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'.

also: I have never ever once said that anyone who rapes was asking for it. I never have and i never will.

Rape happens. Opportunistic rape, rape within relationships, rape of complete strangers whatever. Rape happens.

Kathleen Stock isn't stupid. She isn't reckless (well, maybe on some topics) and she knows how to argue a point. She isn't saying that if we all wear big pants and a hoodie we won't ever get raped.

She isn't presenting all possible arguments that will prevent rape for ever and ever.

She is presenting a pragmatic view - notwithstanding the "do it to Julia"ness of what she says - of how individual women can under certain circumstances try to mitigate being raped. And people who walk confidently, and don't look attractive as a victim to an opportunist rapist, are likely less likely to be raped than the half cut, not dressed for the weather, woman staggering along 100 metres behind her.

The concept of "personal responsibility" doesn't mean that victims should be blamed. Victims aren't responsible for the crimes against them. Personal responsiblity, or trying to have a tiny modicum of control, are not blaming victims.

Also, I will keep on taking the precautions I do whilst cursing the patriarchy and I’ll also maintain that if I am raped that it won’t be my fault in any way, shape or form even if I’m walking naked in a park at night where two women were raped over the last week.

What advice would I give to my children - son or daughter about hitchhiking? It's the same.

Also those costs (travel costs and spontaneity) have no impact on the objective which I assume would be to travel and see the world, so they aren't limiting in the same way.

FFS
Do you think that if something happened to her, she has zero responsiblity for going into a strip club full of drunk stag parties buck naked and drunk? Really? Would you do it? Would you let a friend do it? a stranger you met in the ladies of the pub next door who said "i have a wizzard wheeze, let's do this"? your mum? your daughter?

"Nobody is saying it is the same" is a lie. It is not true.

You, yourself, said "But it's the same as wearing a seatbelt, or locking your door."
In the post I quoted. It is upthread.

A poster said "What happens when you do everything "right", you dress conservatively, you restrict your freedoms, and you don't drink alcohol to excess and yet you still face sexual violence?"
You responded directly with "indeed you may well be raped. But it isn't your fault. But it's the same as wearing a seatbelt, or locking your door."

Could you try again without contradicting yourself?

Do you see why 'restricting your freedoms' is not the same as 'locking your door'?

Sorry, where have I mentioned 'the right to get wasted in the street'?

I'm talking about literally being able to go out on your own. Restricting the times you do go out. Paying for cabs instead of walking 10 minutes, and then still being at risk in the cab. Being in a closed room with any male. Freedoms.
People are saying "It iS ThE sAmE aS lOckIng YoUr DoOr"

It isn't. It quite patently isn't and I worry about the intelligence of anyone that says "It's the same".

This thread is infuriating.
I didn't say it is exactly the same. It isn't. But we know what the world is like. So i wouldn't buy a house on a flood plane, up a steep hill in a place that gets 3 months of snow and no guaranteed winter highway service. I wouldn't swim with sharks if I'd just cut my finger.

Our freedoms are curtailed in hundreds of ways every day. You can#t drive 100mph the wrong way up the motorway. You are not allowed to drive a car that isn't insured. You can't smoke inside public buildings. You can't just walk up to someone and take their sandwich because you're hungry. You can't knock off a policeman's helmet and run off laughing even though they are so very tempting.

And of course, if we really really really wanted to we should be able to walk naked and drunk into that strip club and order a beer or whatever.

So the reality is: rapists rape. There are several small things we can do to hopefully mitigate that for ourselves. If you want to go naked into that strip club, have at it. And i will be online defending your right to do that against the people who will say "what did she expect?" but privately? i'd think you should be locked up for your own good.

Yes. I do actually think that she has "zero responsiblity (sic)" for being raped. As far as I can tell there is nothing a woman can do that would MAKE HER RESPONSIBLE for someone else raping her.

Call me naive, but I actually think many women could walk butt naked and roaring drunk into a strip club full of stag parties without being raped because (1) not all men are rapists and (b) rape is not about sex.
Where I agree with Stock, and a previous poster, is that - for both men and women - excessive alcohol consumption blunts judgement and increases risk-taking. Anyone can get shit-faced, but it’s wise to do so with people who will look out for you.

“Stock's piece isn't in the least bit original”

I said this upthread, so apologies for repeating it, but in my opinion, Stock’s angle in this piece is the reaction to what he said rather than what he said.

I would see her area of interest being “opinions that frequently get criticised / condemned and whether that’s justified”, and not ‘MVAWG and what to do about it’.

I agree that her article isn’t exactly ground breaking on the subject of precautionary actions, what difference they make if any, and victim blaming.

It’s prompted an extremely thought provoking discussion on here though.

(And just to add that, I’m quoting your post simply because it’s the first in this later section of the thread which brings the discussion back to Stock, at least that I’ve spotted, not because I’ve got an issue with your post.)

Yes, I agree - she's not offering advice. She's saying why people offering advice isn't victim blaming. But her argument is unusually weak and not-well-thought out compared to other things we've seen from her previously.

“This thread is infuriating.
I didn't say it is exactly the same. It isn't. But we know what the world is like. So i wouldn't buy a house on a flood plane, up a steep hill in a place that gets 3 months of snow and no guaranteed winter highway service. I wouldn't swim with sharks if I'd just cut my finger.”

But the point is, in those examples, the ‘restrictions’ are the same for everyone regardless of sex, age, etc.

They are not restrictions with which one group is expected to comply because of the hostile and illegal actions of another group.

“Yes, I agree - she's not offering advice. She's saying why people offering advice isn't victim blaming. But her argument is unusually weak and not-well-thought out compared to other things we've seen from her previously.”

I completely agree with that Ginger.

There is of course a distance between what I think about rape and women's bodies and how I tell my daughters to behave.

I really do 100% think that women should be able to dance naked and drunk through a stag party and not get raped. Women's bodies are not in themselves a promise, a temptation, or a provocation for men to have sex with. They are just women's bodies and sex should ALWAYS be a joint venture. I do think men have been socialised to think that a woman is inevitably available to them just as a rabbit who walks into a tiger enclosure is going to be eaten. But men have intellects to differentiate them from tigers and men don't need sex from women for them to survive.

Until and unless we sort that out though I will be giving my daughters advice that balances keeping them as safe as possible while restricting their freedoms as little as possible. Enraging but practical.

“And i will be online defending your right to do that against the people who will say "what did she expect?" but privately? i'd think you should be locked up for your own good.”

Wait till you find out that the Taliban have adopted those private thoughts of yours as public policy.

I feel like a lot of 'rape prevention/victimhood avoidance' is like wearing an amulet that protects from tiger attacks when you live in Manchester. That it seems to work isn't because the amulet prevents the attack, it's just that you've never been unlucky enough to be near a tiger.

The real issue for me is when this avoidance/prevention flips into "Well you didn't do everything to prevent the rape, so therefore you asked for it" Because it seems if we realise all of our risk assessment and prevention is only at best moving us into 'Do it to Julia territory' we'd end up going fucking mad at the risk and realities of the world.

Someone upthread mentioned risk assessment and I think that's an interesting point actually. On here there are often threads of people saying they'd never let their chid have a sleepover or a playdate, or walk home from school until quite old and the reasoning is, "if anything bad happened to them I'd never forgive myself". that's the kind of thinking that says a woman must never go out in case she gets raped - it might not be her fault but she could have prevented it.

I don't think it's healthy in children and I don't think it's healthy in women. Doesn't mean that I don't also agree that there are things we can do to mitigate SOME risks at certain times and in certain situations for both women and children.

I think most if not all women are well aware of dangers and risks - it's been drummed into us since we were old enough to leave the house on out own.

My children both sexes are aware of the danger because I've slowly over years taught them and how to try and avoid -they weren't born inherently knowing these or any other dangers.

It was fairly shocking to me to encounter a friend of DD1 who was very oblivious - both parents not really there for differing reasons - oblivious to walking late at night back to her house - were resident parents was incapacitated and had no idea where she was - in a city MN always tries to talk people out of moving to and in a neighborhood then often cited as one to seriously avoid. We insisted on getting her back safely and having a quick gentle chat about navigating round safely gave her a spare alarm - not sure how much went in as she argued she done it loads and been fine.

That young girl wasn't aware because it was one in many way her family were letting her down.

Also, I will keep on taking the precautions I do whilst cursing the patriarchy and I’ll also maintain that if I am raped that it won’t be my fault in any way, shape or form

I suspect most people are here - doing what little we can to mitigate risk to ourselves and our kids and ones we love while also frustrated we actually need to consider it at all.

I wonder if we apply the "women should be able to walk drunk and buck naked into a stripp club full of drunk men" argument (not all men are dangerous and rapists) to the "man in a dress with woman feelz should be allowed to use a women's toilet" because not all man are dangerous and rapists?

The argument against the latter is: yes, we don't know which ones. So we restrict the others freedoms because of it.

I'm thinking on the hoof on the train. But i do wonder if there must always be coherence of thought/belief, or if we are allowed to have nuance in our lives ("this situation may be dangerous so I'll call a cab instead of hitching a ride")

Women are not helpless, naive victims.......unless they actually are victimised. It is naive to think that we should not take sensible precautions before putting ourselves in certain types of situation. The world is full of predicatable risks. We all have agency, and we all have responsibility.

Waiting for the day that male sexual offence or violence is not a thing will be an extremely long wait.

As was acknowledged way up thread, the reality is that very few rapes happen to girls out clubbing in short skirts. Or women making their way home through ‘unsafe’ parts of town. The vast majority of rapists are known to their victims, and they rape because of a culture which presents the female body as a consumable object. And in many of these cases, excess alcohol consumption by both parties, combined with lack of witnesses, makes it difficult to prove lack of consent with the rigour required by the English legal system.

What clothes you're wearing makes fuck all difference to your chances of being raped.

Martial arts are also pretty useless. Men are significantly stronger than women. I do a strength-based sport to a reasonable level, and I couldn't come close to fighting off the average unfit man.

Also, very few rapes begin with a stranger trying to jump a woman in an alley - in most cases it's someone the woman knows, and the thing that stops her kneeing him in the balls or elbowing him in the face at the outset isn't lack of ability to do so, but politeness. Female socialisation. An internal voice telling her not to make a fuss, because surely he's just misunderstood what she said/did? Martial arts will be fuck all help in that scenario.

So what does make someone "more likely to be raped" then?

• Having a vagina, obviously. Most rape victims are women. But there's not much we can do about that.

• Knowing, spending time with, and trusting some men. Pretty unavoidable if you want to live a normal life, but statistically women are most likely to be raped by a man they know, so knowing men will increase your risk.

• Being vulnerable in some way - easy to exploit and/or easy for others to disbelieve. There are some vulnerabilities that we have control over (not getting too drunk, not walking through dark alleys alone), but others that we cannot control (mental illness, homelessness, addiction, being in care/fostering, female socialisation/people pleasing, power imbalance, poor boundaries or inability to recognise red flags due to upbringing or previous abuse etc.).

So essentially, the only effective advice you can give to avoid rape is to reduce the vulnerabilities that are within our control. Don't get too drunk/take lots of drugs; try to stay aware of your surroundings and who is near you; take the safest routes you can; ideally stick to where there are other people around for security.

Which is sensible advice for anyone, male or female. So it's not really "advice to avoid rape", is it? It's just generic personal safety advice.

You could try to tell women to recognise and react to red flags / boundary pushing in men before those men cross the line into rape, but their ability to recognise those behaviours will be largely dependent on their previous experience. Someone who has grown up with abuse is likely to struggle to recognise boundary crossing, through no fault of their own.

Yes we are allowed to have nuance in our lives. Nuance and logic.

When/if a "man in a dress with woman feelz" is told they cannot use the women's toilet because "we don't know which [men are dangerous and rapists]", whose freedoms are curtailed? The potential victim or the potential perpetrator? If women are not "able to walk drunk and buck naked into a stripp (sic) club full of drunk men" because they might be raped, whose freedoms are curtailed? The potential victim or the potential perpetrator?

Can I make it clear that I am not advocating for women to be allowed to do this (in fact, it could be considered to be a criminal act in itself), the point I am trying to make is about responsibility. Who is responsible for the criminal act of rape, or any act sexually violence/harassment being committed. The potential victim or the potential perpetrator? You would think this is a straightforward question and answer but many posters here have displayed victim-blaming beliefs. Advice about "avoiding" rape is not helpful or consistent with the reality of these crimes, but instead leads to blame, shame, and further harm.

@TarantinoIsAMisogynist I agree 100% and you have put it more eloquently than I could.

The two occasions I was most at risk of male sexual assault was when hitching alone in France, aged 18. Never had any problems with men when hitching in Britain - but as soon as I arrived in France it started. I'd definitely not recommend any young woman not to do the same. You live and learn.