In thinking that if you won't go out alone at night because you've got a vagina, you are actually a bit pathetic?

[solidgoldbrass]

Because, statistically, if you have a vagina, you are far more at risk of being murdered if you stay at home If your home has a man in it. Yet time and time again there's this 'Waa, waa, I need an armed escort or a male owner to protect me if I'm ever going to set a foot out of doors after dark. It's so unreasonable to expect me to use public transport or walk anywhere...'

When I was a single parent, I did effecting - because I had to, now I am ina loving marriage I don't have to.

As for comparing sexual abuse, rape and domestic violence to driving on the motorway.

Words fail me.

I wish I knew what the answer was.

In my case, there were a lot of things I could have done differently, i.e. not getting so drunk I could hardly move, and then going to snog someone and expecting him to stop when I said to.

I'm sure there were/are plenty of people who'd think I was a stupid kid (which I was, basically) and if I'd been at home tucked up in bed like a "good girl" it wouldn't have happened.

But it wasn't my fault. Ever. The same as it's not anyone's fault if something awful happens to them in a dark alleyway. But that doesn't make them any less traumatized, does it?

I, for one, would like to see a program where victims talk to boys/young men about how terrible it is to suffer sexual trauma. It wouldn't stop the people who go out lurking with the intention to rape someone, but it may stop a few who are drunk and think "oh she wants it, just cause she can't move or talk doesn't mean she doesn't", etc. Sorry, I'm sure that idea's going to be ripped apart; it's quite early here and I'm flu-addled and don't know how to say what I mean.

CheerfulYank Not your fault, NO MATTER WHAT YOU DID OR DID NOT DO.

I agree with everything you've suggested, I cannot see why someone would rip your idea apart, seems rather sensible and useful to me, if it was to be done - in a child friendly girl/boy, appropriate manner and consent given from parents/guardians etc It could work, who is to say it definately wouldn't?

You are very courageous :)

STOP BLAMING YOURSELF :)

HE WAS A C WORD OF THE HIGHEST ORDER

Get well soon :) x

I think if everyone was taught a bit more respect for other people, it would solve a lot of problems! Respect for their bodies, respect for what they say, respect for their property etc. - as opposed to thinking that the way to earn "respect" is to be as bloody anarchic and full of attitude as possible to everyone else, so that everyone fears them. Fear does not = respect - they ought to be taught that.

I like that idea Thumb

Thumb I agree I respect everyone until they prove otherwise.

The thing that terrifies me the most, personally, is that I KNOW without a shadow of a doubt, that we did the right things in this house, we had all the talks from the point of view of not letting someone hurt you, to not being the person doing the abusing.

We have discussed, debated, been open, educate our children from both signs of the coin.

And it made no difference, none what soever

Goal, I know. I know it wasn't. :) Thank you.

I am pretty frank about what happened to me. I work with a lot of teenagers at my part time job and occasionally it comes up. I'm pretty open about it. I try to be respectful, as in, what their parents would or would not be okay with someone saying to their child, but I think talking about it is a big part of it.

I'm not going to be quiet like I'm ashamed. I didn't do anything wrong.

I'm sorry to hear of your awful experience CY

I agree with you thumbwitch I think we need more respect all round. I think much more could be done to teach it to children, from a young age.

I'd have liked to see more respect from the OP in wording of the opening post tbh

Good idea Thumb. We talk to DS a lot about his body and no one having the right to touch it in ways he doesn't like, and also that that means he has no right to touch someone else in a way they don't like.

goingforgold - your question to yellow suggests that you think any woman who does choose to exercise her right to walk about outside at night is doing it in ignorance of the risks. Or she wouldn't be doing it? It might in fact indicate that she has assessed the risks in her particular case and feels they are worth making. As I have.

And yes to respecting others. It's not such an outrageous thought really is it?

I did that too Orm, unfortunately no one had told my unpleasantness-causer.

Short of home eding - never going outside the front door and turning into total recluses, alongside all sleeping in one room, I have no idea how to keep us safe, even from each other.

CY dulling. :(

See you can think, well, I've assessed all the risks and I choose to go and X

or

well, I've assessed all the risks and I think I won't

Both are valid.

Nope Ormi my post is merely stating that you can never know why a person will not go out at night. Unless one asks which can be just as direspectful as assuming it is because a person is just frightened do so or infact as you stated ignoring the risks which i do not believe anyone in their right mind would actually do.

Why judge each other for own reasons no matter what they may be, was and is my point. I do not get it unless SGB does feel unsafe and secretly longs for scores of lone women milling about at night just to make her feel safer., for her own gratification.

Exactly hully

It's a risk

• that is something bad may or may not happen.

Equally
something good may or may not happen

There's that to balance as well

I choose toget back in a taxi after asessing my risk after what happened to me . The man opposite was a taxi driver and was stabbed in the back of his head and died. I still choose to use a taxi. As it happens i have very, very rarely ventured out of the door at night because i cannot leave my child alone in the house even though he is 13. They're my risks. I've asessed them..nope,,still do not feel pathetic.

:)

I do not think you are pathetic, because the attitude that seems to be seen in the Uk is that if a man rapes a girl who is on he rown at night then he is not really a rapist so much as an idiotic opportunist!! Look at the rape victim who went o morning TV, and was slated the whole time for daring to go out at night on her own for a whole two streets (because obviously if she had been with someone else they coudl have taken on a rapist, and gettign into a steel locked box with a stranger just because they are a taxi driver is oh so safe - lets face it if a taxi driver had raped a tipsy women there would eb no prosecution). Look at other countries and this attitude is not common - did anyone notice in the first series of the danish tv programme The Crime, that the fact the teenage girl was cycling home in the early hours by herself was not once mentioned as a contributing factor.
The fact is in the Uk you are more likely to be murdered or raped in your own home by your partner or ex partner, but if you go out alone and get attacked your attacker will gain sympathy. recently ther ehas been a case where a man raped a woman and actually said to her that he was going to rape her twice, and this was recorded by the 999 operaters she had dialed on her 'phone. he is still pleading not guilty, claiming it was consensual, and she has been questioned over why she was drunk and alone with him!!

indeed kelly, and it is these attitudes that we need to change.

The self blame is the point I was trying to make. It doesnt matter a jot how many other people blame you.. they have no right to that opinion, but taking away self blame is bloody near on impossible. You have to live with that and it is much harder to ignore than another person because it is on your mind and in your head. I know this because I experience it.

Its ok if (like the Op), you are a strong unpathetic person who is able to get past any self blame, but the majority of people, certainly everyone that I know, does not have that mentality, and no amount of people telling you that it was not your fault (even though they are right) can take away those images in your head, or you yourself knowing that if you had done something differently that time, then you would not be having to deal with that memory.

I am fine Hully, what happened was a long long time ago, and it was nowhere near as traumatic as the experiences that others on here have gone through, but it certainly makes me shudder even now, and I know that I would advise anyone, male or female, not to walk home alone at night if there was any other alternative.