How To Stop Rape

Oh, Ann Coulter. Such a wonderful human being. Except not really wonderful. And probably not really a human either.

She was just on Hannity & Colmes too (I know, I know, I shouldn’t be watching Fox News, but I was flipping through and heard them say, “And when we come back, we’ll be talking to Ann Coulter,” so I had to stay and watch).
She wasn’t really on her game, though. No incredibly inflammatory comments past what she’d already said in her article. The title of which, by the way, is fabulous. (“Lie down with strippers, wake up with pleas.”)

It’s a sad day when you’re disappointed that Ann Coulter wasn’t as much of an ass as you would’ve liked her to be.

Well, everything is always (insert your favorite) Clinton’s fault.

I just have to say, re: that last paragraph… oooh, snap! That was awesome.

I have always been unabashedly anti-murder, anti-rape and anti-false accusation — and I don’t care who knows about it!

I’m going to say it before August does:

“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.”
(New York Observer, 8/26/2002)

And other, similar “jokes”.

that should say “my brother’s hometown.”

Seriously ladies if you are so worried about female victims then lobby for less restrictive gun laws so you can have a chance at defeating an assailant. If I could I would personally be every woman’s bodyguard but I can’t, ya’ll have free will and I am only one man. But I hate seeing women victimized and I know that guns are the only thing that gives a woman a shot (literally) when she is cornered by some violent fuck who wants to rape or kill her.

Well, now she’s gonna be in trouble with all the pro-rape, pro-murder conservatives.

Zuzu, no-one who has ever been raped in the history of time “deserved” it. But she would have certainly enabled a bad guy more than the gal at the bar sitting next to her who kept her wits about her did. Do myou lock your doors at night? Why – because it deters bad people who do bad things. And if you had the doors to your apartment wide open and you got robbed, you would be criticized, and rightly so, for it. It doesn’t mean you “deserved” to get robbed, but you made it easier, didn’t you?

This is not a zero sum game of focus, as explained before. Of course there needs to be focus all over the predators. But you preach a creed of non-responsibilty by ignoring the victim’s actions. Are you maintainig that there is no difference between a woman sleeping in her bed who’s locked door is kicked in and gets raped and a woman who is drunk in a bar a 4 am and leaves with someone she hardly knows getting raped?
Certainly the commonality is that the rapist should be shot and it is the perpetrators decision to violate the woman’s rights. However, the percentage of rapes that happen in circumstances similar to the second woman described are astronomically higher than the first. In all other areas of life, that’s called a learning situation, but in this case your cry foul when what can be adopted to the benefit of all women is spotlighted. That just makes no sense?

I don’t know what planet men who get killed for acting stupid don’t get criticized too, cuz on my planet they do.

Really? Because I don’t recall anything like that being said about Michael Zebuhr (the guy that was shot in Uptown a few weeks ago). No one pointed out that it was a Saturday night, in Uptown Minneapolis, that perhaps he should have brought some big strong men with him instead of his mother, and that hey, he wasn’t even from Minneapolis, perhaps it is his fault for going into a strange city. Nope, didn’t hear any of these things.

Why? Because it wasn’t seen as stupid. It’s normal for people to dine out in Uptown on a Saturday night. It’s normal to go out to eat with your mother. But replace him with a woman, and suddenly… all of it is really really stupid and she should have known better!

I always find this argument really surprising though, I think it’s really offensive to men. Because basically, what you are saying, is women bear responsibility for their own rape because men are inherently beasts that can’t control themselves when tempted (I’m assuming that having 100 dollar bills hanging out of ones pocket is equal to a woman having the audacity to bare her shoulders, correct?). Let’s apply that to other scenarios. If women that go out to bars are at fault for their rape, then can we say that parents that allow male teachers into schools are responsible for their child’s rape? I mean, the kids are vulnerable, right (like the drunk woman)? And after all, that teacher is a man, and we should immediately cast him as a rapist, just to be safe (like women should do when encountering unknown men at the bar)? So it was pretty stupid to let that potential rapist (ie any man) into the school, right? Perhaps we should just never have male teachers in any school.

My wife can drink a bottle of wine in our home wihtout any cause for conern.

Bullshit. Apparently you forgot about that serial rapist that was on the loose a few years ago in Minneapolis? The one that broke into people’s homes?

I have to agree with M.

There is a difference between blaming the victim and using instances like these as “teachable moments”.

Don’t get completely wasted and walk alone on the streets at night.
Don’t get completely wasted and off with a stranger that you don’t know.

Those are two somewhat common sense steps that we can all take to minimize the risk of being a victim of rape or any other crime. If we know that rape is more a crime of power than it is of sex, why not point out the fact that being high or drunk places one in a vulnerable position, where her power is diminished and increases her risk of being a victim.

While no one has direct control on who a perpetrator decides to target, there are certainly steps that people can take to minimize the risk of putting oneself in a potentially harmful situation.

How are women supposed to meet men and get married, like we’re supposed to, without actually ever being in the presence of “strange men”? Isn’t that what dating is? Going out with a man in order to get to know him?

I guess we’ll have to let our dads pick our husbands for us or else it’s our fault if we get raped.

But the problem is that no one is suggesting steps *people* can take to minimize their risk. They are suggesting that *women* should have their behavior and activity curtailed in order to avoid risk. If a man can go out to a bar and have a drink safely, to suggest that a woman should not is problematic. It essentially says that women can only ensure their safety if they view all male strangers as potential rapists, and stay home, or only leave home with a male protector.

There are numerous problems with that – not the least of which is that the majority of rapes are *NOT* committed by strangers.

Did no one notice the opening paragraph of Coulter’s column:

However the Duke lacrosse rape case turns out, one lesson that absolutely will not be learned is this: You can severely reduce your chances of having a false accusation of rape leveled against you if you don’t hire strange women to come to your house and take their clothes off for money.

In other words, if it turns out the rape accusation was false, the players put themselves in a position where they were vulnerable to that. (As Mr. from Minnesota points out, this does not reduce the guilt of the perpetrator one bit.) Coulter is applying the same standards to men as to women.

And she manages to imply that the only reason men shouldn’t do that is because there’s hoardes of women out there who are dying to “cry rape”. Anyway you slice it, women are to blame.

I hate to break it to you, but men are actually more merciful on average toward women in these cases than other men. A man who got the shit kicked out of him in a bar fight that he started by saying something rude to a drunk biker wouldn’t get an ounce of mercy from me, Vox or most other men. Unless he were paralyzed or killed, we’d probably quietly acquit the perp on the grounds of fighting words. Same biker raped a woman who did something stupid, we’d vote to convict… because it’s a woman, not a man.

You’ve got two choices in this world. You can live in your fantasy world where evil people are just a few more cops and a new law away from disappearing or accept the fact that they’ve always been here, and always will be. Let me show you why men tend to stay away from these places. Why is it that most “manly men” can accept the danger and stay away, but “Strong, Liberated Women” seem to have an almost suicidal passion for running into the lion’s cage and trying to beat it with a rolled up newspaper?

There are a few separate issues here. First, blame is not only attributing causal responsibility to an agent; it is also attributing moral culpability. They two are quite distinct; the first might be necessary for the 2nd, but it certainly isn’t sufficient for it. So blaming someone when all you mean to do is attribute causal responsibility is simply inappropriate.

Another issue is that of ‘reasonable precaution.’ Men who get killed in stupid ways *do* get criticized. (See the Darwin Awards, which “salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who remove themselves from it. Of necessity, this honor is generally bestowed posthumously.”) But there is an enormous difference between, say, playing with grenades and simply going out drinking on a weeknight. Even without getting into the issue of one’s right to a normal life, the simple fact is that going out drinking is not a particularly risky thing to do, statistically speaking. When someone gets raped and killed, we hear all about it; we don’t hear about the millions who make it home with no worse consequences than a hangover.

Finally, the moral dimension has to be brought back in, because there are many times when even quite risky behavior is exempt from blame or even praised. The “Tank Man” of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests was doing something very, very risky; and in fact he was probably murdered by the state as a result. Most of us would say that it would be inappropriate to say that “he asked for it” or “he shouldn’t have been so foolish”; we tend to think he was being, instead, heroic. Similarly, Jill’s mention of Sister Karen Klimczak being killed by an ex-con she tried to help is very much on point: what she was doing seems much riskier than getting drunk every weekend, and yet, again, it seems quite inappropriate to criticize her for it.

When we combine these issues, the reason for outrage over Coulter’s column becomes clear: it inappropriate to expect women to take all possible steps, no matter how cost-ineffective, in order to minimize the risk of other people violating their rights. It is inappropriate not only because following Coulter’s prescriptions will not, in fact, make one much safer, but also because denying that women ought to be able to enjoy city nightlife as they choose, and as men take for granted, is hard to square with a professed commitment to equality of moral status. The state has claimed the exclusive right, more or less, to protect us from each other through the use of its coercive apparatus; there’s at least something to the argument that if it is to do so, it must do so in a way that is sensitive to our equality of rights. An unsafe neighborhood ought to get more policing resources than a safe one, rather than simply being subjected to collective shaming due to the residents’ foolish choices in picking their homes.

Saying, as some commentators have, that we ought to blame the victim, not because she has done anything wrong, but simply to discourage such behavior in others in the future, gets things rather backwards: shame, I think, ought to be saved for those behaviors we wish to discourage *because* they are morally questionable, since it of necessity incorporates elements of moral condemnation. Behaviors that are merely risky, like living in a high-crime neighborhood, having a nightlife, and the like, should be more or less immune.

There is a doulbe standard, and that double standard is to treat rape differently than any other crime as far as victims are concerned. It is not blaming someone to point out that their behavior and choices created a higher degree of possible victimization. If I don’t shred my bank statements and just toss them in the trash I have increased my chances of ID theft. If I leave my car running on an abandonned street I have increased my chances of it being stolen. If I get butt wasted and mouth off to a guy in a bar, I increase the chances of getting my ass kicked. If if a woman chooses certain behavior patters and circumstances she increases her chances of being victimized. I write the first example and everyone on this blog says – yup. I write the 4th example and people say I’m blaming the victim. It’s common sense, and when you ignore reality – which is that men and women are different and face different kinds of peril in this world – you increase the number of victims not reduce them. Of COURSE these measures of increased safety don’t eliminate all rapes, but they’d eliminate some. And to write up soem long loist saying don’t hang out with male relatives, don’t go on a date, blah, blah, blah, you are perpetuating an argument that says because all rapes can’t be eliminated, reducing the likelihood of any is a wasted exercise. I strongly disagree.

Piny,

What part of not putting yourself in a situation that you know is against you, don’t you understand? Does a caustic word justify a fist fight? To many evil men, it certainly does justify beating the hell out of a man, just as much as being drunk justifies a woman getting raped. In both scenarios, evil people used a moment of bad judgement to justify their actions. Why don’t you… *ahem* fucking live with it and accept that evil people are, well, evil and reject your standards of right and wrong.

No one is suggesting that women stay home. It’s that women shouldn’t go to bars, which happen to be magnets for many types of bad people, without backup or a weapon.

But you feminists will take one thing and redirect it in a direction that no one intended. That’s the feminist MO. Take a simple suggestion that women modify their lifestyle to fit their physical disadvantages relative to men and say that women ought to be locked up in a tower with an iron maiden. I have no pity for people who refuse to take necessary steps to be safe. Even as a man, I’d no more get drunk in a seedy bar (or even go there) than I would swim in shark-infested waters. Even for men the danger is too high. The difference is that you don’t see men arguing that we should be able to go to seedy bars, get wasted, leave alone at 3AM and be perfectly fine because we know that in the real world, that’s not going to happen. You’re right, women ought to never be raped. However, they do get raped and any woman who goes into a situation where she knows that rapes are statistically like to occur is not the same type of woman as a woman who takes care of herself.

And she manages to imply that the only reason men shouldn’t do that is because there’s hordes of women out there who are dying to “cry rape”. Anyway you slice it, women are to blame.

Could you point out exactly what she said that implies this? I couldn’t find it.

And if she did imply it, so what? The primary (if not only) reason women should avoid going off alone with strange men is that there are many men (I wouldn’t go so far as to say “hordes”) who are willing to commit rape. So is she also saying that “anyway you slice it, men are to blame”?

She’s equating two very different positions in order to make it seem as though she’s applying the same standards. She’s saying that there are about as many predatory rape-crying women out there as there are predatory male rapists, and that men have the same vulnerability to the former as women to the latter.

Where is she equating anything with anything? She mentions a number of bad things that can happen to people, and a number of behaviors that can increase one’s exposure to these things. Nowhere did she equate one with another. If I were to give a list of things you could do to avoid getting robbed, and a list of other things you could do to avoid getting killed, would I be equating robbery with murder?

Oh and Piny, I don’t drink and could care less about the social freedom to drink in public of this country’s legion of alcoholics. While I don’t support prohibition, I could care less about whether men and women can drink in public.

…you are perpetuating an argument that says because all rapes can’t be eliminated, reducing the likelihood of any is a wasted exercise. I strongly disagree.

I don’t think reducing one’s chances of getting raped is a wasted exercise. We all take risks every single day. We all engage in risk reduction thought processes on an almost constant basis (while driving, crossing the street, cooking food). I would not tell a woman that it was a “wasted exercise” if she decided that she was not willing to engage in certain behaviors because she thought it was personally too risky for her. If a woman doesn’t want to go out to bars by herself and go home with men she’s just met, good for her. But I also wouldn’t tell a woman that she was stupid if she did choose to do those things. Personally, I’ve gone to bars and gone home with men I’ve just met and had sex and I’ve not gotten raped. I knew that there was an inherent risk in doing so. I also know that there’s an inherent risk in driving over the speed limit or cooking my steak medium rare. But like to do all of those things, and I don’t think I’m being unreasonable by doing them. They are normal ways to live one’s life.

Jill said this in the post:

Now, obviously, all people should do what they can to prevent themselves from being the victim of a crime. In fact, the vast majority of us already do that.

When a woman gets raped, don’t you think she is already going through every single detail of the incident and wondering what she could have done differently to prevent it from happening? Don’t you realize that woman usually already blame themselves when they are raped? They don’t need anyone else blaming them.

While it might reduce a particular woman’s chance of getting raped if she just stays cloistered in her home all the time, it won’t reduce the overall incidence of rape. As was said upthread, the predators will find their prey somewhere.

Stacy,

Perhaps the false reports of rape have taken their toll on the willingness of juries to believe accusations that lack corroborating physical evidence. All it takes is a few cases of women trying to make statements to get society jaded. Besides, don’t you fear a legal system that can convict primarily on a he-said, she-said scenario that lacks physical evidence? How would you like a system that could execute you for murder, even though there is only one witness and no physical evidence to suggest foul play at the scene of the alleged murder? I bet you’d go gibbering up the wall the first time a woman would get put on death row because her husband accidentally killed himself such as falling down the stairs at a time the neighbors knew their marriage was strained.

Unlike you, I don’t give people the benefit of the doubt to strangers and am skeptical of people who say “just trust me” when I don’t know them.

Well, Mike, I just got back from my lunchbreak and was going to respond to all your insightful comments, but since Piny, Stacy, et. al. have all said what I wanted to say anyway, and since a short little glance at your site indicates that you’re a troll who sympathizes with sex offenders who like to bang 15 year old children, I’m just gonna take a rain check on getting into an argument with you.

Good day.

*snaps fingers and points at eyes* Pay attention.

Yeah, not a dictorial asshole who thinks women are equivalent to dogs or small children. Just a well-meaning good guy who thinks feminists are misguided.

I don’t, anymore than I think it’s right to rape a woman for dressing in a provocative way. The problem is, both happen, but the average man isn’t going to get himself worked up into a political snit over evil men using a mild fighting word to hurt others.

The “average” man probably doesn’t hate women nearly as much as you do and probably doesn’t feel that discouraging women from wearing sexy clothes and being in public places where he can meet them is such a fantastic idea.

Yes, zuzu, such women are quite different from your average woman who drinks moderately and stays safe. They are doing over the course of several hours something that is no more demonstrably safe than jumping into a big cat area of a major zoo. The difference is, I’d be completely against shooting the big cat that killed her on grounds that it didn’t know any better, nor should it have been expected to.

Whoa. Glad we’ve cleared that up.

You’d be against shooting (convicting?) the big cat (rapist) that killed her (raped her) on grounds that it (the rapist) didn’t know any better, nor should it have been expected to.

Dude, are you human? Humans have choices, we can choose to control ourselves and exist in society, or we can choose not to. This is the point. Rapists cause rape. PERIOD. Rapists know better. Rapists are expected to know better. They aren’t innocent animals in a zoo. I don’t even get that analogy.

Oh and Mike, please stop calling us ladies.

In order to argue that the danger of having a woman falsely accuse you of rape is real, you have to assume there’s a high risk factor. The only way there’s a high risk factor is if false accusations are common. The only reason that false accusations could be common is that women are wicked and enjoy lying for no reason whatsoever.

You’re conflating “risk” with “high risk”. A man can put himself at risk of a false rape accusation without that risk being high. Similarly, when we say that a woman is risking rape by behaving in a given way, we’re not saying that the risk is high. After all, for every woman who got drunk at a bar and was raped, thousands of others got drunk at various bars at the same time and nothing happened.

Also, the risk of false accusation doesn’t require women to lie “for no reason whatsoever.” There are plenty of things that men can (and do) do to provoke them, and that’s part of the risky behavior. For instance, in the Duke case (assuming the accusation is indeed false), I have little doubt that the players either used racial slurs, tried to withold/retake the strippers’ fee, or both.

And so… ladies, and I use that term as loosely as Paris Hilton’s vagina…

Classy. I’m sure there are more misogynistic ways to start a paragraph. I just can’t think of any at the moment.

…I would like to make one last suggestion. If you want to restore rape to its original status as a heinous crime only overshadowed by treason and murder, concentrate on the genuine victims. You know them. The girls who did what was right, played it safe and still got victimized.

You can take your suggestion and cram it into whatever orifice is most convenient. The genuine victims of rape are everyone who gets raped. Full stop.

Simply being, simply moving about the world as anyone else does, is not grounds on which to be blamed for your own rape. Engaging in relatively normal behavior prescribed by religious wingnuts to be sinful and undesirable is not grounds on which to be blamed for your own rape. Merely having tits is not comparable to “waving your wallet and credit cards around in public” and thus is not grounds on which to be blamed for your own rape. Merely being in prison is not grounds on which to be blamed for your own rape.

Any other number of scenarios apply.

Victims of rape are not appropriate stages for religious assholes to enact their kabuki dances of shame, blame, and so-called responsibility. This little exercise that Mike and Vox, et al., engage us in is the bullshit that places the onus of rape on the victim, instead of putting it on the rapist where it belongs. Rapist aplogists, as it were.

Hell, let’s take their logic a step further: if there were no women, there would be no rape. Bye, ladies.

…I would like to make one last suggestion. If you want to restore rape to its original status as a heinous crime only overshadowed by treason and murder, concentrate on the genuine victims. You know them. The girls who did what was right, played it safe and still got victimized.

Ah, so this is where the “right kind” of rape argument comes in (was that Bill Napoli?). Non-Christian women deserve it, and we shouldn’t deign to help them any more than we would stoop to help a bum who won’t get a job. What we need, then, is the right kind of bum, the right kind of rape victim, to build the PR for our “campaign” to end inequality.

That makes a whole lot of fucking sense.

Sorry, that last post was mine…..

no one is even willing to consider that maybe, just maybe, those aren’t the smartest behaviors to engage in and that yes, they do put women at risk…

Everyone knows these things put women at risk. Being a woman puts you at risk, whether you like it or not. Women know this and don’t need to be reminded of it when they get raped. They don’t need to be told that they were stupid and should have known better when they get raped, and their behavior should not be taken into account when deciding the guilt of their rapists. And if you tell a victim of a heinous crime that she was an idiot and should have known better, you’re a tactless asshole and should seriously consider volunteering your opinions only when they’re asked for.

But Tam, if you look at rape statistics, as other commenters have noted, most women are raped by people they know. Nobody would say a woman is stupid for being alone with someone she knows and trusts who ends up raping her (well, maybe Mike would).

If one particular woman goes out to a bar and gets drunk and goes home with a man she doesn’t know who ends up raping her, well, then she would have avoided being raped if she had stayed home that evening. But if she had stayed at home, that guy probably would have just raped someone else. The overall incidence of rape is not reduced by particular women not engaging in behaviors that you personally think are wrong or stupid or too risky.

the problem for me is that women have to worry about getting drunk and then walking down the street. MEN DON’T.

men have to worry about waving $100 bills while drunk or making rude comments while drunk, or whatever, but women just have to be themselves while drunk. so men do the raping, and the women are the ones that have to pay, by changing their behaviors. it seems like it’s hard for some guys to acknowledge this.

also, michael is coming close to condoning rape of women when he describes women as “bar-hopping sluts”- because”bar-hopping sluts” are less than human. they don’t deserve sympathy, they are “the other.” this is the same rationalization guys use who rape prostitutes or slaves, or women of a lower economic status. they aren’t fully human; they don’t deserve the same sympathy, etc as real women. in fact in a lot of places, just being a women, no matter what social or economic class, makes them less than a full human than a man.

this devaluing of human (female) life is what makes rape possible!

this is also how wars are fought- by devaluing the “other”- they’re just chinks, or commies, or whatever not real people like you and me, so it’s ok to shoot them. they’re just bar-hopping sluts, not people. when you can make one class of people less than human, you are putting them in a place where rape or murder is a little more acceptable. as soon as you start to make comments about how some rape victims deserve sympathy and some don’t, you are implicitly condoning the rape of the latter.

all women are human. because they are human and feel pain, they all deserve sympathy; they don’t deserve to be raped. they deserve human rights simply for being human, not for being a virgin or a “nice girl” or a tetotalling mother. either you believe in human rights for all humans, or you don’t.

Amber – Every man in the world thinks that when a man gets mugged for being in the wrong part of town it is partly the result of a bad choice. We say it about him, we’d say it to him. Stop pretending that only women are treated this way. It is simply bullshit.

Any woman who has not done everything in her power to train herself and obtain a gun to carry with her at all times in public is, indeed, “asking for it” because she can’t physically defend herself.

And now we have something else to add to the list! Ladies/gals, if you’re not walking around with a loaded firearm, you’re just asking to be raped!

So let me get this straight . . . . you think there is some kind of brainwashing or “social enforcement” that could reduce rape to 0%? Or is it that you want a fascist police state where we have total security from crime at the cost of all individual freedom of movement (presumably men are under constant surveillance by killer robots)?

Right. That’s completely realistic. I assume most of the feminists on this board believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution and a naturalistic basis for human behavior, in which case you could see rape as an positive behavior that spreads a man’s seed as far and wide as possible, and is a natural instinct for at least a small portion of the population (that’s not what I personally believe, but I’ve heard other Darwinists make the argument). Throughout history, men have ALWAYS raped women. There is no society in which it has never happened. That means a certain amount of it IS inevitable — would you argue that physical fighting among teengage males is a social malady that could be cured by behavioral training early in life? To say such things you would have to believe that humans are a complete blank slate with no hard-wired instincts, which is rather antithetical to the natural-selection-outlook.

There will ALWAYS be murder, rape, fist fights, petty bickering, theft, jealousy, and anger among a certain percentage of people. No amount of social conditioning can ever change human nature. Human nature is not naturally nice and sweet for most people. It is outright silly to say I am a rape apologist when in fact, I am a strong advocate for harsh punishments for rape. Long prison sentences, castration, even the death penalty for horrendous pedophiles — none of those things will act as a deterrent to an evil man with an opportunity to rape a drunk, defenseless woman who has made herself vulnerable.

Please answer my weapons premise — since even in your fantasy world it would take a couple generations to raise rape-proof males, and until then you are still vulnerable. How should a woman protect herself with something other than a gun?

I don’t think you summed it up right zuzu. I’m reading:

You can’t change the mentality of rapists. You can’t socially re-engineer them.
You can stop them by making it harder to get to you personally or putting a bullet in them if they try.

If a man staggered out drunk from a bar at 3 AM waving his wallet in the air and yelling “I HAVE LOTS OF NICE CREDIT CARDS!!!,” everyone would indeed “blame” him if he got mugged. Women who are physically vulnerable to being attacked (because they’re weaker than men) are at an extra disadvantage when drunk and alone late at night. And for some reason, they usually decline to be armed with a gun, which is the only way to make up for the severe imbalance in physical strength and intimidation.

No no no. You are not understanding- you are subjectively saying that ‘women’ by virtue of being drunk/walking on the street/existing are ‘asking’ for it. How do you have the right to say who is asking for it?

Also, about the gun thing. There a lot of countries where guns are illegal. And illegal to carry knives as well.

I am in fact aware that in many countries the socialist/feminist lobby has successfully made women’s only means of physical protection illegal for her to carry — cuz you know, that’s the job of the POLICE to protect everyone. Also in repressive violent dictatorships where they don’t want the populace to have any resistence to the army’s iron rule. Why feminists would support gun control is beyond me.

You’ve completely misunderstood my point. Rape IS an unstoppable phenomenon (can be much reduced, but not eliminated entirely).

Guess what else is unstoppable? A high-velocity piece of lead aimed by a well-trained woman who has her wits about her. A man may be twice your size and three times as mean, but a gun evens the score and gives you a fighting chance. Most sane people, even sick would-be rapists, will run at the mere sight of a gun and it doesn’t need to be fired.

It is inevitable that men will try to rape, but it is not inevitable that women will BE raped if they put themselves in the right mindset and have the right equipment.

“people blame men all the time when they get murdered for being fucking dumbasses”

The difference is, no one brings this up in an actual trial as evicence that the murder did not even take place.

The 17 year old brother of a friend of mine was murded by some of our classmates our sophomore year. They killed him in cold blood specifically because he sold drugs.

While I did have one asshole teacher suggest that he deserved to die, the newspapers never hinted at the idea or published such opinions. And of course, the defense did not try to argue that the victims actions made him any less dead.

But we haven’t been talking about the majority of rape that is generally understood and supported by statstics. We have been talking about particular circumstances that involve being intoxicated and going off with strangers

Why haven’t we been talking about the majority of rape cases? Why have we zeroed in on the minority of cases where the woman is targeted by a stranger? I know the trolls have steered us towards that direction, for their own devious ends.
I think maybe I’ll laugh at the trolls. Since apparently what men fear most from women is being laughed at. (Of course what women fear most from men is rape and murder, but there ya go)
Hahaha. Take that.

auden,
yes it is deliberate, they choose to ignore the reality of it all.

bad people exist
bad people will always exist
to not take measures/make wise choices to protect yourself from bad people is foolish
unprotected and foolish actions leave you more vulnerable to bad people
bad people will be bad, especially when presented and easy, vulnerable mark for their bad actions, and act upon their bad intent

to expect or to think otherwise is naive at best

Auden and MikeT,

The next time you stumble out of a bar, with a guy who promises to walk you to your door or to your car or help you get a cab, which guy may be a stranger, or who you think is a friend of a friend, or who told you he went to your school to create a feeling of camraderie, or takes you to the Kennedy estate which has armed guards and where you might reasonably think nothing bad would happen, etc. and you wake up the next morning in the hospital with severe anal tearing and AIDS, I promise to stand over your bed and tell you you were stupid and you asked for it. And people to whom that happens should focus modifying their behavior, because by being drunk and leaving the bar, a victim is telegraphing that it was ok to do something like that to them. Not so much when it’s your own ass at stake, huh? Making an error in judgement is NOT the same thing as giving someone permission to victimize you. In a civilized society, we strive to protect the vunerable and condemn those who take advantage of them. By blaming the victim so much, we give people PERMISSION to rape in this society. That is why your comments are so counterproductive. Everyone is vunerable sometimes: when you have a few drinks, an adverse med reaction, sleep depravation, being a child, having mobility issues. Treating people harshly who take advantage of these situations is the right focus for positive social change. Also, most sexual violence occurs between people who know each other. In many circumstances, the victim had a good reason to at least not assume the assailant was a sociopath, and can’t BELIEVE they could not stop what was happening. As a martial artist (red belt, Tang Soo Doo), I’d be glad to give any attacker a run for his money, but I just don’t buy that an impaired victim without a gun or a black belt gives any predator a get out of jail free card.

The only problem with that is, a large percentage of the time, they don’t fucking get punished. Because there are far, far too many assholes who would mitigate the fucking rapist’s sentence or not convict him at all because the woman was “asking for it” or some goddamn thing.

I’d like to bring this point up at some sites where the discussion is taking a rather different tone (i.e., the likes of Mike predominate). Does anyone know of an actual case I can cite (preferably with a link) where a rapist was let off because the woman’s risky behavior was used as a defense? Ideally, I’d like a case where the fact of rape was clearly established (either the defense stipulated coercion, or injuries to the woman showed she didn’t consent).

The Haidl case isn’t a good example because the rapists were convicted. Their light sentences were ostensibly due to their ages, not anything about the victim. (The true reason was probably their privileged families, but that still doesn’t speak to the point I want the example to make.)

So, here’s your neighborhood rapist. He sees a woman walking by and says to himself, “Hmmm, she’s dressed moderately and appear sobers. Think I’ll wait for a drunk one in a miniskirt.” No you don’t seriously believe that shit happens, do you?

Apply those conditions to real life as if YOU were the rapist. You would be looking for the easiest possible target. Hmm, do you want the head-held-high, alert woman striding confidently down the street wrapped in a few layers of hard-to-remove clothing, or do you want the one who can barely stand up on her own and is in NO condition to fight back and is wearing clothing that give you easy access to the target area? Sure, there are psychos who prowl the streets grabbing random women, but the kind that go to bars definitely DO have a selection process, and they go for the WEAKEST PREY. Kinda like the lions that go for the limping, slow antelope instead of the sprightly healthy antelope . . . it requires less effort with a higher chance of success. If you physically weaken yourself with alcohol, you put yourself at a much higher risk of getting into trouble because some guy PICKED you as the woman he could most easily throw into the back of a van.

I have read interviews with rapists in prison and they were asked how they selected the women, and invariably they themselves said they picked women who looked weak, alone, not confident, and most importantly not aware of their surroundings. Sounds a bit like what happens after women have a few drinks, right?

“Society” does not “give permission” for anyone to rape anybody, that is completely absurd. Predators see opportunities and decide to take them. This is entirely free of any social constraint, it is their sick whim at the moment. Obviously it is the duty of all moral people to protect the weak from predators — someone mentioned children actually, which proves my point. What do we tell children about strangers? Do we say “It is against the law for a stranger to molest and kidnap you, so don’t worry about taking candy from a man who needs help with his puppy in the back seat of his car”? Noooo, we do not. We say “don’t talk to strangers, don’t go places without Mommy and Daddy, and if you do then be alert and don’t give weirdos the chance to interact with you.”

Women clearly CAN go places without Mommy and Daddy, but they are closer to children than to men in terms of how safe they are out alone in dangerous situations (sans gun) . . . . simply because women and children get raped, because people CAN rape them. It’s purely a physical size advantage that men have over everyone weaker than them. No reason to put yourself in the worst possible position just out of some ego-based need to prove that you can “do anything a man can do” — you can’t do anything a man can do, and it has nothing to do with “society” but with your body.

No reason to put yourself in the worst possible position just out of some ego-based need to prove that you can “do anything a man can do” — you can’t do anything a man can do, and it has nothing to do with “society” but with your body.

Most men who rape are known to the victims. Sigh. So how do women ‘not put themselves in the worst possible position’ ? I feel like I’m banging my head against a brick wall here. Are women supposed to just not socialise with any men, ever? Not talk or be near male relatives? (in case their unstoppable urges get the better of them) Have no male friends? Don’t date, get married or even talk to the local supermarket guy?

I’ve read this entire thread and not only of the rape apologists has yet to give me a solid answer as to how much of my life I should have to give up in order to avoid rape. Should I stop dating? Dating generally requires leaving the house and socializing. Should I merely stop going out with friends? What skirt length excuses a rape?

I suggest the reason they don’t have solid guidelines as to what rapes are good and what are bad is because they know damn well that it’s a slippery slope right to burquas and forbidding women to leave the house without male escort. They keep telling us there are “reasonable” constraints on female freedom but won’t actually define what those are, suggesting they don’t know themselves. But we’re supposed to know, of course.

I, like Jill, go out a lot. I consume alcoholic beverages with friends or on dates. I go out with men that my daddy didn’t pre-approve. Raping me in any one of these circumstances would get off the rapist in a jury made of many in here. You know, “high risk” and all that. My fault, really.

Good thing I’ve never been raped in a “high risk” situation. I got raped in a “low risk” situation–man my roommate used to date, known him for a year and some change, in my home, actually in my own bed. According to my experience, then, fellas it’s your wives that stay safely nestled in bed that are “asking for it”, not those of us sporting skirts and daring leave the house to socialize.

I suggest the reason they don’t have solid guidelines as to what rapes are good and what are bad is because they know damn well that it’s a slippery slope right to burquas and forbidding women to leave the house without male escort. They keep telling us there are “reasonable” constraints on female freedom but won’t actually define what those are, suggesting they don’t know themselves. But we’re supposed to know, of course.

Exactly. And we all know that some men wouldn’t mind that a bit. Not that it would help lower rape rates at all. But that wasn’t the point of the argument was it?

Auden, just think about what you’re saying.
Men can, in general, rape women because they have a size and strength advantage over them. So, do you think those rapists who were interviewed just went without raping anyone and went home and had tea and cookies if there weren’t any drunk women staggering home through dark alleys that particular night? There’s always someone who’s the, metaphorically speaking, weakest antelope; there’s always someone who’s the best target, and if all your recommendations had any effect on the probability of being raped all it means is that some other poor sucker gets raped.
I don’t drink in bars. I do go to bars, and leave them at what, at the age of thirty-seven, I consider to be a late hour: ten-thirty at night (stop laughing, you whippersnappers, you). I suppose, by your standards, I haven’t reduced my risk to the absolute minimum. Well, no matter how careful we all are, there’s always going to be that woman who was a teeny bit less careful, and I expect, when she’s raped, she’ll be blamed for, I don’t know, wearing the wrong kind of running shoes for proper rapist-escaping. It’s not a winnable game.

Rex, how can you read a statement like this:

See, that’s the thing, Amber. Coulter isn’t say that the rapist doesn’t deserve to be sent to prison. She’s saying that the victims aren’t the same, and that you ought to feel sorry for the good girl who got victimized, not the bar-hopping slut. 99% of the men out there in this country, you know, in the real world as opposed to your feminist fantasy world where men’s attitudes haven’t changed for 5,000 years, would vote to send a rapist to hard time regardless of what the woman did. I’d sneer at the bar-hopping alcoholic slut as I’d read the “guilt as charged on all counts of rape” verdict to the judge, like most men.

…and not realize that this is exactly the kind of bias that makes juries believe accused rapists over alleged victims based on things that are entirely irrelevant, like what she was wearing, what her sexual history is, etc.? Sure, Mike’s saying he’d convict the guy, no problem, but guess what? I don’t fucking believe him, and I sure as hell wouldn’t want him on the jury if I were the victim.

No one is suggesting that women stay home. It’s that women shouldn’t go to bars

why should our freedom be taken away because men are rapists? i say we not allow MEN to go to bars.

anyway, this whole point is moot. i know many many women who have been raped, and NONE of them (including myself) were raped at a bar. nor did they meet their rapists at a bar, etc. this is not just anecdotal, MOST WOMEN WHO ARE RAPED KNOW THEIR RAPIST, and often it is someone close to them (husband, boyfriend, friend, father, brother) and not a stranger they met at a bar.

for a women to truly be safe from rape we’d have to cut off all contact with ALL men.

The thing is, MikeT (and your other pseudonyms, I guess) is that yes, people will say to the person who did not shred their bank statements, ‘hey, man, you know, that was kind of stupid.’ Sure, fine. However, if your identity is stolen and/or your money taken because you did not shred your bank statements, this will not prevent prosecution of the criminal in court. The fact that a woman was drinking and was raped 9 times out of 10 WILL prevent prosecution of the criminal. And that is what is wrong with victim blaming.

Yesterday, I went out to a bar with my 65-year-old mother-in-law. I had a drink. I would have had more than one, but I didn’t bring enough cash.
As I understand the trolls on this thread, if some asshole had decided to spike my drink with a hallucinogen and then ‘escort’ me out to his car and rape me, I should expect to hear everyone spend more time telling me that I was stupid to think I had as much right to go to a bar and listen to a band as the guy sitting next to me than they spend talking about what could have been done to catch the rapist before he raped me, what we should tell our sons to make them realize that rape really is a crime, even if she has enjoyed a bit of light bondage in the past or has had sex with someone who wasn’t her husband at the time, or whether incarceration is sufficient to reform rapists.

One parenthetical statement about how evil rapists are at the beginning of a post doesn’t make up for the next five paragraphs discussing the victim’s behavior.

One parenthetical statement about how evil rapists are at the beginning of a post doesn’t make up for the next five paragraphs discussing the victim’s behavior.

That’s true. But it’s a common way of arguing, just like antisemits who start with “My great-greatgrandmother was jewish…” and then start off with their baiting. Disgusting behaviour.

PLN,

Saying, as some commentators have, that we ought to blame the victim, not because she has done anything wrong, but simply to discourage such behavior in others in the future, gets things rather backwards: shame, I think, ought to be saved for those behaviors we wish to discourage *because* they are morally questionable, since it of necessity incorporates elements of moral condemnation. Behaviors that are merely risky, like living in a high-crime neighborhood, having a nightlife, and the like, should be more or less immune

Except that most serious moral codes assign some degree of moral liability to drinking, and even more to drunkeness.

Somehow I doubt many of the people I’m trying to convince will agree with this, but: there’s a real cost to foregoing occasionally heavy drinking

I think that perception is listed by AA as one of the warning signs of adrinking problem. You’re implying that sobriety is some sort of terrible burden.

and yes, to foregoing sexual encounters with persons one has just met

Interesting that most of humanity got through 90+% of humnan history bearing that burdensome cost. It’s astounding what frivolous things you think are necessities of life. OK, sure if someone wants to stagger through life drunk and promiscuous. they do have a right, but somehow, I think there are nobler rights to enshrine. Notice that in Texas, they’ve started aggressively enforcing public intoxication laws, and so far, the sky hasn’t fallen.
That’s what I find so sad about this – all these enlightened feminists pouring so much of their energy into defending the right to pursue shallow and intellectually vaccuous pastimes. Sort of like the ACLU failing to defend political dissidents because they’re too busy rushing to protect Larry Flynt I mean, in the end, is this what feminists need to fight for – not equal career opportunities, but equal rights to burn out one’s brain on booze? Ironic when you consider that Prohibition was the first major result of women’s suffrage. You’ve come a long way, baby,.indeed!

Somehow I doubt many of the people I’m trying to convince will agree with this, but: there’s a real cost to foregoing occasionally heavy drinking

I agree. It appears that if you don’t drink and have lots of promiscuous sex, you might very well end up a bitter, judgmental asshole who thinks women should be blamed for their own rapes because they’re shallow and intellectually vacuous. It makes me want to have a beer right now just to be safe.

piecesofeight says “Clearly you don’t get the point. It’s about rights. What people decide to do (within the law) is their own business, even if that means it’s vacuous.”

I get that point, and of course all manner of silliness is within people’s rights. However, there are causes worth pursuing and causes that are downright quixotic. When you think of all the nobel pursuits that have historically been denied women, such as education, career advancement, voting, governing, etc., drinking to excess just doesn’t fit as the banner to take up.

The first amendment protects a well reasoned criticism of the current administration, AND someone who wants to wrap themselves in green trach bags and run down the street yelling nonsense syllables with their hair on fire. Which of the two represents a more worthy cause to get behind?

It’s my opinion that drunk people, male or female, are at the mercy of sober people by their own choice, for the amusement and/or enrichment of the sober people. Entire industries exist simply to fleece the drunk, and I say, more power to them. ANYONE who chooses to impair their own brain is asking to lose in the game of life.

Everyone has a right to do stupid things, but not a right have society eliminate consequences. The Darwin Awards are full of men who learned this lesson about drinking the hard way and with great finality.

Oh, and given your “within the law” qualifier, apparently you missed that part about Texas. Almost every jurisdiction in the USA has a law prohibiting public intoxication, even if they don’t all enforce them. Thus, we’re not talking about “within the law.”