10 Top Tips For Avoiding Rape

Found via my Tweep @NutkinNB:

1.   Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior.

2.   When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!

3.   If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault  them!

4.   NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.

5.   If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DON’T ASSAULT THEM!

6.   Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry, do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.

You like?

Then go read the rest.

And then go read this list too.

Then ask yourself why it is that all the usual tips are focused on the potential victims. Don't go out alone at night. Don't go jogging on the boardwalk at 5 a.m. Don't use stairwells. Don't wear a tight shirt.

As the late Israeli PM Golda Meir famously told her cabinet during a debate on imposing a curfew on women to protect them from a series of rapes, maybe it's better to lock up the men instead.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: A few people, who obviously don't have superwide LCD screens like I do, asked me what the balloons in the image say. Here goes:

HE: My sweet honey, I hope you are to be let with the lodgings.

SHE: No, I am to be let alone.

Comments

[hysperia]

When I was at Carleton University, a group of women once suggested that men refrain from using a footpath from academic buildings to a distant parking lot after dark. Thus, women would know that any man on the path was dangerous. You should have heard the outrage from the men - "I don't rape women so why should I have my freedom limited!" The men appeared to be unaware of the fact that they often suggested women not use the path after dark in order to prevent themselves from being sexually assaulted. Well, women don't rape people either (for the most part) but our freedom just isn't worth as much, apparently.

[sooey]

At the very least, women should pay 50% less tax than men do because of all the extra precautions we are forced to take to be safe from men. Also, we are allowed nowhere near the enjoyment of public space that men have. We should be compensated accordingly.

[PaulR]

"Only rapists can prevent rape" - lickystickypickyme
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Finally! How refreshing to have a link to content that leaves room for rapists and men to exist in separate categories, not meaning the same thing. Intention or oversight?

"maybe it's better to lock up the men instead." --Antonia
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Question answered.

How's that T-shirt thing going? Once you get those men onside with their T-shirts to march with you, they are going to realize they can't rape women, and that they shouldn't let their male friends rape women either.

Just make sure to send a memo to the mob to let them know the men marching are the ones seeking atonement (ie, they are only "potential rapists"). Last time one of my feminist-minded buddies participated in a Take Back the Night event, he got chewed out by a couple of angry female marchers, who accused him of being there "to meet chicks" until he left. Solidarity!

If feminist professor Susan Caringella of Western Michigan University gets her way, as depicted in In Addressing Rape Reform in Law and Practice (2008), the best way to reduce rape will be simply for men never to engage in intercourse with women. Her interesting reform proposal in the US has the law shifting the burden of proof to the male in this regard, rather than the presumption of his innocence, with regard to whether consent was given. I suppose I'm naive in suggesting that defence though, since no assault is necessary - the accusation alone is sufficient for conviction because the prosecution wouldn't need to prove anything (with only two alleged witnesses, it's her word against his as to whether consent is given - he must therefore testify and supply proof consent was given.) This kind of reform would make it much easier to lock up rapists and potential rapists alike!

[mozo]

Now, now, PaulR, Antonia didn't say to lock up all the men, she was quoting Golda Meir.

Believe me, there are many times I think it would be preferable to be locked up. I have more than enough aggravations in my life I could use a state paid holiday.

This will be minimum security...right?

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

I had a look at the list ....

Lot of interesting and true ones......

And so this means no "cultural" excuses, right?

[PaulR]

"She was quoting Golda Meir." --Stygian
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Fair enough, though my point stands well enough with her endorsement of Golda's better idea. Maybe the best idea is to rise above this Njal's Saga, quit pounding on each other, and lock up the rapists instead of casting a semantic drift net across "men".

"the extra precautions we are forced to take to be safe from men." --sooey
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Again, the inability to distinguish "man" from "rapist", and yet the recurring motif of "I don't hate men." Though I suspect sooey is not ashamed of her misandry in the slightest- others here are at least defensive about it. Those justifications often have the ring of "I'm not a racist, but..."

It's not that folks here are obtuse about carefully and painstakingly avoiding generalizations on *other* biopolitical groups and even pure cultural practices which are divorced from biology. So I know the intellectual capacity exists to keep them separate if there is a will for it. It's just this one target that gets that treatment, which I think is quite illuminating. By this point, the misandry is so baked in to the advocate dough, even if they do see it, they have too much invested to back out, so they double-down. I prefer that less cynical reading (which at least affords them sympathetic trait of desperation)to the other, which is that they simply do not extend compassion or empathy to men as human beings.

[Jim M]

Is rape the original sin?

While I consider the issue of rape by sex predators to be of primary importance compared to other forms of rape, I would like to see a dialogue begin around the issue of rape broadened to include all forms of rape, such as emotional, financial, ecological, etc. Although, I can certainly foresee how unhelpful it would be if sex predators or any other type of 'rapist' started to try to use other forms of rape to justify their own actions... in other words, a defense of fighting rape with rape.

One of many different ways I think a better understanding of the broadened issue of rape could be reached is through the Judeo-Christian story of the original rape, otherwise known as the original sin. I am not saying that Adam raped Eve or the other way around, but I'm pretty sure they are both said to have raped a tree, and I think if we knew what that tree represents — the Tree of Knowledge of ('b&e') Good and Evil... a tree that most people do not seem to understand the meaning of, including most if not all biblical scholars — that we would then be able to develop a much better grasp < poor choice of word) of the broadened issue of all types of rape.

Just one way, but I think it's a good one.

[mozo]

PaulR, first Styggy keeps calling me de beaux yeux. I am not.

Now you're calling me Styggy. I am not.

Am I not a man, I am mozo.

And I'm still waiting for my state-paid vacation, in minimum security. Thank you.

[Steve]

I think it's important not to get carried away with this kind of reversal. No rape victim should ever be blamed in any way for their assault, no matter how frustrating it might for some if they failed to follow some peice of advice.

However, in the same way that locking your car is a sensible approach to avoiding having it stolen, prudent steps to avoid sexual assault are valuable and should still be promoted. I don't think abandoning these was the point of the original post, but it seems to be implied by others.

Continue to promote safety awareness. Teach healthy sexual behavior. Never blame the victim.

[PaulR]

"I don't think abandoning these was the point of the original post, but it seems to be implied by others. - steve"
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Oh I do. I mean, there's certainly nothing wrong with anything on the list. Those are the easy ones though. The usual issues happen with what's left in the margins.

Part of the problem is that young women are taught that they are being tyrannized by men, and that even sexual encounters considered consensual under law and social compact amount to sexual assault. Young women are wrongly taught that sex induced by a male's “cajoling” without physical threat is rape (could "asking" be "cajoling"?); they are wrongly taught that sex not accompanied by oral affirmation is “rape”; and they are being wrongly taught that sex after a woman takes any alcohol or drugs invariably negates valid consent.

When I dated as a card carrrying feminist back at the height of political correctness, I was amazed at how many young women still routinely said "No," only to express surprise and disappointment when I dutifully followed their words to the letter as instructed.

"Like, why did you stop?"
"Umm... Like... because you said 'No'?"

These women, and there were more than one, made me consider how many other men they encounter, would be taught to interpret what they really meant, in contradiction to what they actually said. And if not them, maybe the next woman. With that kind of reinforcement, sooner or later somone is going to make a mistake.

We insist that men who don’t rape need to be “part of the solution” about rape, but instead of bailing out half of the canoe, shouldn’t we also insist that young women be taught about consent? That Nancy Reaganite "No means no!" shibboleth may have protected *me* from a dangerous interpretation of my partner's meaning (if not, overzealously), but they obviously weren't actually correct half of the time I heard them.

What young women are taught with regard to sexuality and consent is a mirror to the failure of the "abstinence only" approach. Both approaches ignore sex as it is practiced, instead rooting the basis of their argument in their own narrative fictions. In the case of feminist rape prevention, women and men are taught that men are the problem to be solved, while women are shortchanged.