Well yeah, if you really thought when UTJ referred to “14-year olds doing their thing” that (s)he meant “existing”, then we certainly had a very different understanding of that post.
Whether people have sexual urges, and whether a culture will reflect that in making sexual expression culturally acceptable, are two separate things.
Saudi Arabian women probably have as much of a libido as anyone else, yet are heavily restricted and also required to be burqa’d from head to toe.
That’s why I said “could reflect” and not “would reflect”.
Whether people have sexual urges is not the only factor in whether their culture makes sexual expression culturally acceptable, but it’s a factor. So the two things are related, which was the entirety of my claim.
I’m an aunt to two wonderful nieces, aged 18 & 19. They are from different parents, different schools, different provinces. For the 19 year old I was her primary babysitter for many years and got to know many of her friends who all loved to chat with me (since I wasn’t a mom I guess I was cooler, who knows, lol)
The girls (and the friends I knew) were always taught the dos and don’ts of partying:
- Open your own drink and watch it like a hawk, if you loose track of it get a new one
- Go in a group for backup
- Help is only a text or call away, no questions
For years they all agreed with these and thought they made sense, even adding their own ones in. Then the oddest thing happened to all these girls when they hit around 17…they discovered Feminist Studies. More than half are now taking it in University.
Suddenly, those rules are now “Slut Shaming”. Regulations forced on women by a misogynistic society wanting to shame them. Therefore the rules will not be followed.
Speaking only for my nieces (not their friends since I don’t know what their families say) the family has tried explaining that the rules are there for protection. To keep them as safe as possible and still let them have fun. We want them to see the dangers out there with open eyes and act accordingly.
We are not saying if they don’t follow them they will be responsible for anything that happens to them…no way!!! They might be naive and dumb at times, but that doesn’t mean they deserve to be harmed. What is sad is that they didn’t used to be this ignorant of what can happen.
The girls also seem to ignore the fact that the boys in the family were always given the same rules, but that might just be my family.
So…is this what being a Millenial (sp?) and a feminist mean? (Honest question, no sarcasm). I know more than dozen of these interesting young girls and enjoy our debates and conversations. But sometimes I get scared, sometimes it seems like they accept no responsibility for their own safety? And having them tell us we are slut shaming them is not a big help in resolving the issue.
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No it isn’t. Who on earth thinks that a law-abiding person deserves to have their property stolen just for being careless with it?
Even if you’re stupidly careless with your property, the blame for committing the crime of theft still rests completely with the thief, not with the victim of the theft.
Also, you’re deceptively conflating “a notoriously bad bar at three o’clock in the morning” with “anywhere at any time” (besides conflating property crimes with physical assault, as noted above). A woman should not have to treat the entirety of her social life like a notoriously bad bar, where it’s her responsibility to expect and prepare for severe danger, and her fault if she fails to guard against danger in every possible way.
Drinking with your friends in their apartment is not the same thing as being “outside a notoriously bad bar”. Wearing a skimpy dress to an office party or campus kegger is not the same thing as being “outside a notoriously bad bar”. Women’s due diligence for their own safety should not have to include regarding all situations as highly dangerous and all men as probable rapists.
Do you realize, though, how unfair it is to emphasize the responsibility of women not to get criminally assaulted, rather than making it about the responsibility of people in general not to assault others?
Imagine if your male friends had been given similar “dos and don’ts of partying” even among their acquaintances, friends and neighbors:
- Never take your hand off your wallet; always turn your back if you have to take your wallet out; expect that any time you take your hand off your wallet, someone may try to steal it from you, even if they’re your friend or roommate or neighbor.
- Go in a group for backup in case one of you takes his hand off his wallet and it gets stolen, which could be attempted by anybody at any time.
Would guys be willing to tolerate that kind of normalization of the crime of theft, and the burdensome expectation that it was their responsibility to be constantly vigilant against the ever-present threat of theft, even among people whom they’d expect to be able to trust?
No. So why should women have to tolerate such normalization of sexual assault as something that’s always likely to happen to them under any circumstances?
[QUOTE=LadyJedi]
Suddenly, those rules are now “Slut Shaming”. Regulations forced on women by a misogynistic society wanting to shame them.
[/quote]
Sounds about right. Compare your “always watch your drink like a hawk” rule, which you take for granted as normal and reasonable, with my hypothetical “never take your hand off your wallet” rule, which the vast majority of people would resent as burdensome and unfair. Why is it acceptable to treat drugging somebody’s drink as much more normal, probable and unexceptional than picking somebody’s pocket?
[QUOTE=LadyJedi]
Speaking only for my nieces (not their friends since I don’t know what their families say) the family has tried explaining that the rules are there for protection. To keep them as safe as possible and still let them have fun. We want them to see the dangers out there with open eyes and act accordingly.
[/quote]
They might be more amenable to your advice if you tried making it clear to them that you understand that those particular “dangers” are brutal, sexist and unjust.
To talk about the high prevalence of drugging and rape as just a natural part of the “dangers” of life, like lightning strikes in a thunderstorm or auto accidents on crowded highways, is adding insult to injury. The real problem isn’t that women aren’t watching their drinks carefully enough at parties; the real problem is that so many men consider it acceptable, or at most only slightly bad, to drug women’s drinks at parties in order to assault them sexually.
[QUOTE=LadyJedi]
But sometimes I get scared, sometimes it seems like they accept no responsibility for their own safety?
[/quote]
It is not their responsibility not to get drugged or raped. It is other people’s responsibility not to commit the crimes of drugging or raping them.
I am not saying that women shouldn’t take such extreme precautions to avoid being the victims of such crimes, even though it’s burdensome and unfair. I’m saying that we need to be very clear that treating such precautions as the “responsibility” of women is burdensome and unfair.
[QUOTE=LadyJedi]
And having them tell us we are slut shaming them is not a big help in resolving the issue.
[/quote]
Like I said, try not slut-shaming them and see if that helps. That is, start the discussion by acknowledging that the real responsibility is on potential rapists to not rape people, rather than on potential rape victims to not get raped. Recognize that it’s unfair to be pressuring these young women about their behavior when they’re totally innocent of wrongdoing, rather than pressuring rapists to stop committing and attempting criminal acts.
Once you get that fundamental acknowledgement out there in the open, you may have a better shot at reconciling them, for their own protection, to the unjust burden of pre-emptively defending themselves against other people’s criminal behavior.
Neither is it* their* responsibility to leave their bag with their purse and phone unattended.
Women should not have to tolerate theft!!
Kimstu I’m not actually clear what you are saying.
Surely it is common sense for anyone, of any gender, to consider the risks of what they are doing and take the sensible and necessary precautions.
If I knowingly went into a bar frequented be football fans, on match day, wearing a rival’s shirt and was hassled (or even assualted) because of that, I would say that I had opportunity to lessen the risk and didn’t take it. The arseholes that hassled me are of course fully responsible for their actions and I did not “deserve” it but surely I would have been wise to consider my options.
If someone had told me not to wear that shirt or avoid the bar at that time would that have been bad advice?
If someone tells me to be hyper-aware of pickpockets in Barcelona and to modify my behaviour accordingly is that bad advice?
I don’t see either of those scenarios as being intrinsically any different to cases of sexual abuse or assault but I suspect you’d have no problem telling me that taking precautions would be sensible.
In a nutshell, are you saying that we shouldn’t teach our children how to behave and how to avoid risk? or are you merely wishing that it wasn’t necessary in the first place?
Kimstu, did you see this line? Maybe a bit more spacing or putting it further up would have helped bring it to the fore, but I think it’s very important.
We, as a society, decide where the line of “personal responsibility” is.
Look at your house. It is probably full of thousands of dollars of easily pawned goods. You regularly leave it unattended for eight+ hours at a time. And what is between your stuff and a thief? Plates of glass. Maybe a deadbolt.
It’s trivially easy to break into houses, and most people make little more than a symbolic effort to protect them. We have decided that we want to use our justice system and social norms to protect our houses, rather than building high walls or hiring guards, as is common in other areas. We have decided as a society that we expect to be able to go to work and go about ordinary life without our house getting burgled, and we police our neighborhoods to largely allow that.
Likewise, we can decide how often we accept people getting raped. The issue here is that some people would like to set the bar at a place that severely restricts women’s ability to live, work and socialize in common, ordinary ways.
And a lot of that is suspiciously like the various ways women’s lives have been constrained and limited through history, when our sexual and economic empowerment were even more explicitly controlled under the threat of violence.
We’ve heard the “we’re just restricting you for your own good” line before. It was used to keep us away from working. It was used to force us into marriages and prevent us from leaving marriages. It was used to prevent us from voting. It was used to convince us not to travel. And shockingly, once we as a society decided it was ok for women to do these things, the world didn’t actually fall apart.
If a frat house can keep its iPads from being stolen at a party, it can keep rape from happening at that same party.
Great post, even sven.
Part of the trouble appears to be that information that some actions are riskier than others is “slut shaming”.
No one is restricting you. It is perfectly legal to go out with men you don’t know, get sloppy drunk in public, whatever you like. If you want to argue that you should be able to do these things without being raped, sure, you should.
You should also be able to leave your IPad on the coffee table during a party with strangers without it being stolen, or leave your car unlocked, or leave your doors and windows open in a high-crime neighborhood, or attend a BLM rally wearing a T-shirt that says “Michael Brown Deserved What He Got”. And anyone who mentions that these, although legal, are incurring avoidable risks, is slut shaming.
Do you see any difference between “Don’t get passed-out drunk in public with men you don’t trust” and “stay in the basement and wear a burqa”/
Regards,
Shodan
“Don’t get passed-out drunk in public…”, as a general rule for everyone, isn’t (in my mind) slut shaming.
Telling a rape victim “you shouldn’t have gotten passed out drunk in public…” is slut shaming.
Advocating that “don’t get passed out drunk…” and similar advice as the best ways to lessen the frequency of rape is slut-shaming (and poor strategy). The focus on how to reduce rape in society should be 100% about the behavior of rapists, and 0% on the behavior of potential victims.
“We as a society” have decided that if I did not take measures to prevent burglary, the insurance will not pay out.
“We as a society” have decided that police have more important things to do than guard my neighbourhood. Only once in a while do they actually catch a burglar and then they are let loose pretty soon.
“I as a person” do indeed take a risk every day, that I will come back to a burgled house.
Main thing preventing burglary is, as you say, morals.
There are only so many thieves and many many houses not really worth their bother.
But I can improve my chances of not being burgled by taking preventative measures.
Bollocks.
“We as a society” take rape many, many, more times serious than a burglary.
Our morals are such that there are very few rapists.
But they are still out there, allways will be.
You can decrease your chances of being a victim by taking preventative measures.
In other words, in some circumstances, you should stay on your toes.
Just like men have to.
Sluts are shamed because being a slut is not supportive of patriarchy.
Also, don’t get mildly drunk. Also, it doesn’t matter if you trust them or not – if they assault you, you shouldn’t have trusted them. And, you know, they might assault you. Except don’t say you don’t trust men – how do you expect them to behave if you treat them like criminals?
Also, even if you don’t get drunk, are you leading him on? Were you at his house? Wait, did you let him into your house? Why on earth did you do that? Did you fight him off? Could you have closed your legs? Did you tell him to stop? How many times?
Anyway, this is totally different than shaming women or telling them they have to be completely desexualized. Don’t be unconscious and naked in a back alley and nobody will ever tell you you’re a whore and it’s your fault!
So you can only tell someone, or rather, you can only tell women, not to do stupid shit before they do it.
I guess that depends on whether you would rather be politically correct, or reduce the incidence of rape and sexual assault.
Because pretending that there is nothing that potential victims can do to reduce their risk of being assaulted is dumb.
Regards,
Shodan
I think rapists will rape no matter what women will do. Rapists will find victims and rape them. Giving good advice to a woman might (if she’s a mental child and doesn’t already know this due to common sense) slightly reduce her risk of stranger rape (while doing nothing for the far-more-common friend/coworker/relative/date-rape), but it does nothing to lessen rape in society. So no, I think there’s nothing victims can do to lessen the desire of rapists to rape. If we want to reduce rape in society, we should find out who these rapists are, why they rape, and approach from that angle.
Sluts are shamed because other people are jealous.
What you think is wrong. Women can, in fact, take reasonable steps to reduce the risk of being raped.
Avoiding high-risk behavior is actually a real phenomenon. You could look it up.
Regards,
Shodan
That has nothing to do with my point and doesn’t dispute it at all. Avoiding risk might lower an individual’s chances of being raped, but does nothing about the overall problem of rapists in society who will find victims to rape no matter what. It’s slut shaming and victim blaming if you believe that the answer to rape in society is for women to change their behavior.
I’m talking about rape in society. You seem to be just talking about helping individual women lower their risk (if they’re mentally impaired enough that they don’t already know all of this). Helping individuals lower their risk does nothing to lessen rape in society, since there are men out there who will find victims to rape even if fewer women engage in risky behavior.