It isn’t it funny how none of the suggestions we have heard from the guys in this thread have been framed around age? We have heard that women in general need to dress modestly at the gym and watch how much they drink while in the company of strange men and not live in bad neighborhoods. No one has specified that they were only talking about women between the ages of 19 to 24.
Like, when filmore asked what my response would be if a friend of mine told me they were going to a party where she was going to be the only female present, he didn’t say she was young. He also didn’t specify that she is baldheaded, 400 lbs, and 6 feet tall. He just threw out a generic woman and expected me to have enough information to gauge her risk level.
This is why it is hard to take anti-rape advice seriously. When a 45-year-old has to listen to the same lectures she heard when she was 20, she starts to think the people giving those lectures are full of shit.
We all agree this is true, so let’s brainstorm some practical ways to combat this kind of environment and way of thinking. There are real world challenges to changing this mindset. Like, some dads congratulate their sons for sleeping with lots of girls. Brock Turner’s dad thought what he did was no big deal. Are those people redeemable? If so, how? If not, what do we do to deal with the issues they bring?
I personally don’t know if or how those kinds of people can be reformed, so my thoughts are more about changing the environment so that those kinds of people are less likely to have that behavior encouraged and they can’t create as much harm by their bad actions. I have given many specific ideas and examples of things I would do. I would really like to hear other specific ideas and changes which could be considered to improve the situation.
[ul]
[li]Don’t get incoherently drunk[/li][li]Don’t get into a car with 4 or more boys who have a reputation for sexually assaulting girls[/li][li] Don’t get in a car with drunk football players[/li][li] [/li][li]Don’t go to a party where you are the only girl.(what about travel and work?)[/li][/ul]
Personally, I can’t think of any gender specific limitations on personal freedom I think will prevent enough sexual assault to be worth the loss or freedom or to be worth the damage they do by reinforcing the idea that rape is caused by women acting unwisely. I agree on point 1–don’t get incoherently drunk. I will even concede that in addition to the dangers getting incoherently drunk poses for everyone, it has a unique set of dangers for women. But it’s still good advice for everyone.
Why is it so much easier for you to advise women than it is for you to advise men? You have already said you have the ability to imagine the motives of a rapist. Shouldn’t that insight also grant you the wisdom to know what to say to a guy who is high risk for doing bad things with his sexual energies?
I mean if advice like “Dress modestly at the gym” flows freely from your mouth, why should you have a problem saying “Don’t mess with drunk girls” and “You need to masterbate a couple of times before you go to a party just so your lust doesn’t make you do something you will regret later.” Hey, common sense is common sense, right?
I don’t think there’s any single solution to all issues of sexual assault. One area that I think is most addressable is the date rape situations like in the Steubenville, so I’ll use that as an example. Thinking of three actors of student, school employee, parent, and police, here is what I would suggest:
Student – If I magically put my 16-year-old self into the Steubenville situation, I don’t know what I would do. I certainly wouldn’t do that stuff, but I’m not sure what I would do if I just heard about it. My moral foundation was still immature. I’m not sure I would recognize what was happening as rape or what the consequences would be. I would probably think it was wrong, but not have the life experience or moral foundation to truly understand the situation. What would help me understand the situation is to have adults reinforce the message that those kinds of behaviors are improper and what I could do if I felt uncomfortable. So when a teacher hears about a wild party, that teacher should say something like “I hope everyone had a good time. But remember, if you see something that makes you uncomfortable or seems dangerous, you can always call your parents, the police, etc. if you don’t feel you can step in.”
School Employee – Be more active in looking for these situations. Be aware of what’s going on. Talk to kids at appropriate opportunities to say that when people drink or are in certain situations, they may do things they regret. Notice when someone changes demeanor in a way that indicates they may have been a victim of sexual assault (e.g. more reserved, wearing baggy clothes, etc).
Good parent – Tell your kids that they can call you whenever they need help. Teach them it’s their moral obligation to step in when they suspect something isn’t right. Tell them they can call 911 anonymously if they need. I personally would make gender-specific recommendations to my kids based on what risks I perceive are greatest to them.
Police – Investigate the allegations as a serious crime. Don’t frame the investigation as if the victim is making it up. Police should face severe penalties if they don’t take the investigation seriously.
I don’t know what to do about bad parents or kids that rape. I can’t put myself in their head to know what message would resonate with them. Maybe the Brock Turner’s of the world can be appealed to, but the Steubenville boys I have no clue. So I’m saying to appeal to the people who will receive the message and step up to make things better. These kinds of changes will make it more likely that one of the other students would be more likely to intervene in some way.
If rapists and other criminals could easily be changed, the world would be a better place. I don’t know how to do that. Do you? Let’s hear some ideas. I’m sure your bat is getting dented from hitting my hard-as-a-rock head as I lob up these softballs. Stop just saying that my ideas suck and let’s hear how you would change things so that situations like Steubenville wouldn’t happen.
Those are all reasonable suggestions. But this thread is about what to advise potential victims to do. What restrictions do you think women and girls ought to be taught to impose on themselves that boys and men don’t need to follow?
I assume “girls can’t look at their phone and/or wear headphones when walking in public, but boys can” is one.
I feel I’ve been pretty clear and given many examples. I don’t feel like lobbing up another softball. If you would like to present some ideas on how to fix the real-world problems, I’d love to hear them. I’ve seen you argue passionately for kids and minorities and I’m sure you can come up with some excellent ideas here which could make meaningful differences.
How about starting off with basic sexism? Don’t call a woman “shrill” if you won’t call a man that. How about “hysterical”, “pushy”, “harpy”, and so on? Hell, use the same insults for men and women.
That’s the real issue here, isn’t it? If rape were the result of uncontrollable, inconvenient hormones, it’d happen anywhere, any time. It could strike in broad day light next to a 6’4" cop. It could strike in the middle of a football game with buddies.
Instead, it only strokes in the most convenient isolated locations next to conveniently-vulnerable or incapacitated women. What ARE the odds?
And can we stop with the “lust” narrative? It’s not lust. It’s hatred.
Yeah, I agree. One thing I realized late in life is that when men objectify women, other men don’t step in and say that’s not okay. Other men typically laugh or not say anything. If instead other men treated objectifying statements like racist statements, it would likely help change attitudes. Movies and media used to have a lot of objectifying just for the sake of objectifying or humor. That is changing and will help reduce the acceptance of it.
This sounds off-topic, but I swear it is relevant.
Nursing my son was really hard for me. I never found it restful, or peaceful: nursing made me groggy, and angry, like I’d been woken up in the middle of a sleep cycle at the worst possible point. And, once I went back to work, it took so much time. I’m a teacher, so I had to spend my 25 minute lunch huddled over my desk, strapped to a pump–and repeat the process on my planning period, and then at least once after I got home and once about 4:30 in the morning (plus actual nursing sessions). At a time that I was juggling a baby that didn’t sleep well, over 200 students, 3 different classes, and moderate post-partum depression. Losing an hour of work time and an hour of sleep time and the physical toll of nursing carried a huge cost for me. I didn’t enjoy the first year of my son’s life. I was constantly ashamed of my failures as both a teacher and a mother, because both suffered. Putting him on formula at 6 weeks, when I went back to work, might not have fixed all this, but it would have helped a great deal. And looking back on it now, I don’t think it would have hurt him any.
But here’s the deal. I kept doing all that for 7 months. And I did it because whenever I went anywhere for advice, I got this nebulous “Well, breast is best. So do it as long as you can.” That’s fucking useless. What does that even mean? I mean, if it was a matter of life or death, I could have done it forever. That doesn’t help me decide if it was worth the damage it did to my psyche, my relationships–including to my son and husband–my professional reputation. It’s not useful advice, it just meant that literally whatever I did, I would feel guilty, I would think I failed, I would blame myself. It was easy advice to give from others, because they weren’t paying the price I was paying. They didn’t have to take on any responsibility for asking me to endure the costs, or accept the consequences.
This is how I look at vague advice like “Women need to recognize there are predators out there and take reasonable precautions to keep themselves safe.” That doesn’t mean anything. There’s no actual advice there. It’s this vague idea that you need to do something, and if anything happens, it means you didn’t do enough. It puts the whole range of normal, everyday activities under the umbrella of “potentially unsafe” and doesn’t attempt to say what is or isn’t unreasonable. It doesn’t acknowledge that there may well be things that do lessen your exposure, but are not worth the cost to your quality of life. It leaves it on me to decide “what I am comfortable with”, but no tools to evaluate if I am being wise or foolish. It’s all retroactive; if I was assaulted, I didn’t take reasonable precautions. If I wasn’t, they must be worth it.
You expressed the ability to empathize with these “criminals and rapists”. Thus, it seems logical to surmise you think that criminals and rapists are not that fundamentally different from you or any other guy.
When people give you advice, do you listen to it? Are you amenable to common sense wisdom handed down from trusted elders and role models? Do you think other guys are amenable to advice?
If your answer to this is yes, then why should we assume that potential criminals and rapists are any different?
If your answer is no (ie., You and/or men in general are resistant to advice and education), then why should you assume women are any different? Why should women listen to you and give any weight to your “common sense” wisdom, when you and other men are not expected to listen to the advice that comes from us?
Why shouldn’t we severly punish all young men when they have lapses of judgment, no matter how small, if men in general are a bunch of uneducable hard heads who are just gonna do what they are gonna do?
Like it mentioned in the Atlantic article I keep posting ( and you should read it if you can, although it may be paywalled for some. I subscribe so I’m not sure what their policy on free views is), one of the problems is that law enforcement doesn’t treat it like they do other serious and violent crimes.
If a house is burglarized, the police don’t concentrate their investigation on figuring out if the crime really happened. And sometimes people DO falsely accuse other people from stealing from them to get them in trouble. They don’t spend a lot of time considering if the homeowner maybe gave the burglar his TV set, even though it’s not unheard of for people to give away something, and later accuse them of stealing it when the relationship goes bad. They believe the victim unless there is compelling evidence otherwise. They don’t worry about damaging the reputation of the burglar.
And they don’t investigate in isolation, like they do with rape. With other serious crimes, they will look at patterns within the area to see if there are other victims and other clues that can lead them to the perpetrator. Even though rape has a lot in common with other serious crimes, and the same people frequently commit all of them. It has surprisingly little to do with sex.
I’m not being disingenuous. I haven’t seen you give examples of rules that you think women should follow but that men should not. You’ve told anecdotes. But what principles do you extract from those anecdotes? When your daughter says “Dad, what freedoms should I give up in the name of safety, what should I accept that it’s just not safe for me to do, but it’s safe for boys”, what do you tell her? Is it the same list for your wife?
I have given my list. Don’t get shit-faced.
I think the best thing we can do about rape is to arrest and prosecute rapists. I think the most important part of accomplishing that is to get rid of the narrative that incidences of rape could be meaningfully reduced if only women didn’t foolishly put themselves in danger. I think that the “rape rules” I was taught–and there is a list on the front page–make it harder for women to report rape and harder to convict rapists, because taken as a set they send the strong message that women can prevent rape, if only they accept these limits. I think that those limits send the message that rape is an immutable, inevitable thing, like tornados, and all we can do is take precautions. I think they mis-characterize the nature of rape and the risk factors of rape, asking women to make huge sacrifices for very minor increases in safety.
Rapists are not like other criminals. No other offender enjoys such a fierce defense on their behalf while the victim is perceived as the lying one.
For starters, it started way before Steubenville. We live in a sexist culture. Tell kids to call the cops. The Steubenville assholes were dragging the unconscious victim around and taking revenge porn shots. There’s some hints she may have been drugged. “Boys will be boys” needs to stop, period. If they were like the “Our Guys” rapists, they’d been getting away with assaults for years. Put them in jail. One of the unindicted “Our Guys” rapists was the son of a detective. (He was only unindicted because the victim and the victim’s family found the first trial to be so exhausting.) What did THEY talk about at the dinner table? (He went on to join the Army with the Army knowing he raped a disabled girl.) Imagine how much fun he must have been if you were a woman co-worker! He went on to shoot his wife and his wife’s boyfriend, then killed himself. Who have predicted that?! His dad assigned the detectives who investigated the case.
Rape doesn’t start at the doorway to a party. It starts with words that are used only to attack women, it starts with treating women differently, it starts with believing women are evil, conniving, emotional, “on the rag”, lying, deceitful, stupid, slutty, and all in all, in every way, less than men. Little kids soak that shit up.
Of course, it would help if scummy Americans hadn’t elected a lying, vicious, petty, malicious, profoundly stupid, traitorous, admitted----hell, boastful-----pussygrabber as President because they fantasize about getting away with it, too.
Fighting this shit will be the hardest crap you’ve ever tried, and you will be profoundly unpopular. Repubs have enshrined sexism as part of their platform, while some supposed liberals demonstrate profoundly different standards for Hillary “Goldwater Girl” Clinton and Bernie “Old Bitches” and “girls-can have-sex-and-babies-at-13” Sanders.
It’s not as simple as giving advice before parties. You have to be the killjoy. Rapists aren’t born. They’re teabags. They steep in the culture, they’re created by the culture, and there’s no conspiracy, it’s just a culture acting on its citizens. You dive in water, you get wet.
I would hope that police don’t fail to investigate fully. I think with rape is that if one party or the other lies about the act then there really isn’t all that much to go on. Without reliable witnesses, or bruising or other such evidence of non consensual sex. Rough(er) sex could just be rough sex. I do agree that the scope could probably be broadened but how if no one steps up to defend the accused or the accuser?
Very few other crimes are this way.
I think they have done a disservice to rape victims by conflating rape and date rape as one in the same. Criminally they are the same but date rape (unless done by a serial date rapist ) seems to be incredibly hard to prove. Especially if it is only a he said/she said scenario, alcohol was involved, and/or no witnesses were around
I think the biggest thing that could be done is to report report report. And for that we need to all be on board with getting that information out there and across.
Because there are several types of rape. Violent rape and date rape being tow of them. Other than “be aware” not much advice on violent rape- which as you said is against all sorts of victims. But date rape is often vs a attractive younger woman. And date rape has some good preventable tips. However, I dont think clothing is a issue.
Pretty much none. I mean yes, getting drunk with a bunch of strangers could get a woman raped- which isnt so likely for a man- but the male could wake up in a alley, with everything of value gone, including possibly his clothes even.