So, which part of my life do I give up to avoid being raped?

The BBQ Pit
1

egarding a few threads about rape and responsibility…

I don’t want to get raped, and if I do get raped, I do not want to be blamed. What am I allowed to do or not to do?

I make more money if I work the night shift, but that requires me walking home rather late. Should I turn it down? Should I spent half my salary on a car, or will simply walking across the parking lot be too risky?

If I am drunk, should I drive home even if I am intoxicated rather than walk or accept a ride from a male? I guess I should be getting drunk except in tightly controlled situations, which is a shame because I enjoy social drinking. Is drinking in mixed groups allowed? What about at my own home? Can I go to parties if I don’t drink, or is the threat of drunken men too great?

I may decide to live alone at some point. Is that okay? I’ve heard people say I should take precautions to make it look like a man lives there (like have a manly curtains, have a male voice on the answering machine, etc.) and try to get on the second story. What if the rent there is more?

I like to travel, and finding travel partners is tough. Should I give up my life’s dream to see the world, or should I wait until I can afford package tours- which I consider inferior.

I have many male friends. When am I allowed to hang out with them? Should I avoid being alone with them at all, or can I assume he’ll know I don’t want to have sex with him when I visit at then in the morning
? Is it okay if I bring a female friend? Maybe I can just keep a knife in my hands whenever I hang out with a guy… Can I treat my gay friends differently?

What clothes am I allowed to wear? Is there a number of inches above my knee the skirt is allowed to be, or should I avoid skirts all together (but what about job interviews?). What about a situation where not a lot of skin is showing, but the outfit is provacative (like knee-high boots and a skirt)? Does my acceptable dress change by time of day or should I stay on the safe side always?

What about a job that requires me to be alone with males? Should I refuse to work those shifts? Should I ask before a job if I might end up alone with a man? My dream is to be a foreign corrospondant, so I think I may have to give that one up, too. Perhaps there is a nice job as a pre-school teacher or waitress waiting for me somewhere…

I’m still not sure how I am supposed to avoid being alone with a male that might think I want to have sex with him when I don’t and yet always be accompanied by a male for protection.

But then, I still don’t get why people think it’s okay for ME to be the one that has to sacrifice huge parts of my life, like what jobs I take, where I go, who my friends are, and what sorts of relationships I get in because some group has decided that I’m an okay target for violence. I want to know what parts of my life you want me to give up, because I’m pretty attached to all of them. It seems to me like the only way to be “safe” is to stay at home and get married real quick, which limits my economic and sexual mobility, and which I think is bullshit. Fuck people that are willing to limit women’s lives with a threat of violence. You guys are no better than people blowing up cars to keep people from voting. You guys are perpetuating terror in your own country. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

2

Does a rapist have full legal responsibility for raping you? Yes.
Do people still need to be careful about their own personal safety and not put themselves in dangerous situations? Yes.

You shouldn’t have to change your life. But then again, I shouldn’t have to worry about walking through the roughest part of town at three AM.

Demz da breaks.

3

Sorry, but this attitude that women NEED to protect themselves has built into it the notion that women aren’t doing this. No woman I know does NOT protect herself. Are people that unaware of this, or do they just think women are stupid and careless?

I carry an M-16 rifle everywhere I go, plus thirty rounds of ammo. And yet I’m still told to have a buddy with me because there have been several gang rapes on this post. The implication is simple: if some guys were to try and rape me, why wouldn’t I shoot them? Would I not be allowed to do so? If a bunch of guys attacked a similarly-armed man, and he managed to shoot several of them, would the response be the same?

4

I’ll see your ‘huh’ and raise you a ‘WTF?’
The reason women, and men, need to protect themselves is because it’s, well, necessary. If you’re already protecting yourself, then obviously you’re protected and don’t need to worry about protecting yourself by more extreme measures.

Women you know =/= valid sample size.
Moreoever, if they are protecting themselves, then they’re protecting themselves. So…

5

You’re ignoring my point. Women DO protect themselves, yet the constant refrain is somehow, well, “Be it on THEIR heads, they didn’t do enough to protect themselves.” Don’t be disingenuous. What else do women need to do?

Demanding that women take these precautions indicates that society has given up on preventing rape—because that would mean raising men differently----and has basically thrown it on womens’ shoulders.

Seriously, why do I need a buddy? I’m trusted in battle, yet what’s that buddy there for? I’ve proven myself here, yet it’s almost as if the powers that be want a witness, so they don’t have to deal with a he said/she said thing.

Women do protect themselves, yet rapes keep happening. And why did I use passive voice there? Why not just say it plainly? Men keep raping women. Women keep getting told to protect themselves. How far do they have to go? To the point of injury?

6 
Assuming you're referring to Finnagain then, no, it doesn't.  The fact that women ought/need to protect themselves, and that they are also already doing so are completely compatible.  At the risk of speaking for Finnagain, I believe his point is precisely that most women consider factors of safety in their day-to-day decisions.  It's a fact of life for everyone, not just women.  

Of course you'd shoot them.  The only question is where to aim.  I think the response, and society's evaluation of it, would be the same regardless of gender.
7

Sorry guys, neither of the two above posts came up on preview.

8

Actually, I wanted to ask a more general question. The attitude seems to be thus:

Women need to protect themselves.

Well, women already do that.

But rapes keep happening!

Women obviously aren’t protecting themselves well enough.

The degree of care women are supposed to take is not just another fact of life. It affects how they dress, live, and work to a degree far greater than it does for men. Women get blamed for what happens to them; men don’t.

And do women get treated equally?  Really, they do?

We had a female get sexually assaulted at three AM one morning. Her senior NCO’s response?

“IF that bitch had locked her damned door, I wouldn’t have had to freeze my ass off.”

That’s where the attitude comes from. The would-be assailant was totally invisible in the equation. No, the assault would not have happened but her behavior. It was almost like she lured him in or something, like he hadn’t gone through the camp, trying doors and locks. (And the locks and doors were rediculously easy to open.) Nope, it was completely her fault. The guy who broke in… he was treated like the weather.

Men who commit sexual assault aren’t like rain or thunder a woman can simply carry an umbrella against. They’re sentient beings; they make choices. Those choices should be held against them, not against women.

I carry an umbrella against the weather when it looks like I need it, but the clouds are mindless. Men are not. Why do they get let off the hook as if they were?

9

There were 17 cases reported of forcible rape in Santa Cruz county in 2003, a figure half as big as ten years earlier, showing a trend of steady decline. Out of these, there’s a steady rate of a couple of spousal rapes every year reported. There are about 83.000 females in the ages 18-65.
I know that statistics dont tell everything, and my quick search didn’t turn up incidents where the woman was raped by a male she knew, who wasn’t her spouse, and further, I’m sure that a lot of rapes don’t get reported. Then, one has to weigh in the fact that a woman, of course, is more exposed in some situations than others.

Still…
The risk of getting raped is minuscule. It’s a fear created by the media, and the media tend not to make a big story that the rate of rapes is down to half in ten years. In fact, considering how the media has played assault rape during the last decade, I’d bet that more women in fact are willing to report date rapes now.

You don’t have to give up any part of your life. Pepper spray and a wise choice in parking is advisible though, if nothing else, to make you feel safer.

Sources:
Office of the Attorney General in California.
US census bureau

10

I’m pretty sure we all agree that men that commit rape should be held responsible for it.

The NCO’s statement is idiotic and mysogynistic for multiple reasons; pointing out that everyone has to take some responsibility for their personal safety is neither idiotic nor mysogynistic.

IMHO, this issue seems to be too sensitive to have reasonable discussions about. Anyone who says that women are at all responsible for their personal safety is equated with someone who thinks that men are not responsible for rape.

11

margin, I don’t know anyone whom I’d consider a thinking person who absolves a rapist of responsibility for their crime.

Having said that, I’ve met a number of people who remind me of your NCO. I’d had an LCPO (E-7) in the Navy tell me, after the Tailhook scandal, that he felt that the men in that situation were being unfairly punished. :eek: :mad:

As other posters have said, I don’t think that it’s unreasonable to suggest that actions on the victim’s part may contribute to the opportunity for a crime. As an example: If I leave my front door unlocked, and things get stolen from my apartment, I contributed to making the situation possible. This doesn’t mean that I deserved, or was a partner in, the theft, just that I’d forgotten a basic precaution. And there will always be some asshole eager to point that out, as if thieves, or rapists, or murderers are just like the weather.

In regards to the OP, I’d like to think that anyone has the right to wear whatever they like, and behave as they wish, without fear of unwanted consequences. I know it’s not true, but that’s what I’d like. I think the question is what level of freedom are you willing to curtail for safety? As I stated above, in the eyes of most people, nothing you do is going to make you responsible for being raped; but in the eyes of some assholes, you’ll always be guilty of ‘asking for it’ - even if you join a cloistered convent. For the most part, using the same precautions to keep yourself from being any other kind of victim seem to work for preventing rapes: be aware of your surroundings; when you go out drinking, have a plan to get home, be it a designated driver, or cab, or just knowing you can doss at a friend’s place; be aware of the image your clothes present, and choose one appropriate for the occaision; if working late at night choose well-lighted routes to get to and from home. I’m male, and those precautions are all things I consider when I leave my cave.

IANA Crime statistician, but the impression I have is that there are two kinds of rape: The planned and the casual. And all you can do is minimize the risks for casual rape, just as for any other kind of spontaneous crime. The planned ones are the scary ones, IMNSHO, and those, you can’t prevent with simple precautions. :frowning:

I don’t say that this is ideal, or just, or even right. Just a reflection of reality.

12

[Oracle] Bingo [/Oracle]

No, I’m disagreeing and saying that you’re phrasing it badly. But I assure you that I am paying attention. Women need to protect themselves, just like men need to protect themselves. Both of these are true even if some people think that women don’t protect themselves, or whatever.

Good for them! But, as I’m sure you know, not all women do. Hell, it’s rare to find that all members of any group have a generalization which will stick to them.

Sometimes, people can make bad choices. If I visit my home town and take a walk through Harlem at four a.m., I should expect something might happen. Would I be at fault for being attacked? No. Would my attacker be able to get out of jail free? No.
Would it be my fault for not thinking ahead and protecting myself? Yes.

Don’t suggest I’m being disingenous unless you particularly want me to start slinging choice adjectives back at you. And I have no idea what women need to do or how many do it. I’d assume that some common sense things apply, like not walking alone at night through bad parts of town, stuff like that. I’m no expert on personal safety so I can’t tell you.

Okay, this is batshit crazy.
First off all, how is it giving up on preventing rape? You are aware that law is, by and large, punitive and not prohibitive? You can’t have cops on every corner watching for rapists. The best defense against a rapist, a mugger, etc… is to not put yourself in danger in the first place. The second best defense is to know what to do if you are in such a situation.
And, raising men differently? How on earth do modern american child rearing practices contribute to the pathology inherent in rape? Are you honestly suggesting that there is a systemic flaw in how males are raised that makes us rapists?

I think you have a desire to see the worst possible side/motives of this.
Me, if I was an army officer and I had female troops getting gang raped, you better damn well believe I’d order them to walk in pairs. Four eyes are far better at keeping alert than two.

Does it suck that there are some wolves out there? Yes, it does. Does that mean you shouldn’t prepare for the very real fact that someone might try to do you harm? Nope.

Well, I’m not police officer, but it strikes me that if someone was properly protecting themself, they couldn’t be raped, assaulted, robbed, etc… I don’t see it as being tremendously different from any other crime.

Which would , of course, ignore the fact that women also rape men (yes, it’s rare but it does happen), that some women probably rape other women, and that men rape other men. What does this mean though?

Robberies keep happening too, and those damn bastards want me to put a lock on my door! The nerve!

My lay-person advice would be that women need to be situationaly aware at all times, probably study a close combat martial art like Aikido, and not take any unnecessary risks.
Which, by the way, is the same advice I’d give to a man who was worried about his security.

13

Here’s what bothers me and I suspect what inspired the OP. I take all reasonable precautions, including living in a secure building and locking my balcony doors on warm summer nights when I’d just as soon leave them open. The thing is, no matter what I do, the possibility that I’ll be raped continues to exist. The difference between this and the possiblity that I’ll be mugged or murdered is I’m aware that someone will suggest is my own fault I was raped and might even suggest I encouraged it because of the way I act in some situations.

I’ve had jobs where I’ve had to work late at night or early in the morning. The hours came with the job and if I had refused the hours, I might have lost the job. We women are told that the difference between our pay and that of men is we’re not willing to do the same thing. However, a woman walking to her car at midnight after a swing shift has one hazard she has to protect against that a man doesn’t – that of rape. If she is raped, some idiot is bound to say “She shouldn’t have been walking to her car alone at that hour.”

If a man is determined to rape me, there’s not a blamed thing I can do about it. That’s reality. Reality is also that someone will try to blame me for the actions of the man who committed the crime. Reality stinks.

CJ

14

Siege: I don’t mean to trivialize your situation at all… but let’s say that, not you, but some other woman is walking to her car late at night and gets raped.

Does she deserve it? No.
Was she ‘asking for it?’ No.
Should the rapist get off without hard jail time? No.
Was her being out alone at night without anybody near her a factor that allowed her to be raped? Yes.

Yes, sometimes someone can get into your locked apartment and attack you. Then again, someone can get into your locked apartment and rob you too. While blaming the victim is wrong, wrong, wrong, there is also truth to the fact that certain patterns of behavior make one’s victimhood more or less likely.

Now, if you had a woman who was just raped obviously the correct course of action would be to help her physically and mentally as soon and as much as possible. So you wouldn’t bring up protection in future instances. But, yes, if she wasn’t alone at her car late at night she probably would’ve been fine.

Is this fair? No.
Is this good? No.
Is this a condition which I’m proud of? No.

But the same thing holds true if I’m mugged because I’m walking in the wrong part of town late at night. Yes, if I don’t walk through harlem at four am I’m probably coming home safe. And yes, if a woman isn’t alone and in an vulnerable position, chances are she’s not getting raped.

But in either case, it is not improper to realize that the victim may not have done everything possible to prevent it.

Would it suck if women had to refuse night shift work because of the safety risk? You betcha!
But does that mean that night shift work doesn’t involve any risks for women? No way.

15

Spot on. Drawing attention to possible ways of avoiding the crime should be indulged in equally fo every single crime. Doing so disproportionately for rape sounds downright menacing to mine ears.

16

I wouldn’t say that it begins and ends with child raising. But there are a lot of double standards in society.

Girls are taught that passivity is feminine. Boys are taught that aggression is masculine.

Girls are told that no means no. Boys are not necessarily told the same thing, and are often given the impression that no means “keep trying”.

Girls are told to save sex for marriage, or at least for the right guy. Boys are told that if they’re still virgins at the age of eighteen, they have failed.

Girls are given strict curfews and other restrictions. Boys are encouraged to sow their wild oats.

And why are girls bound by these restrictions? Because it’s generally accepted that boys can’t be trusted. Why not hold them to a higher standard, so that they can be trusted? If you’re going to raise your daughter to be a lady, you should also raise your son to be a gentleman.

17

There are double standards, but the claim that Margin made was that

To me, that directly says that the child raising practices turn men into rapists, or at least don’t prevent them. And the the way to prevent rape is to somehow train men properly. Double standards aside, this is pure batshit crazy.

Agreed, although in that case I think children should be taught that masculine and feminine are to a degree merely constructs, and that all of us have ‘masculine’ as well as ‘feminine’ traits, and that we should be who we are not some label. But that’s just me, and in any case this doesn’t contribute to rape.

Ehhhhhhhh… I don’t see organized instruction here I think guys are just horny “Will you fuck me now? Oh. How about now? No? Okay. Now?”
Moreoever, your use of the phrase ‘no means no’ suggests that boys aren’t necessarily taught that they can’t force themselves on women…
Surely you used the wrong phrase or inadvertantly used a loaded one?

Indeed, but this, I think, has more to do with popular culture than how a child is raised. But it still doesn’t cause rape.

Unfair and silly, but i also doesn’t cause rape.

Good idea all in all. But I still don’t think that this means parents are raising their little boys, somehow, to be rapists.

Agreed. But not raising a son to be a gentleman doesn’t make him a rapist, which is Margin claim that I had a problem with.

18

even sven, did this thread come completely out of the blue, as just a random thought, or was it perhaps inspired by a recent thread in which this horse has been flogged way far fucking beyond its own demise?

19

I’ve just checked some more statistics, from the DOJ. Rates of rape and sexual assault are down, and in steady decline. And as suspected, in 70% of the cases, the victim knew the perp. Sven quit college not too long ago, so I wanted to highlight something from a report regarding females in college:

(my bolding)

I’m not trying to trivialize rape, but the simple facts are that the risks of getting raped while going to your car from a late shift is small enough to be virtually neglected.
I can link to the cites if anyone wants to, but they are mostly in huge pdf-files. The place to find them, though is here.

20

This is what I came in here to say. No mattter how much you protect yourself, you still have a huge chance of being raped by someone you know.

How are we supposed to take precautions against that? Like the little 16-year old girl in the other thread who was raped by her grandfather. No doubt her family encourage her to spend time with him, and to get to know him, since he hadn’t been around for years and years. :rolleyes: (to the family & the grandfather)