So just to bring this back to Kathleen Stock's blog, with apologies to her for chopping it up, but I think these passages bear repeating:
^
Whatever particulars of this case are established at a future trial, I want to draw attention to some incontrovertible general facts. Some men are sexual predators. Some men rape and sexually assault women and girls. These events often leave indelible trauma for women and girls in their wake. As a society, we seem unable to hold these general facts in mind without detaching, denying, excusing, blaming, sensationalising, or changing the subject.^
... Remember – I’m just stating facts. You may not like those facts but they are still there, perfectly indifferent to your emotional responses to them. If you are a man reading this, I’m not blaming you for those facts. But equally, I’m not talking about other, different facts. Some men get sexually assaulted too. I’m not talking about that right now, though people should. I’m talking about women and girls, and the fact that some men rape and sexually assault them...
So what – strategically speaking – can a society do about these facts, assuming it wants to do anything at all? Let’s not get distracted by big picture stuff - fancy rehabilitation programmes after the fact, or longer sentencing, or bringing up men and boys completely differently from birth, or whatever. Let’s just ask: what’s the very least a society can do, to reduce the chances of some men raping and sexually assaulting women and girls in the first place, and so sparing them some trauma? And I said “reduce”, not “eliminate”. Elimination isn’t a feasible goal.
...Other than teaching women self-protection, a second thing a society can do to reduce rape and sexual assault is to encourage safeguarding social norms to get embedded, so that it becomes unusual and indeed remarkable for men to be in public areas where women and girls undress or sleep. When in these areas, women and girls are more vulnerable to assault even than usual, for obvious reasons. If there’s a well-established norm that only women and girls are in these areas, a man will look out of place. And this appearance of abnormality, in that context, may embolden the women and girls in the room to say something, or to shout, or even to seek assistance – where doing these things may be the only protection they have in that moment against larger and stronger predators.