I have a son too. I’m asking about my daughter. Unless you think I shouldn’t give her any advice without making sure my son is in the room too?
I find it unlikely that my son will ever ask me “Is there anything I can do to lower my risk of being sexually assaulted” because in my experience, as a guy, it’s not something most guys ever worry about.
Would it surprise you if your daughter never asks you that question?
Because I don’t think that is a question that girls are inclined to ask their parents either. Parents will talk to their daughters about how to stay safe without their daughters ever broaching the topic.
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This seems to go against the “There isn’t anything that you also wouldn’t tell your son” bit. I’d never tell my son not to go into a guys dorm room unless you intend to have sex with him. So this bit of advice does, in fact, seem to be just for women.
I’m only asking about my daughter, not anybody else. I try not to give unsolicited advice to people, especially about such a sensitive topic.
For what it’s worth, I really appreciate you saying this.
What makes discussions like this so frustrating is that women’s lived experience very often is discounted in favor of men’s hunches, guesses, and assumptions.
Take the canard about clothing being a risk factor. There is a reason women will be the first to tell you this is wrong thinking. It’s because we’ve had enough experience with being groped, harassed, and assaulted to know how minor clothing is to this problem. We’ve experienced these things while wearing jeans, T-shirts, business suits, club wear, military uniforms, yoga pants, flannel pajamas, nun habits, bikinis, cargo pants, mini skirts, oversized sweatshirts, etc. So we know, from our own experiences, that clothing is essentially a red herring. It’s maddening to see men assert otherwise, particularly when they speak from the land of hypothetical.
That’s fair. I try to treat my kids as people, and not underlings who have to obey all my commands at all times. As they are 15 and 16 now, there is little I can offer them that they don’t already know 
I wouldn’t find it surprising if the topic never came up. However, if it does, I’d like to sort of know what to say. My ingrained “my daughter is my little girl and needs protected” instincts are hard to overcome. It’s not logical, and that annoys me. I’m good with most other things, but sorry, I don’t have anyone to ask about stuff like this. I am looking for what’s best for her, and my son of course, not what’s best for me. That’s why I’m asking here.
Not sure if you want to get this personal (and this isn’t meant to be accusatory or an interrogation in any way), but have you talked with her before about how women and girls are treated, broadly, in society, emphasizing her rights (to consent, to not be touched unless she wants to, etc.)? And/or have you taken opportunities when confronted with slut-shaming or other forms of misogyny in public, the media, etc., to emphasize to her how terribly wrong and harmful this stuff is?
Basically, what monstro said. The things that would actually make a difference are incredibly life-limiting. I don’t want to have a theoretical discussion of whether or not there might be some personal freedoms that, theoretically, I should give up to keep myself safe. I want to talk about actual cases. And I don’t see compelling evidence that the restrictions recommended to me increase my safety much, if at all, and the ones that might are not worth it.
What restrictions on your current life would you adopt if you were a woman? What things that you do now, or did when you were young, do you think are safe and appropriate for a man but unsafe for a woman?
It’s not enough to say “everyone has to make that decision based on what seems best”. That’s just passive-aggressively blaming the victim in advance. “I think there might be a monster in that room. I have no idea how likely it is that one is in there, but I think it might be dangerous. But I am not going to tell you not to. You have to decide for yourself. Also, here are a 1000 mostyl fictional stories of girls who got eaten by monsters in rooms like that. But you make your own choices.”
Look, honestly, the single best way to prevent rape (and child abuse) would be to make it illegal for a man to live in a house with underage children that he was not the father of. But we don’t do that because we rightly see that that is a devastating loss of personal freedom, for men and women–it’s not worth it. Fuck, even if it was worth it, we wouldn’t do it, because personal freedom matters. But society (not just men) are comfortable telling women to make huge cuts to their personal freedom “just in case”. And that’s a culture of victim-blaming.
I think this is smart and I didn’t mean to put you on the defense.
I think your daughter will be more likely to ask how to handle a creepy guy than anything else. Creepy guys are much more common than rapists, and harassment is much more common than rape. If I were advising a young woman on how to handle a creepy guy (let’s say, a guy who just won’t take “I don’t want to go out on a date with you” for an answer), I would tell her to not worry about being polite or sparing feelings. She needs to make it clear that the guy is crossing a line and that he needs to back the fuck up. Way too often, we tell girls that they have to be nice at all times. Don’t be a bitch, we tell them. Well, fuck that shit! Be a bad-ass bitch. Go ahead and tell that creepy guy you aren’t interested and will never be interested, so he needs to keep on walking. If you are too nicey-nicey with a guy like that, he will never leave you the alone.
I had a guy stalk me all four years of high school. I never thought to ask my mother for advice, but I kinda wish I had. Maybe she would have given me the go-ahead to go off on the motherfucker instead of being “nice girl”.
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Yes, I do that if it comes up. They live with their mother and I see them on the weekends usually, so it doesn’t come up all that often. I mean, if I see a scene in the Office where a character is slut-shamed, I don’t point it out and say “don’t do that” or anything like that but for real life news or other situations like that, I try to point out where traditional sexist (and racist and other -ists) behavior is incorrect and shouldn’t be tolerated.
Nah, I’m not on the defense, it’s cool. It’s hard sometimes on this board to actually want to know info about a topic without being accused of JAQ off, or trolling or whatever.
Thanks for this answer, makes sense to me.
Get a copy of Gavin deBecker’s book “The Gift of Fear.” Read it, then require both your kids to read it as well. Sit down with both of them and have an in depth conversation regarding consent, sexual assault (both giving and getting) and social requirements that feed into rape culture. Assure both kids that if they come to you to tell you something happened that you will always believe them and advocate for them.
While watching movies and tv shows, be aware of rape culture narratives and stop to ask if the kids have noticed something problematical in the media they’re consuming. Have regular conversations regarding patriarchal attitudes and how those affect women’s lives and excuse men’s behaviors. Encourage the kids to point these out–have a supply of candy available to toss to them every time they identify a problematical interaction in media–sounds silly, but making it a game helps them to more readily identify and call out sexism, racism, rape culture dynamics and the like.
Don’t have just one conversation and think that’s all that’s necessary. Normalize talking about troublesome behaviors and media presentations and keep raising awareness–and encourage the kids to spread that knowledge and awareness to their peers as well. Keep doing this and I think you might become rather shocked to see just how much normalized rape culture you’ve been soaking in without conscious awareness. It’s pervasive and gross as fuck once you see it and once you see it you can’t go back to shrugging and being indifferent because these are messages people with a dodgy agenda are trying to inculcate your children with and that is not cool.
But that’s not apparent in your posts.
What we’re talking about is a mindset that is centuries old. Women are saying, look, this mindset originates from a time when misogynism reigned unchallenged; can we please stop promoting ideas that ultimately end up psychologically damaging sexual assault victims? And in response to this request, we see men staunchly and persistently defending these ideas, either because they don’t think sexism is relevant or because they are indifferent to sexism.
I don’t see you acknowledging the wackiness of that Fort Bragg piece. I don’t see you acknowledging the role of sexism in perceptions towards rape. So it makes it hard to trust you are arguing from an enlightened standpoint.
Multiple times you’ve floated the idea that attractiveness is a risk factor for rape. Where is *your *support?
Sorry, I seem to have genuinely misinterpreted what you were saying in your previous quote.
I think there is a lot of advice that only goes towards cis-women. Never travel without bringing along some extra pads, your period can surprise you…to be a smartass about it. But I have known some guys to be assaulted by gay men because they went into a room along, or drank too much, and were clueless that the guy had been spending the evening coming onto them, signals were crossed, and no was not taken for an answer. Its just far rarer for a man to be sexually assaulted either by another man or by a woman, that it doesn’t occur to us that this might be worthwhile advice.
If there were a lot of rapes “committed on the spur of the moment,” there’d be a lot more Brock Turners getting caught.
Why are people assuming that the supposedly one-and-done guys didn’t plan? Or that they’re at the beginning of a string? Or that their other victims didn’t get silenced or just weren’t in a position to report? Any rape requires several overt acts to commit and escape: that alone argues some degree of premeditation. If it’s a gang rape, then there’s no doubt.
I think the supposedly single offense guys have done other things that they just get away with because women are so resigned to a lot of the low-level crap we have to deal with. (Ask women how old they were the first tine they got harassed in public by adult men! It’ll be fun!)
Brock Turner was surrounded by an extraordinary crew of rape-enablers. What would he be doing now if he had not gotten caught? His dad said it was a “few minutes of action” that left poor Brockie unable to enjoy his favorite steak any more. His best friend declared something-something about being forced into a van. His mom said, “He will be damaged forever.” His grandparents said, “Brock is the only person being held accountable for the actions of other irresponsible adults.” Huh? Did somebody grab his dick and pull him by it to the victim?
Other girls at various parties with Brockie said he was grabby or tried to grope them. That makes sense because rape isn’t a crime you just start off with.
There’s been a LOT of dudes getting probation for one rape these days. “Athlete gets probation for rape” brings up two other names, while “tennis player rape” brings up two names and cases I didn’t know, while I was looking for a different name. Turns out there’s a lot of adult men raping underaged and disabled girls-----and getting probation.
Yeah, I’m sure that slap on the wrist will deter the white boys who raped a black, disabled, classmate, or the guy who lured a disabled girl to rape her, or the school bus driver who raped a fourteen-year-old girl.
I appreciate the mea culpa. But do you understand my greater point?
It is easy to find risk factors. Unfortunately it is way too tempting to use an identified risk factor as a prescription for behavior. And this it is majorly stupid. For instance, we know that city dwellers have a greater risk of developing schizophrenia than rural dwellers. But no one should use this singular piece of information to justify an expensive move to the country. A statistic based on a broad group (Americans between the ages of 19 to 34), doesn’t provide enough information for an individual to determine their absolute risk. You could move to the country and wind up developing schizophrenia because your new job is more stressful than the one you had in the big city. If only you had done more research, you could have found.the study showing that job stress is a better predictor than land development for white men ages x to y with alleles a, b, and z. You took the one piece of information that made sense to you and ran with it without considering the weight of all the unknowns. That is not reasonable. Look up “ecological fallacy” if you want to learn more.
So in the context of rape, if we did find out that BMI is a risk factor and that was the only piece of information we had, there just isn’t enough information in that finding for a woman to determine if she is particularly “at risk”. If she is 600 lbs and she spends eight hours a day meeting up with guys she matches on Tinder, she will likely have a greater risk of victimization than a 120 lb woman who never leaves her house and doesn’t even use the internet. So it wouldn’t make sense for the fat girl to feel extra safe and secure over the skinny girl. And it really wouldn’t make sense for the housebound skinny girl to change her attire, reduce her alcohol consumption, or increase her body weight in the hopes of reducing her chances of being raped. That would be utterly bananas. We shouldn’t encourage people to be bananas.
I think researchers have a duty to caution people not to extrapolate too much from their research. A study that finds BMI to be a significant risk factor is interesting because it spurs follow-up research to pinpoint what covariates are the best predictors. It should not be used for any other purpose than that.
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So what were the babies wearing that turned men on, diapers? Were they wearing too much baby powder? Acting all seductive? Were they drunk? Which rape rules were these preverbalbabies guilty of transgressing?
Seriously, stop with the “attractiveness” arguments and discussions of how clothing choices influence rapists because it’s BULLSHIT and those perniciously pervasive ideas need to die screaming. Rapists rape because raping is what turns them on–the victims are just the ones who were there when they decided to commit a rape.
Honestly, this argument will probably never go away. It’s such an easy assumption to make. It’s not something that’s taught. Through this conversation, I’ve better understood why I had this misunderstanding. For me, it can be quite compelling to notice how some women are dressed. And it doesn’t necessarily have to do with how much is revealed. If everyone wore burkas, I would find the flash of an ankle exciting. But in any case, a woman in revealing clothing–whatever that may be–is compelling. It makes her stand out among the general background, and I make the false assumption that she would stand out to rapists in a similar manner. But the non-obvious reality is that rapists are looking for characteristics important to them, and appearance just may be one of many things they may or may not be interested in. That’s not an obvious difference that most men would realize on their own (myself included). Men are always going to be attracted to women based on appearance, so they are likely going to always be making this kind of assumption.
Only as long as they assume that shared maleness gives them more in common with rapists than shared morality gives them with rape victims. And that’s not likely to happen, but I think it’s super important to realize that part of the reason we have rape culture is that we raise our boys to be literally incapable of identifying with women.
And if we can have conversations with girls about how not to get raped, I don’t see why we can’t have conversations like this with boys. I mean, my son is 8 and I’ve worked in ideas about consent (and stories with female leads) since before he could talk. Not in a sexual way, but just in the idea that people have the right to control what happens to them, and that you don’t get to compel others to do things your way.
This is why we push back against these ideas, because they are shit, they let rapists off the hook, they normalize rapists and give them a fig leaf to hide behind. Again I ask, what were the babies wearing? Were they too attractive? How about the 85 year old nun, what was her transgression of the rape rules? This is why we refuse to bow down and allow the myth of rape being a “sex crime” to continue unchallenged–it’s not about sex, it’s about inflicting pain and asserting control using a penis. That’s it. Attractiveness, BMI, age, nothing has a goddamned thing to do with why rapists rape and it’s NOT WOMEN’S FAULT THAT RAPISTS ARE FUCKING SICK IN THE NUGGET. Nothing we do or don’t do is going to stop a rapist, the best we can hope for is that he doesn’t rape US and grabs some other poor woman instead. Which does not actually solve the problem, y’know? It doesn’t help to say “well, at least it wasn’t ME!” That’s way too sick an attitude for me to accept.