Judge - 'women must be careful'- help me argue against my Daily Mail quoting mother argh

[af2000]

I'm not really sure if this is going to make sense.

Having coffee with my mother, grandmother and SIL today and the subject somehow came around to rape and the recent case of an outgoing judge saying that young women need to be 'more careful' (in the context of avoiding getting raped).

They were all saying that they agreed with the judge and that the subsequent outcry about her comments were taken out of context and that she was actually right. I tried to argue that she was not right and that women should not have to 'be more careful' and that it once again came around to the fact that we have an intrinsic culture of victim blaming here, even when we don't think we do. They all dismissed my comments, as usually tends to happen.. they think I am just a ridiculous liberal I think

Can you help me with the argument I was trying to make? But in a more convincing/articulate way. I know what I am getting at but I feel foolish and ganged up against and like my current post pregnancy brain is no longer up to a good bit of debate 😕

Agree with them. Tell them that women unnecessarily put themselves at risk of rape all the time by living together with men and marrying men.
Agree that society should be changed so that women live together with female friends (or in matrilineal households - you could move back in with them! Only suggest that if they wouldn't like this, though ) instead of putting themselves at risk of rape instead of living with men.
Agree that men should not be allowed to leave the house without a female chaperone, in order to avoid stranger rape. Women should be more careful with regard to stranger rape and vote for such a law to be introduced.

Then tell me what they reply.

... sorry, mix up in the fifth line, but you get what I mean.

Agree that men should not be allowed to leave the house without a female chaperone,

This has always been my favourite idea. Instead of advising women to stay home because there's a rapist loose, advise men to stay home so they don't get confused with the rapist.

The spluttering it provokes is fantastic.

VestalVirgin

www.boredpanda.com/sexual-assault-consent-analogy-tweets-nafisa-ahmed/

The judge's comments were taken out of context though. Yes - only rapists rape.... and she agreed that.

But being too drunk to know what you are doing puts you at all sorts of risks. You are more likely to have your bag or phone stolen, you are more likely to fall and hurt yourself, you are more likely to appear vulnerable.

People don't go out leaving their front door wide open - yet only burglars burgle.

I agree with the judge and think her comments were taken completely out of context.

There are bad men out there, who will look for vulnerable women and hurt them, obviously, society should focus on making these men not exist, but it is likely they always will exist. As a woman, you should try and keep yourself safe. The victim is never at fault, but we should try and be as safe as we can.

But being too drunk to know what you are doing puts you at all sorts of risks.

So what? Men also rape sober women. The common factor here is the rapist, not the alcohol.
Remove the potential rapists from public spaces, not the potential victims.

Men drink alcohol, too, and, lo and behold, they don't get told by judges that they ought to have been more careful if they get their phone stolen. And if drunk men regularly were abducted and got a kidney stolen, which is closer to rape than having a phone stolen, then there'd be no advice by the police that men ought to not get drunk, there'd be a loud call for more police!

Agree with Vestal.

Also...

It's odd how people say 'oh there will always be rapists' and are generally quick to say 'there will always be burglars' but people don't tend to say 'oh there will always be murderers'.

There's a real refusal to accept rape as the violent crime against the person that it is, instead it's equated with getting your bag snatched. Being drunk puts you at more risk of being murdered too, surely, so why isn't that flagged up more often?

Also why aren't men told not to drink lest they become a rapist

As a woman, you should try and keep yourself safe. The victim is never at fault, but we should try and be as safe as we can.

My words. I am glad you are onboard with the new law that bans men from venturing outside the house without a female chaperone after nightfall, and bans men without chaperone from locations where women might consume alcohol.

Let's start a petition, shall we?

Men without a chaperone should have their trousers padlocked and key left at home?

Completely agree with you Vestal re call for more police if men were violently attacked.

Yes, fine by me.

people don't tend to say 'oh there will always be murderers'

Yes they do, because there probably will always be murderers.

Totally agree with the judge.!

Getting so drunk you don't know what you are doing is never a good idea for anyone, as it puts you at risk of all manner of unpleasant outcomes, from tripping over your own feet to being robbed and assaulted.

But it's only ever brought up as warnings in the context of women becoming victims of rape, which surely should give us pause for thought, and highlight the fact that the underlying assumption going on is that women are responsible for attacks on them.

Where are the warnings saying, "Men - don't drink, otherwise you're at risk of getting into punch-ups in dodgy pubs"? Or even, "Men - don't drink, otherwise you're impairing your ability to judge whether your partner is consenting to sex"?

I've had this discussion with my husband. When I said all men should have a curfew as they're the ones who commit the crime he looked incredulous and said "you can't punish all men because of a few". He didn't seem to realise that all women have their freedom taken away by these few men.
Unfortunately I don't think some people (mostly men) understand that women are on the defensive a lot of the time.

It's about looking after your own neck. Men shouldn't target tipsy women but they do. Just as muggers target people coming out the tube and swipe their phones.

I tell DS to look both ways crossing the road - even a 1 way because some bastards think the rules don't apply to them. I'd rather be aware and not get run over than lying on my back in the gutter saying 'I'm in the right, you were wrong...'. and when he's older I will be telling him to not get pissed on a night out or he might end up getting into a fight or knifed.

Men - don't drink, otherwise you're impairing your ability to judge whether your partner is consenting to sex"?
Actually I do plan to advise both my DSs regarding this issue when they are at an appropriate age. Not necessarily not drinking at all but certainly not drinking to the extent that their sense of reason and decency is badly impaired. Let's start with those nearest and dearest if we want to change attitudes.
And equally I would still suggest to my DSD (as we did when she was younger) that she needed to take care of herself. It's about reducing personal exposure to risk from opportunist criminals-e.g. Don't spend your taxi money on chips and walk home alone at 2 am across the park. Yes we shouldn't need to and definitely it would not be the fault of the victim, but that would be of little comfort to any of us if she got attacked under those circumstances.

I've not read the full text of the judge's comments and I'm interested to discover: did the judge's comments include any advice on how some police officers, judges, jurors and prosecuting lawyers should change their behaviour towards a raped drunk woman, if her case does ever make it as far a courtroom?

I think I do agree that everyone needs to be careful with regards to drinking and bad things happening. But this relates to the dangers of drinking and being drunk, rather than the specific context of rape.

What bugs me is that the comments made by the judge were aimed towards women, and that once again as so often seems to be the case with rhetoric around rape, it was the suggestion that the responsibility lies with the woman not to get raped. Maybe if she had said 'women don't get paraletic because there are some people who want to rape you' and 'men don't get paraletic because your impaired judgement may lead you to rape someone'.. would that feel less bad? I hate the reasoning of 'yes we know you should be able to walk around drunk without being raped but that's not the reality in today's society'...

My previous post should read "lawyers" instead of "prosecuting lawyers".

If alcohol is the factor, why not ban alcohol?

If you're promoting changes to women's behaviour to prevent rape, what you're basically saying is to "make sure he rapes the other girl"

It'sneversunny that is such a good point, I hadn't thought of it like that. I wish I'd have had that in my arsenal earlier

There's a difference between giving general safety advice and specifically targeting safety advice towards only women and only because they might get raped imo.

I think this is the problem I have with the whole people need to take personal responsibility thing; ime it only ever seems to come up when the subject of rape comes up and only specifically when it's women being raped discussed. If a man is doing things that are deemed risky, say if he is drunk and walking home alone late at night, and he is the victim of a crime then you never hear people questioning what he was doing there, he shouldn't have been so drunk, etc.

There was a thread on here not long ago where the OP had been raped after walking home alone after a night out years ago. She had been drunk at the time and she never reported it or told anyone because she felt it was her fault somehow and she just knew the reactions she would get if she told them what happened. One thing that stood out to me was the fact that she said that if she hadn't been raped that night but something else had happened to her instead; if she had been mugged or beaten up then she wouldn't have had the same reservations about telling people nor would she have hesitated to report it.

That stuck out to me because it rang true for me. Now I wasn't drunk when I was raped; in retrospect I was in a situation where I should have been safe. I was in a relative's house with family and it was the middle of the day. The man who raped me was a family friend and he overpowered me when we were alone together and raped me. I hadn't put myself in a risky situation but I still didn't tell anyone what had happened until two weeks later and even then I refused to report it. Even though I hadn't done anything 'wrong' I still felt like it was my fault in some way. I felt like I should have fought harder, should have screamed as loud as I could when he took his hand away from my mouth briefly to pull down his trousers, should never have been alone with him in the first place...

Here's the thing; I know fine well that if he hadn't raped me but had assaulted me physically another way instead then I would have had no problem going downstairs to my family and saying "Wtf, x has just punched me in the face!". I would have probably had no qualms about going to the police either.

I believe the argument is that of course there will always be rapists and of course sober women get raped but being sober will put you in a better position to be able to fight them off and get away but I have a problem with that argument tbh. What about women who were sober when they were raped but still unable to fight their attacker off? Is it their fault for not being able to fight harder? What about women who didn't fight at all but instead froze? Like I said, I was sober when I was raped but still couldn't fight him off even though I tried. Was it my fault for not fighting still? I tried as hard as I could but I couldn't budge him.

I think giving safety advice is fine but it's giving specific rape prevention advice that makes me want to bang my head against a wall. I'm pregnant right now and I will be giving the same advice to my child when they're older regardless of whether they are a boy or girl; stick with your friends, don't get too drunk, keep an eye of your drink, make sure you know how you're getting home, etc. What I will not be doing however is giving specific rape prevention advice if my child is a girl.