Every cop I’ve talked to says the best bit of advice is to follow your instincts. If someone sets off creepy vibes, go with it. Make a scene and get away. Don’t worry about offending some guy if he is innocent.
Anne Rule got hundreds of letters from women who claimed to have had an encounter with Ted Bundy, but something told them to get away. Were some of them bogus? Yes. But some of them were probably very real.
I’d rather look the fool who offended some man than be raped and killed.
MaxTheVool, the only women-specific advice extractable from the available data that would reduce a woman’s chances of being raped would also reduce her chances of living a happy, healthy, fulfilling life.
Now we can speculate that there are undiscovered fact patterns that upon discovery could point a woman to an individualized risk mitigation strategy that does not damage her quality of life relative to a man’s. But that is as interesting as speculating that there may be undiscovered fact patterns that upon discovery could point people to a procedure for turning cat turds into nuggets of anti-matter. Can we say with certainty that either is an impossible prospect? No. But given what we do know, does it not seem like these notions are navel-gazy bullshit?
Sent from my moto x4 using Tapatalk
I think that’s good advice, yes (though whether it’s necessary to make a scene is highly situation-dependent; but if you can’t get away without making a scene, that’s a pretty good sign that you ought to make one. A person whose intentions were OK after all is unlikely to make a fuss about your leaving.) But it’s good advice for people of any gender, not just for women; and it’s good advice for other dubious situations, not just for situations in which one suspects the person of being a rapist.
I genuinely don’t believe that anything like that is what motivates me. But, no particular way to convince you of that.
That said, if in fact there is no productive rape prevention advice, well, that might be true, but it’s certainly odd.
“Hey, I’m really worried about my children being kidnapped. What can I do to reduce the risk of that?”
“Here’s some general literature about ways to avoid being mugged or assaulted”
“Sure, but I’m specifically worried about my children being kidnapped. Isn’t there anything I can do specifically to avoid that?”
“Nope”
Buried in the morass above is my recommendation to read Gavin deBecker’s “The Gift of Fear.” It’s a book everyone should read, preferably while they’re young and impressionable. A finely tuned and properly paranoid creep-o-meter is the best tool any of us have to avoid trouble in life.
Again, what’s your recommendation or advice, aside from “Don’t be the kind of person whose children are liable to be kidnapped?” Please, enlighten us all on what kind of prevention for kidnapping advice YOU would give.
First question: why is the person really worried about their children being kidnapped?
If the answer is ‘because I’m a horribly rich person of power who has some very unpleasant enemies’, then I’m sure there’s specific advice for that situation, though what the advice is I expect depends on where and who the person is, how old the children are, what country they’re all in, and probably etcetera.
But that doesn’t mean that any of that advice is remotely appropriate for parents and children in general. It was entirely suitable for Barack Obama’s young children to have Secret Service protection on the way to school. It makes no sense whatsoever to say that this is good advice for all parents.
So if a specific person says, for instance, ‘my ex-husband is stalking me and has threatened to rape me’, I’m sure there’s specific advice for that situation that may help keep that particular person from being raped by that particular other person (though I suspect genuine cooperation from the police would be very helpful; and the person being stalked may or may not be able to get that.) But I’m also sure that giving that advice to all the women at freshman orientation would be a very bad idea.
Now if the person worried about their children being kidnapped has no particular reason to think that might happen, but is worried about Horrible Things happening to their children in general and has just seized on that one possibility: advice to not let two year olds wander around town alone; to teach five year olds what sort of behavior should be reported to a trusted adult (whether it’s sexual or stealing or bullying or playing with matches) and when they’re entitled to say NO to an adult or a buddy; to give a more age-suitable similar discussion to teenagers along with some basic self-defense information, information about alcohol/other drug use, and phones to call for a ride home on, etcetera – if the response is ‘but while that might reduce the chances of their being kidnapped, it might also decrease the chances of my kids being killed by or in a car or a fire, or being suckered into a shoplifting ring or the KKK! I only want advice that’s limited to preventing kidnapping!’ – I don’t think that would be a useful response.
Ran up against the too-late-to-edit notice:
it occurs to me that there probably is no advice for decreasing the chances of getting kidnapped that doesn’t also decrease the chances of getting mugged or assaulted; and there’s probably also no instance of someone being in unusual danger of being kidnapped that doesn’t also include their being in unusual danger of being assaulted. So no, there probably isn’t any useful advice that solely addresses the danger of getting kidnapped – other than possibly, as SmartAleq says, don’t be the sort of person whose children are in danger of being kidnapped. Most such people wouldn’t take a recommendation of ‘be a poor nobody’ as useful advice; but in at least some cases at least it’s possible to take such advice. ‘Don’t be a woman, or probably a man either’, or ‘don’t be or be perceived as a woman or girl between the ages of 10 and 21, or for that matter a boy or young man’, is not only not useful, it isn’t even possible.
Actually, kidnapping and rape are both crimes where we fear strangers but are in fact most in danger from those we know. In terms of kidnapping, the best advice is “don’t have children with the sort of person who will later, post divorce, try to kidnap them”. Which is as useful as “don’t become romantically involved with the sort of person who would rape you”.
The problem is more along the lines of people who want SOMETHING for NOTHING, which I’ve seen in person too many times.
Too many people out there now, especially the “millennial’s” and the “Snowflake generation” who have been raised as self-entitled narcissists and greed-mongers. They want everything they want, and they want it NOW, and they believe they shouldn’t do anything to earn it.
Case in fact, “welfare babies”. Women out there who do nothing but get pregnant by any man willing to have sex with them, so they can get that free money and free food stamps. Obviously they refuse to hold a job, and 9 months of inconvenience is preferable to actually DOING something worthwhile to get what they want.
When people like this don’t get what they want, they create the problem to their advantage so that THEY become the “victim” of whatever scenario they have devised for themselves. Examples: walking across the middle of a street in heavy traffic, spilling water on a store floor and then “slipping”, propositioning someone who turns you down so you scream “rape” or " harassment", lying on your tax forms, etc…
Too many people for far too long have been “crying wolf”, so nobody pays attention anymore. When they do, it’s more convenient to blame the “victim” for fraud, because it’s so prevalent in our society now. Which is sad, because they have made it almost impossible for REAL victims of REAL crimes to get any help or attention.
The 80s called, they want their ignorant dog whistles back.