So, if total assault rates are the same, what precautions do you take to avoid non-sexual assault? What did you warn your sons not to do?
It’s also very important for a boy. Drunk boys, especially horny young men who get drunk, are at risk of committing sexual assault. They are at risk of failing to notice that a girl (or a boy, if they swing that way) hasn’t given consent, and committing rape. They are risk of having the victim tell the school about the rape the next day, too.
They are also at risk of having consensual but unprotected sex, and getting a girl pregnant. In this day and age, a pregnant girl can get an abortion if she doesn’t want to be a mom right now. The father doesn’t have that option. He’s on the hook for 18+ years of child support. And genetic testing can prove it, and the other states will enforce the support order. (Unlike in the past, when my husband’s father fled the state to avoid paying child support for The children he sired in wedlock.)
I told both my kids to be cautious when they went off to college. I emphasized it more to my son, though, because I believed his risk was greater.
The part in bold is false. As to where, I would welcome data which said where the risk factors are the greatest. If overall the risk is 9x higher for women than men, some places will be higher, some places will be lower. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some places where the risk is higher for men than women.
They’re still in school. If she was working late, I wouldn’t tell her anything, but I would hope she would be more cautious when walking to the parking lot as any person should be. If she traveled alone, I wouldn’t have any problem with that. If she was jogging alone, it would probably depend on the area as to how concerned I might be. If she wanted to drive alone, I wouldn’t have any problem with it.
I don’t have sons. Before this discussion, I probably wouldn’t have really mentioned a lot about their risk of SA, but I’ve seen data that men’s risk on college campuses is actually higher than other places. They are still like 4 or 5 times less likely to be victims of SA than college women, but it’s higher risk than not being in college. With this knowledge, if I had them, I would probably tell them that their risk is higher and to be cautious.
I do think it’s important to make it clear to boys that you as a parent aren’t messing around with things like no-means-no. A big part of the problem is that boys get away with a lot with the attitude of “boys will be boys”. I would also talk about that with them.
By understanding, I mean understanding why people can get so inflamed in these discussions. For example:
How can I keep my car safe? … Park it in well-lit area
How can I be safe when visiting country X? … Stay in this part, not that part
How can women be safe from SA? You’re an misogynistic ahole!
And as to why I’m focusing on SA is because the emotional consequences are so great. We have some acquaintances that lost their daughter to suicide after she was date raped in college. She switched schools but her depression continued to get worse. These discussions get so heated with people calling each other out, but there are real women who deal with this all the time. If what I’m saying is so bad, instead of just calling me an misogynistic ahole, tell me what to say.
This isn’t theoretical for me. My daughters are in college right now. Thorny, if what I’m saying is so bad, what should I say?
I’m very sorry for your friend, but the emotional consequences of any assault can be problematic. Heck, just being close to assault can bring on PTSD. There are real men who are crippled because they were assaulted, too.
A lot of these “what to do” things are fake. You can’t keep your car safe by parking it in a well-lit area. There’s a rash of car break-ins in my area involving cars in well-lit, well-trafficked areas. The thieves are really fast. Someone parks their car “for a moment” and runs indoors to do an errand. The thieves smash the window and grab any handy valuables are are gone in less than a minute.
Women can’t completely avoid the risk of sexual assault. And the impact of a lot of the “good advice” they get is to constrict their lives in ways that men are never asked to contemplate. Like, in all seriousness, what do YOU do to protect YOURSELF from assault? How often do you even think about it?
I told my daughter to make sure to eat regularly, and get enough sleep. Honestly, she had watched “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, she knew to watch her drink. My daughter went to college with pre-existing emotional trauma (not assault related) and the thing I worried most about was her making an appointment to see a therapist. That was the #1 safety item I concerned myself with when I dropped her off at school.
You appear not to be understanding that men are also at risk from physical assault. You appear not to be understanding that your assumptions about who is most at risk walking out of a gym are based on nothing whatsoever other than your own imagination. You appear not to be understanding that the risk of sexual assault is not greatest in such situations, but is greatest from acquaintances and intimates.
And I’m not sure you understand why people get “inflamed”. It’s very annoying to have people insist on giving bad advice based on a batch of false assumptions, yes.
Tell them to go read Captain Awkward. They’ll get advice about (among other things) what sort of behavior to actually watch out for, and about how to back their friends up when needed, which is likely to do them a lot more good than telling them to change clothes before leaving the gym.
Oh, and you can advise them not to walk down the street with all their attention on their phones. Just don’t tell them that the reason is to protect them from rape; let alone that the reason is because they’re female. Tell them it’ll keep them from knocking down fragile old people, or getting hit by a car they didn’t see, because they weren’t looking where they were going.
Yeah. It’s a very moot point whether bombarding women with generic “be alert, be safe” warnings about sexual assault really helps them more than it hurts them.
I’m likewise very sorry to hear about the acquaintances’ daughter who committed suicide due to depression after having been a victim of rape. But is anybody asking how much her depression was exacerbated by the pervasive “what mistake(s) did the victim make?” attitude that our society so often inflicts on rape victims?
Giving women vague advice about “watching their drinks, not walking in dark areas [well how the hell are you supposed to get to nearby locations after sunset, anyway? and not all dark areas are less safe than well-lit ones], being cautious when alone with a boy, etc.” sets them up to worry that if anybody does assault them, it’s because they weren’t “careful” or “safe” enough. Did your acquaintances’ daughter maybe feel guilty that she wasn’t “cautious” enough when “alone with [the] boy” who raped her?
We should not be encouraging that kind of self-reproach in women when somebody else assaults them in a criminal act that they themselves are in no way responsible for. Yes, we should talk to all young people about paying attention to crime statistics, self-defense when you’re in a potentially dangerous situation, understanding the attitudes and behaviors associated with rape, etc. Absolutely give people genuine specific information relating to the dangers of sexual assault and how to identify and deal with them.
But trying to “keep women safe” by giving them vague nonspecific scary warnings about how ordinary normal behavior may be endangering them to some unknown extent doesn’t really accomplish anything except to make them fearful of ordinary normal behavior. And then if some asshole they thought they could trust assaults them anyway, they’re primed to blame themselves for having failed to be “safe” enough in their behavior.
Not addressed to me, but here’s my 2¢. I understand your concern. I have a daughter (now grown), too. And I’m in that 10% who were sexually assaulted by strangers. So I get the fear. But women are not asking how to be safe from SA because–and this is the hardest, most terrifying part–there IS no way to be safe from SA. None. That’s part of the point MandaJO was making. Unlike car theft, SA is not confined to streets or parking lots. Unlike a foreign country, there are no truly safe neighborhoods. These are part of the myths people cling to in order to feel safer or feel their kids are safer (or to blame victims). SA’s happen in family rooms. They happen in daylight. They happen when other people are in the next room. They happen to sober women, to women with males they trust, to women who cover themselves neck-to-toes.
We can make sure our daughters know what to do if they are sexually assaulted. We can reassure them they can tell us and we’ll believe them and support them. We can work harder to change the culture and to keep the Brock Turners from getting off so easily. And we can stop perpetuating the myth that there are behaviors that keep women significantly safer.
Are you really meaning to imply that men and women are sexually assaulted at more or less the same rate, but men are afraid/unwilling to report it because…?
If not, what do you suppose the true ratio is rather than 10:1? 8:1? 5:1? “only” 2:1?
From a recent article in the NYT about male sexual assault in the US military: “Women face a much higher rate of sexual assault in the military — about seven times that of men. But there are so many more men than women in the ranks that the total numbers of male and female victims in recent years have been roughly similar, according to Pentagon statistics — about 10,000 a year. And before women were fully integrated into the armed services, the bulk of the victims were men.”
If anyone thinks I don’t realize that things are different for men and women, they are 100% wrong. It is exactly because I see those differences that I think the data is wrong if it tries to say it’s anyway similar for a man.
In my lifetime, I have experienced physical assault only a trivial amount of times, and that was as a few school fights. I’m not surprised that stats show so men are victims of PA, but my feeling is because those men are in environments where that is more common (e.g sketchy bars versus TGIFridays). How often does any man feel vulnerable in a dark parking lot in a suburban grocery store? Probably not very often.
In my lifetime, I have experienced such a trivial amount of unwanted sexual attraction of any kind that it’s almost non existent. For all practical purposes, my risk over my life is 0%. The data may say that X men and Y women experienced SA, but I would guess that each of those Y women had many more incidents than each man did. Here’s what my life has been like:
In college, I had zero incidents of unwanted sexual contact, groping, forced kissing, spiked drinks, etc. How many incidents are typical for a woman in college?
When I went jogging in my early 20’s with my fit body in small running shorts, there was only one sketchy incident: someone pulled over and asked if I wanted a massage. Other than that, I didn’t didn’t have people honking, waving, leering, pulling up along side me or anything. How many incidents are typical for women jogging?
I’ve never had a repair person at my house make me feel uncomfortable, ask for my number, chat about what I like to do, ask me out on a date, or rifle through my underwear drawer. How many women can say that?
I’m basically invisible when walking down the street. I can walk most anywhere day or night and no one tries to catch my eye, checks me out, or tries to strike up a conversation. How many incidents happen to women?
I’m basically invisible at the gym. No one complements my form, offers to help show me how to use the equipment, sets their mat uncomfortably next to mine, or strikes up a “conversation” where they talk endlessly while I stand there bored. How often do women experience that?
I’m basically invisible at the workplace. No one complements my outfit, hair, backpack. No randos swing my by desk several times a day to chat. How many women can say the same about their workplace experience?
The only thing I experience that is anyway remotely similar is that a few times a month in the locker room, I look up and catch a guy staring at me and he turns away. So as a man, this is the worst I have to deal with on a regular basis: a few times a month a guy looks at me. It’s so trivial compared to a woman’s experience that I feel I’m being insulting to even mention it. I would bet that happens to women more times on their walk from their car to their office.
My personal experience compared to women is so vastly different that my feeling is that women experience 1000 or 10000 times more incidents of unwanted sexual attraction. From that, it seems ridiculous that anyone–man or woman–would in anyway try to imply that men and women have similar risks. I’m not putting out super “don’t fuck with me vibes” or anything that is making me be this safe. I am essentially doing nothing and I have had basically no incidents worth mentioning. That’s nothing like what it’s like for women. Women can do 1000 more things to be safe than I do and they’ll still have to deal with more of this crap than I will.
[NOTE: I’m not saying these things rise to the level of SA. But because of the huge difference in these kinds of incidents between men and women, it strongly establishes my feelings that there is a huge difference in SA risk between men and women.]
I would nitpick this to suggest that it might be more accurate to say that women experience “1000 or 10000 times more incidents” of people feeling entitled to demand their attention for expressions of unwanted sexual attraction.
Women feel sexual attraction all the time for people who would most likely consider that attraction “unwanted”, and to whom expressing that attraction in those circumstances would be inappropriate. The difference is that many, many fewer women than men think it’s okay to announce their unwanted attraction, or to expect that the person they’re attracted to will feel complimented or pleased by that announcement.
So women might be lusting on you or other men all the time as you go about your daily business (and before this descends into hyuk-hyuk posturing from some posters about “Boy, I only wish!” and similar nonsense, let me remind you that statistically speaking this would probably mostly consist of women you’d consider “too old” or “too fat” or “too ugly” etc. for you to be pleased by their attraction to you). But you don’t realize it, because women aren’t socialized to believe that forcing their attraction on other people’s attention is appropriate behavior.
Sexual assault and harassment are fundamentally not about liking other people, they’re about controlling other people. Men are constantly being sent the message by society that being able to control other people is an integral part of manliness. And compelling women’s attention to recognize men’s unsolicited expressions of attraction is one form of that control.
You seem to have completely missed my point. The data show that total number of assaults is the same for men and women. What are YOU doing to mitigate your risk?
Oh, almost nothing? Hey, me too.
Pretty sure that parking lot is safe. It certainly never occurred to me to worry about it. I shop after dark all the time. Because, you know, that’s when I’m free to shop.
I never had a non-sexual assault in college. I had one serious sexual assault that I successfully fought off, and probably some minor incidents that I brushed off at the time.
When I used to walk around NYC, all the sketchy incidents I had focused on my wallet, not my body. The scariest was one when I was walking with my husband. That one was scary enough that we stopped using that street.
ME. Repair people mostly visit houses opened by a woman. If they make the customer uncomfortable, they don’t do very well. Seriously. I’ve had dozens of contractors and repair people through my house. All but one has been a guy (or sometimes guys.) I haven’t felt uncomfortable with any of them since the time my parents had the house painted when I was a teen, and I woke up to the noise of a guy removing the shutters from my window, and realizes I was naked and couldn’t get out of bed until he moved along. But, he was just doing what he’d been paid to do, my parents should have warned me we’d have painters on the house early in the morning.
I guess I had an electrician with tattoos that looked Nazi-themed to me that I was uncomfortable with. Not that I thought he was about to assault me or anything, I just didn’t like having a Nazi in my house. I didn’t hire him again.
I’m not saying I speak for all of woman-kind. But I think you are way over-estimating the actual danger women are in, and you are preaching a life of fear and restricted opportunities. I don’t think your message is helpful. Not even to keep women from being assaulted, but certainly not overall as a life-message.
Something is not adding up. We have women in this thread relating how common SH and SA has been in their lives, but my experience with either physical or sexual assault has been practically zero. I can’t believe it’s just lucky chance for me. My guess is that there are certain distinct environments where men are assaulted (e.g. gang/drug violence, bar fights, etc), while women are more at a general risk. But this is all guessing on all of our parts. If anyone can show that assault rates are 50/50 regardless of environment, I’d be very interested to see it.
A while ago this video came out 10 hours of walking in NYC as a woman. The video is just a couple of minutes of the whole thing. Some of the things she experienced in that 10 hours I have not experienced in my entire lifetime–nothing close to it. At the end it says she had 100+ incidents of guys following her, harassment, cat calls, leering, etc. along with countless winks, whistles, etc. Her experience is nothing like my experience.