Would I be a terrible woman if i advise my DD's to act in a way so they are less likely to be assaulted.

[Rubytuesdayy]

With respect to lit streets, chaste clothes, state of drunkenness etc etc? Or would I be victim blaming prior to teh event. I KNOW that rape is the fault of the rapists, but I just want my DD's to be safe.

No, no blackout / remember, you are only at risk when you are in the presence of a rapist. How could you possibly forget your favourite catchphrase?

Likewise, handbag crab (though I haven't been raped, very sorry to hear you have, if I'm reading you right :( )

Also re. stranger danger - I'd sooner DS learned to talk to people (with me around to watch as he's only 4), so he gets a chance to develop instincts about what people are like. Interestingly, when he met the family paedophile (thanks a bunch, rellies, for not telling me about that one, the phonecall from his offender management officer was such a nice surprise - mercifully what I did know about the guy was enough to ensure that I didn't leave them unsupervised for an instant), he remained unusually distant from him (normally he latches onto male friends of mine and family members like a shot).

That isn't what I was meaning at all and you you know it.

''Blackout, are you saying there's no point in doing any of the suggestions because in some situations they may not help? Some people focus on the fact that in some situations they will.''

Did I say there was no point? Just that you think you can do all that you can and still be raped.

Cheers lurcio :)

Finally the penny has dropped bumbley

Give yourself a pat on the back

What is cheddar? Show me where I have twisted words.

"Just that you think you can do all that you can and still be raped."

Who has said otherwise? No one has offered anything as a guarantee that you will never get raped. People have just talked about certain things that may reduce risk in certain circumstances and some of you seem to object to even that (and then assume things and argue against points that haven't been made and then accuse people of twisting things when you point that out to them but hey ho!)

I'm glad you've actually accepted that there is a point to some/all of them. I think that's all anyone has said really - that if it might reduce the risk even slightly then at least it's something.

No pat required dear, I did acknowledge at the start :)

It* at the start

2nd paragraph - from quotation onwards in my previous post are to blackout btw, in case there's any confusion.

What we need to focus on is what makes a difference. And telling your daughter to dress chastely won't make a difference.

But challenging rape myths, so that next time 12 people are on a jury and the defence barrister tells them the woman was asking for it because of how she was dressed might help. Because if a majority of them think "you know what, that argument's a crock of shit" and convict, that's the guy off the streets for a (generally pathetically short) tike during which he can't rape (and the stats show most rapists are serial offenders).

And now I'm going to sit back and watch you backtrack

Just like the good old days eh?

can someone fill me in on rape myths please.

as a mother of a dd, i don't know how to deal with this

''No one has offered anything as a guarantee that you will never get raped. People have just talked about certain things that may reduce risk in certain circumstances and some of you seem to object to even that''

No one has offered a guarantee, because one cannot be given. How do you know that certain things may reduce risk?

www.rapecrisis.org.uk/

For White

Precisely lurcio

Maybe some serial rapists deliberately pick prostitutes, young women, drunk women precisely because they're less likely to believed due to all the bloody rape myths being peddled around. But if we didn't have rape myths and drunk women and prostitutes, they'd still be rapists and we'd probably come up with some other changes to make a negligible difference in your chance of being raped rather than tackling the rapists themselves.

But surely we can tackle the rapists and take some small measures which may make us marginally safer.

Why do the two have to be mutually incompatible?

OP wasn't asking about what happens at trial. She was asking about what she should be telling her DDs to help them protect themselves. What should that message be?

The Rape Crisis Centre's remit doesn't really cover crime prevention.

The Suzy Lamplugh Trust however does do that, and I think it's advice is excellent. I also think this advice (for both men and women) from a police website is excellent.

But if this is not what we should be telling our DCs (both boys and girls), what is it we should be telling them instead?

What would I need to backtrack on?

"No one has offered a guarantee, because one cannot be given."

You're just repeating what I (and others) have acknowledged several times.

"How do you know that certain things may reduce risk?"

How do you know that certain things don't reduce risk? You acknowledged just a couple of posts ago (22:30) that you weren't saying that there was no point. Are you going to start backtracking now?

Exactly ItsAll.

It's not like they're all going to magically disappear over night. Who can say whether harsher punishments would actually act as a deterrent anyway? People still commit murder at the risk of a life sentence or the death penalty in some countries. I don't think there is a quick fix to this.

Good post Edith.