It’s really not. We’re just getting more honest about calling things “rape” when they are, in fact, rape. Just because rapey behaviors were previously seen as socially acceptable doesn’t mean we should keep accepting them.
Wait, are you saying that because some women are strong, there’s no reason they should be getting raped so much? Because you really are sounding confused.
I’m pretty sure people don’t get locked up for mere sexual harassment - unless we’re talking repeated acts of terrorizing levels, or something more than “whoa, hey baby… you should probably have ‘dinner’ with me if you want that raise.” Meanwhile, many states do have requirements that the aggressor in a domestic abuse situation, regardless of gender, should be prosecuted. (I have a female inlaw who’s been arrested more than once for domestic abuse.)
That might be because it’s not his OP. **Acsenray **isn’t the same person as aceplace57.
I’m in no place to psychoanalyze you, but without making accusations, I’ll suggest you examine whether you’ve got some misplaced starting assumptions that make the whole issue look confusing. If, for example, you’re taking it as given that men and women are, due to some magical cosmic force, exactly equally responsible for sex crimes, it’s gonna be difficult to reconcile that assumption with the facts on the ground, and you’ll end up muddled.
This is a non sequitur. Some women can take care of themselves, sure, under some circumstances. But just as even the toughest guys sometimes get murdered, the toughest woman can get raped. (And of course it goes the other way, too). And when date rape occurs, it ought to be prosecuted.
Sexual harassment should equally be prosecuted when it violates the law. It doesn’t matter whether its victim can take care of herself, anymore than it matters whether the victim of a stabbing can take care of himself. Stabbing people and sexually assaulting people are both against the law regardless of the victim’s self-defense capabilities. (That goes as well for lesser levels of sexual harassment, of course).
And the reasons for this are complex. Foremost, of course, is probably the fact that severe, i.e., injury-inducing, domestic abuse is overwhelmingly committed by certain men against certain women. It happens in all sorts of relationships of course, but there’s a definite trend. THen there’s the shame experienced by some men who’ve been abused that leads to fewer reports, along with the possibility that police will take their reports less seriously. None of that is good, and we ought to work against it.
But “women should take some responsibility for sex”? That’s really really weird to read.
Who, generally:
-Initiates use of contraception?
-Ensures it’s used properly?
-Deals with pregnancy if it results from sex?
-Takes care of the kids resulting from sex?
I mean, if the OP said that MEN should take some responsibility for sex, that’d be kind of a silly OP, but I could see the case. But women?
What! Impossible! Both names start with the letter “A”! Of course they’re the same person! 
Oops :smack:. Sorry 'bout that.
Why is sex involved if it’s not also about sex?
That’s political dogma, not realty. Most of the time rape is about sex, just as mugging is about money.
No, it’s really not. Workplace training on sexual harassment can often be alarmist because they want to draw a bright line at a very safe distance. But the real rules outside of the workplace are getting much closer to what they should always have been—don’t try to force someone else to do something he or she doesn’t want to do.
There’s quite a serious problem right now with women in the military being sexually assaulted by their own compatriots.
- What’s “a lot”?
- The first sentence has no relationship to the second. Whether or not women can take care of themselves is independent of whether there are men who commit or attempt to commit sexual assault or harassment.
No, things really are not so confusing these days.
I agree with you! Because some men can not control there sexual impulses we somehow are fault because we wore shorts .
You’re mistaking responsibility for power. You take the birth control because you have it, while men risk being on the hook for child support and the like any time they have sex because no pharmocological prophylactics are available, and obviously men have no abortion to resort to if things go wrong. Men are the ones expected to initiate sex, to court women and give the compliments and buy the flowers and be the one to do the asking out, and the paying for the date and the asking for consent, or in other words taking all the emotional and financial responsibility for a relationship. Not that women never do, but it’s always expected of the man.
Although here in the UK past accusations, even if disproven, can be used against a defendant.
Some other examples:
In Oregon the burden of proof in rape cases has been shifted explicitly onto the defendant, who has to prove consent.
Womne who rape, statutorily or forcibly, underage boys and become pregnant can claim child support from their victims, while their victims will be treated like they’re lucky to have been raped.
In fact male victims of sexual abuse, especially as children, perpetrated by women are much more likely to recontextualise and reinterpret their experiences later to hide the shame of being raped, and will of course be browbeaten by society with “he must have wanted it really”.
That’s really more relevant. The OP examples were cases where there wasn’t a “rape rape”, to quote Whoopi Goldberg, but a statutory rape or a drunken couple. The fact is that a drunken couple, as the OP says, is never going to end up with the woman in prison but it’s a realistic possibility for the man, and he’s quite right that that’s unfair. A woman’s consent can be revised because she was “unable” to consent because of intoxication, while a man or even a young boy is assumed to be a consent machine, just constantly asking for whatever sexual attentions women deign to give him, no matter if he’s unconscious or tied up or held down or twelve years old. Statutory rape is a wholly different issue, although again an older woman scenario is generally treated totally differently from an older man scenario.
Obviously there is an element of sex going on, so I could’ve expressed myself better. It might be better to say: rape is often about power more than it is about sex, and rape does not occur more often to women who wear short skirts or women who swing their hips when they walk. It is pretty clear, however, that rape is a form of establishing power over someone else. It’s always about power, it is sometimes about sex.
I was raped by a guy I’d turned down the night before. Sex might’ve been part of it, but it was a small part. He mainly wanted to establish his control. Yes, I do realise it’s just an anecdote, I’m giving it as an example of how power works in rape.
There’s a difference between victim blaming and risk minimization. Now before that first sentence ticks everyone off, let me say that I don’t think dressing provocatively increases or decreases your chance of rape, specifically, either way, so I’m not speaking to the specific example, but I am speaking generally.
You can teach people things are bad. Anaamika said above that we should teach men not to rape. But as I man I can say we do, all the time, at least my generation was (I’m 23). “No means no” was drilled into our heads, we were constantly reminded not to even try to pursue someone the least bit intoxicated, hell, anything short of an explicit “I want you to have sex with me RIGHT NOW.” was taught to us, ad nauseum, to be as good as a “hell no!” There’s a reason this exists, it’s making fun of a very, very extensive conditioning we went through about making sure the girl knows exactly what is going to happen in bed and making sure she agrees to each thing. Same with theft, we teach people since childhood not to take things that aren’t theirs, punish them if they do, etc. And murder and so on as well.
However, there are ALWAYS sociopaths, there are always people that think the rules don’t apply to them, there are always people with fucked up senses of justice, and a host of other variables that means you can never just stop crimes from ever happening. That means that people have to take certain steps to protect themselves from the small part of society that’s inevitably going to be fucked up no matter what you do.
Now, obviously this can be taken too far. Never want to be raper, stolen from, or lied to? Move out to a cave in the middle of the woods as a hermit, live alone and forage and hunt for your food! That completely minimizes your risk of getting crimes perpetrated against you and is also terrible advice. However, if you don’t want your stuff stolen, don’t tell everyone you know you leave your door unlocked. If you don’t want to get raped, don’t go into the registered rapist’s house with cookies while on valium. Obviously these are comically exaggerated scenarios, but they illustrate my point. It’s not their fault that they had something bad happen to them, it’s merely advice to lower their chances.
And note that I said lower. You could carry around a shotgun while wearing a burqa while only being in well populated areas in broad daylight and still get raped. I’m not arguing that bad things don’t happen to perfectly acting agents (in AI we frequently use the example of a person who always looks both ways before crossing the street only to get struck by lightning in the middle of the crosswalk), I’m just saying that there’s no reason to mistake advice as an offensive anti-victim mentality when it may just be advice. Oftentimes bad advice, yes, but advice.
Now, when you see somebody who DID have their car stolen, or got raped, or assaulted, or whatever, and try to find what they did wrong and tell them what to do differently, that’s when it starts to get offensive, but offering proactive advice to help lower the chances of it happening to them at all? I don’t see the problem.
Again, I think “don’t dress like that” is a particularly good piece of advice to prevent rape or sexual assault, since I’m pretty sure there’s no known correlation between the two, I’m just saying in general offering proactive advice is just meant to control for that percentage of the society that isn’t going to respond to any amount of “now y’all shouldn’t do that, y’hear?” It’s not saying “if you don’t act perfectly, it’s your fault!” It’s saying “look, I care about you, and some people are bad. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you and want you to be as safe as can reasonably be expected.”
Of course, there are victim blamers and slut shamers, and they have problems. But I don’t think it helps to throw people who legitimately are just trying to compensate for the fact that potential victims can ever-so-slightly improve their chances of becoming real victims at the hands of the very real criminal contingent of society under the bus with them.
I disagree. In my opinion most rape is about sex; and in fact, IMHO rape and power intersect more with power being about getting sex (including but not only by rape) than the other way around. Although it can be both at once at course.
REDUCE their chances. REDUCE. I don’t think we want to make it more likely they’ll be victims :smack:.
Woman: “Dammit! What does a woman have to do to get raped around here?!”
Rapist: “Sorry lady, I’m booked solid this week.”
It just gives off the wrong message. The message that there is something you can do to reduce chances of being raped. There isn’t, it’s a lie. Most victims were raped by someone they know. What does that tell you? That not walking through dangerous areas and dressing a certain way do nothing to reduce chances of being raped. That not drinking and then going home with strangers doesn’t reduce chances of being raped. So what the hell are you supposed to do? The advice you should give is to stay away from men if you don’t want to be raped. As they consist of 50% of the population and are generally fun to be around I don’t think it’s feasible.
You can perhaps prevent being raped by strangers on the street while drunk in a dangerous area wearing a short skirt. But that is not what happens in the majority of rapes, so it’s not a particularly relevant attempt. And anyway, women already get drilled into them that they shouldn’t do that. If they do get raped in that situation, I’m pretty sure the “responsibility” they take for that will last them a lifetime.
This is why equating responsible behaviour to prevent being raped with responsible behaviour to prevent being robbed is a part of rape culture. This is why saying there is something women can do to prevent being raped is blaming victims, even if that is not what you intend.
I don’t think it’s true that there’s nothing you can do, but the things you can do are unfortunately very difficult, hard to see, and symptomatic of larger societal problems. For instance, both men and women who are abused (sexually or otherwise) frequently justify or rationalize for their abuser. They explain away all the warning signs that perhaps this person may feel entitled to sex, or explain away recurring emotional abuse as “stress.”
It’s a very, very difficult problem to deal with, and the lines of exactly what constitutes abuse vs reasonable short-term orneryness aren’t clear, but educating people about these things can potentially save a lot of grief. I know I wish I’d been instructed about how to recognize potential codependency, or emotional manipulation and power plays. I was never raped, but I do know what it feels like to be made sexually uncomfortable, and what being emotionally manipulated to the point that you don’t know if they’re being unreasonable or if you’re being selfish.
Teaching people to recognize behaviors like this and not put up with them (without going overboard) is a very important step in preventing abuse and sexual issues. And I really feel like we don’t do that, at all. We were frequently told “abuse is bad m’kay?” But never were given any guidelines on how to so much as spot abusive behavior. Or even what to do when you encounter them. You can lower risks by making the correct decisions when behaviors like this become evident. But like I said, it’s frustratingly vague and fuzzy and I feel we do not do a good job at all educating people about it.
No, it still won’t make chances zero, and there’s always the chance they’ll do it before you’ve had a chance to identify any red flag behaviors, but such is the unfortunate nature of things.
I agree much more with what you are saying now. Though I must say, I feel like all those warning behaviours were drilled into me. I knew exactly what I shouldn’t put up with, knew “what to do” when things go to far, knew what to look out for. And of course, like all women, I knew all the things I shouldn’t be doing. My papa always joked that he pitied the guy who’d give it a try with me. None of that did me much good when I was actually raped.
Educating people to spot abuse is a great thing. Giving people the tools and knowledge and safety net to get out of that situation is very important. I don’t think it’s quite the same as telling women how to prevent being raped. I see how they are related, but it’s not the same thing.
Be careful with your commas. This appears to be an insult aimed at another poster and those are not allowed outside The BBQ Pit.
[ /Moderating ]