While not perfect, “telling rapists not to rape” does have some effect.
Do you have any evidence that methods you would suggest have any effect?
Intentional?
I think that more education and awareness needs to be aimed at the potential future rapists, as opposed to just their victims. It’s already been said repeatedly in this thread, but the article was not groundbreaking in any way - it’s long been taught to girls that they should try to minimize their risk of becoming a victim by not drinking excessively, covering their drinks, not taking drinks from other people, watching out for each other with a buddy system, not walking home alone, carrying your keys clenched in your fist to use as a weapon if you are attacked, not dressing too sexy, not going out alone, and much, much more. Frankly, most men have no idea what it’s like to have to act with as much paranoia on a constant basis due to fear of sexual assault.
Also, I found it less than helpful that the article focuses on the association between alcohol and rape, but doesn’t break it down into any useful numbers (maybe those numbers aren’t tracked anywhere). So a large number of rapes occur when the perpetrator and/or victim had been drinking alcohol. Does that mean that in most of those cases they were fall-down unconscious drunk? Or just had any alcohol at all? It seems to me that the author of the article is recommending that women limit themselves to two drinks (and no shots! although I’m not sure why the distinction - a drink is a drink). But it seems like if a women had even one drink over the course of an entire evening and then was raped by an entitled douchebag who won’t take no for an answer, her case would still be lumped in with the “rapes associated with alcohol”.
Like the campaign in Edmonton (where I’m from), I think we need to educate potential rapists about what rape actually is. Some people (mostly men) have an image in their heads of what rape is - usually a stranger, using overpowering physical force and violence, etc… When in reality that only describes a minority of rapists. Instead, they need to learn to “not be that guy”.
Given the sorry state of sexual education in many places in the United States, I’m not sure how feasible this is - but I think we need to focus more on what consent is and what type of consent you want to get before having sex. Lots of people think that it’s only rape if she’s screaming and yelling no and vigorously struggling. But not all women respond like that when they’re terrified - they may say no or be less than enthusiastic, or they may freeze up entirely. People should be taught that the type of consent you want to have is full and enthusiastic consent. Not sitting down and notarizing a contract, but is your partner fully participating? Are they saying encouraging things (yes, more, etc…). I think that sex education starting at as young an age as possible should teach people that sex without enthusiastic consent is disgusting, repulsive, not sexy.
I think that’s the part that bugged me the most. She didn’t talk about how she’d teach her son what consent is, and how an enthusiastically willing partner is the best - an not just to avoid a rape charge, but because that’s what you should always want. The writer assumes that the only problem her son could face is a false rape accusation - not that he could face a true accusation. Or that he could himself be a rape victim.
The problem is that the last statement isn’t true.
Date rape is very common - it isn’t always reported - because women know that “he said, she said” isn’t going to go anywhere, but its really common. Get ten women in a room where dated in college and as young adults who are willing to swap date rape stories and you can spend an entire night doing so. When you add in - lets call it “grey rape” - I didn’t want to have sex, but he was bigger than me and insistent so I said yes because I didn’t want things to escalate" or “I tried to say no, but I was so drunk I wasn’t really in control or able to communicate my intent” - it becomes even more common.
Men are statistically more likely to be violently attacked than women.
Alcohol increases the likelihood of violence. Do we tell young men not to get liquored up and play pool at a dive bar so they don’t get curb-stomped? You betcha. There’s no double-standard, just an acknowledgement of the types of violence men and women are more likely to encounter. Men get raped too, it’s just less likely than non-sexual violence, so we don’t warn them about it specifically.
I think one of the reasons men and women get into disagreements over issues like these is that there’s a gender difference in how men and women speak. Some — though not all — of the “hostile workplace” behavior women complain of is actually men treating women like another man.
Men don’t express sympathy often. They are more likely to criticize the mistakes of their peers. Their casual conversation is often mutual verbal roughhousing. To women, a friendly conversation between male friends sometimes looks like a budding argument. Unless they consciously change their conversational style when speaking to women, some men treat their female colleagues and acquaintances as if they were men, which, needless to say, doesn’t go over well sometimes.
A concrete relevant example: One of my friends in high school told us about how he was driving one night in Stockton and got chased by gang members. Turns out, he was driving around aimlessly because he was upset about breaking up with a girl he’d been seeing for the eternity of 3 whole weeks and wandered into one of the pockets of hell Stockton harbored at that time (probably still does).
Did we express sympathy about his trials and tribulations, having been chased at high speed by a group of men who seemed intent at following him home, however far that might be, and beating the living shit out of him and/or stealing his car? Nope. We called him a goddamn dumbass who was lucky he didn’t get fucking shot in the head. We all knew that you don’t drive around certain neighborhoods in Stockton at night, especially not in the family BMW, or you attract a whole lot of the wrong kind of attention.
A teenage girl who had the same experience would have gotten sympathetic and supportive comments from her female friends.
Were we “blaming the victim”? Seems like it would fit if you flipped the genders. Thing is, that’s what men do. I live in a completely different culture from the one I grew up in (I’m an American living in Japan) and boys here do the same thing, even with the feminized soushokukei phenomenon in full-swing. It’s not just cultural training, it’s probably near-universal among males of any culture.
Men are currently being socialized to act more like women, but women aren’t usually encouraged to act more like men. In this article, the author is promoting equality. The traditional message for men is that they are responsible for protecting themselves, which is kind of fucked up when you think about how much more violence is directed at men than at women. Even with all of the changes in social messages, this one has not altered. All the author was doing is applying this standard to women’s behavior; women are responsible for protecting themselves.
As far as telling men not to rape women: 1) We already do that. 2) We tell people not to assault and murder each other too. Doesn’t work very well for that either.
Serious question: how much of that violence is “random”? I mean, sure, as a man I’m statistically more likely to be murdered by a naive estimate, but in reality I highly doubt I’m realistically going to get murdered. I’d bet that most of the assults and murders that happen to men are “political” or due to things like gang vs gang violence. An arbitrary man is less likely to be victimized for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time than an arbitrary woman is likely to get raped for the same. Violence against men seems more targeted.
That’s just a hunch though, I don’t have any statistics.
Out of wonder, what numbers are we talking about for when you say “very common”? Because most surveys/studies I’ve seen, even those that attempt to control for underreported rapes, or even rapes the victim didn’t consider rapes, don’t get much higher than 20%. Those don’t include all possible scenarios (especially what you call “grey-rape”), but even including them, I’m skeptical it skyrockets above 50% which is what “very common” implies to me.
I’m not discounting your personal experiences/circle of friends, but it may not be representative of the population at large.
And FWIW, I don’t consider 20% “rare”, it’s still a large problem that deserves activism and fixing. I’m just not sure that I’d call it “very common” either, I don’t think I’d even give 1/3 “very common” which was the figure I was taught in school.
It’s the way our society is structured that assumes that the male is the “default” and some people think that it’s fine to treat everyone in one way. But in reality, not all men like to be treated one way, and the same goes for women. You can’t assume that people prefer to socialize in a particular way just based on their gender.
Also, I’m pretty sure that anyone who isn’t socially clueless can learn to “code switch” and act/talk differently in different environments. You talk differently to your boss vs. your friends vs. your grandmother. I don’t think we should assume men are helpless to moderate their own behaviour to be appropriate to the situation.
I know it’s a lot of grey areas and it’s hard to draw a line anywhere. IMHO, I would rate 20% as being very common.
I mean, if 20% of the population is obese we call it an epidemic. But if 20% of women will be raped in their lifetime then that’s not even very common?
I don’t think anyone would disagree that in North America “Smith” is a common surname. But nowhere near 20% of the population has that name.
To me it’s a function of sample space. You’re either raped or not raped, so I wouldn’t call anything less than about 70% “very common”. For surnames, while you can boil it down to “Smith” and “not-Smith”, it’s more complex than that. You have to recognize that there are a bajillion possible surnames, and that among all possible surnames, Smith occurs relatively frequently in comparison. It’s that kind of constraint that allows a low absolute-percentage to be “common”, because it has a high percentage relative to the percentages of other possibilities.
But this is mostly semantics, I guess.
Edit: And the problem with comparing rape rates to other crimes is that suffering rape isn’t mutually exclusive with suffering another crime, as well as the fact that it would easily be swamped by Burglury or petty crimes so, to me, it’s hard to judge it comparative to that scale.
No, men are disproportionately likely to be attacked by strangers, and women by people they know. Men are more likely to be mugged (gang-motivated muggings, is it?), and attacked by strangers. You’re just trying to blame the victim so you can stick to the absurd idea that women are more likely to be the victims of violence in literally any situation whatsoever. The truth is that it’s much safer to be a woman. If you’re in a warzone, if you’re down a dark alley, if you’re in your own home, you’re better off being a woman.
I would take 20% as common, but as you say the only way to reach that number is to include rapes that are asically fiction, such as “rapes” that both rapist and victim agree weren’t rape. Certainly the number of reported rapes has declined by about three quarters over the last forty years, and by over half since 1990, and that in a time when the police and have put conscious effort into making themselves friendly to rape victims, getting specialist teams together, making sure female victims get female officers to interview them and so on. So even if rape was common in the 70s, and largely unreported (which I doubt, at least that it was common), it can safely be assumed to now be much, much rarer and still getting rarer, and almost certainly more likely to be reported.
I doubt anyone has a circle of friends that represents society at large, it’s just not possible. What we have is evidence, criminal statistics and the like. These clearly show a massive reduction in rape complaints, and there’s certainly no reason to believe rape is more underreported than it was in the bad old days.
Odd school.
The type of violence that men and women face is very different. According the the blog by Sally Raskoff, woman are more likely to be attacked by their intimate partner, and men are more likely to be attacked by strangers. From the sample that they used, 76% of women were victims of intimate partners, and 63% of men were victims of strangers. That is a staggering difference that suggests we should not be giving women the same advice that we give men when it comes to protecting themselves.
Any advice to woman that doesn’t tell them where the violence is coming from is going to be nearly useless.
There is less gray area for murder. However, some studies show that some men rape women and don’t think it’s rape. Mostly when a woman is incapacitated.
I can agree with this to an extent. When I hear a story about how a woman got raped and it starts with getting blindingly drunk and then going to a house 20 miles from the nearest gas station to an all male party…inside I’m going oh no god wrong wrong wrong moves. I don’t think she DESERVED to get raped for her bad decisions, but I still think they were bad decisions, and of course hopefully the rapists would go to prison.
If someone said how should you move in this situation I’d say don’t do this this, or that. It seems like that kind of analysis is politically incorrect or something. Sorry but the world is unfair and filled with vicious monsters, and right and wrong means nothing you have to protect yourself. That doesn’t mean you deserve to be hurt, but it will happen.
Ah, yes. Some men want to prevent rape by locking up women, and some by making prostitution legal. Nobody wants to prevent rape by locking up rapists.
Women have been blamed for “causing” their rapes for centuries. I don’t care if I’m wearing tight short jeans, nobody has a legal right to touch me.
As a policeman I know use to tell rapists who blamed the victim for "exciting’ them: You don’t need a partner if you got a good hand.
I dont think anyone in this thread has suggested that
Whew, it took less than 20 posts to get Dopers raving about the ebil feminists! I’m also seeing a good bit of patronizing and looking-down-their-noses going on here.
How about this: I’m a young woman, and I, and my friends, have heard our whole lives not to get drunk or take drinks from men, because of rape. Y’all are not breaking any new ground! Unless a girl was kept locked away in a basement, with no access to TV, internet, or radio until set loose at the age of 18, she knows these things! Relatives and friends have told us, PSAs and “very special episodes” on TV have told us, teachers have told us, etc, freaking-etc. And we STILL get raped and we STILL get attacked and we STILL get blamed.
One of my friends took her attention off her drink in a bar in New Orleans for just a minute and got roofied there in 2010. Fortunately, the bartender saved her. But she wasn’t blackout drunk to start with, she wasn’t acting wild or crazy. Just sitting at the bar having a beer. And she still got roofied and it just happened that the bartender was in a position to help her. What was she at fault for? Leaving her apartment? Having a single beer? Possession of a vagina?
I was attacked and beaten on the street by a man who tried to rip my clothes open. I managed to get away. I wasn’t drunk. Hell, I’m Straight Edge. I was like 2 blocks from my apartment, heading home after work. What should I have done differently? Stayed in the kitchen and never got a job? Carried a coiled pit viper in my vagina? I wasn’t drunk and I’ve never been to a frat party in my life and STILL almost got raped.
The sanctimonious advice gets old after awhile. It sounds like “Well missy, if you were a good girl this wouldn’t have happened to you!” Sometimes it sounds like “It would NEVER happen to ME because I’d do X, Y and Z.” What it doesn’t sound like it is “What can be done to educate men and stop them from attacking/raping people?” There’s a disease and you’re not treating the root cause, you’re tut-tutting at the sufferers.
Is it like a movement or something? 
Why the caps?
This is a strange statement. I think you’d be challenged to find a single poster in this thread that believes rapists should not be locked up.
But as a means of preventing rape this may never be more than partially effective - because you kinda have to wait for a rape to happen before you can lock up anyone.
The problem with the “We need to teach men not to rape” argument is that rapists are already deranged, sick individuals who prove that they do not respect others’ boundaries… chances are they know rape is wrong and do not care; they do it anyway.
It makes much more sense to give advice to potential victims, both female and male, to prevent them from being in a situation that could compromise their health and safety, since trying to educate potential rapists is a hopeless cause no different than trying to train a vicious animal from attacking.
The best thing would be for the legal system to actually prosecute rapists. But since that is not happening to the extent that it should, telling people not to rape will NOT stop them.
I’d argue that this is the very reason that so many rapes happen. Rapists are not cartoon villains, they’re normal people. Most rapes do not involve force, or even threat of force, they’re from people ignoring signals or assuming things are okay just because somebody didn’t scream or start crying. Making rapists The Great Other just encourages people to not look at their own behavior and try and figure out how it may be harmful, it just makes them assume that rape is something those other, evil guys do. Not something I would do, I’m a good person.
You’re right about one thing, just telling men not to rape people isn’t going to be fruitful. You have to invite them to consider that common actions that they themselves might take unknowingly could lead to rape. Rape isn’t as obvious as murder, where you can kind of tell you’re about to murder somebody because you’re pointing a gun at them or plunging a knife into their chest. It’s something that can happen by a mistake as simple as assuming a sheepish glance is a come-on.
That doesn’t make it any less terrible, or mean that we shouldn’t prosecute or jail these people. It does mean, though, that making RAPISTS!!! out to be demons is just likely to make potential rapists not consider their actions because they’re not Snidely fucking Whiplash.
I think that’s why the “Don’t Be That Guy” campaign linked above was so effective, because it showed all of the subtle thoughts and behaviors that can be rape and pointed out that anybody can be “that guy”. It didn’t just say “rape is bad, and raping makes you a monster, m’k?” which is what most of us guys get taught about rape.
Well, mistaking that sheepish glance as a come-on may be what starts the series of events that leads to a rape, but that mistake, in and of itself, doesn’t qualify as anything other than not being clued-in to your partner’s signals.
Absurd. Rapists, and other sexual offenders, are human beings. I know it makes a lot of people feel better to throw all sex offenders into a nebulous “monster” category and be done with it, but its like covering your eyes with your hands and going “la-la-la-I-CAN’T-HEAR-YOU.” It’s not realistic, its not sensible. Such a mentality solves nothing. A. Nicholas Groth, who’s studied rape and sexual offenders for years, believes that only a small percentage of rapists are primarily motivated by sadism. Much more common are rapists who rape because of feelings of powerlessness or inadequecy; or those who rape because they believe they are “owed” sex (such as in spousal rape) or even have delusions that their victim is in love with them. Then you have the types who have little to no concept of consent or boundaries, thinking that its acceptable to have sex with a blackout drunk girl, or even encouraged to do so by their peers. They may not think of themselves as rapists at all. They may rationalize it to themselves: “She said yes to me last week.” “She spreads her legs for everyone else, I should get a turn, too.” “She really wants it and is just saying no to be a tease.”