I absolutely agree with you that this is a systemic problem in society. Paternalistic and misogynistic attitudes are pervasive. I know I see things through a stereotypical male perspective of “this is a problem and here’s the solution”. I live in a household of all women and see what they go through. I’m interpreting their challenges through my male perspective, but I’m aware of that and try to empathize to the best of my ability. But clearly I have many male biases and my communication style is male-centric. I’m honestly trying to have this conversation here to learn more and change society for the better.
Even though these discussions are contentious, I feel they are valuable and have been helpful for my understanding. Like, when I mentioned the example of the woman in gym clothes with headphones on in the dark, I was greatly over estimating the risk. Likely there is some additional risk, but it is relatively negligible and not really worth any effort to change. Maybe some creep will leer or some rando will hit on her, but that’s about it. There are other factors that are similar, like appearance in general. It in itself may increase the risk slightly, but it’s so negligible of an increase that it’s not really worth the effort to worry about.
It’s a true story and it’s all the same stuff that has been mentioned here. Marie was not believed by male police officers and ended up signing a statement that she lied and the city charged her with a crime of filing a false report. The serial rapist then continued on until women detectives were able to put the pieces together and capture him. I watched that with disgust at the process and total understanding that is the real situation women are facing.
But how does that apply here? No one is arguing that we shouldn’t tell kids not to get blackout drunk. What are the “factual” arguments that are not being adequately addressed, in your opinion?
What reality am I ignoring. I am not being coy. Please tell me. Because “other than do no get incoherently drunk”, I don’t think it’s a reality that I need to modify my behavior in order to stay safe.
Do you think it’s a reality that things like wearing provocative clothing, traveling alone and traveling with men are things that it is really not safe for women to do? Do you think it’s a reality that doing those things increases the chance of a woman being assaulted so much it’s not worth it to push against those “rules” on principle?
What about women who, outside suburban enclaves, go outside after dark, like to walk to a car at the mall or at work, or jog in public parks? Do you think they are ignoring the reality that it simply isn’t safe for them to do such things?
Thanks for the great discussion between you all, it is interesting to read.
But just so I’m clear, if my daughter comes to me and asks “Hey Dad, anything I can do to reduce my chances of being sexually assaulted?” the answer is “Other than don’t get incoherently drunk, there is absolutely nothing that you can do to reduce your chances, so don’t worry about changing anything.”
Well, for starters, as I’ve said before, nobody acknowledges all the impossibly numerous things women already do to keep ourselves.
** Women already work hard to protect ourselves.**
That’s because society has abdicated on its end of the social contract with women.
The social contract to men says, “Okay, we’re going to take away your right to say, settle things by trial by combat and replace it with a system that gives you guaranteed fairness and justice because it’s one size for everybody. Trial by combat is inherently capricious and no real measure of justice. This protects the weak and the strong alike. You’re in charge of your possessions---- er,
family. Deal?”
Whereas women get, “Yeah, we don’t give a shit. If you can fight the guy off, better not hurt him because then we’ll charge you with assault. How dare you take up arms against your betters. If you get attacked, you get blamed. If you get attacked, you asked for it. You’re smaller and weaker, but that won’t get recognized unless it benefits men in some way. Basically, we don’t want to think about how it’s still trial by combat for women except we don’t let you have weapons at all, and this whole subject makes our brains hurt, so STFU and accept your place as the punching bag you were meant to be. Hey, we always said, “All men are created equal,” what did you expect?”
She should do what boys should do to avoid other sorts of crimes. Don’t go off with a group of strangers that are drinking. Don’t go out with other people if you don’t have a way to get yourself home independently (this can be a person you could call, or uber, or cab fare). If a situation starts to feel off to you, leave. If someone tries to get you to go somewhere or do something you don’t want to do, it’s okay to tell them to fuck off.
How come guys never seem to have sons? Or do boys just get the message that anything goes because it’ll be blamed on girls?
Girls and women can only do so much when men have completely abdicated their entire side of the discussion. Without advice and admonishments and punishment for boys, you’re telling girls that they have to do ALL the work.
If boys and men policed other men the way they police women and girls, then it would be fair to offer girls and women advice. But when people throw up their hands and give up because of some excuse about how rapists won’t listen, that’s accepting ‘how things are.’ But boys and men face nothing like the campaigns of ignorance women deal with. As long as there’s dress codes in schools and places of work that codify womens’ and girls body parts as “distracting”----but not men and boys’-----then, no, there is no argument that men are being lectured at like women are.
And if he hasn’t done this before, which he may have (and I know I sound like a broken record here but some people aren’t getting it), at some point in the future, he will probably react in the same way and do it to another woman.
Let’s say someone broke a store window and stole a really nice expensive computer. Who do you think the prime suspect would be, the guy who really liked computers or a guy with a record of breaking windows and stealing stuff?
Men and women are both at risk of being the victims of crimes. Women are at a much higher risk, however, of being the victim of rape. And while rape obviously has some similarities to other crimes, there’s no reason to think that it’s so identical to other crimes that any advice that would reduce one’s risk of being raped would also reduce one’s risk of other crimes, and vice versa.
So while I am not claiming that any specific piece of advice one might give to a woman would actually be effective in reducing her risk of being raped (should she choose to follow it), I feel like the implicit claim you’re making here, which is that there is automatically NO possible specifically-to-avoid-rape advice that is not also generic keep-yourself-safe advice, is overbroad.
I don’t think you are responding at all to what I’m saying. I’m in no way trying to downplay the responsibility, either legal or ethical, or someone who commits a rape more or less “on the spur of the moment”, compared to someone who does so with full premeditation. Both are equally guilty and both (if convicted in a court of law) should go away for a long time.
But if the distinction does exist, then it’s important to understand for purposes of prevention and reduction. If 95% of rapes are committed by serial multiple rapists who leave the house with a rape kit and a plan in mind and aren’t going back home until they commit a rape, then the best strategies both among law enforcement and among women who don’t want to be victims is potentially quite different than if 95% of rapes are committed by a guy who, while certainly a bad guy and maybe already a criminal, hadn’t been intending all along to commit a rape; until various factors lined up “just right”.
(a) you’re kind of fighting the hypothetical, as I specifically proposed that this risk factor had been proven
(b) that said, I think this brings up a very interesting point. Suppose someone hypothesizes that doing X significantly increases one’s risk of suffering Y (whether it’s a disease or a crime or what have you), and some preliminary data suggests that that maybe true, and no one has any reason to think that doing X is actively harmful in any other way. Should no one be told of this possible correlation until enough time has passed that that data is absolutely positively 100% in support of the hypothesis, all other variables being accounted for? I don’t think there’s an easy one-size-fits-all answer to that question.
It’s not that black and white. What if was the reasoned opinion of a group of law enforcement professionals who genuinely believed their advice to be correct based on years of personal experience… but of course, they could be wrong due to sample size, inherent biases, incorrect assignment of cause and effect, etc. But does that mean they should just never offer advice until/unless it can be rigorously proven? Which for something as nebulous as “ways to reduce being the victim of crimes” is awfully close to never?
And again, if repainting your house means that you have to cancel your son’s trip to Disneyland and stop your piano lessons, well, then it’s up to you to decide how to spend your money. But it seems awfully presumptuous to decide that whatever valuation you personally choose to put on those different factors is so obviously the right one that your decision should be made by all women everywhere.
That’s a fair reaction, and I wasn’t sure I should write that post the way I did. I wanted to make absolutely clear that I wasn’t actually claiming any of these pieces of advice were useful. I certainly wasn’t trying to impose that acronym on any further discussion. I’ll happily use the phrase “rape rules” as long as no one reads anything into my using it.
Not meaning to come off as if I’m "gotcha"ing you here, and obviously not everyone in this thread who is arguing with me has to agree with each other about everything, but isn’t this claim in direct contradiction to the narrative that a lot of people have been pushing? Namely, that rapists do NOT choose their victims based on the victims’ apparent attractiveness?
I would agree that a women with a very high BMI is (somewhat) less likely to be raped than a woman with an average/below BMI. But I would say so for precisely the same so-called-common-sense reasons that I would say that a woman wearing revealing clothes and makeup and with her hair done up to look attractive is (somewhat) more likely to raped than a woman wearing a shapeless concealing jumpsuit, and no makeup.
The only strategies that we know would signficantly reduce a woman’s risk of rape also ones that put severe constraints on her freedom.
Don’t go to bars, clubs, and parties.
Don’t date.
Don’t ever leave your house.
A woman who followed this advice would definitely have a lower risk of being raped than a woman who didn’t follow it.
But it is not reasonable advice.
And advising just women to avoid getting totally wasted while in the company of people they don’t know is like telling just men to avoid cleaning a gun without first making sure it is unloaded. Men are eleventy-billion times more likely to shoot someone or themselves accidentally than women are, and yet we would never think to target gun safety tips just at men.
I’m not addressing it because I agree with it nearly entirely. I mean, every time a woman posts an example of how their claims of being sexually harassed were ignored by the old boys’ network I could respond and say “that’s awful, it sucks that you have to deal with that, let’s work to improve society so that’s less often the case”. But I don’t see what that would accomplish other than trying to win virtue points.
I agree with 98% of the general female-forward opinion on the topic. Is victim blaming after the fact bad? Yes. Is it horrific that Brock Turner got off with such a light sentence? Yes. Do numerous aspects of society work together to reinforce the idea that women are just possessions and status symbols to be coveted and pursued by men, and does that feed into rape culture? Yes.
But I do think that some very specific claims being made in one specific corner of this debate are unsupported and overbroad. And since that’s where I disagree with the majority, that’s what all of my posts end up being about, in an attempt to resolve and explore that disagreement.
Don’t go into a guys dorm room, apartment, house or hotel room alone with him unless you intend to have sex with him. Because possibly he will interpret you going into his room with him as consent, and once you are alone with him in his space (or yours) your options contract.
If I guy seems creepy, don’t give him the benefit of the doubt - keep your distance. Its better to be safe than to be nice.
And yeah, that would be it. Those three pieces of advice. That’s all I’ve ever given my own daughter.
And being someone in authority over your daughter, you get to give her this advice. You don’t get to give it to your coworker or your cousin on Christmas Eve. Which means your daughter will get this advice a few times in her life - once from her parents, once probably in high school, once at college orientation, once from a girlfriend. The problem is that the twelfth time you get this advice, its patronizing and unnecessary.
According to the Justice department there are 164,000 people in jail for rape and sexual assault, the vast majority of them men arrested for assaulting women. Meanwhile the number of women arrested for fighting off an attempted rape is so low that it is impossible to find data on. Attempted rape is a crime in every state and thousands of people are convicted every year.
There is absolutely no truth in what you are saying.
This stupid leap in logic of yours is a perfect illustration of why the kind of “common sense” advice you are advocating is dangerous.
Who is more likely to be out in the world and engaged in social settings where rapists are? A 150 lb woman or a 600 lb woman? Who is more likely to be dating? I would expect that a woman in good health has a higher rape risk profile than a woman who is in poor health, because the latter is more likely to be confined to her house. Who is more likely to be in poor health? The woman with an average BMI or the woman with a BMI at the 95th percentile?