OK @etasyde, let’s forget the hypothetical for a moment and go back to the underlying problem women are trying to draw attention to - the restrictive advice they are given about keeping themselves safe.
For example, a woman is about to go out on her first date with a guy she met online. Typically, she would be aware of the following advice for how to handle this situation:
Meet in a public place
Share with a friend the details of that place, and the name of the guy she’s meeting.
Arrange with the same friend that she will send a message when she is leaving the date, and another when she goes home safely.
Alternatively, if she chooses to go home with the guy, she will share that information with her friend as well.
On her way home, she should stick to well-lit streets while she’s walking even if it means going the long way round. If she’s on a train she should prefer crowded carriages to empty ones. She should get a cab however expensive, but should stay alert and preferably not give her full address to the driver just in case.
Does that seem like a pretty burdensome protocol for going on a date? How much of it strikes you as just common sense and how much as unnecessarily restrictive? It feels to me like it’s a lot to ask of people just to live their lives. Do you see problems with it?
And that’s not getting into the discussion about what she should be wearing- in terms of how revealing it is as well as how practical it is to run in- how she should act on the date to make sure she doesn’t accidentally give the impression that she’s more interested than she really is, how she should make sure not to leave her drink unattended or with a guy she’s just met…
I agree that all that is quite a burden but I’m not sure what the point is here. If I’m a tourist going to a place notorious for pickpockets they’ll be a bunch of advice about keeping myself safe.
Now; I know the obvious response – we should do something about the pickpockets, and I’d agree with that. I agree that police should crack down on common theft or mugging spots, and I agree that police should proactively and intensively prosecute sex crimes, no argument there.
But what we don’t do is suggest that there’s a double standard and say we should instead be telling pickpockets not to steal.
(Oh, and please don’t be offended by the analogy; I am of course not equating these crimes in terms of severity.)
The difference is that taking precautions about pickpockets isn’t a major intrusion into your life. You can get a money belt, keep your wallet in your front pocket, be aware in these areas, travel in groups when in this specific tourist area, etc. It’s limited in scope and impact, and need only be done for explicit periods of time.
Whereas the advice to women is severely limiting to their lives, pervasive in scope in that it applies literally every time one is in public, traveling, meeting others, enjoying oneself. The advice restricts careers, shopping, entertaining, exercising, and pretty much any aspect of daily life. If the advice to women were limited in scope and impact, it wouldn’t be a significant problem. Couple that with the fact that little to nothing has been done about the harassment and rape culture for generations and you can understand why people feel there’s a double standard.
Unpicking the analogy might help. You say, “If I’m a tourist”. A tourist is a) something that you choose to be; b) something that you will be only at times freely decided by you and c) something you will only be for a small fraction of your life. In your analogy, did you intend being a tourist to be the equivalent of being a woman?
Similarly, you speak of “a place notorious for pickpockets”. This suggests that there is a specific localities where pickpockets are a well-known and publicised threat and by implication that there are places where they are not. And again, whether you go to the pickpockety places or not is a choice that you would make. If a tourist chooses not to, they will miss out on a fun leisure experience. In your analogy, which places women might go are the equivalent of “notorious for pickpockets” where they should follow advice about keeping safe, and which places are sufficiently low-risk that either advice can be ignored or there is no advice to follow? What experiences do women have to give up to keep out of the places they are warned are dangerous?
What I’m hearing from women is that they are constantly required to accept the role of “tourist” whether they wish to or not and that there are very, very few places which they are not told are “notorious for pickpockets”. The way you’ve framed your analogy it seems as if there should be significant portions’ of women’s lives where they can choose not to have to view themselves as potential victims in a world with a too-high prevalence of perpetrators but that doesn’t seem to be the lived reality.
I agree with what both of you have written here. Again, the analogy is not to equate the crimes at all, it was simply to illustrate that telling people to protect themselves from criminals is a thing we do, and asking criminals not to commit crimes, isn’t.
Now, if you’re saying that women shouldn’t have to do all those things, all the time, I agree. It’s awful.
I’m living in Shanghai right now, which is a much safer place for young women than anywhere I’ve been in Europe or the US.
But, every time a female friend of mine here asks about the safety of travelling round Europe, I’m sorry to tell them that crimes against women do seem to be more common, and even I, a 6’3 male, would be extremely careful about being in certain city centers at night. When friends ask me about travelling to India, I have to give them even more detailed advice.
I don’t think I am the bad guy for saying these things, and I am sure as shit not condoning the actions of sexual assaulters.
No one is saying that in the current state of the world some version of that advice makes sense. But if and only if we’re also working to change the state of the world. Giving advice like that isn’t enough. It’s the equivalent of saying “Thoughts and prayers” after another school shooting. Sure, it’s nice to hear at first but after the nth time hearing it with no real action taking place it become hollow platitudes. Women already know all that advice; it’s not news to them.
That latter part appears to be sorely lacking, and the suggestion in the OP is a way of creating awareness that the subtle and not so subtle restrictions placed on women are an overwhelmingly disruptive burden that shouldn’t be tolerated.
I think there are two related issues getting conflated:
The fact that it often really isn’t safe for women to do the things men routinely do, and that society in general doesn’t seem to prioritize fixing those things. In most places, if no one, men or women, can walk safely in a neighborhood, that’s seen as a failure of government and something that needs fixing. If men can walk safely but women can’t, it’s seen as an unfortunate, immutable fact that just needs to be accepted. A coda to this is the idea that repeatedly reminding women that they aren’t safe is seen as “doing something”, when it isn’t.
The fact that often it probably IS safe for women to do things men routinely do, but that women are taught is unsafe. Dressing “provocatively” is the best example: there’s no evidence this makes any difference at all to a rapist–rape is a crime of opportunity–but women are routinely told, starting before puberty, that their clothes can make them a target (but also that if their clothes aren’t attractive enough, they don’t “take care of themselves” or “have self respect”). But there are other things, too: women are discouraged from taking jobs that involve travel, from working in male dominated professions, from living alone, from going on walks after dark in quiet suburban neighborhoods, because it’s “asking for trouble”.
She shouldn’t go home with him at all…even if she really likes him and it tanks her chance for a second date…he could turn into Ted Bundy.
She should make sure he has no “real” information about her - specifically her address or where she works (ever had a guy show up where you work…I have).
And it isn’t because this guy is a rapist. Its because this guy might be a rapist. Or a killer. Or just one of those really annoying guys who shows up at your job and demands to see you and gets you into trouble with your boss and texts you from other people’s phones when you block his number and makes friends with one of your friends so he can see you, because he’s a really nice guy, and if you would just see that…On the other hand, he might end up being the father of your children who you are happily married to for 50 years…you don’t know going in.
Bolding mine. That’s the problem with making it our responsibility to protect ourselves. It’s frankly quite exhausting. We’re asked to continually be aware of EVERYTHING, and if we end up in zanger anyway w
Couldn’t edit for some reason. Sorry for littering.
I was going to say that should we, regardless of all the precautions we’ve taken, end up in a potentially harmful situation, then apparently we should have seen it coming. Which means that we are obliged to view every man as a potential rapist. Which is what pisses at least some men off, thus putting women in more danger. So yes, something is seriously wrong with that and it has to do with taking responsibility.
So often the “guidelines” will involve the phrase “someone you trust”. Like “don’t let anyone you don’t trust know where you live” or “don’t drink around people you don’t trust” or “don’t travel with people you don’t trust”.
Which is basically saying women should be psychic and be able to pick a bad guy out on sight.
Plus statistically the chances of being raped by someone you DO trust are significantly higher. In about 80% of all sexual assault cases the perpetrator was known previously to the victim. So actually we shouldn’t trust anyone.
And “previously known” includes first dates. I have never been terribly frightened of someone jumping out of the bushes and raping me. Or someone randomly breaking into my home and raping me. My experience, and that of everyone else I know who is a survivor, is that someone we knew - maybe not well (but sometimes its the guy you married) - raped us.
Yeah, and I think it’s probably true that a lot of people with the worst kind of motives are actually quite good (or are explicitly trying to get good) at manipulating trust. I don’t have any stats on that, but thinking about the number of times I’ve heard murderers, rapists, paedophiles and scammers described as ‘initially seemed charming’.
Honestly, the “someone you trust” and “stranger danger” verbiage pushes me toward seeing the “rape prevention advice package” as more about “keeping women scared to function in society” than about actual rape prevention. Not that everyone who says these things is part of a vast conspiracy, but that the narrative that women just can’t function freely because it’s not safe persists at least in part because the status quo benefits a lot of men.
One of my favorite sayings is “it’s always easy to spend someone else’s time or money”, and that’s how I feel about a lot of these things. It’s really easy to steal your wife or daughter or girlfriend or coworker’s freedom “just in case”. It’s much harder to stop the actual real threats, so that get summed up as “people you trust”.
There is a massive difference between the point of a proposition and the suppressed premises therein. We don’t usually start off “jokes” by saying “the universe exists” but it is very much a suppressed premise in, well, all of them. Suppressed premises are fine, extremely numerous and completely expected unless or until someone disagrees with them. So, you don’t need to affirm the existence of the universe with everything you say because most people completely accept that the universe exists (though, when you deal with hard solipsists, even that assumption might be disputed). There’s (pretty much) nothing wrong with casually accepting that the universe exists. There is something wrong with casually accepting that all men are rapists.
“All the time” as an expression does not indicate every instance of time, and the semantical gymnastics you’re pulling make me doubt you have any interest in real discussion.
Unless I’m mistaken, this is a slight variant on the standard operating procedure for transporting anything of significant value. I mean, take the last point and make it “while traveling” instead of on her way home, and the second to last point as “if a detour should arise” instead of going to a guys place and I have a hard time seeing a difference.
Honestly? I try to observe similar protocols on the rare occasion I’m going to get drunk and/or travel in unknown territory (like cities abroad). I’d do the same if I were ever liquidating my precious metals. Some, like staying alert and avoiding isolating myself I do whatever the occasion. To me it’s common sense, but I’ve been told I put insufficient weight towards my own inconvenience so I don’t know if other people also feel it’s hardly worth allowing myself to feel discomforted by.
I don’t think I agree with this. I see society trying very hard to reduce sexual violence, but it has admittedly failed very badly to actually do so. I don’t think you can judge priorities simply by looking at outcomes. Is there some ready to go solution that merely lacks resources? If so I’d love to hear a detailed explanation - including analysis of why it hasn’t happened yet.
Unlikely. Naive ignorance is not always malevolence, and for decades rapists were cast in the eyes of society at large as being some shady Others that, to borrow from a meme, “climb in our windows.” Americans also have a very strange variant of Face that makes them incapable of acknowleding that they might not actually be as wise as they think they are (in, for instance, judging what “seemed like such a good boy” or worse, “certainly none of our folks…”)
This is a huge stretch. The far more probable sequence of thought is “I care about you. Therefore, I don’t want you to be destroyed. Rape would destroy you. Therefore, I don’t want you to be raped. Rapists exist and prey upon opportunities. If a rapist doesn’t have the opportunity, they can’t rape you. Therefore, I don’t want you to present an opportunity. You can do X, Y and Z to prevent the opportunity. Therefore, you should do X, Y, and Z.” Obviously there are a lot of disputable premises here, and one could argue some faulty reasoning.
The logic isn’t flawless, but comes from a place of “I don’t want to see you suffer” not “I want to take any opportunity to impede your freedom.”
Sorry for the double post, but my last post was a collection of a lot of replies.
The pertinent question got buried: Is there some ready to go solution that merely lacks resources? If so I’d love to hear a detailed explanation - including analysis of why it hasn’t happened yet.
I don’t hear anyone saying sexual violence isn’t a problem. I hear a lot of people saying society isn’t doing enough, and that it shouldn’t be resigned to this. So, is there any real solution to discuss?
I’ve known this story for as long as I can remember- but I was looking for the wrong female politician while trying to get details. And I suspect this is where the thought experiment in the OP came from :
In the 70’s , there was a wave of violent rapes in Israel. One or more cabinet members suggested imposing a curfew on women. This was not a friend or relative advising someone they cared about. It was not an author giving tips on keeping yourself safe. It was at least one ( and probably more) government officials suggesting that women be prohibited from being on the street after a certain time. Golda Meir’s response was essentially “Men are attacking women, not the other way around. If there is going to be a curfew, lock the men up, not the women”
Do you do it when you’re not getting drunk and in your own neighborhood ? Stanislaus actually understates things a little - I’ve heard that most of that advice given in situations that have nothing to do with a first date with a guy who was met online. For example, if you get a ride home from a coworker- do you make sure someone knows who you are leaving with? Do you have cabs drop you off down the block or around the corner from your home so the cabdriver doesn’t know where you live? Do you make sure someone knows where you are going and when you expect to be home if you go shopping or are taking a night class? And do you then let that person know when you have arrived home? I’ve been told I shouldn’t walk around the corner to the store after dark - I should either wait until morning for whatever I want to buy or I should spend more time and drive to a further away store (I can’t drive to the store around the corner because there won’t be anywhere to park).