Please help me frame my argument wrt rape apologist

[PacificDogwod]

I need help as I feel I've lost a debate today although I know I'm right, goddammit!

Ok, here goes:
Female co-worker and I were talking about sexual assault/rape and she came out with the old 'well, she was asking for it what with her short skirt/gaudy make-up/being out and alone at that time of night/teasing him with her provocative dancing' or whatever. Which I countered that that represents rape apology and that the guilt is always with the rapist, no matter what went before.

So she gave the example that is two men (or women, I suppose, 2 people of the same sex) get in to a fight and one punches/stabs the other any judge/court would take in to account whether they were provoked and that unreasonable or inflammatory action by the victim prior to the attack would be used to mitigate the guilt of the attacker (or at least result in a lesser sentence).

Now I know that sexual assault/rape has very little to do with sex and an awful lot with power/need to dominate/control and nobody no matter how short their skirt should ever have to be subjected to that kind of violence, but I struggle to not agree with the mitigation argument?

Help!! I know I won't be able to let this lie, and I do have until Monday to get things clear in my head.

Hi I've had someone come at me with an example that was hard to argue back with as well. Help me out with this one please?
"You shouldn't have to lock your door at night because burglary is illegal but if you leave it unlocked and someone comes in and robs you your insurance company would hold you partially at fault and wouldn't pay out because you didn't take precaution"
All I manage to argue back is that women are not property and its incomparable.

All I manage to argue back is that women are not property and its incomparable.

That's a very good argument, actually.

Also, what did this person try to argue? That we should lock ourselves up in houses all day?

Clothes will not prevent rape. We know this. Locked doors keep out burglars, but clothes don't keep away rapists. (Unless you wear a chastity belt, perhaps.) Rapists rape because they want to rape, this has nothing to do with clothes.

Besides, I am pretty sure insurances do pay if you are hit over the head and robbed by a person you trusted.

Women are expected to trust men. If we really behaved in the way victim-blamers suggest, then men would complain endlessly. (They already do when strange women won't talk to them at 3 o clock in the morning!)

I am a woman. Unless I dress up as a man, I can't hide the fact that I have a vagina, and neither can I lock it up and leave it at home.

Wearing a short skirt or long, a high top or low cut, doesn't hide the fact that I am carrying my vagina a jug with me.

I would also refer to the twitter hashtag about what women were wearing when raped - jeans, pyjamas etc are most common.

And even if I dressed as a man, I would expect my vagina ownership to become obvious with one word of conversation or 10 seconds of scrutiny. So it would be a shit protection plan.

I am a woman. Unless I dress up as a man, I can't hide the fact that I have a vagina, and neither can I lock it up and leave it at home.

Soon, women will be victim-blamed for not transitioning to male.

I think it's based on a misunderstanding of the situations in which perpetrators rape.

Many perpetrators will be boyfriends, husbands - or people who the survivor previously thought of as friends.

When rape happens in a 'date' context, normally somebody will be targeted because they are in some way vulnerable - not because they are irresistibly gorgeous. Their mates aren't around, they've had a lot of drinks and/or their drinks haven't been spiked.

Also if - to do them credit - a bloke believes he's been given some signals that might mean a woman wants sex but alcohol/drugs/or some other factor are complicating the situation,, questions like 'Is this what you want?' can always be asked .

I don't carry my vagina in a jug.

I carry it around with me!

If you're going to use the unlocked door argument - the natural conclusion to that is that if someone leaves their front door unlocked and a rapist walks in and rapes them in the middle of the night, then it's partially their fault for not locking the door...

Insurance companies will cover you even though don't have window locks etc anyway - they just charge a bit more. They wouldn't refuse to pay out.

First argument is simply rebutted: anyone who initiates the use of force is guilty. Rape is the initiation of the use of force. Two men who fight, whomever initiated the use of force is the guilty party. Anyone trying obsfucate or mitigate the situation is essentially saying sometimes the initiation of force is permissible or justifiable, zero in one and that and get them to justify it.

The only degree of mitigation should come from the effect upon the victim not the motivation. I.e. Someone punches a person once is guilty of inflicting less injury on the victim than someone who breaks someone's arm in an assault.

Open up with your friend why in the case of rape is the effect of the crime never really part of the equation? There is rape and that's it, you sometimes get rape + assault, but we never really examine the effect on the victim. The bar for the severity of a rape is entirely gaged by the presumed intent and motivation of the rapist and never the effect on the victim.

The burglary one is even more easy to rebut. Insurance is a private contract between individuals and as such criminal justice principles do not apply. An insurance company is perfectly at liberty to state in its terms and conditions you need to lock your house to be eligible to claim. You can accept/reject those terms as you wish. It says nothing about the moral dimension. Someone steals for you they are 100% morally culpable. An insurance company attempting to expose itself to less risk to increase its margins makes no difference to the moral/legal discussion.

jac thank god you clarified because I thought I'd been doing it wrong all these years

I couldn't win an argument with someone who was insistent that is you went to bed with your bf/dh/dp then it wasn't rape, even if you were asleep and couldnt give permission. I mainly lost it because she could not remotely fathom where consent came in if you were dating.

Hotling - of course it's completely incomparable because as you say - any human being (not just women) are not property.

And insurance companies are just that - insurance companies and not the Police or wider society. If you left your front door open and someone burgled you - it's still a fucking crime and will be investigated.

I HATE this - if you left your door open analogy. It's only ever used by absolute idiots who think that a) you can invite rape by behaving in a certain way and it's therefore justified or understandable when it happens. B) that the trauma and complete invasion of your entire body and mind that rape is - is somehow comparable to someone being burgled.

If people can't see that then they're really fucking stupid and misogynistic.

And if the twats still don't understand then say...okay my front door is open and I've gone out and someone comes in takes my stuff because I'm not there - that's a crime but maybe I could have taken precautions.

If I'm there and say 'no, don't take my stuff' and they still do using fear of; or actual violence - no insurance company wouldn't pay out.

With rape the victim IS ALWAYS there and saying no or they might not be because of fear of; or actual violence.

Hot All I manage to argue back is that women are not property and its incomparable that's a good enough argument in itself.

You can always add that as a woman you cannot lock your anus,mouth,vagina away. You cannot remove them and lock the in a seif, or leave it with someone for safekeeping. Clothes will never stop a rapist that wants to rape. It's as simple as that.

You shouldn't have to lock your door at night because burglary is illegal but if you leave it unlocked and someone comes in and robs you your insurance company would hold you partially at fault and wouldn't pay out because you didn't take precaution"

Goodness some people are thick.

There are 2 entirely separate issues here.
Stealing is always a crime. It is always illegal to enter someone's house and steal the contents of the house. It is irrelevant whether it was like Fort Knox or had the sort of Yale lock you can open with a credit card.

Insurance is governed entirely by civil law. No one has to take out insurance if they don't want to. Stealing goods which are uninsured is no more or less a crime than stealing goods which are insured.

Well put, lass.

OMG, thank you all.

based on this inane idea that seeing a bit of leg takes away a man's self control.

Yes, that one is still banded about

I did not 'lose' so much as I was stunned in to silence.
I am always very clever with my repartee and cutting in my remarks.... about 10 minutes too late .

It was the utter acceptance that that is what it was like, that got to me.

She's not a friend although I do get on ok with her at work, co-worker, same place of work.

I've got lots of ammunition to go back with

So I asked him if he would do this if it wasn't his house and the food didn't belong to him?

This. And "what if the food was a sentient being who would like a vote on whether or not they get raped today."

Or, as PPs more efficiently put it: stop likening women to brainless pieces of meat.

Grrr now!

The only reason a woman is ever raped is for whatever reason the man raped her.

OP, let us know how it goes. sadly, in my experience it's nigh on impossible to change the views of these bigots.

I've had several robust conversations with a well-educated friend who shares the same views as your colleague and she still can't see it.

I haven't given up, and will also use the ammunition here next time.

She is likening clothing/dancing to provocation.

But if that is provocation then little children in school uniform are provocative to some men. The same is true of the Burka, and jeans, and leggings, and basically all female clothing.

Men are raped too, does she think a male's clothing can be provocative? Why aren't men masturbating on tube stations and in the street where they are exposed to images of provocatively clad women advertising anything and everything.

Good luck - I had a work colleague who said it wasn't rape if the man showed his face, rapists wear balaclavas or masks!

I've used the argument before that most people don't rape in those situations. I've been in many, many situations with beautiful women present and - funnily enough - never sexually assaulted one. And that's not just because I'm female it's because I'm a decent person. My husband has a job where he's sometimes alone with women - he's never chosen to rape one. Same for my dad. It is a choice that the rapist makes and the vast majority of us don't behave like that.

I am glad to see that there are others having similarly frustrating conversations.

There was an implication that some rapes are worse than others - you know, if the victim did everything 'right', got violently subdued, tried to fight her attacker and still got raped, it was somehow worse than if it was a date rape situation with a victim frozen in to submission and no physical violence (well, beyond the minor issue of the actual, you know, rape. FFS).

Of course there are more or less physically damaging attacks, that's stating the obvious. But rape is rape.

I am still annoyed - with her and with myself for not having been more, I dunno, organised in my argument.

Oh,, and the implications that if somebody 'had all their wares on display' (her words, not mine) and then got raped, the rapist was somehow less 'morally' at fault compared to a situation in which the victim had been more modest in her dress/behaviour

... hoods and balaclavas...

Nnaaoooowww!!!! Please tell me this was, like, 4-5 decades ago and the perpetrator of such shite was rather elderly. Or an exceptionally uneducated teenager. But 4-5 decades ago, please.

weeps

Yes, and they hit their victims over the head and drag them in to the nearest bit of shrubbery before they have their way with them

Well, my conversation was yesterday