Ways to lessen the risk of rape

[ArabeIIaScott]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/789f07e8-49aa-11ee-ae7e-1fff6c8e0528?shareToken=0d97e81f86763060709b5a5106cc7a9b

The idea that any form of precautionary behaviour from women is akin to 'victim blaming' seems like madness to me. A very sensible column from K Stock.

'Someone needs to tell young women what sort of world they live in and how best to defend themselves accordingly — imperfect certainly, but still better than nothing. Contrary to popular belief, this isn’t always the same thing as telling women that if they don’t listen to sensible advice, they have no right to complain about whatever happens next.'

Another detail that I'd never considered is how insulting it is to suggest that it's mothers' responsibility to 'teach sons not to rape'.

I can imagine even those trained in martial arts will have limited success against grown men.

A woman skilled in brazilian ju jitsu has a pretty good chance against the average bloke as most people don't know how to fight on the floor. Contrary to expectations, grappling isn't conducive to brute force and the average person will tire in about 30 seconds if they're trying to 'muscle it' rather than use leverages.

A skilled bjj practitioner uses their full body as leverage and is good at smothering an opponent so they can't punch effectively. This is how you get all the challenge fights with 150lb skinny bjj practitioners dominating 280lb bodybuilders (no exaggeration). To this day you can still walk in off the street into any Gracie academy with a challenge and a senior trainee will spar you (i.e. take you down and make you tap out via joint hold/choke etc).

This is the kind of stuff that will help you in the real world. If you can excuse the shameless marketing the concepts are pretty sound. Obv in a life or death situation you'd likely do dirty stuff like ram your thumb in their eye socket or bite half their ear off (which you'd have a good chance of doing as most people don't know how to react when they get tangled up and usually flounder around trying to break free).

I've grappled loads of men and unlike with striking arts you can go full tilt in sparring, as long as you release the lock when they tap out and don't pop their joint. Boxing against men is much harder as they have so much more reach, but unskilled grapplers are easy to spar. You can't always apply the locks as they're too strong but they can't really hurt you either as most aren't used to being smothered and just flail around wasting energy. Most times you feel you could defo hurt their eye or rip off an ear with the element of surprise - enough to buy you time to disengage.

ReginaRegina That's all well and good for able-bodied, able-minded women. Physically and mentally disabled women remain at risk.

In the brave new world where all able women become nth dan in BJJ, what do men do to carry on raping? They pick on disabled women even more than they do now, they resort to incapacitating drugs more, they use psychological techniques more, they become police/door staff/teachers and abuse trust more.

Advocating escalation of the arms race isn't a feminist stance, especially when doing so leaves disabled women behind. Men need to stop raping. Fathers need to teach their sons to respect women. Male role models need to be held to account and be seen to be held to account.

I agree. But I think there are always goingto be rapists. there are always going to be men from broken homes, from the care systemwho don't havegood role models, or a good upbringing. There are always going to be psychopaths within society. It's a utopian dream to think that rapists can be eradicated. The same as there will always be violent males, and always be murderers. These people exist and I really don't know how giving our daughters advice on how to minimise risky situations is anything but hepful (im not saying that you have said this, but other posters have).

I also personally don't believe that self defence has that much of an impact.

I really don't know how giving our daughters advice on how to minimise risky situations is anything but hepful

It becomes unhelpful when failure to follow the advice (because you weren't given it, or didn't understand it, or didn't recognise the hazardous situation, ir recognised the hazardous situation but were gaslit about it being hazardous) is used as a stick to beat you with.

"You should have left when you felt unsafe."

"I tried to, but my stupid mate wouldn't leave when I said to and downplayed my concerns when I said I felt threatened and you told me not to take a taxi alone."

I think saying 'you should of ... ' after an incident is VERY different from discussing sensible safety measures.

If course saying 'you should have done x y z' is a terrible thing to do.

Also, in the victim's own mind, "you should" becomes "I should have". It's vital that "you should" comes with "but fight-flight-freeze-fawn-flop means you might not be able to and that's not your fault".

The things is no one knows how they're going to react, because you're not rational, you don't have time to think and consider your options and your brain does whatever the fuck it wants to do.

At 13 I fought and screamed and scratched and treated and tried to bite. Did it help? Yes as it stopped before being too bad. The incident and having to fight, knowing what I was fighting against, were still incredibly traumatic.

At 17(much older,wiser ,bigger,stronger ) I just fucking froze. I couldn't believe it was happening, it couldn't be happening, it made no sense. He was my maths tutor, in his own home, with his wife in the kitchen, his son in his bedroom. There were 3 other girls at the table!! Despite feeling his hand under my jumper, it wasn't happening. Despite de pain from him grabbing and twisting and pinching. It wasn't happening. It couldn't be happening. Who does that? It was all in my head. Not just that, but I actually went for another session. Did that imply consent? It wasn't happening, but it kinda did so I never went back.

In other situations I played nice and made promises of a better time in a better situation, others I just ran. With my grandfather I was just outraged and then deeply ashamed. I remember asking my mother if I am really such a slut that my own grandfather would try it on. Him I did push away. It was the wrongness of who he was that got that response out of me.

You don't know how you'll react, what you internalise, how you'll feel until it happens. By then it's too late.

@AngryGreasedSantaCatcus I'm so sorry

Nah, it's fine. It's not about that.

It's that there are a myriad of situations where there's fuck all you can do, in which you can become a victim, in which women and girls are harmed regardless of what they wear, how they act, how sober they are etc. There are so many ways in which your brain or body can react, that you can't possibly predict. It's that every would ,shoulda, coulda just reinforces that message that somehow ,in some way, regardless of the situation, we did something to cause it or failed to prevent it.

Tbh I believe because it's so much easier to blame the victim so we can delude ourselves it won't be us and not to have to accept that too many boys/men are like that and that there is no obvious sign to recognise. It's too much and too scary to live like that. So once again, we ask what was she doing there, what was she wearing, did she engage with him, was she too "friendly" , was she drunk, did she message, did she go back?

Yes, I believe you're absolutely correct.

Tbh, I don't really care about the feminist stance. I'm not going to wilfully neglect my personal safety for somebody else. It's not like an attacker would even know I'm good grappling and kali or that I've got a massive spiked keyring.

And how does being autistic mean that you can't learn a martial art?

I was classed as a “lone worker” for a few years, so my workplace paid for a self-defence class run by three retired policemen. It gave me confidence and I learnt a few physical tricks to get out of someone’s grasp…

…but I’ve long forgotten all of those, and can only remember their constant mantra: Be alert to your surroundings at all times and always have an escape strategy.

Before that I lived in a pretty rough part of London and had a half-mile walk to and from the railway/tube station, usually very early morning or late at night because of my nursing shifts. I dressed in black (it was the 80s after all) and walked very fast, head up, projecting surety and confidence and supreme fitness, as though I could run really fast (I couldn’t), keys gripped between my fingers in my (body-concealing) coat pocket. I don’t remember being taught to do those things, I just knew not to look vulnerable or easily grabbable. The only trouble I had was from old Greek and Turkish men who leered and muttered obscenities at me as I steamed past them.

Seeing as most sexual assaults are by people known to the victim, this just seems like unnecessary “noise” in the discussion

there is no way to absolutely avoid VAWG, and giving advice like this just gives people a stick to beat women with when it does happen

They know you're not in a wheelchair or on crutches because they have eyes. If everyone who could learn kali did, there would only be the disabled women who didn't know it and they would get picked on more.

1. Bright lights in the sports hall, loud noises, unwanted physical contact during training bouts, other people moving too fast, all causing sensory overload.
2. Being autistic is as much about not being able to "read" people and skilfully deescalate as anything else. I could learn to fight like the Bride from Kill Bill, but if I don't recognise threatening behaviour early enough to realise that I need to deescalate, flee, or fight, I'm screwed.

@ReginaRegina Read what AngryGreasedSantaCatcus and Littlepinkstarsbyradish said.

Sexual assault #3, I trusted him enough to live with him and woke up to find him on top of me. I didn't scream because I was still sleep paralysed and then shock kicked in and I froze. Other women don't scream because they feel that the only thing worse than their husband raping them would be their kids being woken up by screams and walking in on daddy raping mummy. Kali won't save you those situations.

most sexual assaults are by people known to the victim

It's around 80%, 50% current or former partner and 30% other men you know. I recall the coppers who came to my school to spend an hour teaching the girls to fight rapists (but didn't teach the boys not to rape ) telling us that we won't try to fight our friends. I'm autistic, so I didn't understand that coded warning about acquaintance and date rape until several decades later, when it was years too late.

Around 2/3 or rapes take place in the perp's or victim's house or car. The stranger rape on the streets is a minority of rapes, yet it's the threat model women are taught to fear. It's the politicians' syllogism applied to male violence against women.

If you must insist on making women and girls responsible for avoiding rapes, advice that might work would be "don't marry, don't date, don't allow men into your home, and don't enter a man's home". But no one bar the odd lesbian separatist ever suggests that, because "family" under patriarchy is predicted on women marrying men and doing not only the childrearing but the "wife work" as well, and Western society isn't bold enough to consider female-headed families (à la Mosuo) as an option. Basically, blokes not having to iron or vacuum clean is more important than freeing women from the risks of intimate partner violence. This is what patriarchy looks like.

But let's be real. We live in a country populated by an overwhelming number of fat people. They're not all going to suddenly become lean, mean fighting machines. If they did it would benefit women hugely as a group due to the reduction in health problems and lifestyle related diseases.

And try telling the average young women "don't marry, don't date, don't allow men into your home, and don't enter a man's home". 😂 Statistically, most don't identify as feminists nowadays so it's very unlikely they'd want to follow the advice of lesbian separatists or live like a small community of Chinese subsistence farmers.

Feminists always seem to try and speak on behalf of women but really they have no more right than the trans lobby to do so. Stuff like abortion rights etc makes universal sense but too much of feminism is political ideology dressed up as 'the voice of women' when really it represents the minority.

If you don't believe me watch how quickly people will try and chase you out of this section for stating views like the above!

I mean, you could argue that getting fit isn't a feminist stance because it means the overweight women that can't run fast will become easy targets.

That is victim blaming. Nuns get raped. 83-year-old women living at home get raped. It is never the victim's fault.

It's all very well to talk about what should happen but in reality if you don't want to raped/assaulted it's in your interest to use common sense. Once you're lying in a pool of blood the last thing you'll be thinking about is what should have happened.

The problem is “Why didn’t she know Brazilian jujitsu?” becomes a synonym for “she wanted it”/a man can’t be reasonably expected to know that a woman untrained in jujitsu can want not to have sex with him.
To me being trained in jujitsu is not a reasonable preventative measure- I.e. I shouldn’t be ‘held accountable’ for my failure to train in jujitsu should I be raped. The onus is not on women to prevent rapes happening.

Is there actually any data on the clothes that victims were wearing? Or are people just guessing on this? Along with "time of day", I'd be really interested in seeing any data - please do post links if you have them.

It's not about whether women would take the advice not to marry. It's about whether people would even consider offering it. It's the advice that would consistently protect all women, regardless of physical ability.

Most subsistence communities in the world are patriarchal. The Mosuo aren't subsistence-level because of matriarchy but because they are in a very rural part of China. Many other subsistence communities live in rural China amd are patriarchies. Do you think that female-headed families with male partners living elsewhere could work elsewhere? If not, why?