From my inbox:
Amp- Did you watch Primetime, on ABC last night? If not, here’s a link. I’ll give your a brief overview of the piece. I’d sure like to see this discussed online. The segment was about an incident that occurred at a McDonalds in KY. A caller phoned the shift manager, telling her that he was a police officer who needed her help in conducting an investigation of a teen employee, then on-duty, believed to have stolen a purse from a customer. The caller then made a series of instructions over about a three hour period, that led to the girl being strip searched, spanked, and humiliated. Finally, the supervisor is asked to bring her fiancé in to watch the girl, while the supervisor returns to work at the counter. The “police officer” then instructs the fiancé to have a girl perform a sex act on him, which he complies with. The girl is crying throughout this ordeal. At no point does anyone question the authenticity of the call, except for one teen worker who leaves in disgust, saying it’s all BS. The security camera in the office, captured the entire assault. It’s the most troubling thing I seen, and frankly it kept me awake last night. The individual who made the call had been made hundreds of such calls to fast food restaurants all over the country. In 70 cases, the person answering the phone, complied with his requests, resulting in strip searches of employees and customers, and in some instances, cavity searches. This case should spark a needed debate on our willingness to blindly respect “authority” figures, and our accountability when we participate in immoral acts. Thanks- It’s a pretty stunning story. The person who made the call, David Stewart, is a prison guard who had fantasies about being a cop; he’s now under arrest, charged with “solicitation of sodomy and impersonating a police officer.” The fiancé “has pleaded not guilty to charges of sodomy and sexual assault.” And the victim is suing McDonalds and the manager for false imprisonment.
Emmetropia
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I’m not buying for a minute the Nuremburg defense. The McDonald’s Manual says that no LE officer would ask an employee to perform a search. Forther, even if there were an actual officer standing there, nobody would believe that a police officer had the authority to sexually assault this woman, or allow another to do so. Does anyone know if a non-LE officer can be an aider and abetter to a 1983 violation — violating someone’s civil rights under color of law? Each participant should be prosecuted (and apparently they are being prosecuted). But the victim should go further. they are civilly liable to her for damages, and if they have their wages garnished to pay judgments against her it might make them think about what they did.
Second, this matches my experience with corrections officers. In my years doing criminal defense, I came to detest them as martinets, and often corrupt. They have the worst aspects of police and DMV clerks. I simply do not know how to change the culture in these departments — to get the Sgt. Graners out. The job either attracts or breeds the worst abusers.
Third, and it saddens me that I have to say this, this woman did nothing wrong. She shouldn’t have “been more careful” or “seen it coming.” She wasn’t stupid or imprudent, and there is no lesson for other women to take from this.
There’s too much confusion between me and Jake Squid, so I’ll be going by Jakobpunkt from now on.
This is appalling. That anyone would perform these acts simply because someone *claiming* to be a cop told them to is despicable. I wouldn’t do it even if I had *proof* that I was talking to a LEO. This is disgusting. The person who made the calls should be prosecuted, sure, but IMO the people who performed the actions are more responsible. You have a *choice* about whether or not you do as you’re told in a case like this, and they were the ones who actually detained and tortured the poor girl. Christ.
I just read the whole article and it appears that in addition to her fiancé, the manager called two other men into the room to be alone with the girl, but both men refused to comply with the caller’s instructions and left. You’d think one of them would have allowed the victim to put her clothes on or *something*. I just get angrier and angrier the more I think about this.
I’m not buying for a minute the Nuremburg defense. The McDonald’s Manual says that no LE officer would ask an employee to perform a search. Forther, even if there were an actual officer standing there, nobody would believe that a police officer had the authority to sexually assault this woman, or allow another to do so. Does anyone know if a non-LE officer can be an aider and abetter to a 1983 violation … violating someone’s civil rights under color of law? Each participant should be prosecuted (and apparently they are being prosecuted). But the victim should go further. they are civilly liable to her for damages, and if they have their wages garnished to pay judgments against her it might make them think about what they did.
Oh my god.
I just can’t even . . .
There are no words. This makes me physically ill.
That poor, poor girl.
Speaking of ‘blame the victim,’ did you all notice the bit where McDonalds is blaming her for this? Oh yeah, see . . . she didn’t leave after being stripped naked and held against her will, so it’s her fault.
Christ, like I needed another reason to boycott those goddamn psychopaths.
—Myca
I read about this when Ginmar linked to it, and I think McDonald’s knew this was happening at other locations, so the reason she can sue them is they didn’t do sufficent warning of their employees and franchisees.
The aspect of obeying athority figures without thinking reminds me of a comment I heard from a Mormon woman about Elizabeth Smart, that she’d been trained to believe men when they told her they were prophets.
I wonder if she’ll win in that suit. Apparently, McDonalds sent out a brief, automated voice mail message to all their stores, a couple of weeks before the assault, warning the stores of the hoax. No word if this warning was passed through the ranks at this particular store, or if the corporate operations manual defined the process for doing so. Apparently McDonalds also had a plan in place, where warning stickers would be put on — I believe the phones — at each restaurant regarding various hoaxes and scams people were running. They never followed through on this plan, though. From a liability prospective, they may be able to prove that they took adequate steps to warn stores, and that the ultimate responsibility lay with the management at each location. It probably comes down to the nature of the business relationship between each store and the corporate office. If the individual stores are franchised, the local owner may own the larger portion of the liability. Sad if that’s true. I’m not sure how McDonald’s manages their operations. Perhaps a lawyer here can comment on this aspect of the case.
Milgram was the guy who did the experiment on this sort of thing – ordinary people will commit atrocities if a guy in a white coat with a clipboard tells them to.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
I run into this a lot – Americans tend to be nice, moral, people until they get a job with the government and think it’s ok to start bossing people around. Being stripsearched was one of the milder things that happened to me last year.
Reading the article, the McDonald’s manager and her fiance were either total morons (as in, to the point where we ought to consider mandatory sterilization to protect the gene pool) or else they figured out what was going on and decided to play along anyway (apparently they got off on humiliating the employee).
If they had strip-searched her and nothing else, I could believe that they had been fooled (someone should have thought it suspicious that a policeman would ask a civilian to do a strip-search, but then again it is likely that these two were on the far left-hand side of the IQ bell curve. so logical thinking probably wasn’t their forte). But no one in their right mind could possibly believe that there was a legitimate reason to spank the employee or make her perform a sex act.
Definitely the manager and her fiancee bear some blame.
without meaning to revive the blame-the-victim debate, let me add to the previous post’s
a FUCK, YES! in fact, some??
how about all!!
this story makes my blood boil, too. i spend all day long teaching high school kids math, and they are so willing just accept anything I say about math as the truth, that I can barely teach them how to think about it. the lessons here (as I say in my blog post about it) are obvious: question authority, demand proof, know your rights. i sure wish the girl had done that, but she was the powerless one here (no clothes, fear for her job, fear of prosecution, etc.). the person with the real responsibility to do that was the manager herself. i find her even more culpable than her asshole fiancé because he obviously had a sadistic streak and was just looking for a reason to torment the girl. it’s the manager who should have known better.
i find her even more culpable than her asshole fiancé because he obviously had a sadistic streak and was just looking for a reason to torment the girl. it’s the manager who should have known better.
So her fiance is less culpable how? Because he couldn’t help himself?
I am absolutely sickened.
Look, the manager was an idiot and should be prosecuted for improper strip search. But her goddamned fiance was the one who forced the girl to put his cock in her mouth. And when the manager saw the tapes of what he did, she immediately broke up with him and has no more contact. the manager was an idiot, should not have stripped the girl and should not have left her alone like that. but the fiance is the one soley responsible for sexual assault, along with the caller.
and for those who would argue that the manager should have known that you put a man with a naked girl and what would you expect? a *janitor* was supposed to be the next man in line and he refused and was the one who called the cops. so obviously a man can control himself, unlike conventional (rape culture, cough, cough) wisdom would have us believe.
But no one in their right mind could possibly believe that there was a legitimate reason to spank the employee or make her perform a sex act.
You meant to say no legitimate reason to physically assault her and orally rape her, right?
This is sickening. I hope that the guy making the phone call get punished to the full extent of the law, that the manager get fired, fined and/or put to jail, and that the bastard who committed the rape get thrown into jail.
How can anyone believe they are allowed to stripsearch and/or spank someone? Even if the cops tell them to do so? And even if they are that stupid, I don’t for a second believe that anyone would belive forcing someone to sex would be legal.
I don’t want to sound like I am blaming the victim but I know if I were told this by my employer I would tell them to go to hell and leave. It is a frigging minimum wage job. People need to learn to question authority and stand up for themselves or we are in trouble.
This by no means indicates I find innocence in the other parties of this disturbing debacle. The fiance is obviously a criminal. What kind of ass beats a crying kid for 10 minutes? and then rapes her in the mouth? The only good that came from this is the manager getting free of this pervert.
Everyone was nuts in this story.
Quitting a minimum wage job, sure, no problem. It’s a good thing there are no people who need a steady income to survive.
You meant to say no legitimate reason to physically assault her and orally rape her, right?
No, I can imagine someone rationalizing some form of physical assault if they thought the girl was a criminal about to get away (e.g. restraining her in a full-body hold or restraining her hands). It is the specific form of physical assault here (spankingm which would actually be assault and battery) that I can’t imagine anyone thinking there was a useful purpose for.
As for “orally rape,” the reason I wrote “make her perform a sex act” is because the article didn’t explicitly state what sex act she was forced to perform. My first guess was that he orally raped her, but I don’t know because the article didn’t say.
I also didn’t use the term “rape” because I am not certain if it is the correct term to use if the sex act was one that involved no penetration (e.g. if she had been forced to perform frottage or manual sex).
If the sex act he forced her to perform was oral sex, then yes, he orally raped her.
I read a detailed article about this incident some time ago.
The victim – the girl who was stripped – was in no position to do anything about it. She was told she was accused of stealing supplies and would have to clear herself. Had she just walked out she would have had this charge on her employment record.
True enough, both the manager and her fiance were stupid. But there are a lot of stupid people in the world, and just saying that they were stupid doesn’t help explain how they were led to such extreme acts. Three reasons appear paramount: 1) the caller was apparently very persuasive. Some people just have the knack to override and explain away queries and objections. 2) He didn’t just up and tell them to perform sex acts; he led them into it step by step. This is much the easiest way to lure someone into doing offensive things. 3) and MOST IMPORTANT, McDonald’s and other fast food places have an authoritarian culture. Employees – even managers – do what anybody in authority tells them to do. They do not question the boss, even if the boss appears to be wrong or in violation of rules. Such questioning gets you marked as a trouble-maker. The entire corporate culture works this way. It makes the place the perfect breeding ground for potential victims of a smooth-tongued pervert on the phone.
I don’t want to sound like I am blaming the victim but I know if I were told this by my employer I would tell them to go to hell and leave. It is a frigging minimum wage job. People need to learn to question authority and stand up for themselves or we are in trouble.
You think? Not everyone has that option. I’m pleased that you do, but don’t pass judgement on her because she didn’t. I can fully understand her reluctance to run through the restaurant naked as well.
And yes, you are blaming the victim.
This by no means indicates I find innocence in the other parties of this disturbing debacle.
I’m glad to hear that sinse they were the ones who broke the law. They all deserve to do gaol time and I hope they do.
True enough, both the manager and her fiance were stupid. But there are a lot of stupid people in the world, and just saying that they were stupid doesn’t help explain how they were led to such extreme acts.
They weren’t just extreme, they were criminal.
Three reasons appear paramount: 1) the caller was apparently very persuasive. Some people just have the knack to override and explain away queries and objections.
No matter how persuasive he was nobody would expect a cop to tell them to batter and rape someone, no matter what the victim had supposedly done.
2) He didn’t just up and tell them to perform sex acts; he led them into it step by step. This is much the easiest way to lure someone into doing offensive things.
‘Easy way to lure someone?’ It looks to me like he saw his chance and took it, believing that the situation would absolve him of responsibility.
3) and MOST IMPORTANT, McDonald’s and other fast food places have an authoritarian culture. Employees – even managers – do what anybody in authority tells them to do. They do not question the boss, even if the boss appears to be wrong or in violation of rules. Such questioning gets you marked as a trouble-maker. The entire corporate culture works this way. It makes the place the perfect breeding ground for potential victims of a smooth-tongued pervert on the phone.
The manager and the rapist are not the victims here. They’re the perpetrators. Policemen do not order one to break the law. It doesn’t matter how authoritarian their hierarchy is. They have no excuse and they’re as guilty as the guy telling them to do this stuff.
Having read a bit more:
I was at first perplexed as to why the girl didn’t say; “then take me to the Police Station then” rather than submit to a strip search. She is young, and I figured she simply didn’t know her rights.
But in fact she demanded they take her to the police precinct, at least according to one report.
Regardless of what she did, all the other’s in concern, whether they actually did something or simply looked on, are guilty as hell in my book. Would they have stripped and bent over if the caller asked them to subject themselves to such a search? I sincerely doubt it.
No, something in their tiny little brains would have told them “something isn’t right.” And something in their tiny little brains should have told them that real cops don’t ask someone else to do their work; not to strip-search someone, certainly not to do the list of perversities detailed in the numerous articles.
There is some interesting stuff on making a citizen’s arrest; when and how you can do it.
Perhaps if someone has the skill and knowledge a good blog would detail what a police officer (or firefighter or other’s in similar positions) can ask you to do. Poeple get scammed by supposed authority figures quite a lot.
The rapist hit the girl for ten minutes, too before he raped her. He outweighed her by a hundred and forty pounds.
He had here longer than that.
It really boggles my mind.
We are masters of our own destinies,
untill jews like amp chime in.
This is a valid argument. Don’t ban this message, you cencoring juden.
Trust the ZOG, from the ZOG comes the morals, and ZOG, not yourself controls your own mind, trust government; trust Amp.
If this is what normal 100 IQ point people believe, I believe my IQ just went up 200 points. For a Prank Call gone hilariously too far, the guy should get a medal, not thrown in jail.
Blacks trust the police, the government, when they are told by the government to freely attack the innocent.
Why TehSuck, I daresay you’ve violated the courtesy precept we try to live by on these here boards. I’ll derive no end of pleasure from seeing your stupid racist ass banned.
—Myca
TehSuck, when used in this context, the proper spelling is
Jooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
After the Abu Gahraib shamefulnes s, that man (Milgram?) who performed the famous experiments on authority was all over the radio. He said something really interesting: that the only man who challenged the white coated “doctors” instructing the test subjects to “electrocute” the actors was a civil engineer and he hypethesized that he said hell no because he felt equal to the fake doctors. That’s why the comment that you would walk out of a minimum wage job is so telling. In the imagined scenario you feel equal to, if not superior, to the manager of a fast food restaurant. I don’t think he was saying status and education make us more moral, but they may make us less pliable if we are challenged by people of (perceived) lower status and less education. If you were uncertain of your rights and if you felt lower in status then the person ordering you around, you’d be more likely to comply.
Still and all, it just underscores how we can all be tested when we least expect it, and people who were up to that moment perfectly decent can fail miserably. But the janitor called the police- that’s a little comforting. I guess.
I still feel like as long as women have this passive, victim attitude they will continue to be raped and abused by men. There are plenty of sick abusive men around and our culture is breeding more. The only way for women to free themselves is to resist. This means not submisively taking this kind of shit. I understand completely that this woman stood for this because she felt powerless, intimidated, afraid for her job, etc. etc. but until women stop feeling this way the situation will never change. You can make all the laws you want, there are just way to many idiot peverted people who will take advantage of those that have, or feel they have no power.
To say this woman could do nothing is to further treat women like children. I am not saying it would be easy, I am not saying she is at fault, I am looking at how to stop this crazy insanity. It is not going to stop because the perverts cease to exist. It is not going to stop because someone is going to take care of you like your parent s and make sure the meany pervert leaves you alone. It would have been nice if the boss had her head screwed on right and told the guy to go to hell. It would have been good if her boyfriend wasn’t also a pervert. But ultimately we as adult women need to walk out of a situation like that job or no job.
Rosa Parks died this week. I know Rosa had a lot of political awareness and education that brought her to take the stance she did. She took risk, that cop could have clubbed her, she could have died in jail, some white bigot could have burned her house down.
We cannot act like submissive children and do what our figures in authority tell us. This is what the whole campaign to get children to resist the sexual advances of those in power is about. Know what is appropiate touching and resist what is not.
If we expect this of children what of women. I don’t blame the children but I recognize that getting the children to recognize and resist abuse is how we will make it stop.
The thing that fries me about this case, is that this McDonald’s is smack dap in the middle of “moral values” country. You can’t spit without hitting a church. Another article mentioned that there was yet another adult — a 40 year old, female asst. manager — who was present in the office, during much of this assault. It took three hours and five adult witnesses until the last one took a stand. It was the maintenance worker with the 9th grade education.
Now church are spending a whole lot of time trying to protect 8-day old blastocysts, and women who are missing vast portions of their brains, yet no one seems to be talking about what it means to act as a moral agent within the actual living human community. That you might just have to defy authority, whatever the consequences — that legal authority, is not necessarily, moral authority.
And some people seem to suggest that the people were cognitively impaired, or easily fooled, that is the root of the problem.
I don’t care if a cop was standing right in front of me, in full departmental regalia. His request would be wrong, and people would have a responsiblity to defy him.
From what I saw in the tape and in subsequent reports, the caller had the manager’s fiance take the apron away from the victim and also had the victim perform various things before the sex act. This was so he could “see” what was happening. The whole thing was recorded by McDonalds security cameras. The only way the caller could see was if he was viewing what was being captured by the camera. The caller had to either be in the McDonalds corporate security office, or have found a way to hack into their video system. This whole thing should be tracable.
I still feel like as long as women have this passive, victim attitude they will continue to be raped and abused by men. There are plenty of sick abusive men around and our culture is breeding more. The only way for women to free themselves is to resist. This means not submisively taking this kind of shit. I understand completely that this woman stood for this because she felt powerless, intimidated, afraid for her job, etc. etc. but until women stop feeling this way the situation will never change. You can make all the laws you want, there are just way to many idiot peverted people who will take advantage of those that have, or feel they have no power.
So what do you suggest? Free compulsory martial arts classes for little girls with lifelong ongoing training? Free tins of mace given to every woman? Guns issued to women? Free compulsory classes to teach them their rights?
Will you be posting bail when these women are hauled before the courts on GBH and assualt charges?
So what do you suggest? Free compulsory martial arts classes for little girls with lifelong ongoing training? Free tins of mace given to every woman? Guns issued to women? Free compulsory classes to teach them their rights?
I don’t know about compulsory. But guns, mace, and karate, hell yes. I intend to teach my daughters to be instruments of death.
Will that “solve” the problem of men raping? No. But it won’t hurt.
Will you be posting bail when these women are hauled before the courts on GBH and assualt charges?
I’ll be sitting in the jury box, sympathetic as all get out to the self-defense defense. “He was coming at me, and I felt threatened, so I took him out.” Fair enough, ma’am.
And some people seem to suggest that the people were cognitively impaired, or easily fooled, that is the root of the problem.
I don’t care if a cop was standing right in front of me, in full departmental regalia. His request would be wrong, and people would have a responsiblity to defy him.
My point wasn’t that they shoul have been smart enough to realize that the guy couldn’t have been a cop. My point was that they should have been smart enough to realize that what they were being asked to do could not have possibly been a legitimate request; that is, that there was no justifiable reason to do what they were being asked to do.
As for the issue of “why didn’t she leave?” I think the point being made is not to blame the victim, but rather this:
If no physical coercion was used (i.e. the girl was not physcially overpowered), but was simply intimidated into submitting to abuse by the fact that they were in authority; it suggests that she (and by extension many others like her) has been socialized to be far too submissive to authority; or put another way, society was complicit in her victimization because it did not instill in her the ability to defend herself.
Alternately, if she was afraid that she would lose her job and that is what prevented her from resisting, then that suggests that she did not understand her rights properly or else did not have confidence that her rights would be respected (i.e. that she had the means to seek justice if someone tried to censure her for not submitting to the search). This would suggest that the society, or McDonald’s, or whoever, was complicit in her victimization because it either deliberately kept her ignorant of her rights, or else did not place a high enough priority on making certain that she knew what her rights were. Or, society did not do enough of a good job of seeking justice that she could feel confident that her rights would be upheld.
If non-physical coercion (e.g. fear of losing her job, intimidation by use of authority) was the main weapon used against her (as opposed to her being physically restrained), and she submitted to the abuse because she did not feel that she had the option of getting up and walking away, then someone(s) must have created the environment where she felt she had no options, and this is something that needs to be corrected.
A lot of people who have been fortunate enough to escape the minimum-wage service economy world really don’t understand how utterly oppressive it is. I have a friend who was fired from a bookstore job for supposedly stealing $5 from a corporate employee disguised as an ordinary shopper. My friend was taken to the back room, told that she had done something wrong, and forced to write a confession of everything she had ever done that was against company policy; then they told her what she was accused of and since she hadn’t confessed to it, she was fired. She was in college at the time, working two part-time jobs with no benefits, and had been employed by the same bookstore for 7 years. The corporate people are manipulative masters. Everyone who works for these companies understands that they have no power and no say, and that any ridiculous directive can come from corporate HQ at any time and they either must obey or they are fired and given no references.
That’s not to excuse the manager, who is obviously culpable, but I think it’s relevant to the point about the Milgram experiment. These people are powerless and they know it. A disembodied voice on the telephone is as much an authority as the many absurd corporate memoes they receive.
I read this stuff and wonder how anybody could possibly fall for this crap, but then I remember all the idiots who responded to the Nigerian e-mail scam. There are millions of people in this country who have such a low opinion of themselves, they are willing to believe anything anybody tells them, as long as it seems authoritative.
farmgirl:
Combined with:
And how exactly are you saying she’s not at fault? It seems that you think rape is common because women have a passive attitude, so as a woman, she is partly at fault by your own words. I have a rule of thumb: Any advice against “victim attitude” is bullshit if it ends up justifying the rapists actions. “Refusing to be a victim” is crap when you are already violated.
Clarification: The “refusing to be a victim”… -part refers specifically to the attitude that some people (not necessarily anyone here) feel a need to impose on rape victims after the rape that it would be best if they just were strong and kept on with their lives, when that request is motivated by the convenience of the asker, and ends up with the rapist getting away with rape.
I agree with farmgirl. I think that the way women are trained and expected to act (passive, submissive to men) is a part of the culture of rape. I don’t think it is the main part. I don’t think it is the woman’s fault when she is raped, and I do believe that stopping rape is ultimately dependent on controlling male behaviour. But if you want to believe that a rape “culture” exists, than women must be a part of it. It’s not a woman’s fault that she is raised to act and think a certain way, yet the way women are taught to act and think makes them more susceptible to violence. It’s society’s fault, not individual women’s.
In the future, instead of being taught to be dependent and fearful of men, dark alleyways, walking alone, empty parking lots, going to a party solo, etc., I hope that women are taught to be aggressive, powerful, strong, and confident.
I recently moved to another country to work. I’m on my own for the first time, and I’m just beginning to realize how valuable and effective skills/traits like confidence, aggressiveness, and ‘physical presence’ are. I’m also realizing just how much I’m lacking in these areas. At no time in my childhood was I taught how to communicate boldly, showing strength and confidence with my body. I was taught to retreat to an authority figure, second-guess myself, apologise, and retaliate socially/non-physically at a later time.
I am trying to learn to be bold and aggressive through body language, but always deep inside me there is that little feminine voice saying “are you SURE you’re right about this? what if you’re just being a bitch? everyone’s going to hate you if you keep this up. it’s probably easier to just back down this time and try not to put yourself in this situation again…”
But in saying this I’m NOT blaming women for rape! How can I be when I’m criticising myself for having these same passive traits? Rape is the fault of individual men and society, of which all men and women are a part. Punish the individual men, for sure, but cure whatever societal disease is producing these men, too.
I’m hoping that Stewart’s behavior as a prison guard gets investigated, but I’m not counting on it.
Gee, with farmgirl and Avenir around, I’m sure rape victims would find it tremendously easy to come forward.
Here’s yet another clue. Saying I’M NOT BLAMING THE VICTIM does not make it true. It just means you think you can get away with it. Except you can’t.
There are a few people on this thread who, while bending over backwards to disclaim that they’re saying women are responsible for rape, are arguing that women should do something to change the rape culture. And the argument seems to be that women are easier targets than they should be.
Though I agree with Robert (mark your calendars) that self-defense training is never a bad idea, in general I disagree with the sentiments being expressed.
Not too long ago, women were held to an “utmost resistance” standard. They were legally obligated to “not act like victims.” All this produced was more opportunities to blame victims, and probably more injuries among those who had been raped. When a woman is being sexually assaulted, the situation is frightening, highly fluid and emphatically not suitable to armchair pronouncements. Nobody on this blog or anywhere can speak authoritatively to what any particular woman should do when she’s being sexually assaulted. No two situations are alike, the stakes are huge and unless you were there you don’t know the details. One can make probabilistic statements about how to survive such an encounter, but each woman has to make those calls on her own.
But this line of inquiry is worse than useless. Talking like this affirmatively makes things worse. 1) rape survivors often have a tendency to second-guess their own behavior, and reading people (feminists!) saying that women should be tougher to victimize reinforces that; and 2) despite all the disclaimers (which I’ll assume arguendo are made in good faith), these remarks may give ammunition to those whose real agenda is to blame women for being too easy to rape.
There is another line of reasoning about how women participate in patriarchy and contribute to rape culture. That line of reasoning usually travels through the role of non-feminist women as victim-blamers and finger-pointers.
In sum, if what you’re thinking is, “if I was in that room, I would have gotten out of it,” I’m sympathetic. I think those sorts of things all the time (not specifically about rape, but about lots of things). But that kind of thinking does not help others; it is merely self-comforting. Since its only purpose is internal, if that’s what you’re thinking you should keep it to yourself.
I don’t think saying to blacks ” you need to resist going to the back of the bus” in anyway blames blacks or makes them complicit in the racism put on them by a racist white culture. Women are not helpless children. There were some criminals in the McDonalds story. There were some idiots. There were victims. The manager was victimized as well by the caller and fell for it for some of the same reasons the 18 yr old did; submission to authority. The fiance started out being victimized and ended up a criminal.
In domestic violence work most of the focus is on getting the victim to understand her power and leave. Does this put her in danger? Is it difficult? Does it go against all the control issues she has been subjected too? Does it put her out of her house and out of money? Does it threaten her custody of her children? Does it subject her public humiliation? The answer to all these questions is, at times, yes.
We are not blaming the victim when we say leave, recognize your abuse, take the necessary risks, and leave.
I see more parallels in this story to domestic violence than rape, although rape occured as it often does in DV. This was a power issue. The 18 year old felt powerless when in fact she was not.
I saw the ABC Primetime story that aired Thursday on this incident, and like many others, was so revolted, I have been unable to stop being upset. The victim was a teenager from a rural background who had been taught to respect her elders and do what she was told. She trusted that scumbag of a manager, Donna Summers, who, I believe someone said above, probably had the IQ of a turnip, or words to that effect. The victim could not have foreseen just how far things would go. They caught the guy, who was actually phoning from Panama City, Florida. Also, the pile of dog crap fiance who performed most of the sadistic stunts is pleading not guilty, so I suppose he will plead the I was only following orders defense. But I really hold Summers responsible for allowing the whole thing to happen. If you had seen her demeanor when she was interviewed on ABC you saw a cold-hearted, callous Nazi of a woman, who insisted she didn’t do anything wrong, that poor Louise wasn’t crying and pleading with her to make it all stop, that she was always covered up, etc. This woman has no clue what an evil, repugnant thing she helped make happen, and never will. I hope she pays dearly.
Why, yes, farmgirl. A teenager being held against her will by adults can get up and leave just like that.
Fucking hell. I am so sick and tired of these people who claim that they aren’t blaming the victim but. . .she should/shouldn’t have done X,Y, or Z.
In domestic violence work most of the focus is on getting the victim to understand her power and leave. Does this put her in danger? Is it difficult? Does it go against all the control issues she has been subjected too? Does it put her out of her house and out of money? Does it threaten her custody of her children? Does it subject her public humiliation? The answer to all these questions is, at times, yes.
We are not blaming the victim when we say leave, recognize your abuse, take the necessary risks, and leave.
Yes we are, because we have never been in the victim’s precise position.
Yes we are, because we here are able to sit back and take the time to theorize and discuss what options one has in a particular situation, and what the ideal behavior with minimal risk would be, but someone in that situation does not have that luxury at all.
Yes we are, because we are able to say that perhaps it’s simply a choice between literally losing everything and being assaulted, and the victim should be conscious of that choice and able to make it just like that – because if they choose the latter, it’s their fault, but if they choose the former, somehow everything will be okay.
Yes we are, because we are supposing that all these women and girls will successfully be able to escape just by having an empowered attitude.
Yes we are particularly in this case, because it is a teenage girl working for adults, faced down first by her boss and then by a man over twice her weight.
You can say that it’d be IDEAL for all such victimized women and girls to be able to simply laugh at their attackers and walk off, or to beat up their attackers and walk off, but the MOMENT you claim that not only is it what anyone could have done, it’s what anyone SHOULD have done is the moment you’re blaming the victim. There’s the difference.
Had the teenager stood up to her boss at the get-go, things may have been different. However, Louise admits that as the nightmare wore on, she became almost dissociated from it, not an uncommon reaction when one is in such horrific and threatening circumstances. So not only was she unable to control the situation, she became unable to control her own reaction to the situation. This young woman depended on the adults around her to protect her and they betrayed her.
The disrespect to the young lady was very inappropriate and the manager should have ask the gentleman on the other end to come in if he was a police officer and they also need to take responsibility of what she and her former fiancé did. I think it is very childish how she is handling the incident and she in not showing any remorse from what I can see and this young lady/employee is scared for life and the manager has no remorse to what she did and I think her and the man need to be put in jail for at least a 25-30 sentencing terms.
Abe
I really don’t give a flying fig if a bunch of you are horrified at people “balming the victim.” The fact of the matter is, that victimizers attack people because they feel they can get away with it, and ultimately giving potential victims the tools to defend themselves is a good thing.
When a woman is abused in her marriage, asking “why didn’t she leave?” is an important part of teh solution, becasue finding out why she didn’t leave can make it easier to understand how people are put into situations where they are victims. If the reason she dixdn’t leave is because she had no place to go, then that would suggest that a major part of solving the problem of dmoestic abuse is making certain that woman have options (e.g. we need to build more battered women’s shelters).
But a lot of people would never think of that unless they asked the question “why didn’t she just leave?” and then search for the answer.
Most of the people on this board seem to agree that the girl was vulnerable to this situation largely because the job she was taught to be submissive (i.e. was taught that she had no choice in a situation like this but to obey authority) and because the “minimum-wage service economy world” tends to crush people down so that they are afraid not to obey orders even when they are violative. The fact of the matter is, that the people who ask “why didn’t she leave” may not understand a lot ofthat, and if they are criticized for “blaming the victim,” then rather than explore these issues they may just decide to ignore them and pretend they don’t exist.
Working on such things is the part of any solution, and when someone asks “why didn’t she just leave,” it provides a good opportunity to see how society socializes people so as to make them vulnerable or not vulnerable. Explaining why she felt she couldn’t leave might help to show how aspects of society and culture should be reformed to empower persons such as her. Telling people “stop blaming the victim” in such a case simply causes people to become less, not more, willing to question what problems there are in our culture that encourage victimization.
There are a few people on this thread who, while bending over backwards to disclaim that they’re saying women are responsible for rape, are arguing that women should do something to change the rape culture. And the argument seems to be that women are easier targets than they should be.
No, the argument is that society should help women not to feel that they have no option but to be easy targets. There is a reason why the McDonald’s employee felt that she had no choice but to obey her supervisor, and unless she was physically incapable of getting away, the reason has to do with the alrger culture and the messages it was sending her. Whatever aspects of our culture caused that need to be examined and reformed.
If that’s “blaming the vitim,” then fine. I want to find out how to solve the problem, not how to make certain that I don’t offend anyone. If you don’t like it, then that’s your problem.
Glaivester said it better than I did. What I want is for this situation to CHANGE. Women are further vicitimized when treated like they are helpless. An 18 yr old is vunerable, as is apparently an indoctrinated McDonalds employee. This preditor exploited that vunerablitity. Putting him in jail for six months(what are they going to change him with?) won’t stop this kind of thing.
The attitude that people who are oppressed cannot help themselves is part of the problem, not the solution.
There’s a difference between saying “why didn’t she leave?” and “She should/could have left immediately.” I don’t know if the primary problem in this discussion is miscommunication or what.
It’s not miscommunication. Famergirl and Glaivester don’t have any interest in stopping the rapists: they just want to pin it all on victims.
Jesus Christ, here’s a guy justifying asking battered women, “WHY didn’t you leave?”
Yeah,Glaivester people already know why women don’t leave. You hit every cliche in your quest to make it all about victims, but you don’t appear to ahve read anything after about 1950 when it comes to domestic violence and rape. Why don’t you go correct that before you start telling people what WE need to do to reach your standards?
What I want is for this situation to CHANGE. Women are further vicitimized when treated like they are helpless.
Not what I was saying. I am not questioning why society is treating them like they are helpless. I am questioning what society is doing to make them helpless.
There’s a difference between saying “why didn’t she leave?” and “She should/could have left immediately.”
Good point.
I don’t know if the primary problem in this discussion is miscommunication or what.
I think that the people who are saying “she should/could have left immediately” presumably don’t understand the situation. People tend to assume that everyone thinks the way they do, and interpret what they would do in a situation based on their own experiences. They have a hard time relating to someone else’s situation. I don’t think most people intend to be insensitive, they just don’t understand other people’s situations. That’s why I think that trying to explain the situation to people who say “she should/could have left immediately” is more effective than “telling them off.”
“Gee, with farmgirl and Avenir around, I’m sure rape victims would find it tremendously easy to come forward. ”
I agree. If I had my way and more women were raised to be confident in self, body, and mind- I DO think it would become easier (probably not tremendously easy, though) for women to come forward about rape.
“Here’s yet another clue. Saying I’M NOT BLAMING THE VICTIM does not make it true. It just means you think you can get away with it. Except you can’t. ”
Thanks for your (snotty, and not very focused) thoughts, but I still stand by my original statements- all of them. I don’t blame individual rape victims one iota. I do think that society raises women in a way that makes them vulnerable to victimization. I don’t understand how my statement about the way women are raised translates to my blaming women for anything- much less for being raped.
It’d be one thing to say, “If that girl had acted more confidently or aggressively, she wouldn’t have been raped.” It’s totally different to say “I wish society didn’t require women to be passive, dependent, and non-aggressive, because having those traits really make you a target for violence and exploitation.”
I get it, though. It’s a backlash, or whatever. People here are reacting to the disgusting, unfair, and common act of blaming a rape victim for being raped rather than blaming the rapist. I get where you’re coming from, and how terrible that is, and how it must stop, and how anything that doesn’t entirely focus on rape being a crime committed AGAINST women BY men has to be viewed with mistrust.
But I think it’s taking things too far when you get down on statements like “I think society requiring women to be passive and non-aggressive leads to the victimization of women”. It’s just ridiculous to equate that with someone saying “I believe that women who dress sluttily get what’s coming to them.”
I DO think people need to focus on men’s behaviour to solve rape. I didn’t post on it because I don’t know anything about it. But I do know about myself and how I was raised to be afraid of things like walking at night, empty parking lots, and living alone, and I also know that fear never went very far in helping me deal with those situations. What HAS worked has been teaching myself to be aware, confident, strong, and knowledgeable about all those things I’m supposed to avoid in fear. I was hoping to pass that nugget on to people raising children or coming to similar realisations in their lives.
Anyway, my two cents. Take it, leave it, or put words in my mouth and take those, as you like!
I am all for women being confident. I am all for women knowing their rights.
However, there is the small problem that women don’t have a lot (with regard to rape) to be confident in.
Only 4% of rape complaints made in Scotland end in conviction. Although our attrition rate is low, it’s not totally out of the ballpark in comparison with other countries’, although it’s hard comparing like with like given disparities in criminal justice systems.
It’s low because police, prosecutors, and juries know (and believe) rape myths. “Real rape” is rape by a stranger. “Real rape” means you were a virgin beforehand, or are blamelessly married. “Real rape” means you fought him off tooth and nail. “Real rape” means he must have had a weapon. Defenders like having women on juries that hear rape cases, because they know they can rely on them to judge the shit out of each other.
It’s natural, of course. We would all like to console ourselves that we have the knowledge and discernment that will keep us from ending up like those women. We can act differently, be smarter, make better choices. Can we fuck.
You can’t have empowerment of women around rape, without us being ceded more power. We’ve come a long way, baby, but there is so far still to go. We are generally unrepresented or under-represented in all of the groups that legislate and set policy around rape: legislative bodies, senior echelons of the civil service, the judiciary, and senior levels within police forces.
Acting confident is not going to help the realities of rape to permeate those citadels of power. We need to push for the happy day when we don’t need to tell a jury that it’s “normal” for a woman to not be giving a tearstained Lifetime movie rendition of a victim. Or an angry policeman that the woman who gave a statement three months ago about her fathers’ abuse shouldn’t be charged with wasting police time because she’s now freaked out and wants to withdraw it. Or a judge that it’s inappropriate to get a schoolgirl to hold up her underwear in court so the jury can decide if her skimpy panties meant that she secretly wanted it anyway.
Glaivester:
There is more than one way to ask a question. If all you’re saying is that we ought to be willing to honestly inquire into the conditions that keep women in abusive situations, I can’t think of anyone who would disagree with you. (At most, feminists will — rightly — point out that we also need to inquire into why men abuse women, rather than simply treating that as a given fact.) If women who have survived abuse volunteer the information, all for the best. But if you mean that we are entitled to demand an accounting of her reasons from any woman who is battered or raped (rather than presuming that she did have her reasons, like any other human being, and letting her explain them or not explain them as she sees fit); and that we ought to interrogate specific women in specific cases about why they didn’t leave, and suggest that — whatever reasons they may have had — it’s that that’s necessary and sufficient for systematic male violence against women to continue — then what you’re doing is fucked up and it needs to stop. Because yes, that is victim-blaming, and yes, that is making excuses for the rapists and batterers, and yes, that is a hostile and hurtful way to treat survivors of violence. This kind of attitude can be either ignorant or malicious. Often it’s a bit of both. If it’s malicious then there’s precious little reason to care whether your response helps the interrogator to understand or not, because people who do this maliciously generally don’t care and don’t want to understand. If it’s ignorance, then I don’t think it’s obvious that sympathetically catering to ignorance is always either obligatory or helpful as a means to getting people to understand better. And, on the subject of ignorant interrogations that weren’t malicious in intent, you should be aware that it’s very easy to ask a question that you think is just honest inquiry, but which really comes across as a demand or an interrogation. Particularly to someone who has been through hell and is already struggling with self-doubt and self-blame.
Avenir:
Glaivester:
Avenir:
Y’all keep talking about “society” as if it were a gaseous medium or an airborne disease instead of a bunch of individual men and women living in roughly the same area. “Society” doesn’t “raise women,” or treat anyone like they’re helpless, or make them helpless, and male violence against women is not a medical condition that “society” contracted. Men and women raise children; men and women can choose to, or decline to, treat people as if they are helpless or make them helpless; and male violence against women is something that men choose to do to women, every day, everywhere. I mention these things because when you start to talk about “society” doing this or that you are quickly and thoroughly changing the subject from the real facts of real men and women’s daily lives to some reified abstraction, treated as if it were some looming presence outside of us (when in fact it just is you, and I, and our neighbors), and in the process nicely obscure questions such as: who in “society” is doing the actual hitting and raping; who in “society” is making the excuses for it in conversation, commentary, and high theory; who has the most power to determine what we learn to say and do when we are being brought up, and so on. Here’s a hint: it’s mostly men. If you sincerely want to stop encouraging passivity and irresponsibility, maybe you should start by talking in a way that actually demands that actual men be actually accountable for the specific things they do wrong, rather than passing the buck to “society” and treating male violence as if it were a given natural fact.
Ginmar, for what it’s worth I don’t think Avenir was toeing the same line as Glaivster and farmgirl. I think that the behaviour that’s expected of women in our society is a contributing factor to the prevelance of rape, and I think that if such behaviours as “niceness” and acquiescence were less expected of women, and if women were honestly and truely raised to believe that their bodies are their own there would be less rape. I think this is largely true because if women were raised to be assertive then equally men would be raised to expect or at least accept assertiveness from women, and if women were raised with the assurence of bodily integrety then men would be raised with the understanding that women have bodily integrety that needs to be respected.
To be honest, I think these things are just examples of rape culture, and I think the reason some of us tend to focus on them is because it’s easier than facing the fact that, as women, there’s next to nothing we can do to prevent rape.
I really really don’t think that saying this is tantamount to blaming the victim.
Seeing as so many people seem to think I’m a “bad guy” here, let me clarify my point.
I think that when someone at McDonald’s feels that they have no choice but to strip and submit to sexual humiliation when a supervisor asks them to, that that indicates that the supervisors at McDonald’s are given way too much power over the employees.
It is one thing to have a healthy respects for one’s superiors (superior in the sense of having a higher rank in the company, not superior in terms of human worth), but it is wrong for the company to create an environment where the employees are so terrified of sanction that supervisors have license to abuse them. I think that companies ought to do a better job of making certain that employees know their rights, rather than relying on their employees’ ignorance as a means of having power over them.
My point was that if stories like that of Sophronia’s friend were rarer, it would be much harder for incidents like this rape by proxy to occur.
Jesus Christ, here’s a guy justifying asking battered women, “WHY didn’t you leave?”
I said asking “why didn’t she just leave?” presumably to third parties who are discussing such issues, not asking “why didn’t you just leave?” to the victim. I never suggested that the question be asked to the victim.
My point was that it is more effective to assume that a person asking this question is asking in good faith, and that explaining the situation is more effective than demonizing them. Of course, that would not provide as many opportunities to exercise righteous indignation and to extol one’s moral superiority.
Famergirl and Glaivester don’t have any interest in stopping the rapists: they just want to pin it all on victims.
And I think that you are less interested in stopping the rapists than in extolling your moral superiority.
In any case, in case people were unclear on this fact, I think that the telephoner, the supervisor, and the supervisor’s fiancee all ought to be locked up in jail for a long, long time. I didn’t explicitly say this before because I thought that it was obvious that they should all be locked them up for sexually abusing this girl, and so I didn’t see it as a point of discussion.
Arrghhh… horrifying. Weather they were stupid or sadistic, Summers and Nix do not deserve the air they breathe. I hope they burn in hell.
Poor girl… why did they have to train her to be so submissive? Question authority, question anyone who gives orders. I hope she can rise above this…
I Fear the future…
Jake, it’s really simple. If they’re not thinking about changing men, but focus on changing women, then they’re blaming women. They get sneakier and sneakier, but they just don’t go after men. Case closed. It’s the way women get stuck doing the housework: men just don’t do it and women have to. Men don’t care about rape. Eventually, though, they’ll have to. They’ll only have to, though, when the apologists stop bitching about women in that faux sympathetic way.
Glaivester, in order for your opinion to matter it’d have to be something other than the shit you’ve been spouting. Why are you here, anyway? You sure don’t give a fuck about women. “Why doesn’t she leave?”
Avenir, sweetie, you’re still doing it.When you’re whining about people putting words in your mouth,don’t rush to do it to someone else.Christ, you bang on and on about what works for you. I don’t give a shit what works for you. It’s not relevant. You have a cute safe little life and if other women don’t want to do what you do,well, then, what’s to be done?Certainly not talk about rapists, of course. Let’s not talk about them at all. Let’s talk about women. Let’s just talk about what women do and what society does to women and let’s act like society is the damned weather instead of composed of men and people like you and Glaivester.
It takes guts to fight something, and that’s why it’s so disturbing that people are going after society’s scapegoats. Men are the establishment. Men have all the power, and it’s frightening to hold them to account, to take them to task. LIke Rad Geek says, society is made up of poeple who act in ways that make sense to them. You guys go on and fucking on about women this and women that, but you’re just not shitting and getting off the pot. You never get around to talking about men. After a while, it becomes too noticeable. Deal with it. YOur patronizing assumptions about how to protect women without inconveniancing the men who attack them are pretty obvious.
I have a challenge for you. WAnt to prove me wrong? Talk about men for a change. Not society, not vague amorphous terms, and not women. You cannot talk about women at all. I dare you. Let’s talk about men and how to stop them. No snarky passive aggressive insincere attempts allowed, either. Be honest or be damned.
Glavierster, Farmgirl, whomever:
There IS a movement to empower women and make them more likely to stand up for themselves. It’s called feminism.
And you are misunderstanding the nature of intimidation and power. We ALL have to submit to authority; it’s part of what makes us human. It’s also what makes us ALL very easy to manipulate when someone we perceive as authoritative tells us to do something. Maybe for you that isn’t a police officer unjustly accusing you (although if you never argue with police I wouldn’t call you stupid). Maybe it’s a doctor, or a a judge in a courtroom on the record (almost no one argues with a judge on the record). Maybe it’s someone you have learned over time to respect. Point: it is ridiculously easy to get almost anyone to obey authority. It’s why sociopaths can cook up genocides and slavery. Teaching people to think for themsleves is wonderful, but no one can defy authority unless they can reasonably believe that the authority will be held accountable, which rapists are not when we focus on the weakness, fear or even passivity of the victims. It’s the abuse, aggression and violence of the perpetrators that has to be dealt with.
I think a contributing factor to this is the way most people are taught to view authority. My view of authority, which I have passed on to my own daughters, is that authority is something that you sometimes have to tolerate in order to get what you want, and no more than that. In my view, as soon as a manager asks me to do something inappropriate, he or she has outlived his or her usefulness to me, and the authority factor vanishes.
In other words, authority figures are to be tolerated (better yet, used) when it is beneficial, but not venerated or respected.
To put it in context, I’ve applied this philosophy throughout my life, and my relationships with authority figures have been very, very successful. In fact, I’ve always been surprised at how much power I ended up wielding over persons who were my superiors in a hierarchy. I am not above feigning respect for authority for personal gain; but I never allow myself to believe that persons on authority are any more intelligent, wise, or moral that I am, or than anybody is.
Anyone who works in fast food should bear in mind the following adage: Corporate America is a resource to be exploited; nothing more.
Ginmar, thanks for that response. It put it back into perspective for me.
FWIW, I still think it’s worth fighting and educating to change the way women are raised, but you’re right that this isn’t the right place for that discussion.
I have a challenge for you. Want to prove me wrong? Talk about men for a change. Not society, not vague amorphous terms, and not women. You cannot talk about women at all. I dare you.
Well, I have to mention women as a contrast point (e.g. why are men more likely to rape than women?)
The problem, ginmar, here, is that “men” as a generalism for all male humans is just as amorphous a term as “society.” “Men” do not rape, specific men rape. And a large number of them do that not because of society, or a “rape culture” or anything like that, they do it because they are evil people who will take advantage of other people if they feel they can get away with it. Trying to “change them” through better education, or through trying to change “society’s perceptions of women” is futile. The only way to change their behavior is to make it damn clear that if they rape or otherwise sexually abuse someone, they will be held to account.
The reason why the vast majority of rapists are male instead of female is not because something in our culture screws up men more than women. It is because male physiology is more conducive to a man becoming a rapist. On average, males have greater physical strength, and far greater levels of testosterone, a hormone that is implicated in aggression (for example, ‘roid rage in those with large amounts of artificial testosterone). In evo-psych terms, the male reproductive strategy is more geared toward accumulating a large number of partners than toward getting the highest average quality of partners possible (which is the female strategy).
None of this is to say that men “have to rape” (which are words that I am sure a lot of people want to put into my mouth). People have the choice to do good or do evil. What I am saying is that biologically, men who choose to do evil have a greater motive, desire, and ability to let that evil manifest itself as rape than do women. As long as there is rape in society, biology suggests that men will do it more than women will. So I don’t see rape as evidence that there is something specifically wrong with the way men as a group are socialized in our society; rather, it is a manifestation of the general category of evil that is by its nature more prevalent in evil men than evil women.
Yes, there are some men who rape because “they don’t know any better.” But the majority who rape do so because they don’t care. Teaching such men not to rape would be useless, because it’s not that they don’t know they shouldn’t rape, it’s that they don’t care. The way to stop such men from raping is to (a) make certain they do not get into positions where they have more of an ability to rape, and (b) to make certain that they know that if they rape, there will be swift, severe, and certain consequences.
So, then, how to reduce rape in our society? Well, rapists (who, yes, are overwhelmingly men), generally have two ways they can rape. Physical coercion (pinning someone to the ground, threatening them with a weapon, wait until they are asleep or drug them) and psychological coercion (make someone feel they have no choice; threaten their job, make them feel worthless, make them feel they have a moral obligation to submit to abuse [e.g. Catholic priest suggesting that God disapproves of people questioning any demands made by a priest]).
The only way to deal with physical coercion is to make certain that the men who rape know they will get caught and punished.
The second situation, however, usuaqlly involves the man who rapes having some form of power or authority bestowed upon him by other people (e.g. he is the boss, or the teacher, or has some other position that wold give him power over thsoe whom he would victimize) can also be prevented by (a) making certain that men who are willing to abuse their power do not get power, (b) (in case (a) fails) reducing the number of situations where persons of authority have such absolute power that a man so inclined could abuse the situation, and (c) (in case (b) fails) making certain we reduce the vulnerability of those who might be victimized.
If (a), (b), and (c) fail, then the way to deal with the situation is again, to make certain that the men who rape get caught and punished.
Or what exactly is it that you want me to say? What should I say that we should do to men in general to make fewer of them rape?
The reason I tend to get involved in these discussions over whetehr or not one should “blame the victim” is that sometimes I get the impression that people think that the way to change the world is simply to tell the bad guys to stop being bad.
For example, look at this article on avoiding computer viruses.
Is this article “blaming the victim?” Should we instead focus on how to stop people from writing viruses? Is giving advice on what messages to open and not to open wrong because it shifts the blame? Should people refrain from advising others on what antivirus software to get, because to do so is to put the obligation on the victim, not the virus-writer?
I mean, applying the logic here to computer virues, many of the people on this board would be arguing that it is wrong to recommend antivirus sofware or to discuss suspicious emails, because it is the responsibility of the would-be virus-writer not to write the virus, not of the computer user to protect himself/herself from the virus.
I think that’s an entirely false impression.
Glaivester, you’re being insincere again.
Men rape. Men rape and other men waste a lot of time ignoring it, justifying it, attacking women the men rape, and all kinds of shit like that. Men rape other men. Men rape women,children, boys, and other men. Rape is male, in reality. It’s a male invention, and men protect it.
Men who get defensive when rape is mentioned—“I was just giving some advice!”—–help rapists. Men who look for excuses not to discuss men raping help rapists. In short, if you’re not talking about men, you’re not talking about rape, and you yourself are doing everything you can to avoid looking at rape the way it really is: by men, for men, in a rape culture. Saying ‘some men’ is a sop. I don’t deal with ambiguous language. You’re being ambiguous. There’s no ambiguity here. You’re being defensive, you’re doing all kinds of shit to avoid looking the issue in the eye: men rape, and it works for them. It works for other men, too, because it enables those men to blame everything on women. Everywhere, every time.
In short, Glaivester, you know what you can do to stop rape? Stop fucking making excuses and avoiding the isuse and doing every goddamned thing you’ve been doing. Shut up and listen. Shut up if you want to talk about the victim. Shut up if you want to bitch about the victim’s choices. The guy chose to rape that woman. That’s what’s relevant. Nothing else. If you’re discussing a crime that’s already occurred and you want to criticize the victim, you are a fucking asshole, and there’s nothing to be learned for her. You’re not being educational: you’re criticizing her.
Every rape victim blames herself. It’s about fucking time we had some voices raised blaming the damned rapist. If that means you have to keep your mouth shut because that’s all you can think of to say, well, cry me a river.
Talk about rapists. When your buddies talk about rape victims, tell them to talk about rapists. Keep doing it, just like I’ve done here. No excuses, no rationalizations, no long-winded defensiveness. Talk about rapists. You wasted time whining about something other than rape here, justifying your position and getting defensive. That’s time you could have spent either reading something about rape or listening.
For starters, read Amp’s post about rape culture and keep reading it till the urge to talk about the victim goes away. If it doesn’t go away, YOU are part of the rape culture.
I was a battered wife… raped by my husband after I left, when I was “allowed” to return home to get some clothes.
I look back at that chapter of my life… you don’t leave because you are afraid to. Yes, you can be raised to be terrorized. It is like the story of the elephant…
A baby elephant is chained by one leg so it cannot move. Years later, when it is a grown elephant, it is still chained by one leg. Clearly, it could get away, but because it was trained to think it could NOT get away, it will not even try.
As for me? If I see someone I think is in trouble? I just ask them. I talk to them about dignity and abuse and anything else I can think of to try to help them.
Sometimes I just hate people — this story illustrates exactly how easily we can be corrupted and persuaded to do evil. But what really fries me is that even in this clear example of a woman being raped by force, there are still some self-righteous not-a-victim-YETs who insist that the woman could have prevented it. You know, the folks who constantly blame the victim for the acts perpetrated against them are accessories before, during and after the crime. They perpetuate rape culture becuase they insist that the rape is the fault of the raped.
She should have walked out, she should have resisted, she should have, she should have, she should have. Every single time you insist that a rape victim should have, you are excusing the rape and helping to perpetuate more rape. In fact, you are a rapist, a rapist of the heart and the soul.
I hate to wish ill on anyone and certainly don’t wish rape on anyone, but I would like all these shoulda, coulda self righteous idiots to just once be a victim of a crime — something painless like a purse-snatching that will inform them that everyone of us have moments of vulnerability and powerlessness and that none of us can guarantee our perfect safety at all times. To understand, once and for all, that the fact that you have never been the victim of a crime or an assault is not the result of your high moral fiber, foresightedness and wisdom, but more likely than not, the result of pure luck.
I realise that this is post has long been quiet. I do, however, want to point out (in response to some of the earlier comments) that there was a point when the girl’s actions ceased to be “obeying authority because it is authority” and became “this man will hurt me if I don’t do what he says.”
Most of the conversations I have seen about this event seem to ignore this point. The girl was struck repeatedly, and threatened with more battery if she did not do as she was told.
You know, I came across this site and I have several things to say to the few idiots who condemned this girl. “McDonald’s sent warnings” and “It says in the employee manual…” HELLO!!! Did it occur to you that YOU my friend just beleived the ‘authority’ of McDonald’s Corporation??? They did send warnings? Have YOU SEEN THEM? Neither did any employee. Did you see a training manual in each and every store? No? That is because they don’t have them in stores. The victim obeyed authority? Not exactly. She was locked in an office with two women who outweighed her by 400 lbs., and tried to save her life. She was not told in advance that during her 4 1/2 hours she would be stripped of her clothing, her dignity, her life as she knew it, she was not told that ‘boyfriend’ would be in to beat her, rape her, etc. And I DARE anyone to say what they would “do” in this situation b/c they have not been in this situation therefore cannot possibly know what they would do. Jesus, how can so many people be strip searched by managers who beleive a phone caller is a cop? I guess the same way so many people blogging can be so stupid as to simply believe McDonald’s Corporation and to bash the victim. Folks, get an education and your head out of your ass. Those of you who are supportive please do forgive me rant re the assholes.
The incident where the girl was strip searched, spanked and possibly orally raped/molested shows alot about today’s culture.
1. Many people are held hostage in their jobs, whether it be a min. wage job or a moderate wage career. People are afraid to question authority for fear of loosing their jobs or having a bad record (or public image). The is obviously true to such an extent that these people will sometimes say or do things that they really shouldn’t and normally wouldn’t just to save their own skin for fear of negative consequences to them.
2. It is possible to convince someone to do something they shouldn’t by feeding them what to do step by step and explaining away and questions, regardless of how good the explanation is, just as long as one is given.
3. People don’t want to look like they are un-patriotic, esp. since the 911 attacks. I think all this security ‘enhancement’ since that horrible event has negatively affected everyone and has totally backfired to the point that if they didn’t step up most of the securities and scared everyone, fewer of these types of innappropriate actions would have occurred.
4. People are often simply down right stupid and ignorant.
My main points are that that girl should have refused to submit to those searches and left the store and contact the police to protect her privacy and rights. This would also clear her name of any issues if the real Police decide to perform their jobs correctly.
I certainly wouldn’t allow that to happen to me. I am a guy so some of you might think, oh well it’s different for a girl than a guy, but come on. We’re all humans and we’ve all gone through school. Even at 17 this girl had been through at least grade 11 or 12, so she should be intelligent enough to make her own adult decisions as a human in our society not to submit to such an unlawful search.
She is NOT to blame. She didn’t do anything wrong. That is not in question. What is in question is WHY we are so stupid and neieeve. People need to question anything that doesn’t make sense in a situation where it matters.
On the part of the persons who obeyed the instructions of the prankster on the telephone and assulted this girl… They should and probably are being held accountable as well. Same thing goes for them as the girl in the way that they should have used their better judgment not to rape a girl because someone on the phone claiming to be an authority figure says that it is okay. A story like that just doesn’t add up. These people must have either conciously or unconciously thought to themselves that “Hey, someone’s telling me to do something i normally couldn’t do, but since they’re in authority, it’s not me that will be at fault for this, i’m just being their eyes, ears and hands. I’ll do it and it will be an interesting experience” All the while not realizing that this is the real world -reality- people. You can’t perform these acts lawfully or morally without consequence or just cause with authority.
Would these people who strip searched that girl have, in a difference scenario, restrained a male subject and cut off their penis and testicles because a claimed person in authority said the subject was a rapist or pedofile? How far would these people have gone as an instrument of evil?
Everyone envolved is to be blamed. The subject should have refused and left with all her power and will, but again, it was NOT HER FAULT and she is NOT TO BE BLAMED. and neither are any of the other vicitims; however, they DID have a choice to leave and contact the real authorites on the matter.
I hope these cases have given the public a heads up and got them realizing that they have to think about what’s they are doing. It’s not okay to do somthing wrong just because someone tells you to do it, no matter what their authority is.
A person must take ownership of their own acts and communications. A person must also be responsible for their own privacy and to uphold their own personal rights and freedoms with all of their being.
A job is not worth it. Esp. a low paying dime-a-dozen job that nearly ANYONE can do without education.
Those are my raw thoughts.
I guess I was blessed with some common sense.
I’ve been reading some of these responses and I guess it would be appropriate to say that:
A. The 40 something “manager” did nothing wrong. Didn’t anybody see her interview??? She called her “Fiance” (partner in crime) to come to her corporate job and “guard” a naked teenager? COME ON PEOPLE!!!
B. The finace did nothing wrong because a voice on the phone told him to do it. The Son of Sam did nothing wrong because a freakin’ dog told him to murder all those people. All of Manson’s little hoe’s did nothing wrong because Charlie said to do it???
If you believe this stuff, you’re just as inbred as the perpetrators.
That girl WAS a victim and until you’ve walked in her shoes you know nothing of how she felt or what she was capable of doing.
But thanks for sharing your knowledgable views.
Oh, and to the ZOG moron – I guess the Holocaust never happened either, right?
I blame the manager and her boyfriend more than McDonalds. There is diffenitely something perverse about the couple. Sure Mc Donalds owes some responsibility but I want to see that couple go to jail for this.
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It’s the most troubling thing I seen, and frankly it kept me awake last night. The individual who made the call had been made hundreds of such calls to fast food restaurants all over the country. In 70 cases, the person answering the phone, complied with his requests, resulting in strip searches of employees and customers, and in some instances, cavity searches.