The problem is that the behaviors labeled as reasonable steps to avoid future problems are established by men, and they are only “reasonable” if you are not being asked to follow them yourself. You’re advised not to leave a party and walk across a campus or apartment complex alone, ever, anywhere, because the possibility of rape is too high. You also can’t let just anyone escort you, because, again, some guy at the party could be a rapist, too, and letting a rando walk you home is unwise. If a college campus was so dangerous that men were afraid to walk home alone after dark, no one would go there. It would be a total breakdown of law and order.
On this board, every time this comes up, there’s a poster who states that women who don’t change into street clothes before they leave the gym are “taking a risk” that they compound if they look at their phone or listen to headphones. Can you imagine if a city was so crime-ridden that it wasn’t safe for a man to walk from the gym to his car without changing clothes? What sort of post-apocalyptic hellscape would that be?
I would love to see a survey asking “do you avoid walking around your neighborhood after dark because of concerns about safety”, divided by gender. And the saddest part is, it’s probably not a reasonable level of fear. Most places are safe. Statistically speaking, most rapists are people the victim knows. But growing up with a million men giving you “common sense” advice–which is reinforced by other women who have heard the same thing, makes you afraid and limits your life.
I’m that poster. (btw, I don’t bring this up every time). Anyway, I don’t see how bringing up the reality we live in is wrong. I’m not saying the situation is right, but it’s the world we live in. If a guy walks through a dark parking lot with an appearance like he has a lot of money, he’s increasing the odds he’ll get robbed. That’s a fact. A bum can walk through a dark parking lot with little risk of getting robbed, but a guy in a fancy suit will have more risk. If he leaves his car unlocked with lots of fancy electronics in it, he’ll get robbed. The guy in a beater 70’s car filled with fast-food wrappers can leave his car anywhere and nothing will ever happen to it. Anyone who says that every person has the same risk of harm regardless of circumstances is completely wrong.
If your daughter went to strange college parties and took drinks from strangers, would you tell her that is a risky behavior? The guy who gives her a spiked drink is a criminal, but aso we have PSAs about not taking drinks from strangers. I would think you can talk about the risks and also talk about ways to change the culture so it’s not a risk.
Here is the thing, the advice handed out is either patronizing common sense or its life limiting - or both. And we are a little sick of having our lives limited because some men are assholes who can’t limit their lives to not play grab ass on the subway or take no for an answer or risk not getting laid tonight, so they spike someone’s drink.
Do you lock your doors every time you leave your house. Good. Deadbolt them? Oh, good. At least two deadbolts, right? Yeah, patronizing to tell you this, but we will keep mentioning it every time the crime rate comes up. Robbed anyway? Did you have bars on your windows? Do you live on the first floor? Yeah, I know, second floor isn’t convenient and bars are expensive, but that’s the price you pay for having stuff. And you should get a big dob. Oh, was it your car? Well, you do have indoor securing parking with cameras, right? In fact, why do you own a car at all, you are just asking for someone to rob it. Oh, you were mugged - you were carrying CASH?! Why were you carrying cash - you shouldn’t do that. You need to be hypervigilant at all times.
And evidence was cited in that thread that people get raped wearing all sorts of clothes; and no evidence was cited that wearing gym clothes outside the gym increases the incidence of rape.
– People who carry money do so because they intend to spend it. Seems to me that it’s possible to make a better claim that anybody who goes out carrying money intends to give it to somebody else than to make a claim that somebody who goes out along with their body intends to hand their body over to somebody else: because it’s perfectly possible to go out on the street while not carrying any money. It is, however, impossible to go anywhere (including one’s own bedroom) or do anything (including breathing) without one’s body.
As I keep pointing out in these comparisons, though, the skew is in comparing extraordinarily reckless behavior on the part of men with ordinary behavior on the part of women.
Leaving your car unlocked and full of fancy electronics is unusually careless behavior that can be very easily avoided by the simple effortless action of locking your car. Simply being a woman walking from your gym to your car or bus stop in gym clothes is not unusually careless behavior, nor are the workarounds anywhere near as effortless.
Men in general: Please stop trying to justify your advice to women to avoid or fear ordinary reasonable behavior by drawing comparisons with men engaging in exceptionally stupid and/or reckless behavior.
The message you are sending with such comparisons is that merely existing as a woman trying to lead a normal life is as risky and unwise as leaving a car full of fancy electronics unlocked, and therefore counts as foolish and irresponsible behavior on a woman’s part.
Why do we view robberies differently? With the robberies, there are all kinds of signs and PSAs about being vigilant. Parking lots have signs to hide valuables. Every holiday season there are PSAs about locking packages in the trunk. These things are generally seen as helpful and useful to making people safer and less likely to be robbed. If someone leaves their car unlocked, with the keys in it, and packages visible, we have no problem telling they’re likely to get their car and packages stolen. But if someone brings up that it’s risky to take drinks from strangers or get drunk at parties, it’s labeled as patronizing. Why can we talk about ways to minimize risks of being robbed but not ways to minimize risks of sexual assault?
As I mentioned in the post just above, the problem is in the misleading comparisons between easily avoidable especially careless behavior and ordinary reasonable behavior.
Leaving expensive-looking packages visible in an unlocked car with the keys in it is risky behavior that can be avoided with almost no effort. Leading an ordinary existence as a woman, on the other hand, is much more difficult to negotiate if you’re supposed to be constantly avoiding perfectly reasonable and normal actions like walking out of your gym in gym clothes or accepting a drink at a friend’s party.
Do you think taking drinks from strangers and getting drunk at parties carries no additional risk? I think we should be able to discuss that those are risky behaviors and that we should change society so that those things aren’t risky.
I see signs on my kids college campus about being party safe, with messages about pouring your own drinks, knowing your limit, going with friends, etc. From the way the discussion goes on here, I don’t know why the discussions are so contentious. Do the people mad at me think those signs on campuses are unnecessary and patronizing?
Again, though, you’ve shifted the goalposts away from the previous examples of “walking out of your gym in gym clothes” and “walking home across campus by yourself” to more extreme examples such as getting drunk.
The contention is not that women shouldn’t try to stay safe. The contention is that in such discussions the well is always being poisoned by people trying to draw analogies between ordinary reasonable behavior on the part of women, and outright irresponsible behavior such as leaving an unlocked car full of fancy packages with the keys in the ignition.
What kind of parties are we talking about? Getting drunk with my 50 year old girlfriends on a few bottles of wine party or my 20 year old getting drunk at a frat party. How about a few drinks at a vendor cocktail party at a work conference. The first shouldn’t be risky at all. The second they already knows not to do and is told not to do as frequently as you see “don’t leave valuables in your car” signs - through signs throughout the dorms, through orientation lectures an RA meetings. The third is the grown up version of a frat party, but a grown adult woman should be able to socialize and have a few drinks with coworkers without having to worry about rape.
But even if they ignore all that advice and get drunk at a frat party, they should still have the expectation they will not be raped. Because raping someone is wrong, because the community standard should be “hey, we watch out for each other while drinking”
Back to the original goalposts, do you think these situations carry the same risks:
Walking out of the gym at night with your face buried in a bright phone screen
Walking out of the gym with your head high looking around
Walking out of the gym with minimal clothing
Walking out of the gym wearing street clothes
I think my words are being twisted around to imply that I don’t think women should be able to do whatever they want. They absolutely should. The same with everyone. But I see different behaviors as having different risks. Just based on size and strength alone, women seem like they’d be generally more at risk to be attacked since they would be easier to overpower. That’s a tragic situation, but it’s the world we live in. Unfortunately, that would imply that women should be more vigilant than men. Until we get to the point where criminals don’t exist or they select victims at random, we live in a world where criminals will attack people they think they can overpower. A robber looking to snag a gym bag is likely going to pick a distracted person who is unlikely to be able to fight back. A guy looking at a phone is less at a risk than a woman looking at a phone by the basic fact that the guy will likely be a stronger opponent than the woman is. It doesn’t mean the woman deserves to be robbed.
That’s perfectly reasonable. The problem with your response crops up when you try to draw analogies between reasonable, ordinary behavior on the part of women—which includes behavior like looking at your phone or wearing gym clothes when you step out of a gym—with exceptionally reckless and risky behavior like leaving an unlocked car full of fancy packages with the keys in the ignition.
By which reasoning, we should also make a point of singling out elderly and short men to constantly warn them that they need to be extra vigilant because of their comparative weakness as an opponent.
I have no problem with women or anybody else trying to minimize their risks. But I object to attempts, even well-meaning ones, to pathologize women’s (and only women’s) everyday ordinary behavior by treating it as exceptionally and irresponsibly risky.
filmore, for someone who says we need to talk about both changing victim behavior and changing perpetrator behavior, you sure do talk a lot about what victims need to do.
Have you considered taking all the energy you’re spending telling women what to do, and instead focusing that on changing some male behaviors? Trust me, women won’t suddenly start engaging in lots of risky behavior because some man stopped telling them not to.
I don’t like these comparisons to robbery, a women in a vulnerable situation is not the same as a package in an unlocked car. It would be more apt to compare it to mugging, which is also a violent assault.
While there are things you could do to reduce your risk of being mugged, it’s largely considered a crime of opportunity and it’s victims are generally understood to be just unlucky, not unwise or somehow “asking for it”.
You can be old and frail and drunk as lord, wandering through the sketchiest neighborhood in town with your bling and bankroll on full display and you’ll be fine unless you encounter a mugger. Because even though you have made yourself incredibly vulnerable, normal people aren’t tempted to physically assault vulnerable people in the way that they might be tempted to take cash from a dropped wallet they found on the street.
And rape, even the rape of a vulnerable person that can’t fight back, is a violent physical assault, not some sort of impulse driven thievery. It doesn’t much matter whether the guy jumped you on the street or took you back to his apartment after a date.
If you needed a sex crime analogy to car prowling, it would be taking upskirt photos or peeping through a window to see a woman undress. No violence but still a criminal violation of your space and privacy, as well as an example of sick, deviant behavior.
Cite, please, that people walking out of the gym wearing gym clothes are more likely to be raped than people walking out of the gym wearing “street clothes”.
(I’m not even sure what “street clothes” means. I see people, male and female and probably other, on the street all the time wearing clothes that don’t cover any more than gym clothes do.)
– I suspect that walking anywhere with your face buried in your phone significantly increases the risk of walking into a light pole, walking into another person, falling over something, and/or being hit by a car. Why pick on women specifically and rape specifically, instead of just advising humans in general to look where they’re going?