I wouldn’t use the word ‘foolish’. I would use the word ‘naive’. I also would almost never say “don’t do something”. What I would say is that there are specific things which create situations which exponentially higher risk, and when you are in that kind of situation, you should exercise more caution.
These kinds of statements are useless: “don’t ride with boys” and “ride with whoever you want”.
When a HS girl gets a ride with 4 boys, that situation itself is not inherently dangerous. But there are factors which greatly increase the risk of harm. When she or anyone else sees these highly risky situations, they should take extra caution or intervene. Just getting a ride is not a risky situation. Getting a ride while drunk has more risk. Getting a ride from lots of rowdy boys has more risk. Getting a ride from her brothers has less risk. A boy getting a ride has less risk than a girl.
If a presentation was given to a group of kids and it was implied that boys have the same risk, the boys would not believe it. If the presentation had a “drunk” boy being driven home by 4 girls of the soccer team, the boys would be high fiving each other and saying it’s their fantasy. But one thing boys will believe is that girls have a higher risk of rape than boys. And by showing realistic situations that resonate with them and their beliefs, trustworthy boys and girls will recognize those situations and step in to prevent it from happening.
Think about boys like Brock Turner. What message would make him change? What about his dad who thinks that Brock shouldn’t be punished for a few minutes of fun? Or the people of Steubenville who were more worried about how the accusations would affect the football playoffs instead of the victim. Changing those kinds of beliefs is going to be a multi-generational challenge.
I was that poster, but that’s not what I said. I said the problem was that she had headphones on and was looking at her screen while walking through a dark parking lot in gym clothes. The revealing outfit adds risk, but isolating herself with headphones and bright screen means that risk is not being addressed. The gym clothes themselves are just a nominal risk.
filmore, do you think women are more naive than men? If so, why do you believe this?
Whenever I walk past the college campus nearest to me, I see both guys and girls with their noses buried in phones and earbuds in their ears. It is not unusual for me to have near-collisions with these people on the sidewalk because they are so oblivious to their surroundings. But I would never think to just warn women of this danger, especially since rape is not the most likely negative outcome. What is much more likely to happen is tripping, falling, or colliding with something. And after that, robbery and theft. So it makes no sense to turn this high risk activity into a cautionary tale about rape unless you think rape is worse than getting hit by a car or a bicycle.
So your advice is that girls in particular should not get in a car full of drunk/rowdy boys? With drunk boys, while drunk, we agree, though that applies to boys, too. What about a group of boys in high spirits after a chess tournament? If they offer to give the one girl on a team a ride home, is that high risk? Assume they won the state championship and everyone is in very high spirits, super activated.
I think women are more naive about what men think and their potential for harm. Being a man, my experiences and thoughts on what men are capable of is not totally hypothetical. Even in this thread, I have given many examples of how I think about women and how I can easily extropolate that to how perverts, creeps and rapists think, but the women are generally discounting that or saying that rapists don’t think that way.
I know I’m just an internet rando, but I’m not a bad or violent guy. My wife is the one and only person I’ve ever been with. She’s my equal. We’ve been married for decades. I have daughters I want to keep safe. If I’m telling you that a guy like me has impure thoughts about a women leaving the gym in skimpy clothes, the assumption has to be that creeps, perverts and rapists also have those same thoughts. I’m not saying those things because I want to keep women locked in the home wearing a burka. I’m saying those things because I want women to be able to do whatever they want, but be safe while doing it.
In the stereotypical case, I would not have any concern about the chess players. As a group, I think of them as typically more thoughtful, respectful, and much less likely to assault someone. If my daughter wanted to drive with them to another state for an overnight regional chess championship, no problem. If my daughter was drunk and needed a ride home, I would be slightly worried but generally think it’s okay. If a stereotypical chess player raped someone, I would be surprised. I think of chess players similar to how I was at that age. If I was alone with a girl, I would never assault her no matter what. However, I acknowledge that no one can be certain about anyone and there’s always a chance.
In the Stubenville case, there was ample evidence that those boys were assholes and bullies. They posted stuff on social media about getting girls drunk. Football players have reputations of being in to partying and sex. It’s not surprising at all to me that boys like that would commit assault.
Also, more to the point, I don’t think girls get rape because they are naive about these things. I don’t see any reason to believe the Stuebenville victim was naive. She was DRUNK. Very, very drunk. She was vulnerable because she literally was unaware of her surroundings or what was happening to her. No lecture in gym class about being careful about riding with boys would have helped. I don’t know why no one stopped the boys from taking her, but I don’t think it was that they were aware of the situation but naive about the implications. That’s a hell of a specific scenario to be confident about.
And in any case, worrying girls don’t get told enough to be careful seems preposterous to me. I get reminders of the “rape rules” at least weekly. As a teen and young woman, it was a constant drum. Everyone tells you to be careful. Everyone warns you about all this stuff. That you think girls don’t get this message is a powerful demonstration of how different our worlds are, and explains why you think my descriptions of the restrictions I face are exaggerated. Girls live in warnings about safety like fish live in water, and you want to fix overfishing by pouring more water in the ocean.
But I DO think women are naive about their own culpability. I think many women, especially young ones, still believe that rape can be their fault, that they could and should be publicly shamed over being “stupid”, and so they don’t report rape, they don’t even process rape as rape, because they have bought into the idea that rape is caused by girls breaking the rules. So I don’t want to add to this narrative by adding even more lectures about what they could do.
I understand how men sometimes think about women. I understand that men might be looking at me and thinking in rather graphic terms about how they’d like to screw me in a variety of ways, some which might not involve my consent. I think this happens frequently and I sometimes sense it as it is happening.
But that is a long way from actually doing it. Rape is violent crime perpetrated by criminals, even having sex with an unconscious woman requires a degree of physical force. It’s not something normal guys do when they get horny and a woman in short shorts turns them down.
In fact, there was another interesting quote in the Atlantic article, one I didn’t transcribe.
“ The Case Western research showed that the great majority of rapists are generalists, or one man crime waves. They will steal your car, they will steal your watch, they’ll steal sex, so to speak, if they can get away with it.”
And here’s the actual study results from the project.
This line item is telling —
“Most [sexual] offenders (serial and non-serial) have felony level criminal histories. Serial sexual offenders have a more extensive and violent history.”
So I liken men ogling scantily dressed women to a person looking at a brand new beautiful phone or computer in a store window. A LOT of people might look in that window and think about how much they’d like to have that. Some people may even think about how easy it would be be break that window and steal it. But the guy that actually breaks the window and steals it is a criminal, and probably one that’s stolen before, and steals things all the time.
You’re wrong about chess players. I don’t think they are more or less likely to be rapists than football players. I don’t know of any evidence that they are.
If it was a known fact that these boys were dangerous, why aren’t you worried that no one deals with THAT? Why don’t you get passionate about the need to develop social structures that stop boys like that?
And, again, other than not getting shit faced drunk, I don’t see any lecture that would have empowered others to stop the boys. Smuggling a girl out when she’s that drunk is not hard.
Something that’s getting overlooked: you’ve set up the wrong equivalency. The equivalent to a drunk girl getting a ride home with a bunch of rowdy boys isn’t a drunk boy getting a ride home with a bunch of rowdy girls. The equivalent is a drunk boy getting a ride home with a bunch of rowdy boys.
Yeah, boys are the victims of violent crime more often than girls. But they’re not victimized by girls in most cases: they’re victimized by other boys.
The best advice is to be careful with alcohol, according to this study, drinking alcohol and going to places where people get drunk is the biggest risk factor, and 55% of sexual assaults involve alcohol.
So why aren’t we limiting men’s freedom? Sounds like that would solve a lot of problems.
Imagine a society that encouraged men to take these actions:
"Boys, don’t go out solo! Always travel with a friend (who can reign you in).
Stay out of trouble by keeping indoors at night. Most crime occurs after midnight. Do the right thing and keep off the street.
Remember, drinking increases your risk for committing a crime. And don’t hang around other drunk people, because they might influence you to become an accomplice in their crimes.
If you see a woman, especially if she gets your attention due to her attractiveness and vulnerability, stay away from her. Your impure thoughts might lead you to do unspeakable things. So run away. "
Society doesn’t do this, though. Instead, it limits women’s freedom. We get all the messages above, except we’re treated as prospective victims instead of prospective criminals. The end result is the same thing, though.
What would you consider “careful”? I’m fine with “don’t get incoherently drunk.” I said that in like post 8. On the other hand, I’ve read women should never have a THIRD drink in public, because it might make you vulnerable. That, I think, is bs. A woman can generally keep herself safe even with a pretty good buzz on. I don’t buy the idea that a woman whose had 5-6 drinks over a long evening (spaced over 4 or more hours) has meaningfully elevated her risk of rape. I think cautioning such a woman would be inappropriate.
No, seriously. Are women really supposed to contort ourselves to prevent creepy men from having impure thoughts? You say you’re not for burkas, but please realize this is the same rationalization used for hiding female bodies and faces in misogynistic societies. “Nice guys” over there believe they have same good intentions you do, and yet we can see how backwards their thinking is.
Perverts get aroused by all kind of things because perverts are what perverts are. You talk about naivety in women, but if you don’t know this basic fact then it is you is naïve. I assure you that if American women started wearing burkas tomorrow en mass, this wouldn’t stop perverts from getting turned on when seeing a woman. All the lights that go off in their brain now would light up at the sight of some burkas, except even moreso because burkas create mystery. They allow the imagination to run wild. “Is she naked under there”.
It’s a losing game when society treats women’s bodies as the root of men’s problems.
[QUOTE=bengangmo;22015979I also think - re the date rapist, that there absolutely are men (I don’t know how many) out there who set out to get women too drunk to resist / too drunk to care. they try to create the situation where they separate the drunk from the herd, then take her to their place over weak / incoherent objections. Stopping just shy of violent force but definitely over the line of consent. And I think these sorts of men are responsible for a LOT of rapes - as many as 1 every weekend for multiple years[/QUOTE]
I’m going to spoiler this for reasons that will be obvious to many Dopers.
[spoiler]In her biography of her son that came out a few years ago, Sue Klebold, mother of Columbine shooter Dylan Klebold, said that when his cohort Eric Harris’ computer was analyzed, they found (among other things) an e-diary, where he said that he was looking forward to college in large part so he could pick drunk girls up at bars, take them back to his dorm room, and rape them. So, yes, there are people who deliberate commit sexual assault and other crimes.
They also found a lot of stories riddles with violence, including one that led to the extermination of all life on earth, and it wasn’t some variation of sci-fi either.
I have no idea what, if any, sexual experience either boy had at the time of his death, and AFAIK Harris didn’t rape anyone while he was living.[/spoiler]
“Don’t dress sexy” is just a stone’s throw away from “Don’t wear make-up and perfume” and “Don’t show your hair” and “Don’t be so confident and friendly.” All of these things can be attractive to someone with bad intentions. Probably because those qualities are attractive to just about everyone.
So much this! How are gym clothes a risk? Half the women are wearing leggings now. Are they all at higher risk? The analogy here would be that men shouldn’t drive even slightly nice cars, carry laptops or have smartphones because then they have made themselves targets for assault and robbery.
Are men unable to control themselves around attractive women? That doesn’t make sense either since most men aren’t raping women.
Finally you (filmore) keep jumping back and forth from girls to women and then back to girls. It’s not doing your reasoning any favors when you have to discuss the behavior of minors and compare it to adults. I think you haven’t thought through what you’re asking for in the name of “safety” or whom you’re asking it of. Further, it may seem like common sense however your advice seems like it isn’t predicated on factual evidence e.g Ann Hedonia’s posts.
And even if you get incoherently drunk, you’re not going to get raped unless you cross paths with a rapist. Date rape is not something guys do when they get provoked. It’s a violent crime. There is evidence that the guys that do it tend to do it all the time, and they are responsible for most rapes.
All this “how many drinks is too many” makes me laugh a little. Because my history is rife with incidents like “I was at this party, and everyone including me was really drinking heavily and I was talking to this guy, and we hit it off and we went into the bathroom and locked the door and we made out [enthusiastically and consensually, it’s funny, I’m rather suave when sober and prefer low key seduction, but when I was drinking I was always pretty enthusiastic] and I maybe even performed oral sex on him for a few minutes, then I’m like, “that’s enough, dude” and he laughed a little and zipped up and we kissed a few more times and went back to the party”
Now, I’m not condoning that kind of behavior, I had a horrible self-destructive streak at that time in my life. But, despite everything, I never encountered a rapist while behaving like this. Which is why I think they’re few and far between.