Advice about how to dress (or similarly superficial things) to avoid rape strikes me as similar to advice to use special spiritual crystals to purify one’s water when a toxic chemical plant moves next door. Not only is the advice completely useless in the presumed goal, but it totally ignores the real problem – the fucking toxic chemical plant that just moved in! And in both circumstances, it’s hard to believe that the advice-giver is anything other than either pathetically ignorant or a dishonest gaslighter.
Can you read the article about McCann and tell me whether any of his crimes were “intuitive” for you?
There are lot of things that men do that are counterintuitive to me personally, but I’ve long ago accepted that it is what it is. Like, it still boggles the mind that my husband wanted to have sex with me days after having my last child. Objectively speaking, there was nothing remotely attractive about me at that time. I’m not being self-deprecating either. I looked like Grimace with Sideshow Bob hair. But even though I don’t “get” how he could even think of having sex with me, he showed me evidence.
Sometimes you have to accept what the evidence says, and not go with intuition.
Substitute “cat burglar” with “armed invader”, if that paints a scarier picture to you.
Would you paint your house a crazy fluorescent color to reduce the likelihood of your family experiencing a home invasion, wherein you and your family are all hog-tied and held at gunpoint before all of you are killed?
Sent from my moto x4 using Tapatalk
It wasn’t that one, monstro, though I used a similar example. It was super-explicit: women were morally obligated to report assaults to the police, but morally obligated not to report assaults to any but their closest confidants otherwise, because if they couldn’t prove it, it was slander.
Max, I find your acronym annoying. It feels like an attempt to take control of the argument, and to treat it like you are a scientist studying this strange tribe called “women”. I have been using “rape rules” throughout the thread and I think that works just fine. It also bothers me that after all these pages of testimony, you think these are open questions we haven’t begun to address. Like, you finally see the discussion the rest of us have been having for days, and you think you’ve invented it and are appointing yourself moderator. I understand that you didn’t intend it that way, and I’m reading charitably, but I wanted to convey that that was my reaction.
I also find it interesting that you apparently think looking like a fugly old woman would exempt one from the rape rules. Fugly old women follow them more carefully than anyone, if for no other reason than being old and fragile make you less likely to resist or survive a rape. Plus, in my experience, they were raised in an era in which the rape rules were gospel.
Yes, that is a valid comparison and I would make major changes to my life to try to reduce the risk of that happening. If there was something which made me 50x more likely than normal to have armed invaders break in kill me and my family, I would do whatever I could to reduce that to more normal levels. An example might be that I win the lottery and everyone knows I keep the millions at home in cash. That would put me at a very high risk of violent harm and I would make major changes to reduce that risk even if they were inconvenient. With the typical cat burglar, I wouldn’t go to great lengths to protect my TV or whatever.
Using this line of thinking, is it productive to consider changes in those specific situations where the risk of rape is highest? As I’ve said before, I feel the risk is very high in the situation of rowdy teenage boys with an incapacitated girl. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the specific situation with the highest risk of all. In that specific situation, is it worth taking extraordinary precautions?
Add into that how many rapes aren’t reported, and I’d bet that there’s a lot more “serial” rapists than people think.
This is say nothing of the rape report suppression several police departments have been caught doing----Philadelphia springs to mind, though they’ve reportedly improved. There was a study that MRAs used to like to cite as if it were reliable, by a guy named Eugene Kanin. Kanin studied a small police force in a small town. It had a rate of false rape reports of 41%. He was not permitted to name the town or the police chief.
It was standard practice for the PD to demand a lie detector test from every rape victim----and only rape victims----before they’d even be taken to the hospital. If you think that that attitude toward women wasn’t apparent from the get go, you’d be wrong.
Then there’s these guys.Inside the NYPD's Special Victims Division
“Nine times out of ten if she asks for a woman, it’s going to be a lie.” (Paraphrasing because I’m typing as fast as I can.) Yeah, you’d be able to smell that guy a mile away.)
For me, advice about dress is idiotic even if there was empirical evidence that rapists are influenced by clothing. I can certainly imagine that a survey of American rapists might reveal they are more likely to rape women dressed in clothing that is fashionable and trendy than women who dress in shapeless caftans and mumus. But I am also guessing that survey would find little to no difference in the level of “rapist attraction” towards women who shop at Ann Taylor versus women who shop at Fredericks of Hollywood.
So when a guy says “dress more modestly!”, they are probably thinking all a woman has to do is go from looking like a Fredericks of Hollywood model to an Ann Taylor model. But they have no basis for thinking this shift will make any difference to the average rapist! These guys don’t consider the very real possibility that a woman has to make big changes to her appearance to make a signficant change to her risk level. Most women aren’t dressed in Frederick of Hollywood attire anyway. Most of us dress pretty conservatively. So what are we supposed to do? Go from Ann Taylor to Walmart caftans? That is crazy unreasonable. But for the mansplainy guy, it is just common sense.
Sent from my moto x4 using Tapatalk
Everyone should be taking the most extreme precautions when someone is incapacitated. Period. I don’t see why “rowdy teenage boys” adds anything to that. I don’t think “girl” adds anything to that. If my son is ever incapacitated from drink at a party, I hope his BFF stays by his side until he is safe home. If the only precaution you think is important is that, we don’t disagree–as I said literally on the first page.
However, I still don’t see any acceptable standard that only applies to girls, not boys.
I think most of this whole debate can be boiled down to this:
There is a big difference between what ought to be and what actually is. Much of the debate is two sides talking past each other, when in fact they agree but simply don’t want to acknowledge that the other side has a valid point.
This is the key point here. I have no idea what I would be doing. But if that statistic existed and was true, I think it would be reasonable to let people know. Some people might choose to make that tradeoff. Others might not. It would certainly be ridiculous and offensive to laugh at someone whose house was robbed if they did not choose to repaint their house. But it would (imho) NOT be ridiculous and offensive to include that information in a neighborhood-watch-list-of-ways-to-keep-your-house-safe.
(That’s all assuming that the statistics in fact exist and we’re fairly confident that, at present, the reduction in risk is real… not just that it’s someone’s intuition.)
My question wasn’t would you make major changes. My question was would you re-paint the color of your house?
Personally, I would not make a major change to my life without know what my absolute risk is. Just knowing I can reduce my risk of something without knowing the likelihood of that something happening to me in the first place doesn’t help me one bit. I know that I could reduce the likelihood of me being flooded out of my home by installing a flood wall around my property. But I live on a ridge nowhere near the flood plain. So it would be insane for me to spend money on a flood wall. Even if it did give me peace of mind.
I would question the wisdom of anyone who puts relative risk above absolute risk.
Sent from my moto x4 using Tapatalk
“Confluence of events” is passive. Sexual deprivation does not cause rape. You’re blaming it on “horniness”, getting “shot down”----like, is this an aerial plane battle?-----a woman “who pushed all the wrong buttons”, “full of anger”, drunkenness, and stuff that just kind of…happens to this guy. It’s all passive, except for women attacking him-----they “shoot him down.” They “push all the wrong buttons.” That’s aggressive language, implying deliberate acts on the part of women. Even “got too drunk” is kind of passive. (I’m reminded of the famous Anita Loos phrase, “Someone became shot.”)
In your scenario, all these things just happen to this guy and he just kind of…stumbles into rape. He’s just drunk and horny, got “shot down” several times, had “the wrong buttons” pushed. If she “pressed all the wrong buttons”, then that’s something she did. Her actions are seemingly the issue, not his reaction.
How come the guy has no responsibility here to not respond in a way that will affect the rest of the woman’s life? If he can’t handle rejection, he needs to stop drinking and stay home. If he experiences all these things as a kind of assault on his senses or whatever, then he’s *looking *to be provoked.
Getting drunk * is a choice.* Choosing to view women as pushing the wrong buttons is a choice. Putting himself in a position to be “shot down” (multiple times) is making the same choice several times. Getting “too drunk” is a choice. Getting angry at not getting laid----“getting laid” is not something he’s entitled to-----is a choice. Being horny is something he can choose, too. Masturbate, for chrissake.
It sounds like men live a passive existence, where they mysteriously get drunk and then women shoot them down and push all the wrong buttons.
So. This guy went to a bar.* He *hoped to meet a girl. He hoped to get laid. Women shot him down—how many times? He chose to drink several beverages, enough to get drunk. He chose to get angry. He chose to get horny. He chose to view some woman as “pushing all the wrong buttons.” And then he chose to rape her.
How many choices are a guy setting up.a scenario where he gets to claim he’s really just a victim of circumstances, like everybody else? Sounds like our hypothetical guy here has not just one but several chips on his shoulders, and he finds excuses to see hostility in womens’ actions toward him. Not the other way around.
margin already asked for one and I waited in case you replied to that, but you haven’t. So: cite please?
What actually is is a nifty way of avoiding the words “sexism” and various other unpleasant things. What ought to be could just be phrased as, “fighting sexism.”
Lots of awful, evil things are the way things actually are. We’re not talking a culture where witchcraft is a commonly-held belief that would imply ignorance. We’re talking about a culture with rockets and the internet, which somehow simultaneously believes that men are just passively acted on by fate and emotions and circumstances that all add up to cause rape but are somehow still regarded far more logical and trustworthy than women.
I read this as saying that I know that women actually need to take precautions that significantly limit their freedom but that I don’t want to acknowledge that these things are true. Is this what you mean? I am really asking, not trying to be snarky. I don’t understand this comment, otherwise.
Yep…I remember. Couldn’t find it, but I remember.
Here is the thing on advice - unless I ask for it, or you are in a position of authority (and simply being a man isn’t a position of authority), keep it to yourself. If you are a cop giving a seminar on what I can do to prevent risk - you’ve checked both boxes, I’m there because I’m asking, and you are probably knowledgeable. This goes for everything, how to raise kids, how to manage money, how to write a resume, how to poach an egg and how to avoid being the victim of a crime. If 1) they aren’t asking for advice and/or 2) you aren’t an authority on the subject, keep your mouth closed.
I’m giving you this advice because you asked in the title of the thread. And because I do have some small amount of authority via experience and training on the topics of sexual harassment and assault.
I’ve done rape crisis counseling and worked with victims of sexual harassment. I have never had “how to prevent rape” come up in casual mixed conversation (it has come up with my girlfriends). If, for some reason, it comes up at your next cocktail party, its time to say “have you seen Baby Yoda…so cute!” Triggery conversations aren’t good conversations for polite company.
Advice given after the fact isn’t advice, its criticism. If I serve you a poached egg and you say “oh, you should have added vinegar to the water” that isn’t helpful at this moment in time, it makes you look like an ass. If someone has been a victim of a violent crime, any criticism you make of their behavior is victim blaming.
As a scientist, I think it would be ridiculous to spread the word about this finding without caveating it to death. A risk factor does not imply causation. Maybe fluorescent houses are more likely to be in neighborhoods where armed robberies aren’t likely to occur. Maybe neutral colored houses with dead bolt locks are a lower risk of being robbed than fluorescent houses with dead bolt locks, but the study focusing on dead bolts hasn’t been published yet.
So no, it would not be reasonable. It would be irresponsible and downright stupid.
Some people think it is reasonable to reduce their likelihood of being struck by lightening by staying indoors all the time. They are willing to put up with the trade-offs because their fear of lightning is so off the charts that it controls every facet of their being. These people are mentally ill.
Sent from my moto x4 using Tapatalk
But what if it’s not a proven stat, it just makes intuitive sense to the guy who writes the newsletter? And what if repainting my house meant I had to cancel my son’s trip to Disneyland and stop his piano lessons?
I haven’t seen filmore, Max, or anyone on the “common sense risk reduction” side of the debate address the core concern for a lot us women here:
The historic sexism behind society’s focus on women’s behavior as it relates to male conduct, and how this still affects assumptions about rape.
Do y’all think this is just something we’re imagining? I don’t understand, for instance, how anyone could read that Fort Bragg article that DrDeth linked to, and not see how sexist it is for women to be singled out for tips and advice and admonishments about “wise decisions” when the subject wasn’t even limited to rape. Even for property crimes, women have to be lectured to by male authorities calling them “females”. We are expected to accept paternalistic sermons from men who never in a million years would accept such condescension themselves, because we are supposed to see ourselves as more weak, incompetent, and naïve than men.
When male posters continue to gloss over this big elephant in the room in favor of the same maxims and platitudes about risk, it really becomes hard to discuss this subject.
What I meant was (since we have had threads about this before):
In these threads, usually one side presents a **moral **argument and one presents a **factual **one. The moral side is: People shouldn’t have to take precautions, criminals shouldn’t commit crimes, etc. Which is flawless from a philosophical standpoint. But it runs into the factual side: We are in an evil world where bad things are done.
If I may Godwinize it to an extreme for a moment, it would be like someone saying that Jews in WWII Germany should have the freedom to walk about freely in public, unafraid of anyone - dressed to the nines as Jews, because anti-Semitism is wrong. For sure, anti-Semitism is wrong. But doing that is going to result in an automatic trip to Auschwitz or some similar camp.
Similarly, people shouldn’t have to lock car doors, lock house doors, avoid walking in dark alleys at 3 AM, etc. They should have perfect freedom without any fear of crime. Unfortunately, in an imperfect world, that can potentially lead to severe harm. It doesn’t make it the victim’s fault - the perpetrator is 100% at **moral **fault - but it is reality.