'To say that some men rape and sexually assault women and girls is an uncontroversial fact'

My first thought was definitely "thin air", but when I thought about it, I realised what a small percentage of the population at large trans women actually are.

AskingQuestionsAllTheTime as SapphosRock has confidentially stated a precise figure I assume she has a source and I was very interested in knowing what that source is and I don’t believe I’m the only person on this thread interested in knowing the source of that figure.

"But 99.9% of the time the perpetrators are men not trans women."
Where do you get the 99.9% figure from SapphosRock ?

Maybe it's simply that 99.8% of people with male genitals are men not transwomen?

Disclaimer: I have no idea what the actual figure is, but that seems quite a possible one if actually being a transwoman requires more effort on the part of the individual than getting up in the morning and deciding to wear women-jeans rather than men-jeans that day.

I have been really lucky so far: on the three occasions (after the first one when I was pre-pubertal and he simply out-weighed me and there was nothing I could have done to stop him) on which I seemed to be at genuine risk of rape, I was so blazingly angry that in each case, I left the attempted perp badly hurt as I ran away. This was not planned, it was just how I happened to react. I got a nasty attack of "how dare he!" and had the right reflexes to make it stick, thank goodness.

Sorry to hear of your Mum's experience Rufus that's truly awful

Sorry sapphos i missed this completely,

Thank you

@Malahaha. Glad you scared him off! Still very traumatising like waking up with a rattle snake in your bed.

Mine was after accepting a drink from someone I knew that turned out to be drugged. That wasn’t my fault either and I know that but I also know some people would blame me. And that’s their failing not mine.

That blog post is good in part because it is focussing on some simple ways of reducing the risk in some cases and doesn’t get bogged down in trying to solve the problem in all cases. There isn’t a universal solution but that doesnt mean we shouldn’t try and reduce risk where we can.

Fight, flight, freeze or fawn. It’s not a choice, it’s survival instinct. No one should blame or shame victims for how they reacted to an attack. I’m appalled at how you are being treated DrizzleandDamp. An assault does not magically become something else due to the reaction of the victim. Rape culture in action.

Rape culture needs to go, but it’s a long arduous fight. Right now women are girls are viewed as a commodity for male sexual urges and the last thing anyone should be doing is reducing the small protections that help reduce attacks.

I honestly don't know what came over me. It was just a reflex. I'm still astounded. I was lucky, too, that he ran away; he could just as easily have fought and overpowered me with utter brutality.

Fantastic blog post. Thank you for sharing it.

Excellent article especially the last two paragraphs.

It's a good analogy @cheeseismydownfall. I"m sure I've read somewhere that the crime rate of some males is identical regardless of gender identity and cross-sex hormones. I also heard a 'female' crime rate for murder doubled when a TWAW was convicted. sex matters. as Kathleen put it Most males are not predators. This is about tactics, not character reference. Males as a group are reasonably excluded from these spaces in order to try to protect women and girls from a few of their number.

@DrizzleandDamp. God that’s horrendous

Looking at you, Radcliff
yup

When my body is scanned before I board a flight, I don't for a minute think that this is because security staff have me pegged as a terrorist.

But I understand that some people, a tiny number of people, do try to carry weapons on to planes, and that because there is no special aura that differentiates would-be terrorists from their fellow passengers, I naturally have to be scanned along with everybody else. I can't simply say, "Trust me, you don't need to scan me, I don't feel like a terrorist".

Perhaps I am oversimplifying it, but surely it should be this simple?

plan thanks for the wave analogy. I want to say it resonates... Without it seeming like a pun?!

drizzle appease is an important one to remember. How fucking shit this is being used against you. One of my ambitions used to be to try and find a way to bring trauma awareness to the greater public. Sparked by watching Piers Morgan massively misunderstand. I feel pretty despondent right now about that being possible.

Plan We’ve been on threads before about this.

The big wave analogy is a good one, it isn’t a choice. I flipped between freeze and appease. That appeasement was caught on camera and has so far been used as an excuse not to prosecute. if the CCTV had caught Mr x using force was the statement. Total misunderstanding of the reactions we have.

Great read.

Or maybe you’ve made a calculation, consciously or unconsciously, and decided that there’s no social capital to be had in feeling outraged about sexual violence against women; the cases are too common, and the rest of the world too indifferent to give you any credit for it. Looking at you, Radcliff and Radmayne and the rest of you.

Oh, it’s ok @HecatesCats. I didn’t post that for sympathy, i know I’m not alone. Just hoped to help anyone reading the thread who is struggling with the shame and guilt we get saddled with after an attack. All the “should have” “could have” that run through our heads are meaningless self-punishment because they imply we have choice when it happens. And so often, we do not have any choice at all. Survival is victory.

This was a really good read, thanks for sharing. I agree that keeping single sex spaces is just basic safeguarding and I think most people were completely fine with that idea but somehow the whole issue of trans has just completely unhinged people from any kind of rational response.

There is no way of knowing which type of attacker you've got and whether freezing, or (trying to) fight or flight was the best, or least bad, option until after the attack.

To piggyback on this good comment, I just want to add that at least in my limited experience in the heat of the moment, you have no choice in whether you fight, flee or freeze. I found that I had an out of body experience and I was reacting with one or more of the above but it wasn’t a conscious decision. It happened so fast and was so overwhelming I can only compare it to when swimming in the ocean and a big wave just crashes down on you and you tumble through the water, bouncing off the seabed, maybe fighting to get back to surface or maybe just rolling until the wave lets go and you wash up. It seemed purely instinctual how I reacted. This to me, just further underscores that it is victim blaming of the worst sort when people sit and say “you should have fought/fled/froze...” when truly, in some attacks it is all reflex reactions. There’s not always time to weigh options and choose.

Yes the way I see it is no person born male - however they do or do not identify - needs to take personal offence at the statistics. Unless they themselves commit crimes. But it would be wonderful if more males started to take responsibility for the crimes of their sex class. There are some good examples on twitter of both men and transwomen doing that.