The mention of alcohol abuse applies both to the perpetrator and the victim, of course, and thus education to reduce the likelihood of someone getting drunk and raping might be almost as effective as educating women not to put themselves at risk by getting drunk.
It just seems unfortunate that advice like “guys are going to try to get you drunk and take advantage of you” comes across as slut-shaming, or victim-blaming, or saying that women can never have a drink in public, or whatever.
I think that rapes are lower among women who had the training. That doesn’t mean there were fewer rapes on the campus, or in the area, just that those women weren’t victims. So it’s possible that all the training does is make a rapist move on to someone else-- it doesn’t actually eliminate rapes.
So as a personal solution, it works pretty well, but as a global solution, maybe not so much.
It seems to me that things like “sex-role socialization, rape myths, lack of sanctions for abuse, male peer group support, pornography, adversarial sexual beliefs, lack of empathy, and all-male membership groups such as fraternities and sports teams.” would be things that could be addressed by education and awareness campaigns: it sounds like acquaintance rape is encouraged or discouraged by the culture that surrounds it, and cultures can be changed–think about drunk driving, or seat belts, or harsh corporal punishment.
I suppose that’s possible, just like it might be possible that if we trained this particular guy not to rape anyone, the woman would just be raped by someone else. Possible, but not IMO very likely. Reducing the pool of possible victims is going to tend to reduce the incidence overall, just like reducing the pool of possible perpetrators is.
As a society, we seem to take it as a given that men are gonna do what men are gonna do. So we focus on controlling women’s behaviors, because women are apparently infinitely more amenable to instruction. Don’t wear yoga pants after 7p. Don’t get drunk. Don’t go out at night alone without a man by your side. etc.
A while ago, I theorized that men are socialized to want women to feel vulnerable and afraid of male predators. When women see themselves as potential prey, good guys are needed to serve and protect, reinforcing their sense of masculinity and worth. This means men collectively have a vested interest in making sure women’s behaviors continue to be policed under the guise of safety. Sadly, they also have a vested interest in allowing men’s behaviors to continue unchecked. And why wouldn’t they? I wouldn’t want to be constantly tsked-tsked either.
Could be - but my earlier link discussed the lack of evidence that programs that attempted to change attitudes in men led to changes in behavior.
That doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Just that, as far as this thread is concerned, there is a program that changes women’s behavior that apparently has some success, and less evidence that attempts to change male attitudes have had anything like the same success.
If you added, more context like “but if it happens it is not your fault, and there is no shame in being the victim of a criminal. The fact that you were attacked won’t change how much I respect and love you”
There are thousands of teenage girls walking the street in active prostitution, because some charming guy promised to give them the world and love. And once she fell for him he would have a group of his friends gang rape her, and then use the threat of telling her parents and friends that the was raped to force her into prostitution. The first part is called “grooming” and the second is called “seasoning”
This may seem absurd, but the issue with slut shaming is that it can send a message that if someone is raped, or makes a bad decision on a Friday night that they are broken and devalued just for having the wrong penis in them.
Seasoning is typically a combination of psychological manipulation, intimidation, gang rape, sodomy, beatings, deprivation of food or sleep and isolation.
Shame is an insanely powerful psychological weapon.
I can do that, if it makes it better. However, I’m torn with the contradictions of parenting now, where telling them not to do something, and then they do it and bad stuff happens, saying “See? I told you not to do that”
Yep, that is the pickle, all I can say is that I don’t know how to help without suggestions that would edge on causing existential crisis.
My personal choice was to decide that a personals past, present or future sexual events were unimportant, and instead focus on encouraging consent and respect. But we do not live in some utopian world and we still hold onto a lot of abrahamic concepts that make this difficult.
Hopefully other people can provide helpful suggestions.
Under the English common law definition circa 1847, rape was limited to the forcible vaginal penetration of a woman against her will by a man other than her husband.
Any other form of sex crime had to be prosecuted as simple assault or battery if it prosecuted at all until the last century.
While the legal terms differ it is a just a matter of degree in a practical modern context in the US too.
From what I can tell, the shaming effect operates more insidiously than this.
As an example, someone earlier in this thread remarked on women leaving the gym at night in yoga pants. He offered this up as an example of reckless behavior.
Now imagine hearing these kinds of opinions expressed throughout your life, all the time. Not just about yoga pants, but about anything that could conceivably elevate a woman’s risk by some unknown quantum.
So what happens when something then happens to you? Your mind instantly recalls all those so-called risky behaviors you’ve been warned to stay away from. And gosh, you realize that you did some of those things. You had two drinks instead of one. Or maybe you drew attention to yourself by wearing a skirt instead of pants (or maybe you wore pants that were extra flattering!). You then become ashamed because you failed to live up to the standards of safety preached at you all of your life.
My question to you is why do you need to advise daughters to drink wisely so they aren’t raped? Why not just say drink wisely? There generally is no good reason to drink until incapacitated regardless of who you are and what you’re doing. By making it be about rape prevention rather than their general health and safety, you are implicitly telling them 1) rape is the only thing that makes alcohol abuse dangerous and 2) getting raped is a natural consequence of getting drunk. Both are untrue.
You’re missing the excluded middle, which is bystander intervention - teaching people to recognize when others are at risk of rape or sexual assault and to safely intervene. We have some evidence this is effective at reducing incidents of intimate partner violence and sexual assault at the high school level. What it comes down to is a school climate where all participating members have low tolerance for that kind of behavior and understanding exactly what it is when they see it.
It’s just plain false that rapists know what they are doing is wrong. Most rapists, even convicted rapists, even rapists serving time for breaking into women’s homes and raping them at knifepoint, do not believe what they did is rape, or they assign at least some of the blame to women.
There used to be a chilling Reddit thread making the rounds in which men who had committed rape were asked to share their experiences. There were maybe two cases of intentional serial rapists who preyed on their female friends in college and mindfucked them into acquiesence (which is some terrifying shit to read, I promise), but the thread was filled with scores – SCORES – of men who had no concept of what they were doing until they looked up into the terrified face of their partner. In other cases, the men knew she didn’t want it but it was a split second decision where they really weren’t hit with the weight of what they had done until it was over.
The thread has since been removed from Reddit, but some snippets remain in the form of analysis.
I can’t tell you how to handle it, but I can tell you a little about mitigating factors of PTSD, if it helps. I think it gives us some good direction in understanding why PTSD is so much higher among rape victims than other types of trauma.
Meta-Analysis of Risk Factors for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Trauma-Exposed Adults by Chris Brewin (University College London) Bernice Andrews and John D. Valentine (University of London.)
I’ve long since lost the paper, but I saved the post.
Here’s the part that might be particularly relevant:
What this would seem to indicate is that of the top three factors examined as predictive of PTSD, two of the influencing factors had no direct relation to the trauma itself – it would seem that a large part of whether or not someone will develop PTSD depends on their circumstances immediately following the trauma.
IOW, the single best thing you can do for a rape victim immediately following trauma is to support that person. They don’t need to be told, ‘‘I told you so,’’ society has told them that rape is the victim’s fault from the time they were old enough to understand words. If you reinforce the already socially entrenched idea that it’s the victim’s fault, you will increase the likelihood of PTSD.
Bolding Mine.
More generally, when you look at cognitive therapy for PTSD, it is extremely common for victims of trauma, particularly interpersonal trauma, to take on a significant portion if not all of the blame. One theory for this is that people really can’t psychologically deal with the idea of being completely helpless and having no control, regardless of the facts. One of the main goals around cognitive therapy for PTSD is to dismantle the self-blaming cognitive schemas.
What I’m saying is, victims don’t need any help blaming themselves for what happened.
By the way, in that linked post, I make a risk-factor comparison between two types of people, an innocent schoolgirl and a prostitute, which seems weird out of context. I was directly refuting someone’s claim that it’s less bad for a prostitute to get raped vs. an ‘‘innocent’’ virgin, because the prostitute has sex all the time, therefore rape should be no big deal to her.
A couple of things here: I don’t consider “wearing yoga pants” risky behavior and I would never caution my daughter not to wear them.
The other is, it seems like getting wasted at a party, walking down a dark street at night, letting a strange guy give you drinks, are behaviors that are risky. I mean, shouldn’t I tell my son and daughter - “Don’t walk around dark alleys at night by yourself. You might get mugged or worse”? And isn’t the fact that some guys may spike drinks or other crimes something to warn my daughter, and son for that matter, about?
How do I warn them about things like that and not have them feel guilty for not heeding my warnings later if something bad happens because of them doing what I warned them against doing?