I think a lot of the nasty that differentiates “don’t dress revealingly” from “don’t flaunt your rolex in a bad neighborhood” is the sheer weight of history–no one has ever successfully used “I couldn’t help stealing his watch, the way he was flashing it around” as a defense to theft.
There’s also the measured element of risk. In the absence of actual data concerning the actual reactions of rapists to “slutty clothing”, anyone advancing the argument has no idea if they’re suggesting something analogous to “you shouldn’t hold a metal rod above your head in a thunderstorm” or something more like “you shouldn’t wear shoes in the car, in case you drive into a river–you’ll lose precious seconds kicking them off to swim easier”–that is, there is to my knowledge (and certainly not in this thread) NO hard data as to whether “don’t wear slutty clothing” is practical advice that actually prevents rapes, or nigh-useless advice that prevents one rape in 100,000 or less. Absent that data, it comes across as an attempt to justify the rape since that’s precisely how it’s been used in the past–even the recent past. Hell, some idiot is probably right now advancing it as a defense, and the only difference between now and a decade ago is that it’s not quite as likely to earn him a hung jury or “innocent” verdict.
How about a slightly different analogy…but staying on the theft theme.
We have a maid in our house all day long. Do we take extra care with cash? Totally. I make it a point to not leave cash out lying around and to put my wallet away at the end of the day.
Whether the cash is in plain view or not, she is still the same amount at fault.
Why then do I take the extra precaution of putting the cash away?
In a “relationship” or a circle of acquiantances, if you behave as though “you are avialble for sex” (the definition of sluttiness?) isn’t that a temptation for those that have a predilection towards rape?
Should you be able to do whatever you like? YES.
But that is different from recognising that people will react to how you act.
Provocation HAS successfully been used in mitigation for assault and murder.
I am not going to draw a bright line to define “slut” or “slutty dressing” - that way is too amorphous and has too many dependent variables.
What I would say that “behaving like a slut” is trying to provoke a sexual reaction - does it excuse the reaction when it happens? Totally not. But to pretend that a reaction* is not going to happen is burying your head in the sand.
BTW - I am not defining “reaction” here, it could be anything from an appreciative stare to a nasty leer to being asked for a drink and on upwards.
These are all pretty standard pieces of advice given to minimise your chances of being a victim of a mugging right?
And what do they all relate to? Wouldn’t it be “temptation”?
My contention would be that someone that is “dressed like a slut” (and / or has behaved sluttily) would need to work harder to have a no believed by a date rapist.
I also imagine that there is a number of men that rape not because they say to themselves - “I’m going to get my rocks off whether she wants it or not” but rather because they quite genuinely (although stupidly and cluelessly) didn’t understand that “no meant no” and that locking the door or holding her down crossed the line from “confident” or “pursuing” to forcing.
First of all–mitigation, not “getting off scott-free”.
In the United States Sentencing Guidelines, we have the statement “If the victim’s wrongful conduct contributed significantly to provoking the offense behavior…” (bolding mine). And the United States Model Code says this kind of mitigatory defense can be used only when the provocation causes “extreme emotional or mental distress”. Finally, it can only be used when a “reasonable man” would find the victim’s actions provocative enough to justify a complete loss of control on the part of the assailant.
So for the analogy to hold, you’d need to find me a reasonable person who could still believe there was any level of clothing that would automatically cause a condition of temporary loss of control comparable to insanity that led directly to the crime.
And that’s where your analogy completely breaks down to nothingness. I will not get off on a “provocation” defense if the victim is yelling in my general direction (analogous to dressing sexily). I will not get off on a “provocation” defense if the victim is yelling in my face but it’s not particularly vile language. Provocation is a VERY narrow defense.
There is no such thing as a set of clothing or behavior that would merit that defense in the case of rape.
They don’t relate to “temptation”, they relate to “access”. A normal guy isn’t going to turn into a thief just because he sees you flash a lot of cash. A thief will, certainly, but if you follow those bits of advice then they won’t have access to your cash because it’ll be in your bank. Seriously: items 1 and 2 are “you can’t be a victim if you don’t have anything to steal”, and item 3 is “if it is unknown whether you have anything to steal, most thieves will choose someone else”.
What’s the analogy here for rape victims?
Don’t carry your vagina unless you need it?
Don’t carry your vagina and anus in the same place?
Don’t show that you’re in possession of a vagina?
Seriously, your advice sucks. Women are victimized by men for rape because they’re women, not because they’re women who dress sluttily. There is no analogy to mugging prevention, because women cannot leave “being a woman” at home like you can do with cash.
Those men are idiots and deserve to go to jail, if they exist, which I doubt. I don’t believe there is any such thing as an accidental rapist.
I do knew someone to this degree who is currently serving like 20something years in prison on child molestation and various related charges.
The guy was a cousin of a good friend of mine, he was always creepy, weird, and very inappropriate. My friend figured is was because he was raisied by grandparents, way out in the boonies, no friends, no real socialization. He was practically a hollywood caricature of a child molester. Friend thought if he had the chance to hang out with the guys he would see us working our magic at the club and learn a thing or two, maybe even find himself a girlfriend. We actively tried to coach him on being less creepy.
It didn’t work, he was arrested once for an inappropriate touching incident with like a 13 year old girl who apparently thought it was sooo cool to have a 22 year old bf until she found out what 22 year old boyfriends like more than holding hands. He spent like a month in jail and was on probation, registered sex offender, blah blah. Pretty much all of us withdrew from him at that point, I saw him a couple other times because my friend just knew he could be redeemed and or fixed.
A couple years passed and we all kinda started hanging out together again, we constantly terrorized him about his prior charges…“Got a date John, There is a middle school on the way?” “What? Her? Shes gotta be like 25, isn’t that like 15 years too old for you?”
Then about a year after that he for whatever god unknown reason basically grabbed a 10 year old girl off the street in front of where he was living, forced her to have sex with him, then let her go.
Never saw him again…and cant say I’m sorry. I have no tools to say what was wrong with this guy, but something in his head is just not wired right.
While in no way defending your buddy Chester and his actions, in reading this charming description, it certainly sounds like you and your friends were behaving like a bunch of 5th grade-level children, doesn’t it?
Like i said, my experience is with “this kind of thing in relation to sex”. You guys would be amazed how many girls say “we are NOT having sex tonight” as THEY get on top and take off their own shirt haha I didn’t say I have sex with unwilling girls and use Jedi mind tricks to get out of a prison sentence, I said the psychology makes that example possible. Are the people who get all high horse on me seriously not able to discuss things from a theoretical view? Or if I talked about how ballet must be hard would you assume I was saying I’m a professional ballerina of 20 years? The forum is called Great DEBATES haha
A rapey sounding example:
Met a chick, we were into eachother and got drinks together. She didn’t want to have sex but we were making out. Outside the bar later we were in the parking lot and she’d tell me I blew my chances with her for some silly thing and I’d say “oh that’s terrible I guess we won’t be having sex tonight” and then suddenly bee-line toward her to grab her. She’d giggle and skip away a few feet and tell me no, but not leave and had a big ol smile on her face. I’d act casual and then bee-line again. Eventually she let me catch her and I carried her over my shoulder to a cab and took her home. In the apartment I flung her onto the bed and she gave the classic “we shouldn’t be doing this” and “we can’t…” (this is so later she doesn’t have to admit she wanted sex and feel like a slut she can say it was the guy’s fault or it “just happened”). Held her down and we had rough sex.
Probably to people who hear the jist of the story it sounds rapey but the reality is she loved it (partly because I didn’t make her feel slutty for wanting to be dominated, I made sure to make her feel good about letting herself go sexually like that) and we hooked up numerous times for a few months and while we live in different cities now we still keep in touch.
The key is that I know the difference between what actual resistance and token resistance look like and can read when to pursue aggressively, and I know how to encourage good emotions afterward instead of negative. It’s not some magic mind manipulation puppetmaster shit, it’s knowing “if I kick her out right after I blow a load on her face she’ll feel bad” or "if I post on my Facebook “just nailed that slutty blonde lol” it probably won’t make her feel good, or if I show my friends the pics/video we took she’ll be embarrassed and feel slutty. It’s just common sense shit that a lot of guys don’t understand.
And that’s just for a normal chick who likes when a guy takes charge. I’m not even getting into the girls who have rape fantasies and play in BDSM communities and shit. Saying “if a girl protests the whole time it’s rape” is pretty much ignoring the whole concept of safe words and roleplaying. I can’t even imagine what kind of bland vanilla sex life some of you getting all riled up have haha
As for the silly “kissng a girl is the same as breaking into her house” analogy, having your house broken into is never good. Being kissed is often good. That’s the nuance.
There are a phenomenal amount of shades of grey when you actually have a lot of sex very quickly with a variety of partners.
Rapey expample that didn’t go so well just to give the other side of how it can go:
This Internet chick chatted my buddy up. He invited her over and she drove to his place. She was horny and looking for sex basically and so was he so they only had a few messages between eachother and she came to his place. Anyway so they get going at it and she tells him she likes it rough. She flat out asks him to choke her and treat her rough and that she loves to be dominated etc.
Now my buddy is a nice guy, he’s not a PUA or anything he’s just the nice dude you’d all be friends with, not a mean bone in his body. But he’s inexperienced with girls and he was horny and she was telling him what she wanted so in his mind he logically thought “okay then I’ll be dominant so we can have sex and she’ll like it so this is win/win!”. So he gets into it and is doing a little choking and stuff while theyre fingering and stroking eachother and getting into the role-play he says in her ear “you’re my dirty little slut aren’t you, you’re MINE.” because, well, that’s how they talk in porn.
Well shit. Apparently those specific words set something off in her psyche. We’ll never know what (I’d guess she had an abusive past of some kind with a partner or dad who was super controlling but I wasn’t there to guage her personality so I can’t say) but she started screaming get off and then scurried into a corner of his bedroom curled up in the fetal position crying and screaming.
My buddy shit a brick and txted me asking wtf does he do she just had some kind of mental breakdown and he was terrified she was going to accuse him of trying to rape her. This incident shook him up for months and he’s still scared to have sex with a girl now (a year or so later) because it was such a shock and he was scared as hell he’d be going to jail for doing what SHE asked for.
Anyway I told him to turn on all the lights and the TV and act like nothing’s wrong and just calm her down telling her “it’s okay, you’re okay, its okay just relax everything is okay” and when he got her calmed down again finally I told him even tho he doesn’t want to do it he should cuddle with her and let her sleep over if she wants to, act like a boyfriend to her, because she had subconsciously (it probably surprised her as much as it surprised him) hot-wired a massive rape assosciation to him and he needed to disassociate himself from that and just make her feel good emotions for the sake of her leaving his place NOT thinking he was a rapist.
Anyway so there’s an example of how this stuff has grey shades. Again if you sleep around a lot you get to learn that these situations aren’t as black and white as people like to classify them. I’ve got a bunch of real life examples of this kind of thing which is why I say I have experience with it in regards to sex it that doesn’t mean I’m out there being a rapey puppetmaster.
People can continue to think that girls actually don’t like me and that I live in a PUA fantasy world and just read romance novels and don’t know what the “real world” is like but when you finally accept that yes, I have actual frequent real world experience (and far far more than the average person who has sex with 3 partners in their lifetime and the occasional drunken “get lucky” bar slut) my points will hopefully carry more weight. This isn’t armchair psychology.
Cool. She seemed okay with it, what with the orgasms and the wanting to hang out and txting me to come meet her at the bar and taking me home and introducing me to her family and everything, but ya, fuck, just keep reading into it what you want to. :rolleyes:
You don’t like kissing? Or you like having your house broken into?
You seem to have lost the distinction, somewhere along the way, between “being a successful skeevy guy” and “being someone other people aren’t going to be creeped out by.”
I don’t care if you happen to have succeeded. You’re coming off as way creepy.
It’s almost impressive how determined you are to cram the square peg into the round hole. “You’re guilty!!” “The courts found me innocent!!” “Well you’re just a guilty man who got away with it!!” Like, okay there, keep believing whatever you want to haha :rolleyes:
Can we stop dragging the PUA thing into these “rapey examples”?
I’ve read at least part of all the well-known PUA books, and they don’t advocate rape. In fact, they make the distinction very clear (which I thought was patronizing…until I read this thread and realized that there are people that actually need to be told this).
And as for “mind tricks”, most of them are focused on trying to give the woman what she wants. Making yourself more attractive while making the time you spend together more fun or intimate.
So now you’re clumsily acting as though you were talking about BDSM the whole time, and convincing a grand total of zero people that you’re not as creepy as you look. And it took you how many days to come up with this? You probably should have just faded into black and pretended to have forgotten about this thread haha.
Remember when you made your debut on this board and I said that it sounds like PUA maneuvers might work with women who lack confidence and self-esteem, but not so well with women who have it fully together mentally? Of course you denied that then, but all you’re doing is confirming that now. What grown ass woman with sense sings the “we shouldn’t be doing this” song continuously when they’re making out? And what grown ass man who is truly confident in himself wouldn’t eventually be turned off by this game?
What I’m learning is that you see a pseudo-protesting woman as a normal part of dating and sex. But it’s only normal if the women you take home are often too immature to admit to being sexual beings, are a little crazy upstairs, or/and lack confidence in themselves to say what they mean and mean what they say. They might also be ashamed that they really like you, and don’t have the cojones to come out and show they are attracted to you. If I had to guess why I’d say it’s probably because subconsciously they feel you only see them as an object to manipulate, not as a unique individual that you really care about.
I don’t think some men realize how desperate they come off when they push for sex with someone who has told them no. I think PUA’s imagine this behavior flatters women because it makes them think the guy finds them irresistable. But a woman who has her head screwed on right doesn’t need this kind of sign as proof of her desirability. I know I don’t. If I say “not tonight” and the guy backs down and stays down, it tells me two things. 1) He listens to and respects me–which are extremely important indicators of our compatibility in the long run and 2) sex isn’t such a rare event for him that he has to seize it when he can, like a drowing man does a life line. This screams desperation to me, not normal male horniness.
OK, you with the face, this is the last I’ll say on this because I am hijacking a bit, and the last thing I want is to be grouped with TheWhoToTheWhatNow, but it does bother me the kind of press the PUA thing gets.
I am more your typical PUA. I’ve always had many women friends and I was the guy women could talk to about their problems, but I didn’t have a serious girlfriend until relatively late in life. The kind of behaviours that are necessary to make a guy a “boyfriend candidate” just didn’t come naturally to me, and they don’t to many guys.
I read The Game when it first came out, and at that time it was all good. I had no problem telling girls I had read this PUA book and I had no problem lending the book to female friends.
But since then it’s become a dirty word / acronym as the media have got hold of it. “Shy guys gain confidence” is not as good a story as “Women BEWARE! Men have found jedi mind tricks that are more effective than rohypnol!!”
Then more PUAs need to speak up and say “it’s about learning behaviors that women like for those of us who don’t osmose them” to counter the Mysterys and TWTTWNs of the world for whom it is about “overcoming the woman’s natural resistance” or whatever.