old girls are dressed provocatively nowadays. Victoria’s Secret has that whole ‘pink’ line to cater to them. They are also increasingly sexually active in middle school. And I think it’s very possible that this girl didn’t report it because she had previously ‘consented’ with one of the boys. I think girls need educated on what rape is and it needs to happen at an early age.
When my daughter was eleven I knew where she was and who she was with at all times, and I had passwords to her facebook and myspace accounts. I do feel that more could have been done to protect this particular child, but as someone has already said “if it wasn’t her it would have been someone else”
What can be done to teach boys empathy? Is it something that has to be ingrained early or something that can be introduced later, possibly in a school program of some sort?
There was a similar case in my area. It wasn’t a gang rape, but about ten boys all having sex with a twelve year old. Everyone piled on the girl like the poor boys were victims of raging hormones.
Are you quite sure that wasn’t a gang rape?
It was certainly rape given her age and the ages of the boys, but what I meant was that the incidences happened one at a time as opposed to all the boys on one occasion. I should also note that this girl also did not report it and did not realize she had been raped till the videos got out. We need some serious educating of both sexes.