Am i missing the point here?

[Mamazon]

my brother bought home a copy of the sun and i have been flicking through it.

in one of the side stories is a piece about Torbay police giving away condoms to girls who are out on a night out.

the idea is to prevent teenage pregnancies, something that the county is havong a huige problem with...fair enough.
but also....to REDUCE SEXUAL ASSAULTS.

apparantly 135 sexual assaults last year were against women who had been drinking.....hmm maybe that means' its ok then.

Could someone explain to me how having possesion of a condom will prevent you being sexually assaulted?

dont know.i didnt have one.maybe i should

i would be interested to know myself.

i would have thought it would be better to target those who are responsible for the assaults,educate them about respecting others' bodies,that no means no,and that an intoxicated person may not be capable of giving consent so its best to leave them alone full stop.

unless i am missing the point totally and they are meant to use the condom as some kind of weapon?

well thats my feeling too Diva.

what are these girls meant to do? when a man attacks them wave teh condom at him in some bizaar form of self defence?

It such an totally stupid and ill considered "project"

I can't find a link on the website which is annoying.

A vodka and orange please - but can you put it in this condom so I don't get so terribly drunk? A straw would be lovely. And do you have an little umbrella?

How many sexual assaults were against women who hadn't been drinking? What are they on about?

By the way, what exactly qualifies as sexual assault, as opposed to actual rape? Having bits of you squeezed etc - do the police take that seriously? (Not saying they shouldn't - just wondering about the terminology.)

for it to constitue Rape their needs to be penetration (the law has been updated for this to include oral penetration now as well)

everything else (from a pinched bottom to full on horriblness) is calssified as sexual assault.

OK. Just wasn't sure if assault involved an actual injury of some kind or could cover any uninvited physical attention. Already teaching my boy 'when someone says no (about whatever) you stop straight away'. Haven't got onto people being too pissed to form words yet. Hope he takes it in and doesn't become unhinged by booze as soon as he's allowed out of the house alone.

I actually think that it is vital to teach girls to respect their own bodies and have the self-confidence to say no decisively. But the other half of the coin is to teach boys that women are equal to men and that no means no. Sadly in the age of celeb worship neither is going to happen.

(it would also help for judges to give rapists meaningful punishments and be more sympathetic to rapees - sorry hate the word 'victim').

the problem with some men is that they understand no means no.
so they prey on women who have allowed themselves to get so drunk that they can no longer remain fully concious.

they then start groping at her and because she can't actualy say no, they think they have a green light.

of course this is not the case, both morally and legally. if you are in an unfit state to give consent then it must be presumed you have refused consent.

but thats all too complex for some male brains.

No woman deserves to be violated in that way but yes i agree that if more girls learnt to respect their own bodies and take more care of themselves whilst drinking then yes it may reduce this problem.

....but i hate saying that as it is somehow implying that they are responsible for their attack. which obviously they aren't

Perhaps they can use them as a form of catapult.

"they then start groping at her and because she can't actualy say no, they think they have a green light.

of course this is not the case, both morally and legally. if you are in an unfit state to give consent then it must be presumed you have refused consent"

while i completely agree with you, you also have to take into account cases where a woman is unable to remember what happened and wether or not she gave consent due to drinking to much. they may have been far from unconscious just suffering from memory loss due to too much alcohol and the male involved could easily have drank just as much.

i'm not talking about cases where men deliberately target unconscious girls as happened to my gf once but luckily i was there.
i am talking about cases where both parties are absolutely trashed and can remember very little but somehow it is the man who is said to have taken advantage when in reality they have both acted in exactly the same way.

of course MQ.

Im sure many a woman has woken up next to their freind/colleague etc and thought "oh no, we didn't did we?" and he has done the same.

but i think it's quite rare for that woman to experiance anything but regret.

I think that if you have been drinking and sleep with someone you know deep in your gut whether whathappened was a consequence of too much alcohol or someone taking advantage.

But yes i agree with you in the main. I don't like the idea that if a man sleeps with a woman because she is upset he has taken advantage..as though women are so weak and feeble that they have no control over what they do simply because they are upset.

WOULDNT it be better to provide a rape alarm? one of those ear piercing thigns, or has it been proven that people just ignore these?

yep i'd agree with you completely. my only point was that there is a world of difference between someone who wakes up not remembering having slept with someone knowing that they wouldn't have done so if they had been absolutely thrshed and someone who wakes up beside someone who has deliberately taken advantage.
just because you wouldn't have slept with someone if you were sober does not mean they took advantage, the decisions people make when hammered are still their decisions where as in a sexual assault they had no part in the decision making process.

i'll bow out now because as a man i know that for certain women (with good reason often) the idea of a man preaching about how women should "be more careful" for want of a better term smacks of trying to attribute blame to the victim of an attack, and that is the furthest thing from my intentions.

should read had not been absolutely trashed

No i don't think anyone would accuse of thinking so, MQ.

there is never an excuse for a man to violate a woman agaisnt her direct wishes, but i think we all accept that it is often the case where a woman makes herself more vulnerable to attack.

that does not mean she deservesit, justthat she could have taken precasutions in order to make it less likely.

MrsGeneHunt i think rape alarm is good idea but sadly dont think it would work. eg girls night out want to have fun. They have a few to many to drink decide rape alarm is a toy.People would get used to people messing with the alarms and become immune to them.

Personaly i think handing out comdoms is bad idea as it is. Rapist not going to turn around say hi have you got comdom before i rape you please.

Then thare is the matter of handing them out in the first place this just seems to me that police are saying its ok to rape if you got condom as we cant be assed putting more officers on the streets.Simple solution is change the law any1 caught raping gets dick choped off some countries still chop hands off if caught steeling.Would probably drop rape rate down dramaticly.

"Personaly i think handing out comdoms is bad idea as it is. Rapist not going to turn around say hi have you got comdom before i rape you please"

i don't think anyone will ever work out a logical thought process as to how this campaign would prevent a rape.
surely condoms should be given out for campaigns to do with std's and unwanted pregnancies. where as some sort of "drink sensible/safe" campaign would be the way to inform women of things which might make them more likely targets for potential rapists. i don't know what exactly, something along the lines of "don't leave drinks unattended/have an agreed friend to go home with/don't accept drinks from strangers" etc. although that just sounds like lip service so don't know if it would be effective at all.

i'd agree that rape alarms would just become another background noise to be ignored as people got used to people dicking about with them.

Maybe it is the fact of the police being there that is supposed to reduce sexual assaults. While they are handing out the condoms presumably they will be keeping an eye on drunken girls falling out of nightclubs with men they've just met, making sure girls on their own can get home, that sort of thing. Also, their presence could scare off any dodgy men that are on the prowl.