Ought to be more than enough time; you only have a 27-minute commute. 
Alligators and men? And outrage? That’s what you got from my post? I’ll stop talking in metaphors, then. We’re told - in terms at least as vehement as I used - that women must not be told to take measures for their own safety, lest it be seen as blaming those who have suffered through no fault of their own and whom no reasonable measures would have safeguarded. Why, then, do we tell men “Don’t take stupid risks, and you’ll be OK”? If on the one hand we should focus, not on the risk, but on the evil of the wrongdoer, why not on the other?
That’s hardly the only place I’ve seen that attitude, nor have I ever noticed it being especially restricted to women who say they’ve been raped. And one of the common complaints in that thread was that men didn’t even have the right to be unhappy at being treated like monsters.
Wrong. No one cares if men are tortured or killed; if some army overruns a village and kills all the men and rapes the women, we’ll hear all about the abuse of the women and how that proves how misogynistic men are - we’ll be lucky if the massacred men get even a line in the article. People care a lot what happens to women and children; that’s why all the advertisements for charity have women and children in them, virtually never men unless they are so starved that gender is unrecognizable.
Assuming any of that even happened like you said ( a significant question in a thread about false accusations), by the same logic you shouldn’t condemn men who fear false accusations or who believe no one cares about what happens to them because you’ve never been one of them.
It’s pretty cool how you can find hypocrisy when you conflate the views of two different people (passive voice ftw!). If, however, you pay attention to what I’ve repeatedly said, I disagree with the idea that women must not be told to take measures for their own safety. Certainly the first approach is to stop rapists from being rapists; but the second approach, as long as there are rapists, is to avoid putting oneself in their path if it’s possible and reasonable to do so. Of course people disagree with me on this; those who disagree with me probably wouldn’t use the alligator metaphor.
Because on the one hand we mean “treat all men as if they were monsters”, and on the other we tell men that showing the slightest concern about the honesty and benevolence, and all-round superior nature of women makes them crazy or a monster.
There’s an element of truth in this somewhat twisted mindset. People care more about crimes of violence toasted women & children. Presumably because of a sexist based attitude that women exist to be protected. You punch a woman in the mouth you will be looked at worse than doing the same to an equally sized and skilled male. But socity views sexual crimes towards men as more serious than sexual crimes towards women. A 30 year old female teacher sleeping with a 14 year old student is viewed very differently in public depending on the sexes of the people involved. A straight man compelled to perform oral sex is likely to receive a lot more credibility to his accusations and sympathy in general than a lesbian in the same situation.
I think the reason many people complain about the “safety advice” women get on how to avoid rape is because it’s ineffective. It’s not something women do or don’t do that gets them raped, rape is something that men do to them. That’s why I object to those who tell women what measures they ought to take for their own safety, anyway - as well as, of course, the flip side of that safety advice which is “if you’d only done x, you wouldn’t have been raped” - unhelpful at best, and largely untrue, because it again puts the emphasis on the actions of the woman, rather than the man who should have refrained from raping someone. It’s hardly an accidental action, after all.
Say what? He’s more likely to be laughed at or condemned as a weakling or a sinner than he is to receive any sympathy at all. Jeffery Dahmer’s last victim was handed back to him by the cops, who were laughing at him. The cops of course weren’t punished; the boy was murdered, but then he was only a boy not a real human being whose life had value like a girl would have been.
Was that the victim who the police believed to be Dahmer’s boyfriend when he told them that - so not, in the minds of the police there, a straight man at all?
Even if that one incident fitted the pattern, which it doesn’t, it is one incident. Or do you disagree that when a female teacher rapes a 14 year old male student, there aren’t very many people with the view that it isn’t so bad after all.
People care about what happens to women and children in the aggregate. An individual woman who is the victim of sexual violence, however, is a different story. Any woman whose victimization doesn’t follow the media-reinforced narrative of what Whoopi Goldberg so kindly labeled “rape rape” (i.e. a stranger attacks her with a weapon) is subjected to cruel revictimization by police, friends, family, coworkers and strangers who all think that they can second guess the veracity of her story based on irrelevant factors, and prosecutors who defer to the most base and stereotyped beliefs when determining which cases to prosecute.
It’s not just ineffective, it almost always involves a recommendation that women vastly alter how they go about their daily lives for a limited return on actual increased safety because the vast majority of rapes are not crimes of opportunity committed by strangers, but that’s how the tips frame it. Most rape victims wren’t blitzed while walking across a parking lot or jogging in parks or while fiddling in their purse for their keys while on their doorstep.
The tips aren’t as simple and common sense as “lock your doors and don’t leave items on the seats/in sight” to avoid car theft/break-ins, it’s things like “don’t walk alone at night.” A perpetual buddy system, like women are children swimming in the lake at summer camp.
“Replace all your locks when you move into a new apartment,” which is not only prohibited by many leases, can come at a tremendous expense. Several hundred dollars spent on the off chance that some former tenant might come in and rape you, ignoring that maintenance and leasing employees all have keys and if you lease, you will never be able to avoid that.
“Leave lights on outside your house through all dark hours,” again, expensive, energy-wasting, potentially counterproductive (nothing like bright light for someone who is talented at picking locks quickly) and again, feeding into the notion that the majority of rapists are going to be strangers breaking into your house in the dead of night.
“If you are harassed by the occupants of a car, simply turn and walk the other direction. The driver will have to turn around to follow you,” never mind that you’re walking in the direction of the place where you need to go, just… go somewhere else. You’re a smart girl, you can figure it out. (That’s advice that only a man could ever give, because as we’ve seen here on the Dope, men have no clue of the frequency of harassment from passersby that women endure.)
“Don’t get drunk,” because whatever personal value being drunk might have for women, it’s just simply bad, bad, bad. Men can be drunk, and enjoy all the freedom they get from drunkenness (including the freedom to be loud and piss on sidewalks and leer and harass passersby) and at best, they’re considered a nuisance, and rarely face punishment unless they get start a fight or do something brainless in front of a cop, but a drunk woman has made herself unacceptably vulnerable. No freedom for women to cut loose.
“Avoid having both hands full when you’re walking,” but “hold your purse close to your body, not dangling from your shoulder” and “don’t stop and dig in your purse for your keys, always have them out before you need them.” When am I meant to get my keys out, and which hand am I supposed to carry them in if I’m meant to be clutching my purse to my body and yet I’m also meant to not have full hands?
This is stuff straight from cops. This is the best advice that they have to offer for how to “protect” ourselves. And yet in all the rape prevention pamphlets and lectures and websites, I’ve never seen the best tip I can imagine to stop rape:
Don’t rape anyone. If you’re not sure that what you’re doing is okay, stop doing it.
Infinitely less complicated than changing locks and walking circuitous routes (with your buddy system partners in tow) but no one ever officially says it.
Because saying the former would be ridiculously patronizing when it’s already written into law with severe penalties. What, should the cops put up signs saying “Don’t Murder People” too? As for the latter, given that men aren’t telepaths men actually following that rule would mean no sex, ever. It is impossible for a man to tell if a woman is going to decide she was a victim after the fact, not even if she’s his wife he’s known for thirty years.
:rolleyes: Lots of people. That scenario is notorious for getting the reaction “boy, he sure is lucky”.
Left Hand used the alligator metaphor to describe precautions he would take to avoid being accused of rape by women who would do him dirty to avoid being seen as a slut. Yes? Barbecue sauce : alligator attack :: repeatedly toeing the line of consent : rape accusation.
You responded with a sort of burlesque of the argument that rapists and not rape victims are responsible for rapes, where the alligator takes the place of the rapist and the victim takes the place of the victim. So yes; men and alligators was the analogy that you decided to go with. And that’s not a very good point, because if you think a man is a wrongdoer in the same sense that an alligator is a wrongdoer, you either have a lot of respect for the latter’s intellectual and ethical capacity, or very little for the former’s. Which is what I was pointing out. It seems to me that you and, for instance, Der Trihs spend a lot of energy in these threads talking about the ways that men are demonized. And yet here you are ready to run with an analogy where men are the mindless amoral victimization machines.
Can you cite anyone saying that
?
You know, I just realized I was making completely the wrong point with that. I don’t agree with you on the rest of your comments, but it is actually a situation where a sexual crime against a male gets treated as less seriously than one against a woman.
My bad, my brain was fried. Kind of embarrassing, that.
Except most people know largely what murder is, and think murder is wrong. Significant numbers of people don’t understand what rape entails, and don’t think forcing a woman to have sex is always wrong.
I don’t know where you’re living, but almost all the advice you’re posting here, I have received before as a male to keep myself safe from mugging, robbery or just general stupidity.
This includes: always be aware of what’s going on around you, don’t get distracted (by digging through your bag for keys), don’t be loud and obnoxious (i.e drunk) in an unfamiliar crowd, change your locks when you move into a new house - this is advice that I have given to men and women alike, young and old.
It burns me that general advice given to keep people safe (whether it be from robbery, assault or rape) suddenly becomes sexist if it is given to a lady.
Do you have a cite for this?
Intuitively it seems pretty clear that, at least for rapes like “she was too drunk to resist” absolutely wouldn’t have happened if either a) the lady was with a sober buddy that was looking out for her or b) didn’t get drunk in the first place.
This would probably apply to a whole 'nother spectrum of the “date rape” type of rapes that make up the bulk of rapes. I am not saying these can be avoided all together, or that extreme care needs to be taken, but to totally ignore that there are steps to be taken to mitigate risk factors seems to be something of a fallacy to me.
It is akin to saying - locking your car doesn’t affect the rates of theft, so don’t even give that advice, or cars parked in well lit, high traffic areas get stolen less. For every other area of crime, it is considered ok to give advice that mitigates risk - why is it not ok to give such advice when it comess to rape? For every other crime, just as with every other criminal, it is still the criminals fault - no matter what the victim did. It’s just that we do recognise that there are things we can do to make the job easier or harder.
I remember one case here not long ago, a lady got drunk in a bar, a guy that she met that night volunteered to take her home in a taxi. Instead he took her to his apartment and raped her. After she spent most of the taxi ride unconcscious.
The total blame for this, and full weight of disgust falls onto the rapist. But do pose yourself some questions.
- If she had been alert and functioning during the taxi ride, do you think she would have ended up at home or at the guy’s apartment?
- Having gotten drunk, if a friend had been looking out for her interests, would she have ended up in a cab with a strange guy?
If either have happened this rape would have been avoided. This isn’t mitigation for the rapist, in actual fact, having taken advantage of her state it reflects worse on him, but to pretend that her state didn’t contribute to making this an “easier” crime is utter lunacy.
And sorry, missed the edit window - this advice has also extended to clothing. The classic is opposing team colours when it comes to sport. Try wearing Man U colours and carousing in a Man City bar during the derby - it’s most likely not wise, or wearing Highlanders colours in a Crusaders student pub.
Things may or may not happen - but it is behaviour to be avoided UNLESS you know the crowd or you have a strong support network with you. The clothes are not wrong in and of themselves - exxccept in the reaction that they will draw from others.
Sure. Uh huh. Sounds kind of paranoid, given how rapes are so under-reported, how rape victims are treated so badly, and how rape is routinely blamed on being slutty.
Yeah? Really? Explain the UK’s absolutely abysmal five percent conviction rate for rape, then. I can hardly wait.