This x 1000.
It’s all I’ve been trying to say.
Yeah, but women have been told that ad nauseum. After a while, it could (not a woman, but just my WAG) seem patronizing, like victim-blaming, and make one wonder where all the warnings are to men about No Meaning No–even if your intentions are just consequentialist, and, again my WAG, I believe they are.
The analogue that I feel as a rather large (well, mass-wise anyway) black man is that I need to be extra-respectful of the police… over and over and over again. Sure, it’s great advice for anyone. Sure, it might prevent a situation from being escalated needlessly. But at the end of the day, there are some police that just have it out for people that look like me and no matter how respectful I am, if I run into them in an opportune situation, they will try to assault me. And if such a thing were to happen, the last thing I’d wanna be asked over and over and over again was what I said and what my posture was and what neighborhood I was in.
Does that make sense?
Of course “No means no” and all men should be advised to respect such words. When people are advised to act cautiously (and it’s not just women but people in general), it is in recognition of the fact that some men simply won’t respect those words. And if people hear such advice so often then why does it happen? Your analogy falls apart because if the woman (or whoever) were to act cautiously and not invite someone into their home that they didn’t know or want sex with, then no situation would have the possibility to occur. Period. However, as a large black man, even behaving in the most respectful and cautious manner may not prevent a possible run-in with a police officer who may “have it out” for you.
Incidentally, a move to the pit often has the seemingly paradoxical effect of fostering a more civil discussion precisely because many of the most heinous offenders don’t like to make “controversial” statements anywhere they think people might call them out.
It makes perfect sense that it would piss you off, and that men need to be told that no means no, and that the police need to be encouraged not to be racist by whatever means necessary.
However, you are only in control of your own behaviour, not anyone else’s. No matter how wrong another’s actions may be, you can’t directly change them. Campaigning for change to social attitudes and people’s behaviour is good, but it’s a long term thing. It doesn’t help you when you’re dealing with a cop right now, or a woman deciding whether to invite someone into her place.
As I said before, being in the right is all well and good, but not much use when you’re hurt or dead.
Do you not understand that such “rules” are gender-imbalanced, socially limiting constraints that many women do not feel it is or should be their moral obligation to labor under? It is kind of like proposing a curfew for black people. Yeah, I guess it’s harder for policemen to beat on you if you don’t leave the house, but honestly that is an unbelievably bad way for a society that aspires to be egalitarian to approach these issues.
Would you have told Rosa Parks that she was foolish to get herself arrested? Acquiescence to regressive social norms may be the safest thing for any one individual person to do, but when that’s all anyone does, then nothing will ever change.
Yes but it’s the world we live in now and I’m just trying to make the best of it. What’s the alternative? Please, tell me plainly and simply.
My analogy holds.
It’s not required that I go into any neighborhood, for example, where I would be seen as unusual–but if I want to visit friends it is. A woman can shut out all men from her domicile who are not related to her–but if she wants to be nice, as MOL did, or just want to hang out, or anything else, she can’t.
Put the emphasis on curtailing and modifying the behavior of offenders.
Aside: Isn’t it funny, the conversations between the descriptive and the prescriptive…?
Sure, but being in the wrong does not protect you either.
The offender always has initiative in that they know that they have malice in mind whereas, unless one wants to be a paranoid loony, a normal sane person cannot assume everyone has bad intentions toward them. That is why I have to go about my day as per the norm, visiting whom I will and doing as I will, and so I extrapolate that to everyone.
Caution is well and good–but there’s no such thing as psychic powers either.
I’ll remember this post the next time you bitch about a confrontation over a handicapped parking space.
I find that outside of a Susan Sontag essay, this distinction has very little relevance. 
The alternative is that you all stop saying things like, "Being right is cold comfort when you are hurt or dead.
I don’t always agree with colander, but she is on the money when she mentions the black struggle. I can just see someone telling black folks to keep their eyes down when they talk to white folks, because it is cold comfort to be right if they pull out the dogs or the hoses or the dogs with hoses in their mouths.
Women deserve to be free, just like you do. If we get hurt while exercising our freedoms, that is fucked up, but it isn’t something that you should respond to by suggesting that we be more careful.
If she made a conscious decision that being right was worth more than the pain and suffering she would receive, then no.
But what are you suggesting? The only way I can see your parallel working is that women let themselves get raped in the hope that the publicising of those rapes will cause a societal shift. I don’t see that as acceptable.
What I do think is necessary is education, and a stand from cultural leaders. The recent story about the rapper who lost sponsorship from Reebok because his lyrics suggested a tolerance for date rape is a small example of what needs to happen. Until it does happen, though, I’d still say women should be careful who they invite in, whether or not it’s fair.
Why? Would you rather be right than safe, if they are the only two options? Sure, society needs to change, but that’s not going to happen overnight, and until things change, in some cases that will be the choice people have to make.
And this is what I think this thread boils down to. Changing the behavior of these assholes. Well how is that going to be done, exactly? It’s not victim blaming to suggest that the potential victims double down on protecting themselves against these predators when identifying and stopping these predators ahead of time is virtually impossible 100% of the time. It’s also not victim blaming to do so at the same time when working to do whatever can be done to curtail and modify the behavior of the offenders.
Says the one-man equal rights campaign on wheels who, in Most cases, is at a distinct disadvantage in confrontations as both his reach and strength are limited by his station. Like it or not, you rank with us women with regards to equal rights, buddy, and ought to relate a little better.
True enough, I trust we’ve heard the last from you about people who illegally park in handicapped spaces, then? I mean, the signs communicate explicitly who’s supposed to park there and who isn’t, but hey… who read signs?
Or, just maybe… when an issue is important to us, it’s worth making a fuss about.
The sort of man who won’t take no for an answer is unlikely to limit himself to only those women who actually invite him into their homes. I’d bet that every woman in this thread has a story about some creep she encountered outside her home who wouldn’t back off, and some probably have stories about actually being assaulted by these men. There are also a few men who are so eager to assault a woman that they’ll force their way into her home without an invitation. While this is thankfully rare, it’s a possibility and it could happen even to a woman who never entertained gentleman callers.
The alternative to not tiptoeing through the world fearful, cautious and perpetually cowed by a specter that should rightfully inspire defiance?
I don’t know. How about living.