Woman blogs about sexual assault at tech conference

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
161

I told myself I wasn’t going to read any more of this thread, because some of the responses so far have been so incredible. But maybe I’m missing the point.

It seems to me that all the responses that focus on what this woman was wearing, or how much she’d been drinking, or whether she’d been flirting are putting the focus in the wrong place. Her drinking, wearing short skirts or flirting doesn’t relieve people around her of the ability to think and act rationally. People have control over their behaviour and can decide not to do illegal things, generally speaking.

I don’t believe that a woman wearing a short skirt getting hammered at a bar makes it impossible for men at that bar to act like a normal person, as they would towards a male friend or colleague, for example. And I don’t accept that anything I do absolves other people of responsibility for their actions.

People choose to do things, regardless of my actions - I have worn short skirts, got drunk and flirted in the company of men before, without getting raped. Therefore, doing those things in and of themselves doesn’t make you get raped. You get raped because someone chooses to rape you. Doing those things, or not doing them, doesn’t make a difference, because it’s about the person who does the action - they, at some point, decide to go ahead because they think they’re more important than you are. Without the person who chooses to do the assaulting, the assault doesn’t happen, regardless of what I’m wearing or whether I’m sober or not.

I don’t know, am I missing something? It’s possible. But every time this sort of question comes up, people are always talking about what the woman should have done differently. And I always think that actually, it doesn’t matter what the woman did or didn’t do, because it wasn’t her behaviour that got her assaulted, someone chose to assault her. If that person hadn’t made that choice, her doing exactly the same thing wouldn’t have been a problem - so the problem is not with her, it’s with the assailant. No?

(Not to mention Diosa’s very good point that this happens regardless of what you wear, what you look like, or how old you are. So it’s even more pointless to focus on what the victim was doing, because it’s not about them. It’s about the person who took the action.)

162

Look at this sitch tho:

Two guys in a bar get in an argument. They start calling each other names. One says something about the other’s wife being a whore. He gets punched.

Is there any blame for the fight on the guy who called the other guy’s wife a whore? Or did the punch happen out of the blue, without provocation?

Mind you, this is not an attempt to equivocate with the OP’s sitch. It’s an attempt to point out that what is said in done in public is not done in a vacuum. In the scenario I just described, both men share some responsibility for the situation that led to the punch.

Not for the punch itself, but for the situation that led to the punch. Do you understand the difference?

163

If Noirin described events exactly as happened and she was 100% telling the truth would you see her as being culpable in her being assaulted? If you do see it as being her fault under those circumstances - I see you as blaming the victim.

If you don’t - and you think a woman has the right to flirt with men and the right to dress as she wants to and the right to drink - without it justifying that behaviour of a would be rapist, then you are not blaming the victim.

If you think a women should behave in a much different way than a man, just because she may be raped - that is sexist. Nothing excuses the behaviour of a man who violates a woman, nothing gives him an excuse, the man is at fault for his actions. The woman is not to blame.

164

This thread is making me very confused.

Do you guys really think that a woman dressed in a sexy outfit, drinking, and flirting is equivalent to walking down the street with a wheelbarrow full of cash or yelling out insults about someone’s mother during a bar argument?

Unless your only experience with women is at a church social, women wearing sexy outfits, drinking, and flirting are pretty common occurrences.

165

Good. I’m glad we can both agree (finally) that I’m not blaming the victim.

I reject the absolutes of this because you are phrasing things to absolve the woman of having to make conscious choices about the reality we all live in. If you fall off a cliff, it’s not the ground’s fault for not being there.

Are you able to see the distinction I’m making? Since I’m having to ask this a second time (at least), I’m guessing that the answer is “no”.

166

Sorry, Nzinga, it was just shorter to type than “crude asshats with no manners or thought for anyone but themselves who are prone to assaulting others, especially assaulting women”.

167

I don’t know about lexi, but the problem I have with this analogy is that the cliff just is, it can’t help being there. Men who rape can help that - they can just not do it.

In the example of the bar fight, I can see it more - except that I don’t think I agree that what a woman wears/drinks/how she acts provokes rape, in the way that someone saying something insulting can provoke a fight. In any way. I can see it provoking (for want of a better word - it’s not quite what I mean, but close enough) interest - indeed, it’s often designed to. But there’s a difference between hitting on someone - which is clearly fine, since if you don’t ask, you won’t know - and not taking no for an answer.

It’s not actually a difficult line to draw, I don’t think. It just requires paying some attention to the person you’re hitting on and treating them as someone whose desires are as important as your own. And too many men that I’ve met don’t seem to value my desire to be left alone as highly as their desire to get off. I don’t think it’s asking something superhuman of a man to not rape someone - most of the men I’ve met seem perfectly capable of not raping people on a daily basis. Regardless of how many drunk scantily clad women they come across.

168

I almost broke your post up to make a few responses, but I think you’re missing some basic knowledge of humans here. Some people cannot help the way they act. They are broken, for lack of a better word, and cannot function in the reasonable way you describe. We have names for them: sociopaths, psychopath, etc. These people are the biological equivalent of a cliff. To ignore the possibility that people like that exist is going to cause a normal person great pain and grief when they are encountered, unless a person has prepared themselves beforehand in how to deal with that situation.

And as many people will tell you, the best way to avoid the consequences of a bad situation is to avoid getting into the situation in the first place. Is that always possible? Nope. Sorry. That’s life. You can never be safe and secure. Ever. Deal with that, tho. Accept that fact, and move on from there, and you can be much happier than you would be otherwise.

169

Ok - I wanted you to be clear - and from this it sounds like you do not blame her (in the case that she is being 100% truthful).

But you still mention “realities” - what exactly is this reality you are referring to?

To me this reality you are referring to is that we live in a world where there are men who rape and that it may be safer for women to dress like nuns, never flirt and never drink.

If you hold that viewpoint - (you may not, but other here have said similar things) - it still bothers me - because this is not the reality I as a woman want to live in, and I sincerely do not believe that getting drunk & wearing a miniskirt is akin to walking around with a wheel-barrel of cash & saying please rob me.

Actual real nuns get sexually assaulted. Women wearing burkas get assaulted. Women who are 87 years old get assaulted. A man who rapes a woman wearing a miniskirt may make an excuse to himself that she was somehow asking for it - but if a nun looked at a rapist in a certain way - her rapist would make excuses too.

170

Yeah, but look at the numbers of women who get assaulted by men in a year. My understanding is that the number of psychopaths, sociopaths, etc is actually very small. Something is clearly creating a culture where men - normal men, not sociopaths - think it’s ok to harrass and assault women. Rather than assume some men have superhuman powers of self-control and manage to avoid raping women despite the provocation they endure on a daily basis, I’d lay the blame on a society which constantly makes excuses for men’s behaviour towards women, puts the focus on her actions rather than his, assumes she did something that invited his attention. Not all the men who do this are broken people, otherwise there are a lot of broken men wandering around, you know? This guy in the blog story, he’s not a broken person. He’s not a sociopath. He’s just a guy who thought he’d try his luck because he decided he didn’t believe the woman he was hitting on wasn’t interested, or he didn’t care.

He’s far from unique.

171

Spot on, Nicole1912.

172

Thanks for saying this. This is the exact reason that I think it is so important to confront statements people make about a women’s dress or behavior having anything to do with her being assaulted.

Until culture changes and women are no longer blamed for being attacked - there will be men who do not understand that there is a line that they should not cross.

The only way to change this is to make sure that all men know that if she says no - then it is assault - no matter what she was wearing or what she was doing.

173

I wasn’t going to get involved in this, not because I disagree with the consensus. I do agree - but only if the blog statements can be taken for the truth. The only issue I have is just that - the woman’s approach to blog the assault causes me to question her honesty.
I have met many people over the years - both men and women - who are basically lying psychos. Some people are just lying sacks of shit, backstabbers that turn the truth around - and the approach to go blogging as method of handling this incident is just the kind of thing one of these people would do.

I admit also that the blogging woman may be being totally honest about this - the fact that she blogged this doesn’t guarantee her a liar. Based on my experiences in life thus far though, I just can’t help but to be skeptical, since she chose this approach as her sole means of handling the incident. The whole thing stinks.

That said, and not trying to pile on you, Bo. But your above analogy about the battery is just wrong. Name calling, worded insults - should not promote or excuse battery. The batterer should bear 100% accountability.

174

Now you’re being sexist. Why is a woman’s only option to cease participating in society?

Why can’t she learn how to properly assess situations and people, and prepare for eventualities? Why can’t she punch a guy in the throat and kick his head until he’s unable to assault her (or anyone) ever again? Why can’t she carry a knife and stab a would-be rapist? Why is your view of women so low that they can’t defend themselves or call for help?

175

Because if women have responsibility for being attacked (in addition to, or instead of, the men who attack them), just by doing normal things like walking down the street, or going to a bar, or flirting with a guy, then the only responsible course of action is to not do any of those things.

Or, of course, men could just refrain from assaulting her.

And as for calling for help, the reactions even in this thread should surely shed some light as to why some women might be just a little leery of calling for help in relation to a sexual assault; it’s tiring having to deal with your friends, colleagues or family assuming you did something wrong just by existing and living a normal life.

176

How are these things remotely comparable?

You can choose not to walk down the street with a wheelbarrow full of cash. You can hide money and not advertise the fact that you’re carrying great sums of it.

A woman can not realistically choose to hide her gender or her secondary sex characteristics. If she’s a woman, it doesn’t matter if she’s wearing a skirt or pants. Would-be “thieves” who are determined to get what they want can still “steal” from her. Put a woman in a burkha and guess what? The “thieves” can still get at her body. Nothing short of locking her up in a vault is going to prevent that. It’s not like there’s any secret as to what is being covered up by a burkha.

Locking money up in a vault is perfectly reasonable course of action to prevent it from being stolen, but it’s ridiculous to do to a woman.

177

In the eyes of the law, he does. In Nevada, where I live, fighting is illegal outside of a sanctioned, supervised sports setting. We had a case here back in the late 1990s where 2 guys did exactly what I said: got in an argument, went outside the bar to fight, and one guy punched the other guy. Punchee went down, hit his head on the concrete and died. Puncher was arrested and convicted of manslaughter.

But if punchee had never gone outside, never started arguing, had just walked away and gone home, etc., he’d be alive today. He failed to assess his situation properly, and he died because of it. He failed to assess the risks involved in fighting while drunk against an unknown opponent in an environment not where falling down will not be painless. He failed on a number of levels, and now he’s dead.

The blame for the punch, and it’s aftermath, rightly went to the punchee. The blame for the situation existing at all lies with both of them (thought you can prolly make a good argument that one side has more blame there than the other, if you had more facts).

178

This is ridiculous. Do you think most muggings are “provoked” by anything the victim did? No, of course not. But it they had been more aware of their surroundings, or better prepared to defend themselves (or run, etc.), they could have avoided being mugged.

Yes, we’d all (well, most of us) like to live in a place where bad things didn’t happen to people, but we’re never going to have such a place. Get used to that idea, and live in the world around you. You wanna change the world? Great. But don’t lose site of reality while dreaming the dream.

You’re talking about making phone calls later. I’m talking about screaming and yelling at the top of your lungs when the situation is happening.

I got chastised at work recently for loudly calling out a person working for me when they did something that is very unsafe. They were upset that I had embarrassed them. I told them to fuck off. In that case, my main goal was to put an end to the unsafe situation immediately. Period. Feelings be damned.

It’s the same when I see a fight break out: I clobber the first participant I can get to. Hard. I could care less about doing anything other than ending the bad situation as quickly as possible. I don’t care who’s right and who’s wrong; we can sort that out later.

And that’s what anyone, male or female, should do when they find themselves in a bad situation: take the course that will definitely end the situation as quickly as possible.

No ambiguous remarks, no ambiguous actions: End it now. Sort it out later.

179

I think the difference there is that when two people fight, each of them is hoping to win. “I might beat him before he beats me.” If a man starts getting out of line with a woman, she’s not hoping she can rape him before he rapes her. She can lose by getting raped, or it can be a draw where she gets away before it’s too late. But she has nothing to win.

180

I can only assume you were typing at the same time as I was. Read the post above yours, please.