Judge - 'women must be careful'- help me argue against my Daily Mail quoting mother argh

In almost every other crime the fact the victim was drunk is an aggravating factor.

If your handbag or wallet is stolen when you are drunk I think society has more contempt for the perpetrator as they are so clearly taking advantage of the victim.

Profilic.

I think @ItsNeverSunnyInWales has it. Rapists will just rape someone else. They might choose someone vulnerable through drink now, but they could choose someone based on situation, disability, age, proximity. They're rapists. They won't magically stop because women don't drink.

im going to be giving my son the advice that he should never get into any situation where he could possibly be accused of rape.
I think thats probably what we should be focusing on instead of telling girls not to drink or go out alone.
This makes it seem like men are natural rapists or something. Like there are always going to be loads of men waiting to rape you once you are drunk enough.
Thing is there are probably always going to be some absolute mentalists who brutally rape women.
The thing thats more common though is these cases where a man takes advantage of a woman in a way that he can justify to himself or cover up easily.
Thats something that can change. You cant do anything about people going insane, murderers rapists etc. That will probably always happen but its actually very rare.
The common cases are actually about a culture that tells guys that having sex with as many women as possible is a way to be super masculine. That tells them that being pushy is masculine. That teaches them that if a woman doesnt say no then its fine, and not that they should in fact be looking for actual consent and enthusiasm.
That we could tackle as a society. But we arent going to tackle it if people keep saying that the emphasis should be on a woman to protect herself because that feeds into the culture that allows men to justify this sort of behaviour to themselves.

I also think that women are often put in a very difficult position when it comes to this and we receive so many conflicting messages.

On one hand we are told that we need to take responsibility for our own safety and not put ourselves into risky situations. On the other hand when we do take steps to keep ourselves safe we are labelled paranoid and accused of tarring all men with the same brush.

Again there was a thread on here not long ago where the OP was in a deserted petrol station at night when she was approached by a man asking her to phone him a taxi as his battery had died. The OP felt uneasy about this so she refused. There were people on the thread calling the OP mean, accusing her of tarring all men as potential predators and attackers, asking her how she would feel if the man was her son, etc. I just found it confusing tbh. She felt uneasy about him and the situation and she listened to her instincts so she didn't help him. To me, she was doing what women are always advised to do and that is taking responsibility for her personal safety. I bet you anything that if she had stuck around to help him and he had attacked her then there would be cries of "what did she expect?", "she shouldn't have helped him", "she needs to be more responsible", etc.

There is a very prolific poster on a certain other big forum who praised this judge for her views and agreed that women needed to take steps to reduce their risk of being assaulted and you can't alter rapists behaviour, you can only control your own. Fair enough, that was his opinion.

Except this same poster was also outraged on a different thread about a female only taxi service because it was discriminatory against men and tarring all men as potential attackers and rapists. He has also posted about being hurt and offended when women cross the street if he is walking behind them at night, again because it tars all men with the same brush as potential predators.

I can't be the only one completely and by this?

There's a difference between giving general safety advice and specifically targeting safety advice towards only women and only because they might get raped imo.

I think this is the problem I have with the whole people need to take personal responsibility thing; ime it only ever seems to come up when the subject of rape comes up and only specifically when it's women being raped discussed. If a man is doing things that are deemed risky, say if he is drunk and walking home alone late at night, and he is the victim of a crime then you never hear people questioning what he was doing there, he shouldn't have been so drunk, etc.

There was a thread on here not long ago where the OP had been raped after walking home alone after a night out years ago. She had been drunk at the time and she never reported it or told anyone because she felt it was her fault somehow and she just knew the reactions she would get if she told them what happened. One thing that stood out to me was the fact that she said that if she hadn't been raped that night but something else had happened to her instead; if she had been mugged or beaten up then she wouldn't have had the same reservations about telling people nor would she have hesitated to report it.

That stuck out to me because it rang true for me. Now I wasn't drunk when I was raped; in retrospect I was in a situation where I should have been safe. I was in a relative's house with family and it was the middle of the day. The man who raped me was a family friend and he overpowered me when we were alone together and raped me. I hadn't put myself in a risky situation but I still didn't tell anyone what had happened until two weeks later and even then I refused to report it. Even though I hadn't done anything 'wrong' I still felt like it was my fault in some way. I felt like I should have fought harder, should have screamed as loud as I could when he took his hand away from my mouth briefly to pull down his trousers, should never have been alone with him in the first place...

Here's the thing; I know fine well that if he hadn't raped me but had assaulted me physically another way instead then I would have had no problem going downstairs to my family and saying "Wtf, x has just punched me in the face!". I would have probably had no qualms about going to the police either.

I believe the argument is that of course there will always be rapists and of course sober women get raped but being sober will put you in a better position to be able to fight them off and get away but I have a problem with that argument tbh. What about women who were sober when they were raped but still unable to fight their attacker off? Is it their fault for not being able to fight harder? What about women who didn't fight at all but instead froze? Like I said, I was sober when I was raped but still couldn't fight him off even though I tried. Was it my fault for not fighting still? I tried as hard as I could but I couldn't budge him.

I think giving safety advice is fine but it's giving specific rape prevention advice that makes me want to bang my head against a wall. I'm pregnant right now and I will be giving the same advice to my child when they're older regardless of whether they are a boy or girl; stick with your friends, don't get too drunk, keep an eye of your drink, make sure you know how you're getting home, etc. What I will not be doing however is giving specific rape prevention advice if my child is a girl.

If you're promoting changes to women's behaviour to prevent rape, what you're basically saying is to "make sure he rapes the other girl"

If alcohol is the factor, why not ban alcohol?

My previous post should read "lawyers" instead of "prosecuting lawyers".

I've not read the full text of the judge's comments and I'm interested to discover: did the judge's comments include any advice on how some police officers, judges, jurors and prosecuting lawyers should change their behaviour towards a raped drunk woman, if her case does ever make it as far a courtroom?

Men - don't drink, otherwise you're impairing your ability to judge whether your partner is consenting to sex"?
Actually I do plan to advise both my DSs regarding this issue when they are at an appropriate age. Not necessarily not drinking at all but certainly not drinking to the extent that their sense of reason and decency is badly impaired. Let's start with those nearest and dearest if we want to change attitudes.
And equally I would still suggest to my DSD (as we did when she was younger) that she needed to take care of herself. It's about reducing personal exposure to risk from opportunist criminals-e.g. Don't spend your taxi money on chips and walk home alone at 2 am across the park. Yes we shouldn't need to and definitely it would not be the fault of the victim, but that would be of little comfort to any of us if she got attacked under those circumstances.

It's about looking after your own neck. Men shouldn't target tipsy women but they do. Just as muggers target people coming out the tube and swipe their phones.

I tell DS to look both ways crossing the road - even a 1 way because some bastards think the rules don't apply to them. I'd rather be aware and not get run over than lying on my back in the gutter saying 'I'm in the right, you were wrong...'. and when he's older I will be telling him to not get pissed on a night out or he might end up getting into a fight or knifed.

I've had this discussion with my husband. When I said all men should have a curfew as they're the ones who commit the crime he looked incredulous and said "you can't punish all men because of a few". He didn't seem to realise that all women have their freedom taken away by these few men.
Unfortunately I don't think some people (mostly men) understand that women are on the defensive a lot of the time.

Getting so drunk you don't know what you are doing is never a good idea for anyone, as it puts you at risk of all manner of unpleasant outcomes, from tripping over your own feet to being robbed and assaulted.

But it's only ever brought up as warnings in the context of women becoming victims of rape, which surely should give us pause for thought, and highlight the fact that the underlying assumption going on is that women are responsible for attacks on them.

Where are the warnings saying, "Men - don't drink, otherwise you're at risk of getting into punch-ups in dodgy pubs"? Or even, "Men - don't drink, otherwise you're impairing your ability to judge whether your partner is consenting to sex"?

Totally agree with the judge.!

Yes, fine by me.

people don't tend to say 'oh there will always be murderers'

Yes they do, because there probably will always be murderers.

Men without a chaperone should have their trousers padlocked and key left at home?

Completely agree with you Vestal re call for more police if men were violently attacked.

As a woman, you should try and keep yourself safe. The victim is never at fault, but we should try and be as safe as we can.

My words. I am glad you are onboard with the new law that bans men from venturing outside the house without a female chaperone after nightfall, and bans men without chaperone from locations where women might consume alcohol.

Let's start a petition, shall we?

Also why aren't men told not to drink lest they become a rapist

Agree with Vestal.

Also...

It's odd how people say 'oh there will always be rapists' and are generally quick to say 'there will always be burglars' but people don't tend to say 'oh there will always be murderers'.

There's a real refusal to accept rape as the violent crime against the person that it is, instead it's equated with getting your bag snatched. Being drunk puts you at more risk of being murdered too, surely, so why isn't that flagged up more often?

But being too drunk to know what you are doing puts you at all sorts of risks.

So what? Men also rape sober women. The common factor here is the rapist, not the alcohol.
Remove the potential rapists from public spaces, not the potential victims.

Men drink alcohol, too, and, lo and behold, they don't get told by judges that they ought to have been more careful if they get their phone stolen. And if drunk men regularly were abducted and got a kidney stolen, which is closer to rape than having a phone stolen, then there'd be no advice by the police that men ought to not get drunk, there'd be a loud call for more police!

I agree with the judge and think her comments were taken completely out of context.

There are bad men out there, who will look for vulnerable women and hurt them, obviously, society should focus on making these men not exist, but it is likely they always will exist. As a woman, you should try and keep yourself safe. The victim is never at fault, but we should try and be as safe as we can.