Shayne at No, Not You writes this brilliant list:
Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work! 1. Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior.
2. When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!
3. If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault them!
4. NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.
5. If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DON’T ASSAULT THEM!
6. Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry, do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.
7. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.
8. Always be honest with people! Don’t pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. Consider telling them you plan to assault them. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to rape them.
9. Don’t forget: you can’t have sex with someone unless they are awake!
10. Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone “on accident” you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do.
And, ALWAYS REMEMBER: if you didn’t ask permission and then respect the answer the first time, you are commiting a crime- no matter how “into it” others appear to be.
Abyss 2 Hope and Girl With A Pen have more serious takes on the same topic.
(Via.)
Pingback: Protect Yourself! | The Global Sociology Blog
totally awesome
Love it.
Fantastic! I’m going to give this to my students.
Awesome.
Wow. It’s… kind of scary how much this simple, silly little humour piece twists my mind. That I somehow can’t fully contemplate shifting the responsibility for preventing sexual assault, even just as a joke, because I’ve learnt so well since pre-adolescence that the responsibility is mine. What’s the opposite of having your privilege called out?
@ The Britkid,
Taking the red pill?
Pingback: A Better Version of the Checklist of Fear | Right to Bleed
This makes my day. It’s so subversive to the view we have now and yet….so logical.
Pingback: Repost: Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work! « The Czech
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. “Our” as in all your readers… I’m not using the royal we.
Pingback: Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work! | Girl with Pen
Pingback: Interesting posts, weekend of 9/19 « Feminists with Female Sexual Dysfunction
Wonderful piece, and I experienced firsthand just how much ideas like this shock most people. I am the president of the Social Justice Club at my all boy’s highschool, and I wanted to bring in a speaker from RAINN to talk about sexual assault prevention. When I ran this idea by the headmaster of the school, she gave me a bewildered look and told me that she “Didn’t see how it was relevant to the student body.” When I pulled out my statistics and pointed out that the perpetrators of most sexual violence were young men, and that the rates of sexual violence were much higher on college campuses (relevant because 99% of the guys who go to my school go immediately to college), she gave me a look as if I had grown an extra head and asked me, “Well you don’t think anyone here is capable of this, do you?! This seems like a presentation much more appropriate for our sister schools (we have two affiliated all girl’s schools next door), not here.” And she showed me out of her office.
It just blows my mind that people treat sexual assault prevention as the victim’s responsibility.
Vagabond, I feel you.
I gave a talk at a city hall on the topic of sexual assault prevention. The nice — if clue-challenged — police detective who spoke before me was concerned about the topic. The solution? He explained that most sexual assault involves alcohol. Therefore women should be careful not to drink. Ummmm. Yeah.
I made a point of asking him to stay to hear my presentation that shifts the responsibility off the survivor/victim and onto the perpetrators of assault.
I guess that’s Sexual Assault Prevention Tip #11: Alcohol is implicated in the majority of assaults. If you are at risk of assaulting, be sure you don’t drink!
OK, so let’s say you’re a non-profit in a medium-sized city which has been given an advertising budget to push this exact campaign for two months. The approach would use some combination of direct mail, newspapers, billboards, TV, whatever, but the result would be that in this two month period, half the male population would be exposed to this message 1-2 times, while another 25% of the male population would see it 3-4 times.
I’m curious as to how much of an impact on that city’s sexual assault rate does everyone believe that this “guaranteed to work” campaign would actually have (during, say, the following year)? A 75% reduction? A 25% reduction? A 2% reduction?
Given the prevalence of men who believe there’s an epidemic of false rape accusations made by women against men (to the point that they think false accusations are more common than actual sexual assaults), if the advertising campaign is targeted to that type with an overriding message of “Keep Yourself Safe From the CRAAAZY Bitches Who Accuse Innocent Men of Rape,” I could see it working. If the overriding message is based on the idea that sexual assault is wrong in and of itself, because of the harm it does to the victim rather than to the perpetrator, I doubt it will have much effect.
Shira:
Isn’t there a more fundamental problem here – the very existence of a police detective?
The police are employed by law-abiding citizens to protect them from crime. Shouldn’t we instead be putting responsibility on criminals, where it belongs? Instead of having a police force, you could spend just a fraction of the money on a publicity campaign giving people advice on how best not to commit crime. Yeah, that would work.
Abistance only. You know it makes sense.
Daran,
Do many crimes other than sexual assault feature people who claim that while they went through the motions one would expect to see for the crime, they didn’t actually commit it?
That’s a prejudical framing. I could just as well ask: do many alleged crimes other than sexual assault feature people who claim that while they went through the motions one would expect to see for the participant in a legal act, they were actually criminally victimised?
The he said/she said aspect of SA is a problem for third parties trying to determine, in the face of conflicting claims, whether a crime did or did not take place. I don’t see it is relevant to the matter at hand, which is how to prevent the crime from being perpetrated in the first place.
do many alleged crimes other than sexual assault feature people who claim that while they went through the motions one would expect to see for the participant in a legal act, they were actually criminally victimised?
For it to be a legal act, the victim has to have consented without coercion. Victims always say they didn’t consent. What’s your point?
The he said/she said aspect of SA is a problem for third parties trying to determine, in the face of conflicting claims, whether a crime did or did not take place. I don’t see it is relevant to the matter at hand, which is how to prevent the crime from being perpetrated in the first place.
It is very relevant. The accused in sexual assault cases frequently say, “She didn’t say no/ fight me off”; the accusers frequently say, “I didn’t say yes.” There’s a reason for the “yes means yes” movement in American feminism: it treats women as sexual subjects or actors, rather than as just objects who passively accept men’s advances.
For example, take “9. Don’t forget: you can’t have sex with someone unless they are awake!” If someone thinks that it’s not rape unless she actually articulated “NO!” then he may even sincerely believe that a woman who is asleep and doesn’t say “NO!” hasn’t been raped at all.
Do you not think that #9 would be helpful to the men who heretofore haven’t understood the “yes means yes” philosophy?
OK, PG, so that suggests the campaign is specifically addressed to those males who are raping out of ignorance (i.e. they genuinely don’t know what they’re specifically doing is wrong). What percentage of rapes do you think fall into this category?
ballgame,
I think a lot of sexual assaults are perpetrated by men who will at least claim that they didn’t think what they were doing was sexual assault. It’s certainly a common response from the accused when he doesn’t deny having had sex in the first place. Why else say “She was asking for it” or “She came to my room” or any of the other cliched things unless the idea is to communicate “She consented by what she did even if she didn’t consent in words.”
These are, at least, the sexual assaults that might be preventable by making clear what constitutes sexual assault. Some people will commit what they know are crimes, because they don’t respect the law or don’t think it should apply to them. But there also are people who will really think that the law isn’t what it says. Even cops do this, as we’ve seen with police who arrest people for exercising their First Amendment right to complain about a government agent.
For an example of the kind of guy who doesn’t think he was a rapist even if he was told no, I present DJ Austin commenting as “doovinator”:
When abyss2hope said, “To the doovinator, if you ignored ‘no’ even when it was whispered with no other actions then the assessment of what you did as rape is correct. It doesn’t matter that she was naked and willingly next to you.”
He responded,
I have no doubt about that, PG, but that’s different from saying that they’re genuinely ignorant that what they’re doing is wrong (and not just putting up a ‘defense’). I’m still curious as to what proportion of these crimes that you (or anyone here) think fall into the category of, “he actually didn’t know what he was doing was wrong.”
ballgame,
Well, what do you think of DJ Austin? He at least says he doesn’t think he committed rape. Do you agree with him? The fact that he felt comfortable stating all of the above on the women’s website DoubleX, in the comments to an article about why a woman didn’t report her date rape, indicates that he genuinely feels like the accusation of rape was wrong (it’s not like he was required to comment about his experience).
“Actually” and “genuinely” are difficult terms for describing the complexities of how people feel about their actions. I break the speed limit pretty much every time I drive, so I do “actually and genuinely” know that I’m not abiding by the law, but I still get disgruntled and feel it’s unfair when I get ticketed if there are other people driving just as fast. Some consciousness of not having behaved as well as one might have done is not the same as agreeing that one has committed a legal breach for which one ought to be punished. It sounds like Austin recognizes that there were a couple signals that his accuser didn’t want to be having sex, but he also argues that there were signals she did, and that he was justified in ignoring the signals that contradicted the latter.
With my speeding, so far as I know, it doesn’t really create any harm. I suppose it’s not good for the environment because 55mph is supposedly the most fuel-efficient speed. However, if you told me that what I thought was my essentially harmless speeding actually is hurting people, that the cops weren’t just persecuting me to get the city revenue during a recession or because I have out-of-state plates or whatever I fume to myself while my ticket’s getting written, and that there are specific things I ought to be doing to avoid getting into that situation in the first place, I might listen and change my behavior.
Daran and ballgame are actually arguing against this list? Really? This is so offensive to your sensibilities that you have to take the time and expend the energy to voice your disapproval? Do you think that the items on this list are wrong and won’t actually prevent a sexual assault? Which items do you guys find offensive? Why?
I understand what you’re saying, PG. A lot of it makes sense. All I’m trying to get to is a sense of how much rape you (or anyone) think is committed by guys (or women for that matter) who genuinely don’t know what they’re doing is wrong. One out of a hundred? One out of ten? One out of two? It’s an honest question, and it goes to the point of the post, because the post is based on the premise that proportion is extremely high.
ballgame,
The premise of the post is that the sexual violence prevention tips that women are bombarded with are not very helpful. It’s not that a campaign of putting this on posters would be “guaranteed” to eliminate sexual violence.
Like Chinoga, Ballgame, I have to wonder if you’ve actually understood the post. It doesn’t appear so from what you’ve posted on this thread.
As I see it, the point of the post is to highlight the big elephant in the room when someone gives typical “rape prevention tips” aimed at women’s behavior, which is that the cause of rape, in the overwhelming majority of cases, is not how the woman behaved.
There are serious programs attempting to reduce rape by primary prevention — that is, by speaking to and working with boys and young men (either exclusively or in a both-sex program), rather than just speaking to girls and women. This post is not one such program. Responding to it as if it were such a program, really makes it seem like you’ve missed the point by a mile.
Um, OK, Amp. So Shira was just joking when she said she was going to give this list to her students? And Jake was just being tongue-in-cheek when he asked, “Do you think that the items on this list are wrong and won’t actually prevent a sexual assault?”
I can’t speak for Shira, but yes I was. I actually had to force myself not to ask 18 other silly questions. My first three questions were serious, though.
Ballgame of course, I can’t speak for anyone but myself, so I stand ready to be corrected.
However, I think Shira is assuming that her students will understand the piece’s irony and purpose. (Shira? Is that correct?)
And I think Jake likewise understood the piece in the same way I did (can you clarify if that’s so or not, Jake?), but his questions to you were serious in the sense that he was seriously trying to understand the grounds of your (and Daran’s) objections.
Yeah, Amp, I read it the same way you do.
It does come with the bonus of 8 of these tips being guaranteed to prevent you from sexually assaulting another person in the way defined in that tip.
It was just a jaw-dropping moment to watch people arguing against the efficacy of the list, so…
@Ampersand — Yes, I would definitely give this to my students expecting that they would understand the irony.
These “tips” reveal how sexual assault prevention is geared toward victims/survivors (usually presumed to be female). That takes the focus off real prevention, which requires that assaulters stop assaulting.
@Daran — I’m guessing that your comment above about the police department is sarcasm. It’s unclear.
I will say, though, that the detective is a really nice man. We both share concern about effectively addressing the problem of sexual assault, even if our perspectives on how to get there differ.
OK. I appreciate the clarifications. In my defense, I will say that I have not always found the absurdity of a particular statement to be an accurate barometer of the ironic intent behind it.
And I am still curious as to what portion of rapes people think are committed by someone who didn’t know what they were doing was wrong, which I still think is a relevant question in light of the attitude embodied by statements like Shira’s. (“That takes the focus off real prevention, which requires that assaulters stop assaulting.”)
I don’t have time to dig up the stats for you, but research indicates a fairly high percentage of college-age men have participated in actions that meet the legal definition of rape, but don’t describe what they did as rape.
Is it feigned ignorance? Is it because in our culture sex gets confused with assault? (I’m thinking of pop culture media, entertainment, music video here. If this concept is fuzzy for you, see Byron Hurt’s film Hop Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, or Sut Jhally’s Dreamworlds 3. Also see the new anthology Yes Means Yes.)
Is it because we don’t talk enough about sexuality, pleasure, assault and consent? . . .
Yes, it was rhetorical irony, spoiled, somewhat, by my inability to spell “abstinence”.
I’m sure the proponents of abstinence-only education find it equally draw-dropping to watch people arguing against its efficacy.
This is because they fail to appreciate the difference between the efficacy of abstinence, and the efficacy of abstinence-only education.
Daran, what you fail to appreciate is that no one here is saying that the list itself is useful education for the purpose of primary prevention.
To use your metaphor, no one here is arguing for this list as “abstinence-only education.”
(I would argue that there are models of primary prevention that are worth experimenting with, but this list is not such a model.)
Ampersand:
I can’t speak for ballgame, but for myself, I totally get that this list was formulated as a critique of typical “rape prevention tips” aimed at women’s behaviour.
There’s a valid critique to be made of these tips. They are, by and large ineffective and costly.
They’re ineffective because, by and large, they don’t address the real controllable risk factors. Instead, they are security theatre, often directed at movie plots. But rapists don’t do movie plots. They’re like terrorists in that respect.
The tips aren’t even good security theatre which, at its best, can at least lull you into a true sense of security.
The costs are that the tips, if actually implemented, sometimes significantly limit the woman’s freedom, and if not implemented (perhaps because they are unimplementable) can make her feel insecure and inadequate. There’s also a cost to simply holding all these tips in your head.
Finally there is the opportunity cost. By advocating ineffective and costly security measures, you fail to advocate low-cost measures which actually work.
The trouble with the feminist response to this is that 99% of it boils down to “don’t do anything to protect yourself. Blame abusers” or “blame men instead”. This is counterproductive. Firstly, any babies among the tips are thrown out along with all the bathwater. Women are discouraged from considering good advice or learning how to distinguish it from bad. Instead, they are encouraged to be helpless.
Secondly, while blaming abusers is certainly appropriate, it’s not going to do anything at all to prevent abuse. Blaming “men” is inappropriate and harmful for all the reasons I’ve pointed out a zillion times in the past. Additionally, it just antagonises the very men that you want to reach.
I’m sure I’d find much to criticise about the content of such programs, but as that isn’t before me, I’ll confine my remarks to what you just said.
The problem with the framing here is that every part of the complex picture of coercion and (non)consent except that which posits a male (potential) abuser and a female (potential) victim is completely erased.
I refer you to ballgame’s “defense” of himself in #36. As for myself, none of my remarks have been directed at the list per se but at what feminists have been saying, apparently in all sincerity, in the comments.
We crossposted:
You misunderstand my point, perhaps because I didn’t make it very clearly. I was responding specifically to Jake Squid’s remark:
Parsed literally, he appears to be asserting that the list is so obviously efficacious that it is jaw-dropping to watch anyone argue against it. It’s true that nobody has argued for it to be used as education. But if it truly is as efficacious as Jake appears to be claiming, then why not?
Alternatively, perhaps Jake’s meaning was that it would be efficacious for a person to do the things on the list (analogous to abstinence). But nobody here has argued otherwise, so if this is his point, it is a straw man.
Agreed on both points, though we might disagree on the details of worthwhile models. Your last clause simply asserts your agreement with the jawdropping view (according to the first interpretation of Jake’s remark) that the list is not in fact efficacious.
Daran,
There is exactly no mention of gender of either abusers or victims in this list. None. Not a single word.
And yet you insist that this is a list that:
1) blames men.
2) posits a male (potential) abuser and a female (potential) victim.
Why?
The list is satire, and satire is supposed to make you uncomfortable.
As for myself, none of my remarks have been directed at the list per se but at what feminists have been saying, apparently in all sincerity, in the comments.
What, exactly, are we saying with all sincerity in the comments?
I just re-read the thread. Nobody said (or even hinted) that giving every man a little card to carry in his wallet with the tips on it would eliminate rape.
Shira said she was going to share it with her students? I reposted it on Facebook. Saying “I think this is a great bit of satire that turns a bunch of bullshit on its head and I want as many people as possible to read it” does not equal “I have found the solution to rape.”
That said, I think the list does a very good job of causing us to see the way we’ve internalized certain narratives and ideas around sexual violence. It’s almost startling, even to me, as a feminist, how well it does that. And because I think sexual violence is related to the culture we live in and that culture’s ideas around sex and gender roles – and doesn’t occur just as a result of sociopathy – I think something like this has a small role to play in shifting some of those cultural norms.
I’m not sure that you see sexual violence as tied up in culture the way I do, and if you don’t, then sure, it loses that secondary effect. But the post was presenting it as a send-up of the tips we usually hear, which you agree are ridiculous.
I fail to see how it’s insulting to men or “blames men” for sexual violence. It blames people who commit sexual violence. Is there really dispute that they are the ones to blame for sexual violence?
I’m also curious which “babies” you think went out with the bathwater.
I am, admittedly, something of an old New Leftie type, chingona, and I find this kind of assertion astounding for a blog which is purportedly progressive. On a banal and politically useless level, strictly speaking the answer to your question is, yes, if an individual commits rape, then that individual is responsible for the act.
But if, as a society, we want to reduce or eliminate the phenomenon of rape, the progressive approach is to understand its root causes. With, perhaps, vanishingly few genetic exceptions, evil is made, not born. Generally speaking, humans who grow up in loving, nurturing environments in which their physical integrity and emotional needs are respected (and who are taught to reciprocate this respect) do not become rapists.
To a significant degree, males commit the bulk of violence in this society because males are dehumanized to a greater extent than females. They are subjected to (and compelled to participate in) a much higher level of violence than females. Male dominance is rewarded disproportionately, while male empathy is undervalued. When that overall treatment is coupled with an abusive family background, you have fertile ground for the development of violent predators.
Holding predators responsible for their actions is essential for a just society, of course. But the notion that this will make a significant dent in the overall social problem is essentially a right wing, ‘law and order’ approach, and has about as much chance of actual success as the War on Drugs has had on drug use.
It’s an internet truism, I guess, that anything you say that can be misconstrued will be misconstrued. I must say, though, that I’m baffled as to what was so unclear about what I said:
Charles:
chingona:
At no point has anyone said that the list insults men. That is a complete straw man.
What I said was: “99% of [the feminist response to typical ‘rape prevention tips’ aimed at women’s behaviour] boils down to … [b]lam[ing] abusers or blam[ing] men”. The list, of course, does the first of these things. It blames abusers; it does not blame men.
Unless the word “or” works differently for you than for me, that would put the list into that 99%.
“While blaming abusers is certainly appropriate, it’s not going to do anything at all to prevent abuse.”
How on earth can anyone conclude that I am disputing that they are the ones to blame, given that I just called it “appropriate”?
Charles:
Here’s what I said:
“Here” does not refer to the list, but to “what [Ampersand] just said”.
Here’s what Ampersand just said:
Ampersand has used the phrase “primary prevention” several times in this thread without defining it. I infer from context that it means reducing the prevalence of abuse perpetrated by the worked-with group, as opposed to reducing the prevalence of abuse suffered by the worked-with group, which we might call secondary prevention.
As Ampersand just framed it, “speaking to and working with boys and young men” is primary prevention, while “just speaking to girls and women.” is not. That’s the framing I object to. Specifically, while I’m in no doubt that he’s right that in practice work with males focusses on primary prevention, while work with females focusses on secondary prevention, his framing of the issues normalises what is, in fact a highly problematic expression of gender-prejudice.
Shira, I appreciate the validity of what you’re saying, but I wasn’t actually looking to see what ‘the research’ says is the ratio (which obviously has all the questions you cite in your comment). I was actually just interested in what your perception (and other Alas readers’ perceptions) was of how many rapes occur because the rapist genuinely didn’t know what he (or she) was doing was wrong. I wasn’t going to hold anyone to any kind of decimal point precision on the question, I just wanted some sense of what everyone thought the magnitude of this particular kind of rape was. It seems to me it’s absolutely germane to discussing how much of an impact rape prevention programs which focus on the rapist might actually have.
Daran,
I’m intrigued, kindly list these measures.
chingona:
For example this:
My critique of the “tips” is that they are, by and large, the wrong tips because they are ineffective and costly. I advocate replacing them with effective low-cost secondary preventative advice directed at both sexes, as well as appropriate primary preventative advice, also directed at both sexes.
It’s worth pointing out the difference between effective primary and effective secondary prevention. Effective primary prevention reduces everyone’s risk by a tiny amount. It would take a huge program sustained over many years to significantly reduce any individual person’s risk. Effective secondary prevention reduces one person’s risk by a lot – yours if you’re the person practicing it. Effective primary prevention is a laudible goal, but as far as your individual personal safety is concerned, there is only one game in town. It’s your personal safety. Take responsibility for it.
Shira in contrast denies the legitimacy of any kind of secondary preventative advice directed at women at all, she implies that nothing a women could do to protect herself would be “real protection”. This is the advocacy of female helplessness.
I never said anyone did.
I never said it did.
I agree. In so far as the list is a critique of ineffective and costly “tips”, I have no criticism of it. My criticism of feminism is that it eschews any kind of secondary protection in favour of blaming men or blaming abusers. That the list does this (blames abusers, not blames men) on its face is, I think, quite significant, even though I realise that its not intended to be taken seriously.
I do see violence as “tied up on culture”, though probably not the way that you do.
There are no absolute babies. Whether any particular measure is a baby depends upon a cost/benefit analysis that will vary depending upon the individual’s personal circumstances and priorities.
So for example, “Don’t go out alone at night” is probably bathwater to most people, but it might be worth considering if you live in area with particularly high levels of street crime, and you’re young, male, and your race makes you vulnerable, these being the three major non-controlable risk factors. It would also depend upon how you rate the cost of the measure, in terms of your loss of freedom to wander about at night.
It’s true that alcohol is a significant risk factor, but the risk does not increase linearly with the level of intoxication. Rather it increases exponentially as one approaches incapacity. So it might be a good idea to moderate your drinking so that you never get completely shitfaced. But even that isn’t a certainty. If you feel that your day just isn’t complete if you haven’t made a complete arse of yourself the night before, and don’t feel like shit the morning after, then maybe this one is bathwater for you.
@Daran — I assure you that I support self-defense classes for women, and for all people. I oppose learned helplessness, especially when it comes to women. Contrary to what you accuse, I do not imply that:
It’s unclear where you’re getting any of that because I sure didn’t say that here — or anywhere. Certainly, you support violence and sexual assault prevention. I know that I do.
I strongly recommend this website, with the proviso that you tailor to your needs, and treat it like a buffet. It’s a huge site, but if you concentrate on the 10% of topics that most concern you, and adopt the 10% of the most practical, least-costly, easiest-to-do things, you’ll probably get 90% of the benefit that you could get from trying to do everything.
Daran,
It’s an internet truism, I guess, that anything you say that can be misconstrued will be misconstrued.
When the topic of this thread is this list and our apparently problematic responses to it, and you spend a good chunk of your comment at 41 talking about how feminists too often just blame men, it’s a fairly logical leap to think you’re saying that in this thread, in our discussion of this list, we’re “blaming men.”
I am the author of the list, and it is great to hear this fantastic discussion. I just want to add that implying the list or “feminists” in ANYWAY discourage women from being critical thinkers, informed consumers and savvy civilians is laughable. In fact, those who respond to this list in such a way are the exact people this list is meant to lampoon. Feminists are men and women whose life’s work is educating other about the legal, emotional and physical components and ramifications of consent or lack there-of. Self-defense class teaches a combat strategy. I find the blanket statement “The trouble with the feminist response to this is that 99% of it boils down to “don’t do anything to protect yourself. Blame abusers” or “blame men instead” to be horrifyingly uninformed. Of course, when the author of the statement goes on to say, “while blaming abusers is certainly appropriate, it’s not going to do anything at all to prevent abuse” he or she makes the case of their ignorance for me. I shall add, in my super confusing satiristic way, “Trying to stop theft, kidnapping or drug trafficking by going after the criminals will never do anything to prevent those crimes from happening.”
ballgame,
I am, admittedly, something of an old New Leftie type, chingona, and I find this kind of assertion astounding for a blog which is purportedly progressive.
Wow. It’s almost like you stopped reading my comment right there. Try again.
Daran,
I think Shira hit the nail when she mentioned ‘learned helplessness’. Your natural capacity for self-defense is under that, and is stopped by conscious programming, not the other way around.
I also find the way you speak of women to be odd, it seems to show that what I thought was a complaint-about women being a protected class- is really your conviction of what you think should be.
I disagree with the idea that I’m promoting helplessness by refusing to take responsibility for my potential future sexual assault. Sexual assault is fundamentally a crime, like robbery, and the people responsible are criminals. There have been quite a few thefts from college students on my campus lately, and nobody blames those students for failing to take more precautions. Nobody has told the boy I know whose phone and wallet were just stolen that he shouldn’t have been walking across campus at 2am, he ought to have been in a group, or that he shouldn’t have been wearing a nice jacket that implied he might have money. In my view, nobody should tell victims of sexual assault that their choices caused the assault – rather, the attacker is responsible.
This doesn’t mean people should take foolish risks – just that people need take no more special precautions to prevent sexual assault than they need to take to prevent thefts. I lock my doors at night and am cautious about entering high-crime areas after dark – but I refuse to circumscribe my life choices because I am a woman and ought to live in fear of rape.
The problem with tips geared towards victims are : A) They’re often no more than glorified victim-blaming – placing the onus on victims to prevent crime, when the onus should be on those who commit crime (and as a former rape crisis counselor, I can tell you victims internalize these and blame themselves for their rapes when they don’t follow every tip out there, who the hell does that help?); and B) the tips, some of which are useful (like, never accept a drink you haven’t seen continuously) only prevent you from being raped; they don’t prevent rape. The rapist will simply find a different victim. Either way someone gets raped. And even if the tips were 100% effective and used 100% of the time, predators would drop the method and try something elese that potential victims haven’t seen before (heck, this is why GHB became so popular among rapists in the 80-90’s, because it had never been used before). The only 100% way to stop rape is to stop rapists. Personal safety measures can be taken, but that only shifts the target off your back and onto someone else’s. That is why feminists and rape perevention educators and victim advocates focus on potential rapists and not potential victims.
Right.
Feminists didn’t do the vast majority of the work setting up shelters for battered women.
Feminists didn’t do the vast majority of the work creating rape crisis centers and staffing 24-hour rape crisis hotlines.
Feminists didn’t do the vast majority of the work getting sexual assault recognized as a problem on college campuses, and pressuring administrations to acknowledge and deal with rape (almost exclusively, at this point in time, by educating women on the threat of sexual assault from known assailants, aka “date rape,” and setting up night escorts and emergency lights and the like) rather than hiding it.
Feminists didn’t do the vast majority of work to get women’s self-defense classes started and widely available at least in large population centers.
Feminists didn’t do the vast majority of work on public education campaigns to make it clear to women that being battered or raped by your partner/spouse is not “normal,” no matter what kind of family you grew up in, and not acceptable even if you get an apology and flowers and promises never to do it again and etc.
Feminists didn’t do the vast majority of work to get rape victim’s sexual histories excluded from court testimony, to get stiffer penalties for rape and domestic violence, to get marital rape criminalized at all.’
Third wave feminists didn’t do the vast majority of work to critique and challenge shelter policies that excluded male children, lesbians, and transgender men and women from existing women’s shelters and to create options for gay and straight ciscgender men who are endangered by intimate partner violence.
No, feminists just sit around on their asses blaming men and never lifting a finger to actually help victims.
There happens to be exactly one sentence after the assertion of yours that I was reacting to, chingona, so even if you were literally correct about my stopping there, I didn’t miss anything.
More importantly, your comment appears to me to be internally inconsistent. On the one hand you imply it’s the culture which is responsible for sexual violence, on the other you say you’re not holding men as a group responsible, just the sexual abusers themselves. I was responding to the unequivocal statement in your comment; perhaps you didn’t intend it so unequivocally. From a ‘let’s solve the social issue of rape’ perspective, an exclusive focus on sexual predators themselves — and the neglect of the dehumanization process inflicted on boys which I believe is one of the principal contributors to male sexual violence — strikes me as a warmed-over right wing ‘law and order crackdown’ mentality dressed up in “progressive” clothing (i.e. “evil people are evil”). Perhaps I’d see your comment differently if you were to clarify.
At any rate, that sentence of mine was an expression of how I feel, and there would be few assertions of mine more pointless for you to challenge (because no one is more expert on the topic than I, and ultimately how I feel really has very little import to the discussion). Why not respond to the substantive issues I raise in my comment? I mean, it’s almost like you stopped reading my comment right there.
Try again?
ballgame,
You said you found my assertion astounding for a blog that is purportedly progressive. Okay, the “astounding” part is your feelings. The rest of it is you categorizing my statement in a way that suggests a blatantly bad faith misreading. Oh, but that’s just my subjective feeling about your comment. It would be pointless for you to challenge it.
Anyway ….
You were correct. The part you seemed to not have read was above the part you responded to, not below it, and it would have been easy enough for me to scroll up and check, so my bad on that.
On to the substance. My statement that people who commit sexual violence are responsible for sexual violence was distinguishing perpetrators from men. It was in response to Daran’s bit about how feminists are obsessed with either learned helplessness or blaming men. I was saying it’s not blaming men. It’s blaming perpetrators. Now Daran says he never said the list blamed men. I’m not sure what’s he’s talking about at this point. I’m sure that’s the fault of my poor reading comprehension.
Next. Society made me do it vs. free will. I’m a both/and, not an either/or kind of gal. We are profoundly influenced by the society and culture we grow up in, by the messages we hear, by our early life experiences. We also get to make decisions. We live in a culture that condones and excuses and even encourages the violence (including the sexual violence) that we claim to abhor. This is a big problem that lots of people, many of them feminists, are working to change, and if we could change our culture so that it actually valued that which we claim to value, I think we’d see less rape and less violence. But even growing up in this culture, the majority of people do not rape and are not criminally violent. So people still make choices about how to act toward other people in the cultural context in which they live. I don’t see that as contradictory. It’s not black and white. We’re all a complicated mix of nature and nurture and our own choices.
I’m not sure how you got “evil people do evil things” from a comment in which I expressly said I don’t think that most people who rape are sociopaths. Frankly, when I read your comments @ 16, 22, 25 and 28, I thought YOU were making an “evil people do evil things” argument. Whenever they do surveys of high school students, they find alarmingly large minorities think that it’s sometimes, in some circumstances, okay to force someone to have sex with you. Given that context, to say that people who rape almost always know they are raping (which is what I understood you to be saying, but maybe that’s not what you were saying) sounded to me like an “evil people do evil things” argument. Apparently that wasn’t your argument. So we agree that “evil people do evil things” is a reductive and useless argument (that has no place on a purportedly progressive blog!) and that culture matters. You may still think I’m being contradictory. I disagree. I doubt we’ll resolve that one.
All that said, I still don’t understand what is so objectionable about this list or the responses to it here.
ballgame’s a coblogger on FCB, and I know him quite well. There’s no doubt in my mind that he is arguing in good faith. But if you are so unshakably certain in your own mind that he isn’t, why are you even bothering to reply?
The list of your miscategorisations of my statements is getting rather lengthy. I could suggest bad faith on your part, but I don’t believe you are. I’m happy to go with your poor reading comprehension theory, coupled in some cases with my poor writing skills.
The only thing I have used the “or” conjunction to attach to “blaming men” is “blaming abusers”. In so far as it blames abusers, your remarks on this issue fall into the 99% category which does one or the other.
Nor have I ever said that feminists are obsessed with “learned helplessness”. One of my criticisms is that the feminist discources under discussion advocate helplessness. That’s a statement about what these discourses do. It is not a claim about what feminists intend by them, still less about what feminists obsess over.
ballgame:
I do not agree that this is internally inconsistent. That she thinks it’s the culture which is responsible, does not imply that she thinks that it is men’s culture which is responsible. Some feminists do indeed think this. but it’s not universal within the movement.
elusis (quoting me):
That’s not what I meant.
In this case, it’s my writing that’s at fault. Firstly “secondary protection” was an error. I meant to write “secondary prevention”. Secondly, I should not have assumed that people would understand what I meant by the term, which, in all honesty isn’t a particularly good term for what I meant. Thirdly I assumed that when I said “feminism” people would understand that I meant it in the specific context of the discussion about sexual assault prevention tips. Finally I assumed that you would understand that by “eschew” I meant reject at a conceptual/theoretical level
Let me restate what I meant: My criticism of feminism is that it rejects recommendations directed at what the women/potential victim may do to protect herself, in favour of blaming someone else.
Agreed.
No that’s not the problem with them. This is the very view that I’m criticising.
The problem with them, is that, by and large they don’t work.
Which is one of the negative consequences of tips which are unfollowable or which don’t work anyway.
But how much of this is because the tips were, in fact, just victim-blaming in the first place, and not real advice? And how do you rate advice which is both effective (enables some women to avoid rapes they would otherwise suffer) but which also has this effect upon other women who fail to avoid the rape?
That depends on the type of the rapist, and the type of the rape. “Be clear about your non-consent” is generally good advice which will stop the hard-of-hearing date-rapist who ignores a whispered “no”. She won’t switch that rape to another victim because she never intended to rape anyone in the first place. Then there’s the outright opportunist rapist who isn’t trying to create an opportunity but will take any that comes her way. Don’t be that opportunity. Then there’s the predator who goes after the lowest-hanging fruit. If you’re not the lowest hanging fruit, then she’ll switch target, so no rape is prevented there, but if all the fruit got higher, her task gets harder.
Blaming rapists does nothing to stop rapists, which makes it rather curious that the discussion rarely goes any further than that.
I found this so funny, I hyperventilated! Thanks!
@ballgame
I don’t know if you’re still checking up on this thread, but I thought I’d throw this out there anyway.
You’ve repeatedly mentioned that you were interested in what [an individual’s] perception (and other Alas readers’ perceptions) was of how many rapes occur because the rapist genuinely didn’t know what he (or she) was doing was wrong.
While this is my own subjective experience of rape, I must say that of the 4 times it has occured in my life, I could safely say that every single one of those men didn’t know that what they did was rape. In fact, 3 tried to maintain friendly relationships, unaware at what exactly they had done (until I confronted them with some ugly truth).
So from my personal perspective, I think it’s safe to say that a fair number of rapists (as aquaintence rape is the most common), are not aware that things like coersion (especially invovling alcohol) or continuing after a partner has said no, or having sex while a person is asleep or passed out, consitute rape.
Just my 2 cents.
I thought the post was very perceptive and am disgusted by all the male defensiveness. I’ve talked about sexual assault prevention with male Air Force and U.S. Naval Academy graduates and they admitted that men must take equal responsibility for preventing rape. These men responded like grownups and didn’t do the same ole immature “feminists always blame men” schtick.
Brilliant; I feel like printing it out and taping it up everywhere.
Pingback: Rape and Victim Blaming « kissesandkinks
Pingback: Rape Prevention…For Real « 86 Red Shoes
Pingback: Aspects of a Larger Problem: Concordia Security’s Sexual Assault Prevention “Tips” | S.A.C. Now!
Pingback: Victim Blaming » Kisses and Kinks
Pingback: Slutwalk is more than just funfeminism « Blamer Bushfire
Pingback: » Blog Archive » Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work!
Pingback: Occasional Link Roundup | Brute Reason