But there is NO WAY to prevent rape entirely and forever, working towards that is an utterly fruitless goal. That’s not what people are getting at. It’s more of an analysis of statistics. If a girl is taught <this way> or raised in <this environment> she is statistically less likely to be raped. Nothing about impossibility, or prevention, just mitigation. Should we teach boys to not be rapists? Yes. Will they listen always? No, everything from mental illnesses to retarded group mentalities can throw a wrench in the works. Likewise, any prevention method, be it towards the girl, society, the legal system, or anything else will not be perfectly executed. It’s the unfortunate nature of the beast. All we can do is teach both our boys and girls (since both are capable of rape and being raped) the rules of what NOT to do and what TO do and hope it averages out to something somewhere north of reasonable.
I still don’t see the problem. “An eleven year old had a sexual relationship with[…]” is an ENTAILMENT of sexual abuse, there is no difference between saying “was raped by.” Trying to act offended when somebody says it does a disservice to the phrase, it implies that yeah, in THIS case it was rape, but by saying “you must say rape” it implies that in some cases a sexual relationship involving an eleven year old is NOT rape. If there is no case in which an eleven year old can have a non-rape sexual relationship, then it is encoded in the text of the statement. It’s, at best, disingenuous to act like something else is implied by using the words sexual relationship.
The world would not be a better place if we stopped teaching it. We should teach it. Okay, sure, it’s nothing new, maybe we should stop proposing it as a solution because it’s already ingrained in society, but it’s certainly not liable to make things worse or keep them the same as if there were no guidelines. And you’re vastly oversimplifying this situation, even beyond simple problem relaxation techniques. It’s more of a flowchart, there’s a chance that if a girl tells the authorities and her parents things will stop. There even exist situations (with grown women) where a guy may be unintentionally getting out of hand and a firm no may suffice. All of these methods can and will fail depending on any myriad of variables, and it’s madness to follow every single little one of them, but the situations (even if they’re few in number) where they do have an effect warrant teaching them.
Yes, we were focusing on the victim too much in this thread, I apologize. But I don’t think the rapist is the only one to look at here. Everybody involved, even indirectly should be examined more or less equally. This includes the rapists, the raped, and the bystanders. Yes, we can make a positive difference by drilling things into young men and women who otherwise may rape someone with a different upbringing or personality. It’s not enough though, there DO exist people with mental illnesses, and no manner of conditioning them will help, and you can’t put them away until they actually do something. You just have to watch the ticking time bombs. That’s why we need to look at the person who was raped too, in cases when either the society didn’t correctly condition the now-rapists, and for the non-rapists who were stupid enough to not watch, or care about, the ticking time bombs. It’s a flawed fail-safe, not a matter of fault.
Ending rape is not POSSIBLE. Also, I take issue to the whole “telling sexist[/racist/classist] jokes is wrong” thing. Jokes are often funny because they break the norm, telling a joke about someone who was raped that wanted it implicitly reinforces that the normal state of affairs that rape is a horrible crime, and it’s funny because that expectation has been subverted. Now, the jokes can certainly be stupid, ill-timed, told in inappropriate places, and yes, there exist some that truly glorify rape. I’m all for ending those jokes, but when a joke makes light of a subject it rarely means it endorses it, and in fact often raises awareness and speaks out against it. Consider this, you can’t watch this and tell me, with a straight face, that it endorses the stereotypical “sorority girl” lifestyle that they’re portraying. It’s the same for rape jokes.
I, for one, never assumed* she was willing. I understand that she was threatened and abducted. But the fact that little girls can be manipulated doesn’t speak to me that we need to not talk about the victim anymore. To the contrary, it says to me that we should focus on shouldering the responsibility of teaching little boys and girls not to rape, things you can do to avoid rape, things to do if your friend has been raped, and things to do after you are raped to EVERYBODY, not just the parents. I’m not saying make it so every stranger on the street has to approach small children and give them the talk, just that in addition to telling parents to teach their children, start some social pressure to make schools, daycares, and babysitters teach children this too. It creates more redundancy in the system, so that if the parents are molesting the child, they still get the information from school. The trick here is to make it conditioned, despite my “rational choice” spiel beforehand, I actually find that I like "clear and simple rules’ more. Make it so that all sorts of people from different places are instructing the kid that if anyone, be it aunt, uncle, friend, celebrity, teacher, parent, or high schooler does something sexual to a you or your friends, to report it to somebody not directly involved with that person. This also has the added benefit that if this teaching is coming from so many angles, it lessens the probability that they won’t be believed, since there’s immense societal pressure to report this stuff there will also be pressure to listen and investigate it. Now, yes, this will STILL backfire, probably often, but I think the manipulation shows that the responsibility should be spread around more generally, not focused on any specific group. In this case shotgun seems better than focus fire.
- In case somebody produces a quote of me saying something to the contrary, I was a little fuzzy when I first entered the discussion, but I understood it after a couple posts.