I’ve been thinking about rape prevention advice lately. Not the transparently nonsensical stuff, like “don’t dress slutty” and “don’t be alone with dodgy men”, but the superficially reasonable advice like “stay aware of your surroundings” and “act as if you’re nobody’s fool”. It won’t stop someone who’s decided to rape you personally as payback for some imagined slight, but it might make you slightly safer overall.
It reminds me of the advice we got during Freshers’ Week at university. I went to university in Liverpool, which has a reputation for all manner of crimes. Although I was living in an all-female hall of residence, I don’t remember any advice specifically about avoiding rape. There were some tips about not getting mugged, and advice about buying drugs (“You might have bought drugs safely in your hometown, but it really isn’t worth the risk round here”), but what sticks best in my mind is the bicycle theft paranoia they managed to instill in me.
We were told stories of bicycle thieves who roamed Liverpool with bolt-cutters and vans, sweeping up any bikes that were left unlocked, or secured with only a flimsy chain, or locked wheel-to-frame. It made such a deep impression on me that I never leave my bike unless the frame is secured to a fixed object with a solid lock.
These precautions don’t make my bike impossible to steal. The lock can still be picked or cut through, by someone who’s set his heart on stealing my bike. But as a theft-prevention strategy, it works because most bicycle thieves aren’t after my bike specifically. They want any bike they can get, and it’s easier to take that one over there that isn’t locked, or that one by the wall that’s only locked wheel-to-frame. Some poor sod is going to get his bike stolen, but with a bit of care I can make sure it isn’t me.
I don’t know how much of that analysis applies to rape, how many rapists choose their victim based on who she is and how many choose based on the fact that she looks like an easy target. But even if the fit is perfect, if the majority of rapists are just looking for an easy target and making yourself look less of a target is a way to keep yourself safe, it’s a depressing way to see the world.
Some poor girl is going to get raped, but with a bit of care you can make sure it isn’t you.
Being raped is a good deal more traumatic than having your bike stolen. That’s why I can accept that my bike lock relies for its effectiveness on someone else being an easier target but can’t do the same for rape risk. If walking tall and staying alert can keep me from being raped, it’s only because someone else who didn’t walk tall enough or stay alert enough gets to suffer instead. That’s not a solution I’m comfortable with; it’s not a world I want to live in.
Walking tall and staying alert is good advice, but we need more than that. I don’t have all the answers, but it would be nice to see a justice system that punished rapists effectively and protected their victims from painful intrusion into their private lives. It would be nice to see a culture that didn’t treat rape as a suitable subject for humour, a slightly off-colour subset of sex.
And it would be nice to walk tall without wondering who is making an easy target to buy my safety tonight.
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obviously it’s good for women to walk tall and feel safe wherever they are, but i’m not sure there are large numbers of men out there, hiding in the bushes, hell-bent on raping someone in the next 12 hours. i think it’s maybe more useful to empower girls/ women to stand tall in their intimate relationships with the men already in their lives, so they are more likely to stay away from the date-rape or wife-raping kind of guy. i know loads of women who have been coerced into sex against their will by boyfriends (which they themselves may or may not consider rape- there’s another topic), but none who was raped by a stranger (although since they don’t walk around with signs like ‘i’ve been raped by a stranger’ i could know a few).
and of course, that’s just an anecdote, and any rape is one too many, but i think we should spend our energy where it can help the most, and i think there are too many women (and men) who are taught accept and to keep their mouths shut about day-to-day violence/ oppression. and once women can be assertive in their relationships, i think they might be more likely to feel strong overall- physically or mentally- and discourage stranger rape, too, both in the moment and in the development of guys who think it’s ok to rape.
there are a couple other blogs on this issue- about ‘rape spam’- sending emails to women and scaring them about something that isn’t statistically likely to happen. but i can’t remember which ones, sorry.
Nick, I think that talking about how to avoid stranger rape is a little like talking about how to avoid being killed by a spree killer. Even if good advice were available, and even following that advice were not an unacceptable trade-off, it’s really just the smallest part of the problem. The discussion about rape is about women being raped my men they know. At the margins, some women are raped by men they don’t know. There are also some women who are raped by women, and some men who are raped by men, and in theory some men who are raped by women … but these are marginal parts of a huge social phenomenon, the heartland of which is this: women are raped by men they know.
Sorry if that’s a rant, but stranger rape is raised so disproportionately to its real position in the universe that I feel compelled to keep saying that it’s the far smaller phenomenon. So much so that if I address it at all, I specify that I’m talking about stranger rape, and when I’m talking about rape in general I speak about men raping women they know.
On your model of fungible victims, which I think really is an excellent place to start a discussion, I’m not sure that victimization is fungible. Stranger rapists are going to have a certain risk tolerance (this is not a statement about their motivations — whatever the motivation, any person seeking anything will have a certain risk tolerance), and if the rapist cannot find a victim within that tolerance, he will give up (at least until the urge strikes again). Serial killers (who with one exception are men, and with few exceptions target women) start with street prostitutes: these women are the most vulnerable, and therefore pose the least risk to the serial killer. I conjecture (and I think there is offender reporting to back this up) that when serial killers cannot find a victim within their risk tolerances, they give up and go home, and try some other night. The model I’m getting at is this: the less likely the stranger rapist believes it is that he will be able to target a victim, rape her, and escape serious consequences, the more often he’ll simply give up, and fewer stranger rapes will occur.
That is not to say that a woman is obligated or even wise to choose to limit herself in exchange for what may be a slightly reduced chance of stranger rape. It is to say 1) don’t feel guilty for making yourself look like a hard target, I don’t believe you’re consigning some other woman to the fate you avoid, I think you’re instead denying easy targets to bad men; and 2) as public policy, there is a lot to be said for making stranger rapists feel like no woman is a particularly safe target. Catching stranger rapists, trying them in public and throwing them in jail is at a premium here. If they think they’ll get caught, they’ll think better of it, and stranger rapists have the hardest time mounting a defense and are the least likely to effectively invoke patriarchal victim-blaming.
ps. I predict at least 300 comments on this thread.
Another great post Nick.
I’ve brought this up a couple of times myself on threads about rape “prevention” advice. I lived in Eugene, OR for a while and we had the same problem, and the same general attitude about not leaving our bikes out unlocked.
What always gets me though it that, as you point out, most rape “prevention” advice isn’t preventing rape, it’s simply decreasing the chance that you will be raped, in the same way that locking up your bike carefully decreases the chances that your bike will be stolen. Everyone understood this concept when it came to bike theft, but too few people see it when it comes to rape.
It has also bothered me that there has always been a lot more blaming of the victim in rape “prevention” advice than there ever was in the advice we got about bike theft. If someone left their bike out unlocked and it got stolen, people would shake their heads a bit, but for the most part people were sympathetic. Partly because everyone hated having to be so paranoid about their own bikes and partly because everyone knew of a story (likely several) in which the person whose bike had been stolen had done all the “right” things. For some reason those common sense reactions never occur to the people lecturing women to use “common sense” to “prevent” rape.
“Being raped is a good deal more traumatic than having your bike stolen.”
Which is another reason why the obvious parallels between rape “prevention” advice and advice for preventing bike theft bother me. Even if the majority of people did understand that such advice only (possibly) helps the particular person employing it, and that not following such “advice” doesn’t make the victim culpable, we’re are still dealing with rape the same way that we are dealing with bike theft: give advice to potential victims and follow up on possible leads (as money and evidence allows).
When people talk about preventing murder or theft, no one think business as usual will do the job, or that potential victims shouldering more of the responsibility is an acceptable solution by itself. Most people understand that in the long term we need more than just more police and more jails. Why can’t people see this when it comes to rape?
My memories of the discussions of rape “prevention” in college were that they focused on rape by strangers, and the advice all came down to the idea that no woman should ever be outside her dorm or classroom without an armed police escort. In other words, the point was to make women feel weak and powerless, and dependent upon men for protection from other men — the very opposite of what I’d think would really help women gain the confidence to resist attempts at rape by people they know.
“I conjecture (and I think there is offender reporting to back this up) that when serial killers cannot find a victim within their risk tolerances, they give up and go home, and try some other night.”
The point is Thomas, they do try some other night, they don’t just stop.
I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone using the “right” type of locks for their bikes managed to dent the bike theft statistics. I would be a bit surprised if it managed to dent crime rates overall, though. Just as bike thieves will move onto better bike theft opportunities if needed, I’d imagine many will move on to other illegal ways of getting money as well, if needed, unless crime overall becomes riskier. A potential rapist or serial killer still has the urge to violently control others, even if the risk is too great a particular night, and will eventually find a way to fulfill that urge unless something more is done.
I can see how making rape riskier would prevent a significant number of potential rapists from becoming actual rapists. I just don’t think that individual women making their potential rape a riskier prospect for rapists is a long term effective strategy. I think that will involve a lot more along the lines of doing away with excuses for rape (thus making all rapes riskier) and making an effort to teach more boys and men to respect others and deal with their emotions properly (thus giving more boys and men the life skills tools they need to be good citizens).
I come at this from a slightly different perspective–I was one of the ones that came up with the rape-prevention/awareness programming at my college during mandatory freshman orientation. I now have the cynical view that the reason more colleges/parents/whatever focus more on the “prevent stranger rape!” is because it’s a hell of a lot easier.
Hell of a lot easier.
Because when you come at it from the angle of trying to prevent acquaintance rape (which, as a term, I like *much* better than date rape. 90% of rapes aren’t committed by somebody’s date–“trashy slut, shouldn’t have been dating bad men anyway, why do women have such bad taste in men, why don’t the date all the nice guys, like me”–they’re committed by someone the survivor *knows*. Like, the guy in her econ class whose room she went to in order to study. Like, her friend who she went out for drinks with at the student pub. Like, her brother’s friend. And so on), you have to address the fact that rapists are most likely in the audience. You have to start asking hard questions like, Do those men know that they’re raping someone? Or do they think that they’re applying reasonable persuasion/pressure/force to a impressionable/drunk/passed out woman? What do we say to those guys? What do we say to those women–don’t ever go into a man’s room without leaving the door open?
Then, invariably, no matter how hard you try to make your educational thing (1) informative and (2) sensitive and (3) gender-neutral and (4) not heterocentric, some (usually) guy is gonna stand up and start bitching about how not all men are rapists. Sigh.
It’s just easier to talk about the uncommon situation where no one is going to defensive, and everything’s black-and-white, and there’s not a damn thing effective thing that women can really do to prevent.
I think the discussions about how to prevent acquaintance rape are very important. And a hell of a lot more nuanced and complicated then defensive men and even gung-ho, angry feminists (hello, me!) are willing to admit. (No, I don’t think every acquaintance rape is about “power” and that’s the end of the story, any more than I think it’s helpful to say that terrorists “hate freedom.” How does that help us to understand and thus end the problem?) I think it takes re-wiring expectations that have been forming since childhood about how sexual interactions and communication works. About what consent is. About how you ask for consent. Seriously, how many men or women have any *concept* of what asking someone for consent in the heat of the moment looks like? It’s not something that’s natural (ie, based on everything you’ve ever seen on television or in movies about how people have sex). In my mind, it’s much more useful to think of sexual interactions as happening on a continuum of most consentual to least consentual. And we just have to draw a big line somewhere and say, everything to the right of this is rape (by law, by campus policy, whatever). Everything to the left is A-OK.
Of course, then all we do is sit around and argue about whether the line is in the right damn place. (Maybe a little to the right? Over further?) Useless useless useless.
Hard conversations have to happen in order to start having effective rape prevention, particularly at the college level. But it makes everything less black-and-white, and much more gray, and so I don’t have a whole lot of hope that it’ll be happening soon.
I agree that stranger rape is the much smaller problem, but rape of either kind is so traumatic that the acceptable level should be zero.
It might be heresy in this forum but may I suggest that where possible women should be armed. I live in Florida which is a “shall issue” state. That means any adult who applies for a concealed weapon permit and passes the background check for felony convictions or a history of mental illness must be issued one by the state. All state universities in florida have rules prohibiting the carrying of firearms on campus, but other nonlethal weapons are available for carry there. If any significant percentage of woman made it a practice to go about their daily business armed the risk calculation of stranger rapists would change radically.
On the issue of date rape, it may have changed in the years since my freshman orientation but at that time the University of Florida covered rape prevention only in presentations to women. I would suggest that men also receive education on date rape. The culture of “when a woman says no, she actually means try harder” still seems to be commonly accepted and that needs to change.
On a purely practical note, anything that cuts into quantity of ethanol consumpted by both young men and women is going to help also.
oops, consumed, of course. Where is a proof reader when you need one?
AB: I now have the cynical view that the reason more colleges/parents/whatever focus more on the “prevent stranger rape!” is because it’s a hell of a lot easier.
Of course. It’s the same reason that a book that was being distributed to kids about how to say no to child molesters (and how to recognise someone who was out to molest a child) dwelt on babysitters, strangers, friends-of-the-family, but never, ever, the issue of “What if it’s your dad?” (or stepdad).
Jenny, I’m basically agreeing with you:
I agree, and so I don’t think solutions that are marginal (fixing stranger rape but ignoring acquaintance rape, telling women to look more assertive) or that limit women (telling women not to go out after dark alone) are acceptable answers.
All I meant to say about that is that I don’t think a woman ought to feel guilty for employing strategies that may protect her from a stranger rapist.
When I said that making stranger rapists feel no woman is a safe target is good public policy, I didn’t mean to imply that telling women to look more assertive substitutes for real structural change. I guess I wasn’t clear about this: even dealing with the comparatively smaller problem of stranger rape requires big change, not just women walking with their keys in their hands (or any other of the popular prescriptions). It requires a culture where stranger rape is not tolerated, where women who come forward and complain are supported and affirmed, where the criminal justice system makes the survivors feel that the process is vindicating them instead of blaming or steamrolling them, and ultimately where the rapists simply don’t think they can get away with it. And solving stranger rape is the easy problem; we’re much further along there than we are with acquaintance rape.
AB, I think you’re right that schools are simply totally afraid to admit what a problem rape is, and to admit what it would take to stop it. It would take a culture change that, IMO, really has to start at birth.
I have not looked at this in a long time, but are schools still reporting either zero or one rape a year? I wonder if this reporting is falsifiable with reference to any other data source. It seems to me there’s a case for injunctive relief, based on a pattern and practice of refusing accurately to report, if one had the time to put the allegations together. Just throwing that out there …
What I would love to see is an ad campaign to deliver the following message to the populace at large, but especially to men who have an overdose of privelege –
“Consenting to something is an ACTION. A lack of refusal DOES NOT EQUAL consent. Your partner shouldn’t have to tell you no, you should be waiting for the YES.”
Also along with concrete, specific examples of what consent is vs what consent isn’t. I’d also love to see the following list distributed to all incoming freshman at universities along with their student orientation package-
5 Situations Where YOU May Be A Rapist
1. Your partner is sleeping and has not given you prior consent to begin sex when he/she is asleep.
2. Your partner is drunk/drinking/using any kind of drug that alters mood or perception. At this point, a person is considered incapable of giving consent.
3. Your partner seems uncomfortable, anxious, upset, or withdrawn. While this may not be rape, it could be a case that your partner does not feel comfortable telling you no. It is always best to err on the safe side.
4. Your partner says no. Even if you have had consensual sex before. Even if you’ve already begun relations consensually. Even if you are just about to orgasm. YOU MUST STOP AT THE WORD NO.
5. Your partner has not actively consented. If you are unsure if your partner has consented, ASK. Most people would be grateful to have a partner who has enough respect to always make sure that they were consenting.
Remember: Only Rapists Can Stop Rape.
Sorry, I left a tag open on the last post. Can one of the administrators fix that, please?
Sorted it!
Now I feel all empowered *grins*
Only rapists can stop rape, and only terrorists can stop terrorism, and only suicides can stop suicide, and only thieves can stop theft? NO.
Acquaintance rape happens at college campuses more than in most places, largely for the reason that college campuses, especially during Freshers Year, have the habit of regarding themselves as one tribal organism in the process of bonding (think “Survivor” without cameras), where everyone who plays well with others is willing to let someone borrow their bike, and there’s little shame in not asking permission…
In other words, the culture in freshers’ dorms on occasion regards every man as the common property of every woman, and vice versa. Homosexuality throws another wrinkle into this that I can’t really speak to, having gone to college when there was a definite closet although many people wouldn’t dare enter. Ethanol assists this process, but acquaintance rapists don’t have to be anyone in a class – many of them are dates, and many more are “friends of friends”, or rather, acquaintances of acquaintances. I am a male, but think acquaintance/stranger rape on college campuses is really a crime of opportunity, and the more wise advice on avoiding such situations, the better, especially because on a college campus there is not a very fine line sometimes between acquaintances and strangers.
The existence of paid-up secret societies of ‘let’s pretend’ brotherhood and sisterhood, too, bonding over an acronym whose meaning is only remembered from under a once-voluntary lash, which function as mutual mating assistance troops might in bonobos, is enormously unhelpful. Translation: Fraternity gang rape is called what it is because at their worst, fraternities are legalized and honored gangs. Keeping prostitution away from students is a help, especially on campuses where the communal identity exists in opposition to a lower class nearby whose women are commonly spoken of as objects, whatever the status level of the university.
No rapist can stop rape. It’s up to us instead.
If I may be so bold as to point this out? http://www.livejournal.com/users/ginmar/474570.html
The previous post is about victim-blaming, too. The victim in such cases is always assumed to have been a stranger rapist scenario. Those are easy to avoid.
>>Acquaintance rape happens at college campuses more than in most places, largely for the reason that college campuses, especially during Freshers Year, have the habit of regarding themselves as one tribal organism in the process of bonding (think “Survivor” without cameras), where everyone who plays well with others is willing to let someone borrow their bike, and there’s little shame in not asking permission…>>
Right. Don’t blame women, blame…communism.
College campuses aren’t the playa, and most of the people attending have a pretty good sense of whose bike belongs to whom. Bikes don’t get borrowed by free spirits; they get stolen by mercenary assholes. The distinction was never clearer and more concrete than during my freshman year at school.
Rape works the same way. It’s not some random release of orgiastic energy caused by the cumulative effect of too much fucking. It’s distinct from casual consensual sex except when misogyny equates the two. There are certainly college students who don’t see women as having proprietary rights over their own bodies, but they certainly don’t apply that lack of reserve to their own bodily integrity. They’re violating women because they don’t care about those women.
Acquaintance rape happens more often at colleges because you have a bunch of very green young people living on their own for the first time ever. Some of them don’t yet know how to protect themselves, and some haven’t yet learned that other people deserve respect. No supervision, no support, lots of peer pressure, lots of strangers. That makes it really easy to get into a dangerous and unfamiliar situation, really difficult to find help of any kind, and impossible to depend on your new friends for assistance or protection. It also makes it really easy to find and hurt vulnerable women, if you’re a predator with no moral compass.
Thomas, I wasn’t really sure that you were disagreeing, I just felt like it needed clarification.
“All I meant to say about that is that I don’t think a woman ought to feel guilty for employing strategies that may protect her from a stranger rapist.”
Agreed, but women also shouldn’t feel as though this alone is doing much of anything to stop any (stranger) rape but her own. At the very least because it leads to “I’ll be safe because…” (ignoring acquaintance rape) or “she should have….” and eventually even “well, she really was asking for it….” as sort of a phsycological self-defense “it couldn’t happen it me” line of reasoning.
Or, as another example: “…but think acquaintance/stranger rape on college campuses is really a crime of opportunity, and the more wise advice on avoiding such situations, the better”
Because apparently, if “only rapists can stop rape” isn’t literally true in every sense that means that rapists are born to be rapists and will rape if given the opportunity, so decreasing that opportunity is all that needs (or can?) to be done to stop rape. Which means, of course, that woman should never be alone with a man she isn’t willing to fuck, in any way he desires, and it would be a really good idea if women didn’t live in co-ed dorms to begin with, or walk alone (or with a guy they aren’t willing to fuck, in any way he desires), especially at night. The campaign that marissa describes, after all, in no way acknowledges the fact that non-rapists can have an influence on whether or not rape occurs, even if the final decision is the rapist’s. /sarcasm
AB, I agree that most college rape prevention services focus on women and stranger rape because including men and acquaintance rape would mean that the students, and everyone else, would have to ask hard questions of themselves. As some guys have pointed out on other threads, asking such questions of themselves means that men must not only questioning if they could rape, but if they have. It’s hard for many women as well, who like to pretend that “it could never happen to them.” No one likes accepting that something bad could happen to them, or admitting to their faults, or even less that they may have done something wrong. Unfortunately, I think that such programs and campaigns are exactly what we need most at the moment.
In my opinion, the typical freshman class at a large university will include a few persons who are already rapists. In addition to decreasing the opportunity for crime, such men need to be shown that there are negative consequences to themselves for this behavior. No men are born to be rapists, but my point of view is that rape is as cruel as homicide, and that one can’t expect people who’ve actually committed rape to speak anything but showoff if asked to confess. Now, this excludes quite a few people who caused their partner suffering without meaning to, usually men who were themselves heavily under the influence of ethanol or another psychoactive toxin. For those men, such group therapy might be useful.
As for dormitories? Apartments are less expensive and more mature. College is not a place suspended between home and the real world. There is no such thing as the right of the State, or a private party even of the learned, to manage a person’s life in loco parentis for 18-21 year old men and women, let alone 40-year-old graduate students, and such a thing encourages infantilization, irresponsibility, idiocy, ignorance, the works. College is for grownups and men and women ought to be treated accordingly, which they’re certainly not when living back to buck in the military.
in my experience, part of the problem is that women are expected to defer to men in many arenas, and sex is just one of them. i don’t expect it to happen any time soon, but i think kids should be taught that girls aren’t supposed to just let boys answer the questions in class, or take over the jungle gym, or whatever, and boys don’t have the right to expect that.
unfortunately, two of my best female friends have really bad taste in men, and one has a guy who tells her things like she can’t have other male friends over, etc- and she goes along with it! why? i don’t know, but it might be because her mom also has bad taste in men, and she doesn’t realize that the relationship doesn’t have to be that way. my dad cooks and sews, and although she doesn’t really fix things, my mom makes most of the money. overall, i think they have a pretty equal relationship. but even so, i let boys have their way in junior high, because of the social pressure. i actually felt pressure from boys to be LESS sexual- because otherwise i’d be a slut.
girls aren’t expected to have sex drives or to be sexually assertive, so the boys are used to steering the sexual situations. boys have to learn that they can’t demand that girls do it on their terms, and girls have to feel empowered enough to remind them of that, even if they need to use force. if women felt like they could say, ‘ok, this is what i want in bed, and this is how i want it,’ men would be less likely to feel that they were entitled to take what they wanted. they’re used to women saying nothing, so when they don’t get consent, it’s nothing out of the ordinary.
i don’t know how to make this not sound like i’m blaming women for not speaking up. it seems icky to me, too. but i know that once i felt like i could speak up and tell boys to fuck off if they thought i was a slut or frigid or whatever, i was less likely to be in situations where i could be coerced into sex or raped by someone i knew. (although maybe i’ve just been lucky, too- no greeks at my college.) until women feel like they can dictate their sexuality, men have to realize that no consent is no consent; men who rape are totally responsible for that rape. but i think the sexes are going to have to travel on parallel paths. men aren’t going to suddenly stop raping unless the culture of men-feeling-entitled-to-sexuality ends. and women have a part in helping that happen, too. we all need to teach the kids what’s right.
if women were allowed to have their own sexuality, i think they might be less likely to be ashamed if they were raped, too. i would like women to feel like they could say “yeah, i wore a short skirt, and i like sex, so what? that fucker raped me, and he needs to be taught a lesson.”
“As for dormitories? Apartments are less expensive and more mature”
I lived in a dorm for four years. It was the best time of my life, and it would not have been nearly as great (or educational) if we all lived in apartments. Although I should add that three of those years was at a women’s college, I would also like to point out that my brother did the same – at a co-ed college – and feels the same way.
I’ve also lived in apartments (grad school). Since this included living with men as well as women, simply moving to an apartment doesn’t really solve the problem does it? Especially since I didn’t know much of anything about any of the people I was moving in with, it mostly just happened to be places I could afford. I also didn’t really notice much of a difference in the maturity level. I don’t remember student housing being much more expensive either, just scarce, and (for grad students) designed for couples, not singles. I got the impression that a lot of the apartments (student housing and otherwise) were just like the dorms anyway.
Seems to me the problem you are really talking about about is lack of community, not proximity. More affordable housing options and not building so many high rise dorms on big universities would do much more to solve this than making everyone live in apartments instead of dorms. So would more programs and support for incoming freshmen, like ya, know, discussing rape prevention.
jane, since I’m sure you don’t think that telling girls to speak up is all that is needed to prevent rape, you shouldn’t feel guilty. To me, destroying the feminine = passive and masculine = assertive stereotype falls exactly into what we’ve been talking about regarding educating boys and men as well as girls and women. As Amanda at Pandagon posted a while ago, it’s also the one bit of rape “prevention” advice endorsed by the officials that make it their job to study rape and rapists. All of which makes “acting like you own the place” type of advice a little different in my book than the “don’t walk alone at night” type.
“they’re used to women saying nothing, so when they don’t get consent, it’s nothing out of the ordinary.”
Jane–this is getting at exactly what I was talking about. When I was running the sexual assault awareness group on my campus, I liked to say that a true, long-term solution to rape wouldn’t occur until we taught women to say “yes” as well as “no”. Why? Because right now, there really isn’t the expectation of verbal consent–women aren’t expected to say yes (I think both men and women don’t expect it). I think this really goes back to a shitload of socialization (not even necessarily about sex) as children.
I know that compared to my brothers, compared to my male friends, compared to my boyfriend, I always feel very very uncomfortable in awkward social situations and I have an urge to smooth things over. Even when I didn’t cause it. Even when it has nothing to do with me. I think this isn’t unique among women–a lot of us were told to “be nice” and “play nice” and when people said mean things to us, it’s because “they like you” and “let it roll off your shoulders.” Women aren’t socialized to take a stand and risk being unpopular. That’s still considered a very masculine, John Wayne thing to do. And this certainly has an effect on sexual encounters 10 years down the road–OK, so we’re making out, and his hands are going somewhere that make me uncomfortable, but there’s this block that’s *really* hard to overcome that tells me to not create a scene. To not make things awkward. So you kinda twist away from him–or you freeze up–or whatever. Do non-verbal, non-confrontational things to try to slow down or stop what’s going on.
Rape is just the most extreme manifestation of a profoundly fucked-up way that men and women have learned to sexually interact. I do think a long-term solution to it is going to have to come from a revamp of these social scripts (particularly teaching boys to be active and girls to be passive, nice and avoid conflict at all costs). When I talked earlier about sexual interactions being on a continuum–simply educating men (and women) about where we draw the line between “sketchy, manipulative, unhealthy, but legal sex” and “rape” isn’t going to fundamentally change a lot of things.
Caveat: all this above isn’t going to change shit for a small subset of violent rapists. Kind of like serial killers, serial child molesters, or arsonists–there’s always going to be those random, f-up’d predators. But they represent a relatively small portion of the problem, and it’s kind of like trying to prevent being hit by a piano from the sky–not much you can do about it, other than lock the sickos up forever.
Maybe we could make college radio stations play “Keepers of the Cock” once an hour for freshman orientation.
But that doesn’t solve the problem for the vast numbers of adults in the U.S. who don’t go to a 4-year live-on-campus institution of higher education. Rape prevention education has to happen in middle school, before kids can drop out of formal education and while their hormones are getting sorted out, so that the lesson sticks. Lotsa luck getting it past the parents who don’t want their kids even thinking about sex, though.
>>”As for dormitories? Apartments are less expensive and more mature”
I lived in a dorm for four years. It was the best time of my life, and it would not have been nearly as great (or educational) if we all lived in apartments. Although I should add that three of those years was at a women’s college, I would also like to point out that my brother did the same – at a co-ed college – and feels the same way.>>
It also wouldn’t have been as safe, at least not if the guest rules in my university’s dorms can be extrapolated. What apartment complex has an RA?
That’s one reason I didn’t understand the whole feminist reaction against the SA vagina dentata tampon – Oh, this is terrible, because it will cause women to be murdered as well as raped by the now-angry-and-hurting-rapists! Better that they just be raped! (And this is such a hateful, not-nice thing to show all those poor decent non-rapist men! was the not-so-subtext of it.)
Me, I couldn’t stop laughing at it – it was after all a man, Neil Stephenson, who first conceived of this and worked it into the characterization of a fictional heroine. This was potentially better than a Whacking Big Knife, which I used to carry around in my naiver days, terrified of having to use it, of having it taken away from me while trying to use it…but knowing that Women With Knives is a Freudian nightmare of the Sexist Male, long before the name Bobbitt ever hit the news.
It’s a deterrent. What guy is going to chance sticking his dick someplace where it might get bitten hard, with something he can’t get off without surgical help? It’s the whole principle behind big scary eyes and glaring colors on butterflies: what bird is going to take the chance that that’s not *really* a snake, it’s just a big green caterpillar? That’s not really a poisonous monarch, it’s just a lookalike viceroy? Hm, maybe *she* hasn’t got one of those $.25 thingies up her…
eeehhh, maybe I’ll just go home and beat off to bondage porn, instead, and write some Angry Guy rapefic to post online…
Also, apartments aren’t necessarily cheaper. Around here, landlords jack up the price special for students, from double to almost 4X the going rate.
Which is not kind, but may in some cases have to cover massive property destruction by partying students, so…
I just picked up a 1987 book on Marital Rape and one of the first things the authors say is to cite several surveys showing that marital or aquaintance rape was exponentially more common than the much-talked-about stranger rape (12% of wives had been sexually assaulted by their husbands/acquaintances, only 3% had ever suffered stranger rape) – but most of the wives didn’t think of marital rape as rape, but as their fault for displeasing their husbands, and in any case it wasn’t against the law in most states in the US.
In 1987 – at which time the anti-feminist “backlash” enginered by the Hegemony, and the assertions that feminism was unnecessary because equality had been attained, were just as common, uttered by the same people, as they are today.
The thing with rape is that most of the rape that happens is not someone jumping out of nthe bushes, afar and away a vast majority of rape is by someone the victim knows, I don’t think the same thing goes as with getting mugged. However, never underestimate walking tall and being assertive, most rape is also unarmed and most rapists don’t intend further harm to thier victim other than the rape itself. Given these facts, beingiassertive, going to the gym and getting strong and unlearnng feminine aquiescence to friends/boyfriends/relatives would go a lonmg way in rape prevention. I would add another thing and that is, people who are rapists have an enormous sense of entitlement that they are going to get sex because it is thier wish no matter what the woman wants. I would add, if you know someone who acts like that put them in thier place rught away/stand up and get rid of them.
ginmar, I forgot to add: nice list
I agree, ginmar, that is an awsome list. I would not use that last line… I would prefer to see something more neutral, like “Only you can prevent rape!”
I’m not sure how recently Fielder’s choice has attended college, but I think there are definate benefits to dormitories over apartments. The student community is an important rite of passage in that first year. It’s symbiotic.
I think somewhere on Pandagon there is a link to the 7 or 8 different kinds of rapists… the violent ones, the ones who are living out a fantasy consentual situation, the ones who can’t quite grasp that girls are real honest to god people instead of objects, there’s a whole spectrum.
The “dangers” of college/university are many, and they aren’t just in the dorms. They’re with your TA’s, occasionally your profs, the frat boys that are drinking on the quad as you’re walking home, the people that you study with and have a creepy secret crush on you, the ones that you drink near at the pub.
The overall problem, I think, is youth and inexperience. Most young people today have very little critical thinking skills when they start college or universtity, and also very little intuition for what’s right or wrong in this new environment. It’s like being tossed into a different world with next to no supervision or responsibilities… a microcosm society (like Lord of the Flies but hopefully without the wild boars and murder). This isn’t the world you’ve lived in for nearly two decades and it’s not the world that you will inhabit for the next six or eight decades. It’s a total cultural shift. Things that when you were a teen might have set off your warning bells (being offered a few beers while studying for a test) are suddenly normative, even if the danger hasn’t really changed.
Since fraternities have been notorious for generations as clubs for rapists, I wonder why they don’t get banned from most universities.
Oh, that’s right. Because they’re about ruling class bonding. Silly me.
The overall problem, I think, is youth and inexperience.
Also a sense of entitlement. And alcohol.
bellatrys, that’s a remarkably oversimplfied view of what the opponents of the “tampon” actually wrote. The device in question would literally have “stuck” the man inside his victim. A man who wanted to see if a woman was wearing one would have all kinds of novel ways of determining that without hurting himself. What the hell kind of crime prevention is that ?
I don’t know where you picked up this “poor men” subtext. It wasn’t in the criticisms that I read. I also don’t think it’s exactly a trivial thing to worry that a rapist might kill his target if he was angry enough at her.
Thanks mythago… I agree, but I think a sense of entitlement and alcohol are problems that exist *outside* the college-campus aka. fertile-field-for-date-rape as well as within it. From the age of 3 months to 99, many people have a problem with a sense of entitlement.
Alcohol… to be honest, I have to wonder if the problem with alcohol and date rape in North America is not partially cultural. It is taboo until you are XX years of age, therefore you find yourself in college with very little clue of what is a reasonable amount for you, personally, to drink to achieve various levels of alcohol buzz (from a light buzz to “dude, where’s my legs”). Which really comes back to my statement about inexperience.
Are there any European commenters in the crowd with university/college experience? Yes, too much alcohol always plays a role in the morning- after-regrets and aquaintance rape, but is this as common a phenomenon on the other side of the ocean as compared to North America?
Hey, you’re from Norwich! I come from right near there!
I’m sorry, I don’t know how to view IP address from this site.
I am actually in a small community to the east of above-mentioned town. What direction from Norwich do you live in?
I never bought the idea that some acqaintance rapes occur because of bad communication. Like the woman was just so passive and the man wouldn’t have been a rapist if he had only asked, or if she had clearly stated consent. It’s all just a terrible misunderstanding.
This understates how mean rape is, how mush it disregards a person’s wishes about their very body. I think the decision to force sex on a person is a very active and conscience decision. I don’t see how it can be otherwise.
People speak of the heat of the moment, but we’ve all been there. You would know if your partner was scared or threatened or unconscious.
I’ve said this before on blogs- but when a woman is alone with a man for any reason, but especially to fool around or have sex, it is an act of trust. We trust those who are bigger or stronger won’t hurt us because most don’t, and to assume otherwise would make life unbearable. Rape abuses that trust, and then she gets blamed or called stupid for it. Prevention should focus on men and how they have to ethically behave with a woman’s trust. I think if we frame the discussion as one of ethics and respect, it may be an easier pill to swallow for many. Same goes for sexual harrassment.