Should women protect themselves from rape

[JEDIYoda]

Nehalem256 --Whats funny is I believe your "empirical research" was to compare the abortion rate of the US to Brazil. Which actually showed that making abortion illegal made abortion more prevalent!

So again per your "empirical research" making abortion illegal actually leads to more abortions.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

If women can't handle the second-guessing which happens any time something bad happens to anyone (male or female) then they really aren't true equals. And if that second guessing has an element of truth because it's something the victim of that circumstance could (and perhaps should) have done I have even less sympathy for any distress the target of it may experence.

Date rape isn't really a crime that affects men and women equally, unless you think there's some large silent mass of men who have been date raped and are living with the secret shame of the experience. But even beyond that, your posts seem to suggest that if people don't take every possible step to defend themselves against a bad thing happening, they share part of the blame for the act. You could extrapolate this out to any scenario to absurd ends. You got mugged in the subway station? Shouldn't have a job that requires you to use public transportation to commute. You got hit by a drunk driver? Shouldn't have been walking on the sidewalk after dark when the drunks come out. You got injured in a terrorist attack? Shouldn't have left your house in a world where anything can happen at any time for no apparent reason. No reasonable person blames the victim in most scenarios; why is date rape the exception?

 

[Texashiker]

Nobody should ever "have to" defend themselves.

While I agree with you, I also have to disagree.

Humanity has not survived 200,000+ year by being nice. We kill, we pillage, we rape, we hunt, we stalk,,,, whatever needs to be done to make sure our species survives.

Humanity was founded and has survived on violence. Our ancestors did not talk the mammoths into laying down and dying. Our ancestors hunted and killed the mammoths.

A few thousand years of civilization can not undo hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.

Look as the violence the islamic state is inflicting upon our fellow humans. Given the chance we revert to our animal state.

 

[nehalem256]

Date rape isn't really a crime that affects men and women equally, unless you think there's some large silent mass of men who have been date raped and are living with the secret shame of the experience. But even beyond that, your posts seem to suggest that if people don't take every possible step to defend themselves against a bad thing happening, they share part of the blame for the act. You could extrapolate this out to any scenario to absurd ends. You got mugged in the subway station? Shouldn't have a job that requires you to use public transportation to commute. You got hit by a drunk driver? Shouldn't have been walking on the sidewalk after dark when the drunks come out. You got injured in a terrorist attack? Shouldn't have left your house in a world where anything can happen at any time for no apparent reason. No reasonable person blames the victim in most scenarios; why is date rape the exception?

Data hasn’t been calculated under the new FBI definition yet, but Stemple parses several other national surveys in her new paper, “The Sexual Victimization of Men in America: New Data Challenge Old Assumptions,” co-written with Ilan Meyer and published in the April 17 edition of the American Journal of Public Health. One of those surveys is the 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, for which the Centers for Disease Control invented a category of sexual violence called “being made to penetrate.” This definition includes victims who were forced to penetrate someone else with their own body parts, either by physical force or coercion, or when the victim was drunk or high or otherwise unable to consent. When those cases were taken into account, the rates of nonconsensual sexual contact basically equalized, with 1.270 million women and 1.267 million men claiming to be victims of sexual violence.

http://www.slate.com/articles/doubl..._reveals_that_men_are_sexually_assaulted.html

Hard to get more equal than that

 

[BurnItDwn]

While I agree with you, I also have to disagree.

Humanity has not survived 200,000+ year by being nice. We kill, we pillage, we rape, we hunt, we stalk,,,, whatever needs to be done to make sure our species survives.

Humanity was founded and has survived on violence. Our ancestors did not talk the mammoths into laying down and dying. Our ancestors hunted and killed the mammoths.

A few thousand years of civilization can not undo hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.

Look as the violence the islamic state is inflicting upon our fellow humans. Given the chance we revert to our animal state.

Humanity has survived because people stuck together to overcome nature and the elements. Mans inhumanity to man has not helped, it has only hurt.

 

[cubby1223]

In a similar but slightly different vein, women are blamed for contributing to a rape because of their style of dress. Happens all the time during rape trials....woman dressed "provocatively?"....rape OK.

I admit I'm not knowledged on rape trials to talk about what goes on in them.

But what I do believe to be true, is if a woman dresses provocatively, and acts provocatively, the chances of bad things happening to her is increased.

Say I drive my car downtown Chicago, park the car along the street, and leave the window rolled down. When I return to my car later that day and find that some valuable items were stolen from the car, I believe it is perfectly reasonable for me to say "I should have rolled up the window to prevent the theft." I am not making the case that it is okay for someone to grab anything they want out of an open vehicle. I'm just saying it was within my power to prevent that theft. I should have prevented it.

If I leave the keys in the ignition and the doors unlocked, regardless if the car is stolen or not, everyone is going to say (if not say, they all will at least be thinking) "you're such a dumbass leaving the car wide open to be stolen!"

It's the same logic as the situation with how a woman dresses and acts. But applying this logic causes a lot of angry feelings.

On the one extreme, it is wrong for someone to believe they deserved the bad things that happened to them. On the other extreme, it is also wrong to believe you can do anything you want (within the confines of the law) and nothing bad will happen to you.

What is the correct middle-ground in these situations?

 

[mikeymikec]

A decent article on the topic, IMO:
http://www.damemagazine.com/2014/08/25/you-cant-fight-rape-nail-polish

What is the correct middle-ground in these situations?

Focus on those who commit the crimes. There isn't any excuse for sexually assaulting someone. I'm not saying you think there is, but those who need half an excuse to justify their actions will focus on "women who didn't take good enough care of themselves".

I think it's all part of a childish perspective on life that if you do everything right then nothing bad will happen to you. The flipside of that is that if there's half an excuse to blame you when something bad happens, plenty of people will take it as part of buying into the childish perspective.

Women aren't stupid, generally speaking; they have an idea for what's out there, but the fact is, I'm pretty damn sure that for every man on this forum who isn't stupid either, we've put ourselves in positions that could have been exploited. I know I have.

 

[Texashiker]

Humanity has survived because people stuck together to overcome nature and the elements. Mans inhumanity to man has not helped, it has only hurt.

When times get tough societies will fall apart.

This is a recent article published this month - https://news.wsu.edu/2014/08/04/wsu-researchers-see-violent-era-in-ancient-southwest/#.U_5EE6PgWn8

The article talks about violence and how cultures fell apart after climate change. Part of the region went from a estimated 40,000 people, to zero within 20 years.

 

[nehalem256]

If the only evidence is a woman’s testimony that she didn’t want a given sex act forced upon her, however, we generally give rapists the benefit of the doubt.

Damn you rule of law requiring defendants to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt

They hear about their peers being accused of rape and still allowed to graduate from college, while the alleged victims drop out of school.

Damn you rule of law not treating an accusation the same as a conviction

 

[glenn1]

Date rape isn't really a crime that affects men and women equally, unless you think there's some large silent mass of men who have been date raped and are living with the secret shame of the experience. But even beyond that, your posts seem to suggest that if people don't take every possible step to defend themselves against a bad thing happening, they share part of the blame for the act. You could extrapolate this out to any scenario to absurd ends. You got mugged in the subway station? Shouldn't have a job that requires you to use public transportation to commute. You got hit by a drunk driver? Shouldn't have been walking on the sidewalk after dark when the drunks come out. You got injured in a terrorist attack? Shouldn't have left your house in a world where anything can happen at any time for no apparent reason. No reasonable person blames the victim in most scenarios; why is date rape the exception?

You're missing the point. Someone is always going to second guess what you did when something bad happens to you, call it "blame" if you like. If you internalize that second-guessing instead of blowing it off then it's your own damn fault for being too damn thin skinned. If something like that gets to you, it's probably because in some way deep down you know it's partially true and you do share a bit of blame. If someone told me I was at fault for being hit by a drunk driver on the sidewalk I wouldn't care because I know I wasn't to blame. If on the other hand I get into a car with a drunk driver and get hurt then I can't say I have no fault in the matter because "the guy at the wheel shouldn't have been drinking." Same with so-called "slut shaming" and all the like, if you really considered yourself blameless such things wouldn't affect you in the slightest.

 

[Victorian Gray]

Sorry bro I actually own my own house.

Jointly owned with your toaster? Or did the toaster actually come up with the cash?

 

[1prophet]

If only people would read. From the Thinkprogress link



I see that as a perfectly rational viewpoint. On one hand this way of detecting roofies is great, but on the other hand it's a shame that women would ever have to do so.

I don't see this as a mutually exclusive thing.

There are statements which I do disagree with like

According to Alexandra Brodsky, one of the founders and current co-directors of Know Your IX, a survivor-led group working to address campus sexual assault, well-intentioned products like anti-rape nail polish can actually end up fueling victim blaming. Any college students who don’t use the special polish could open themselves up to criticism for failing to do everything in their power to prevent rape.

That would be Brodsky's perspective and there may be people who think like she suggests but I believe she's projecting. If a woman was raped I don't know anyone who would say "tsk, tsk, it's her fault because she wore the wrong nail polish". That's not a good enough reason to oppose a means of protection.

The world is not as it should be and if someone feels more secure for using tools to protect oneself then it is not the right of some (note some) feminists to criticize their choice.

So "feminists think this or that" isn't relevant, because their ideas on this are different. As for myself I'm in the "it's a shame there's a reason for this at all".

If Alexandra Brodsky believes that she is just as ignorant and stupid as those that blame women who get raped based on the attire they have on or the street they happen to walk down, rape is 100% the fault of the rapist regardless of what they wear on their bodies or fingernails.

 

[Riparian]

I admit I'm not knowledged on rape trials to talk about what goes on in them.

But what I do believe to be true, is if a woman dresses provocatively, and acts provocatively, the chances of bad things happening to her is increased.

Say I drive my car downtown Chicago, park the car along the street, and leave the window rolled down. When I return to my car later that day and find that some valuable items were stolen from the car, I believe it is perfectly reasonable for me to say "I should have rolled up the window to prevent the theft." I am not making the case that it is okay for someone to grab anything they want out of an open vehicle. I'm just saying it was within my power to prevent that theft. I should have prevented it.

If I leave the keys in the ignition and the doors unlocked, regardless if the car is stolen or not, everyone is going to say (if not say, they all will at least be thinking) "you're such a dumbass leaving the car wide open to be stolen!"

It's the same logic as the situation with how a woman dresses and acts. But applying this logic causes a lot of angry feelings.

On the one extreme, it is wrong for someone to believe they deserved the bad things that happened to them. On the other extreme, it is also wrong to believe you can do anything you want (within the confines of the law) and nothing bad will happen to you.

What is the correct middle-ground in these situations?

To address you and Meghan54's statement about provocative dress, all states have evidence statutes addressing what type of evidence is admissible, and many states have subsections specifically addressing rape. Using CA as an example, here is CA Evidence Code Section 1103(c)(2):

(2) Notwithstanding paragraph (3), evidence of the manner in which the victim was dressed at the time of the commission of the offense shall not be admissible when offered by either party on the issue of consent in any prosecution for an offense specified in paragraph (1), unless the evidence is determined by the court to be relevant and admissible in the interests of justice. The proponent of the evidence shall make an offer of proof outside the hearing of the jury. The court shall then make its determination and at that time, state the reasons for its ruling on the record. For the purposes of this paragraph, "manner of dress" does not include the condition of the victim's clothing before, during, or after the commission of the offense.

Regarding the rest of your post, the reason why victim shaming is pointless is that, like Atomic Playboy stated in his above post, how much vigilance a person should have is entirely subjective. While wearing provocative dress may be at one end of the spectrum of vigilance, what is the other? Should women wear full coverings, a la Islamic women? If that was enough, there would not be issues of rape in Islamic culture, yet there still is. So, maybe women should avoid personal hygiene and spend effort to make themselves as unattractive as possible. They could put on some weight, which could provide some protection; but how much weight?

Yes, there is always a comfortable middle ground for people's behavior to protect themselves, but victim shaming alleviates, even if only slightly, the perpetrator's shame. If you blame the victim for contributing to a crime that is entirely under someone else's control, then you are essentially saying that the other person is slightly less guilty because that person could not control himself / herself.

I should also mention that there's a difference between acting irresponsibly and causing harm to one's self (i.e., running into a busy street), where the blame is entirely on that person, and a situation where there's a perpetrator and victim. In the situation where the person causes harm to himself / herself, it is much more reasonable to shame that person as a way to encourage different behavior than when it is a crime committed by one person on another.

 

[Victorian Gray]

I admit I'm not knowledged on rape trials to talk about what goes on in them.

But what I do believe to be true, is if a woman dresses provocatively, and acts provocatively, the chances of bad things happening to her is increased.

Say I drive my car downtown Chicago, park the car along the street, and leave the window rolled down. When I return to my car later that day and find that some valuable items were stolen from the car, I believe it is perfectly reasonable for me to say "I should have rolled up the window to prevent the theft." I am not making the case that it is okay for someone to grab anything they want out of an open vehicle. I'm just saying it was within my power to prevent that theft. I should have prevented it.

If I leave the keys in the ignition and the doors unlocked, regardless if the car is stolen or not, everyone is going to say (if not say, they all will at least be thinking) "you're such a dumbass leaving the car wide open to be stolen!"

It's the same logic as the situation with how a woman dresses and acts. But applying this logic causes a lot of angry feelings.

On the one extreme, it is wrong for someone to believe they deserved the bad things that happened to them. On the other extreme, it is also wrong to believe you can do anything you want (within the confines of the law) and nothing bad will happen to you.

What is the correct middle-ground in these situations?

Yeah, if only the wimmins would just not provoke the men. Maybe if they all dressed like this?

nah, they're flaunting their ankles and wrists.

Maybe this would be better?

 

[BurnItDwn]

When times get tough societies will fall apart.

This is a recent article published this month - https://news.wsu.edu/2014/08/04/wsu-researchers-see-violent-era-in-ancient-southwest/#.U_5EE6PgWn8

The article talks about violence and how cultures fell apart after climate change. Part of the region went from a estimated 40,000 people, to zero within 20 years.

Yes, you have proven my point.

When people stop working together and instead only work against each other, things are fucked.

 

[thraashman]

Date rape isn't really a crime that affects men and women equally, unless you think there's some large silent mass of men who have been date raped and are living with the secret shame of the experience. But even beyond that, your posts seem to suggest that if people don't take every possible step to defend themselves against a bad thing happening, they share part of the blame for the act. You could extrapolate this out to any scenario to absurd ends. You got mugged in the subway station? Shouldn't have a job that requires you to use public transportation to commute. You got hit by a drunk driver? Shouldn't have been walking on the sidewalk after dark when the drunks come out. You got injured in a terrorist attack? Shouldn't have left your house in a world where anything can happen at any time for no apparent reason. No reasonable person blames the victim in most scenarios; why is date rape the exception?

Date rape is not the exception, you're just not talking to a reasonable person.

 

[Oldgamer]

Recently a group of people developed fingernail polish that turns colors when exposed to a date rape drug. The woman is supposed to dip her finger into her drink. If the date rape drug is in the drink the polish turns colors.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/08/26/nail-polish-date-rape-drugs/14606105/

What has be confused, feminist are upset that a women should protect herself.

http://www.nationalreview.com/artic...sh-actually-also-rape-culture-katherine-timpf

Is self-defense a personal responsibility? I think it is. Everyone one of us have a personal responsibility to ensure our own safety.

Why should locking car and house doors, wearing a seat belt, keeping personal information private,,,, be standard practice, but women should not take steps to protect themselves from predators?

It is not like criminals care about their victims anyway. Should I tell a snake not to bite me? Or should I be careful when picking limbs up around the yard?

WTF, why not raise your sons to know that "no means no" and not rape women?

I am all for women that want to find ways to protect themselves, but sometimes I get the feeling this is just another "lets blame the rape victim for not doing all she could to prevent it" type thing.

 

[BoberFett]

This thread, predictably, has strayed from the topic of a precaution that has been invented to help stop a problem is being blamed by some for being a part of the problem to begin with.

Because clearly if you have health insurance you're promoting illness culture.

 

[cubby1223]

Yeah, if only the wimmins would just not provoke the men. Maybe if they all dressed like this?

Please, that's not even close to what I said...

Here's a story from a few years ago I saw involving a female co-worker. One week she started seeing some new guy (they had no prior history), and she decides to go out to lunch with ____, and when she returns she is all pissed off at his advances during lunch. The next day comes along, and she decides to again have lunch with ____, and upon returning she's even more pissed off that he's making even greater advances on her. Everyone is trying to tell her to end it with this guy. Next day comes and again she decides to have lunch with ____, and is again even more pissed off afterwards. She had plans to hang out with a friend of her's in the evening, she cancelled those plans so she could go on a dinner date with _____. Luckily she finally got up the nerve to walk out in the middle of dinner and leave.

But to the rest of us who are watching this unfold throughout the week, watching the train-wreck we know is coming, it's damn fucking difficult to stand idly by. We all know the guy was the prick and was completely wrong with his advances. But if the train wreck unfolds, nothing that can be done afterwards can ever undo the damages.


I guess I have the general philosophy that you cannot change other people's behaviors, cannot wait for other people to change. You have to take control of a situation and make the changes within yourself to get out of them. And that is exactly what this co-worker also did. She got herself into a bad situation and realized she had to change, instead of playing things cool and waiting for him to take the hints and change, she changed her approach, said "fuck you", and removed herself from the situation. And we were glad she finally kicked this guy to the curb. But if she hadn't adjusted her approach to the situation, we all assumed something very bad was going to happen to her.



So what's the politically correct answer to resolving that situation that I watched unfold a few years ago? You cannot blame yourself in such situations, while at the same time must recognize that you have to adjust your approach to the situation at hand in order to achieve a more desirable outcome.

 

[MongGrel]

Surgical modification ?



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH8yuld4DUE

 

[cubby1223]

A decent article on the topic, IMO:
http://www.damemagazine.com/2014/08/25/you-cant-fight-rape-nail-polish

Taken from the article:

Criminals do listen to what we, as a society, tell them—and what we tell rapists, time and again, is that we don’t take their crime seriously, so they can probably get away with it. If other young men out there earnestly want to prevent rape, they’d be better off talking to their peers about consent, calling out other guys who dehumanize women, and intervening when they see something that makes them uncomfortable.

I don't know...

Why does it have to be characterized as a "one or the other, but not both" type of situation? Why can we not both punish rapists while at the same time create safer situations on the prevention side?

I don't view creating a nail polish that detects the date rape drug as saying to the world "we don't take rape seriously."

Another comparison, I don't know of anyone who thinks the TSA at airports is society telling terrorists we don't take your crime seriously.

 

[cubby1223]

The point that I feel is most discouraging about this entire topic, are those who have their views on this subject, they have their stance against rape, who believe their opinions are near perfect, and anyone who deviates even slightly from 100.0% agreement on specifics, is a bad person who needs to be shunned.

My opinion, that attitude also contributes to people disengaging from the greater subject at hand. Which is bad.

I've seen this same discussion/argument play out in several other mediums, and it always leads to disengagement, not united support.

 

[Victorian Gray]

Please, that's not even close to what I said...

(snip)


So what's the politically correct answer to resolving that situation that I watched unfold a few years ago? You cannot blame yourself in such situations, while at the same time must recognize that you have to adjust your approach to the situation at hand in order to achieve a more desirable outcome.

Direct quote:

"But what I do believe to be true, is if a woman dresses provocatively, and acts provocatively, the chances of bad things happening to her is increased."

So the pictures were appropriate.

It's funny, when I see a woman walking down the street in a short skirt I might think: "Hmm, attractive woman in a nice skirt" and keep on walking. I don't immediately throw her to the ground and stick my dick in her. Any ideas as to why that might be?

 

[glenn1]

Direct quote:

"But what I do believe to be true, is if a woman dresses provocatively, and acts provocatively, the chances of bad things happening to her is increased."

So the pictures were appropriate.

It's funny, when I see a woman walking down the street in a short skirt I might think: "Hmm, attractive woman in a nice skirt" and keep on walking. I don't immediately throw her to the ground and stick my dick in her. Any ideas as to why that might be?

You just committed stare rape and should go to prison.

 

[Victorian Gray]

You just committed stare rape and should go to prison.

You, nehalem and TH are apparently related