OrangeJulius
Member
Alright this is a COMPLETELY different argument entirely. You are thinking of statutory rape, which is consenting sex between someone of legal age and a minor.
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How could 'the way she dressed' ever be brought up when a women is raped?
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Alright this is a COMPLETELY different argument entirely. You are thinking of statutory rape, which is consenting sex between someone of legal age and a minor.
I think you're misinterpreting me. I believe the issue is with the rapists, not the victims. In a perfect world we would change everything about the assailant's actions and nothing about the victim's. Even if every women does everything they can to minimize the risk of being raped there will still be rape because the issue does not lie with them, it is not their fault.
The topic at hand was framed in a way to discuss the victims, not the perpetrates. I don't think in any way that the way to stop rape is by "fixing" the behavior of women, but I do believe that as long as there are sick individuals out there who will rape then there are precautions everyone can take to minimize the risk of being raped.
Also, I do not think it is ever appropriate to talk to a victim about their appearance, what kind of friends they have, how drunk they were, etc. After the incident has taken place the only thing that should be given is support.
For statutory rape, there doesn't need to be consent, both parties can consent, but it is still statutory rape, even if you think the minor was older. Also, a lot of states have statutes were the age of consent and the age of other party has to be a certain number of years apart. For example, in NY, the age of consent is 17, but the defendant has to be at least 21 years old and the victim 16 years old or younger for the statutory rape to apply.
OrangeJulius
Member
Zornack, taking precautions and being careful is fine, you just have to realize that there isn't much of a link between dress and rape victims.
Rape is often much more about power than just fucking a pretty girl whether she says so or not.
Clothing doesn't enter into the discussion unless someone can provide a relevant study saying otherwise, i've never seen one.
Rape is often much more about power than just fucking a pretty girl whether she says so or not.
Clothing doesn't enter into the discussion unless someone can provide a relevant study saying otherwise, i've never seen one.
OriginalThinking
Member
Doesn't the evidence (and I could be wrong here) support that most rapists are opportunists and how you dress has absolutely no convincing correlation regarding an increased risk of rape?
I think most people can agree to this. The reality is that there are individuals out there who are demented and being wary of this can't hurt.
Yeah, definitely. I am completely unconvinced that the way someone dresses could increase the odds of being raped. My discussion with another poster a few pages back went beyond attire but my most recent posts could be taken as advocating women to dress conservatively if they want to avoid rape, which I do not in any way believe.
That being said, I could see there being a link between a way a women dresses and her chance of being raped. I assume certain rapists might be more likely to attack women they think of as "slutty" or "asking for it." But with the lack of any real proof and the frequency of rape in cultures where a conservative dress code is strictly enforced it seems much more likely that there is no link.
Photolysis
Banned
What a bullshit post. No one ever claims these are surefire ways of preventing anything, and suggesting they should be thrown out entirely because of this is utterly stupid.
Is your chance of being raped higher if you drink so much you have no perception of your surroundings, or if you don't keep a close eye on your drinks to make sure they're not tampered with? Of course it is. And of course it's possible that you'll get women taking these sensible precautions, and who end up being victims anyway. It doesn't change the fact that risk-minimising behaviour does reduce the risk, and will save some would-be victims from being assaulted. Just like wearing a seatbelt will save me in some car crashes, but doesn't make me invulnerable. It's called risk minimisation for a reason, not risk elimination.
'Should' women be free to go out and enjoy themselves without the fear that they'll be raped, and without needing to take these precautions? Absolutely. The realities of the world don't give a shit however, and so sensible women will not drink themselves into a near-coma in the name of 'empowerment'.
Just like I should be free to walk through that dark alleyway at night without being mugged or murdered. Or I should not need to lock my door at night.
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
No, you're right.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
My favorite parts of this thread are the assumptions about what has gotten women raped. The judgments here are unreal.
Brian Griffin
Member
Quoting this for the new page. There are so many "It's never the victim's fault... but," posts here it's dizzying. Girls and women live their lives in a near constant cloud of how-not-to-get-raped "advice" and it changes nothing. They still get raped. The only reason people focus on what a victim wore, drank, etc. to so they can rationalize the crime quickly and not have to think about it.
The actual solution to reducing rape is to target the attacker with all the barrage of questions that is traditionally leveled at the victim. Why was he out that night? What was he wearing? Why did he decide to get drunk? Why was his respect for women so low that he felt he should rape her?
Figuring out why men rape and what to do about it is a much harder thing to do than telling women to not dress like sluts and get drunk, but it has the benefit of actually reducing rape so it's something we should start working on ASAP.
DonasaurusRex
Online Ho Champ
....are you wondering about justification or why its used as an explanation?
Rape clearly doesnt have to do with clothes but there may be some rapists with a profile and like a certain type of target. Hence the array of crimes that target young girls or women in authority/uniform, etc etc. Its not a justification but the way you dress might put you in a target category...doesnt really matter though so many things attract so many different types of sex offenders if you try and protect women thru dress what the hell would they even wear? And then what do you do when they get raped in those clothes. Its a violence thing not a arousal thing.
people that use clothes as a cause of the action are just poor at reasoning and understanding true principles. But someone who warns hey this type of dress at this type of environment you may be making yourself a target to a TYPE of person yeah I think thats good advice.
Rape clearly doesnt have to do with clothes but there may be some rapists with a profile and like a certain type of target. Hence the array of crimes that target young girls or women in authority/uniform, etc etc. Its not a justification but the way you dress might put you in a target category...doesnt really matter though so many things attract so many different types of sex offenders if you try and protect women thru dress what the hell would they even wear? And then what do you do when they get raped in those clothes. Its a violence thing not a arousal thing.
people that use clothes as a cause of the action are just poor at reasoning and understanding true principles. But someone who warns hey this type of dress at this type of environment you may be making yourself a target to a TYPE of person yeah I think thats good advice.
OrangeJulius
Member
Another completely misses the point. The entirety of the argument is that a women's dress doesn't even factor in as risk minimization. It simply doesn't unless someone can show a study saying otherwise.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
The problem is that much of our society (and shit like this is exactly what people mean when they describe "rape culture") seems content to just let it be "well sucks that women can't drink and enjoy themselves as much as men without increasing risk of getting raped, but I mean, it is good advice for them not to do that, so having dispensed it we can avoid the more uncomfortable problems we have around rape and rapists"
User 100115
Banned
You missed the entire point of my post.
Oh, and those people that do engage in the so called 'risk minimizing behavior' that do end up getting raped anyway will have something else called into question before the end of it. 'I didn't drink, or wear skimpy clothes, and it was the middle of the afternoon!' 'Ah, well, you shouldn't have been out alone.'
Right. There is a correlation between drinking and rape. That's all drinking. It is actually more likely that a male rapist had been drinking than it is that his victim had been drinking, yet you wouldn't know it from the emphasis that the conversation has on women's drinking.
No one gives self-defense advice to avoid confronting a problem. The motivation is literally the exact opposite.
wsoxfan1214
Banned
Because people are disgusting idiots that will try to blame the woman instead of the rapist.
I have to go through it all later but I definitely agree that personal recommendations are different from national or social policy.
Minimizing risk shouldn't be social policy but it should still be done on the part of the individual. Part of the issue in this thread is that people are seemingly mixing the two.
methane47
Member
Ofcourse not, I dont believe it. But I can understand the thought process of people that blame the victim with this excuse.
(Note: Understanding doesn't mean I agree)
If you see a person, looking like police officer, wearing a police officer's uniform, with a badge and a cap... It's not a stretch to assume that this person is an authority figure and should uphold the law.
Similarly if you see someone looking sexy, almost exposing every orifice available.
Is it such a stretch to assume that they are looking for sex? or at least they currently are having sex?
(This is the thought process.. not my own)
I think the problem is that humans are human... we are programmed to take visual cues... and somewhere in the last 100 years Fashion has fked with those cues built up over millenia.
Its not weird for me to hear (i have friends that were teachers) an older boy hooks up with a younger girl... gets her pregnant... boy goes to jail for rape... but people then look on her facebook page and see the most promiscuous pictures of all time. And the first reaction is... "Look at what she was wearing... what do you expect"
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
No, its exactly an excuse to not confront the problem. If we just give women advice about how not to get raped then we lessen our need to confront the actual problem of rapists and their behavior.
Maninthemirror
Banned
We need studies on this done on men
What are you saying?
Lack of evidence doesn't prove the inverse. We don't know if it does or doesn't.
Why do you think people who are advocating for risk management don't see rape as a problem that needs to be fixed?
I think there are reasonable things women can do to avoid being raped. I do not think any of those things will reduce the amount of rape there is or get rid of rape because the rapists are still there. The only way to deal with rape is by dealing with the rapists but that doesn't mean people shouldn't try to avoid rape if they can.
No one gives advice to muggers like, "you should learn to budget better because when you run low on money you might be at greater risk to mug someone." If they could follow rational, measured advice like that, they wouldn't mug people. In addition, you don't know who the mugger is until they commit the crime.
We don't tell murderers to drink a nice glass of iced tea since murder rates go up in the summer when the heat rises, and having a nice glass of tea would maybe help calm them down. Because we don't know who the murderers are.
The only thing you actually have minimal control over is your own actions, and while they are never a guarantee of safety, some things can minimize risk.
I think you're really 100% wrong on this. As I said in a post directly to you, earlier, almost all of society is directly trying to confront the problem and prevent people from being maladjusted.
Read my post again. No one is avoiding anything.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
I really recommend people check out the Film Crit Hulk article. He's spot on when he points out the differences in how we treat rape when its prison rape, pedophillia, and male-on-female rape. The main point being that there is a difference, that when we discuss rape it is overwhelmingly in terms of the victim and not the rapist
User 100115
Banned
It's estimated that 1 in 6 women will be raped in their lifetimes.
That's a shit ton of people, with a shit ton of different ways of dressing. Are you suggesting that perhaps they were all wearing something that 'triggered' the rape response in their attackers?
The Hulk Article was incredible.
And yes, he's right. Rape is the only crime where the entire focus is about what the victim was doing, what they should have done, etc. It's maddening.
We don't know. There might be things that increase the possibility, there might not be. Clothing in any case or example, isn't the only factor, however it might be a significant one. Maybe certain colors increase the possibility of rape. We don't know.
Prax
Member
Aren't there also a lot of guys who feel insulted when a woman IS being extra careful and might think of him as a potential rapist so then she's just a paranoid bitch?
The fact that women in HIGHLY restrictive countries that follow almost EVERY RULE to a T (due to punishment of death or rape perhaps!) STILL get raped in high numbers means it's a cultural thing that rape is so prevalent.
There's no winning for women if they are the ones who hold the burden of "taking responsibility for minimizing their chances of rape". Society as a whole needs to hold that burden so as not to encourage and "okay" rape in hint hint wink wink niiiiiiiiceeeee j/k don't be so uptight baby ways.
The fact that women in HIGHLY restrictive countries that follow almost EVERY RULE to a T (due to punishment of death or rape perhaps!) STILL get raped in high numbers means it's a cultural thing that rape is so prevalent.
There's no winning for women if they are the ones who hold the burden of "taking responsibility for minimizing their chances of rape". Society as a whole needs to hold that burden so as not to encourage and "okay" rape in hint hint wink wink niiiiiiiiceeeee j/k don't be so uptight baby ways.
OrangeJulius
Member
I've never seen a study saying that Mary is more likely to get raped than her friend Jane because she was wearing a short skirt and low riding blouse, whilst Jane wore baggy pants and an ugly sweater.
The burden of prove is on those saying that dress factors into a womens chance of being raped. We already know that for rapist it's rarely purely about sex.
Women of all age, shape and sizes get raped, what they were wearing at the time has fuck all to do with it.
The burden of prove is on those saying that dress factors into a womens chance of being raped. We already know that for rapist it's rarely purely about sex.
Women of all age, shape and sizes get raped, what they were wearing at the time has fuck all to do with it.
EdibleKnife
Member
This is kind of where I fall. Once the risk minimization path is taken, when referring to rape, there's always gonna be other thing that "should" have been done.
It was my best friend. Shouldn't have trusted a guy like that. He had a gun. Should have had your own. I was dressed in a pant suit on my way to a business meeting. Shouldn't have looked like the rapist's ex-wife.
There's no reasonable check list of "do's" and "don'ts" that can be set up. The amount of minimal control a person can do and still be themselves is rarely enough in the case of this crime because it's not always about what you were drinking, or what you were wearing.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Not...really. Oh sure, creepy stalker in the alley who kidnaps and rapes a young woman, yeah, we make a nice clean villain out of that and that fits into the kind of criminal maladjustment you're talking about. But when we expand things to broader forms of sexual assault, from people the victim knows, from people who are just at a party, etc the sheer number of assaults spirals up beyond what I think we can credibly chalk up to nicely condemned "maladjusted" people, and notice that its in precisely those circumstances that the most pushback comes from. The fact that there was even a semblance of debate on the whole recent small-town football player fiasco is ludicrous and speaks to something deeply flawed. Yes in some circles, probably the ones you and I frequent, there was unanimous outrage, but keep in mind that not only was there argument being had but those people arguing against the victim won
User 100115
Banned
Like I said in the other thread, it breaks down to this:
"Do everything you can to avoid being assaulted! Unless it's me, cause you should know better, and if you do, you're paranoid."
But if "we don't know" then closing might be as relevant as the brand of shoes the rapist was wearing. If you insist that we don't know what the factors are, why even bring up clothing?
I would actually argue that "blame" is something that could be attributed to virtually everyone.
Using rape as an example, we all agree that the rapist is significantly responsible. But it's much more complicated than that, too: for example, what about the rapists parents? Bad parenting is a common problem, and surely we can place some of the responsibility for bad behavior on the people who helped shape that behavior. In turn, perhaps those parents were bad... because their parents were bad.
Now consider the possibility that the rapist's friends were all jerks who created an atmosphere where rape seemed permissible. Perhaps the bartenders let the rapist have a little too much to drink and the rape wouldn't have happened if he cut the guy off a little sooner. And most broadly, perhaps a culture (like some Eastern countries, as I understand) where rape is sort of quasi-tolerated as a fact of life could also be "blamed."
My point is this: "blame" can be spread across a wide variety of subjects, from individual people to groups of people all the way up to societies as general concepts. So when we talk blame, the question is really where we put our focus. What do we spend the most time talking about? Focusing on?
Now imagine I spent an extreme amount of time talking about the bartender, as a randomly chosen example. Considering what drinks he offered the rapist; trying to discuss where the appropriate "cut off" point is where a bartender should be held liable, and so forth. Again, I think a bartender could in theory be partially to "blame," but why am I spending so much time talking about it, and focusing on it? If everyone is to blame, why spend so much of my energy and effort discussing this specific person's culpability?
Using rape as an example, we all agree that the rapist is significantly responsible. But it's much more complicated than that, too: for example, what about the rapists parents? Bad parenting is a common problem, and surely we can place some of the responsibility for bad behavior on the people who helped shape that behavior. In turn, perhaps those parents were bad... because their parents were bad.
Now consider the possibility that the rapist's friends were all jerks who created an atmosphere where rape seemed permissible. Perhaps the bartenders let the rapist have a little too much to drink and the rape wouldn't have happened if he cut the guy off a little sooner. And most broadly, perhaps a culture (like some Eastern countries, as I understand) where rape is sort of quasi-tolerated as a fact of life could also be "blamed."
My point is this: "blame" can be spread across a wide variety of subjects, from individual people to groups of people all the way up to societies as general concepts. So when we talk blame, the question is really where we put our focus. What do we spend the most time talking about? Focusing on?
Now imagine I spent an extreme amount of time talking about the bartender, as a randomly chosen example. Considering what drinks he offered the rapist; trying to discuss where the appropriate "cut off" point is where a bartender should be held liable, and so forth. Again, I think a bartender could in theory be partially to "blame," but why am I spending so much time talking about it, and focusing on it? If everyone is to blame, why spend so much of my energy and effort discussing this specific person's culpability?
Vermillion
Banned
Quite. Unless women developed telepathy, there's really no way to do both.
So, sure, there are things women can do to make it less likely that they be raped. On one extreme, they can never go outside and keep guns stashed in various places around the house and set up motion detectors all around the outside of their house which they constantly monitor. Now, of course that's an unreasonable level of risk mitigation. So what is an appropriate level of risk mitigation, and how is this sort of talk helpful for women trying to determine that?
I mean, surely you don't think that there are significant numbers of women going out and getting hammered with a willful disregard for their own safety. People know that getting drunk is impairing, and women are pretty aware that rapists are something they've got to contend with. There was a guy upthread talking about how some men like to sit facing the door in restaurants as a ridiculously cautious measure in case of some movie-style robbery. What I'm saying is - none of this risk-minimization stuff is news to people. Everyone has already considered this stuff, and, honestly, probably almost everybody is too cautious already, at least as far as violent/stranger rape is concerned, given the actual risks involved.
The act of saying something implies more about what you're saying than just that you think it is true. I could suddenly start going off about Napoleon right now, and it's not really a defense to later assert that everything I said about Napoleon was true. There's still the question of why I felt the need to go on about Napoleon. The implication of giving rape-prevention advice of this sort is that the speaker doesn't think that other people in the conversation have sufficiently considered that advice. But this seems to me to be really implausible. I think that at this point emphasizing that sort of advice is not likely to do much good at all, and in fact will tend to obscure some other, more uncomfortable facts about rape. And it's not even clear to what extent this is useful advice at all, even for someone who has miraculously never considered this angle!
The point of this talk about "the way she dressed" or how much women ought to drink, or whatever, is not to just say "It is an interesting fact that one's risk of being raped is reduced by X% by doing A, B, and C" (and of course the numbers would be questionable). It's to say "women aren't being careful enough". And that's problematic, since there's really not any reason to think that women aren't being as careful as it is reasonable for them to be.
I don't think anyone in this thread is saying that the burden is on the women. To fix the problem of rape you have to deal with the rapists. But as long as there are rapists out there I believe there are actions women can take to reduce the risk of being raped.
Is dress one of them? Probably not. And whatever precautions one does take won't work most of the time because there are so many different situations where you could be raped: by your friend, by the person you've been on two dates with, by your spouse, by a relative, by the person who jumped you, etc., etc. But just because there's no one fix-all solution for being raped, and just because the way to truly fix rape would not involve any change in the behavior of women, does not mean that there aren't things that can be done to reduce the risk.
MHWilliams
Member
As many have said, ad nauseum, women know already. As you point out, many risk mitigation factors are well known. Trust me, they know. Rape still happens. Just as many rapes happen in "safe" situations and with "safe" people.
Read the Film-Crit Hulk link posted earlier. The RAIN stats. Even the vehicular metaphor posted earlier works well.
You can worry about risk mitigation, but crime still happens. Once it does, it's on the criminal. That doesn't mean you can't try to prevent crime happening to you, it means when they do, you focus on the actions of the criminal.
Unless you're the criminal's lawyer of course.
It's something viewed as being significant. As to whether that's true or not, I don't know. As mentioned earlier, I would love to see some scientific studies take a real hard look at it.
MHWilliams
Member
Bingo.
Exactly. We all know these things. Crimes still happen. That is, and should always be, on the criminal.
Kano on the Phone
Member
Who isn't doing things to minimize risks? Many women do things to minimize their risk of getting raped, but what does that have to do with what's being discussed here, which is putting blame on someone when they don't follow an arbitrary list made up by someone else as to what they should have done to minimize the risk? If I get murdered, no one is ever going to talk about what I could have done differently to minimize my risk, nor is society trying to tell me what I should or shouldn't do to avoid it. You're talking as if women everywhere are just flat out refusing to minimize their risk at all.
What a weird red herring.
In my lifetime, I've seen more women suggest "it was the way she was dressed" more than men. I'm not saying a lot of women have said this, but the few times I've heard something like this, it was from women. My guess is that these specific women believe that girls that dress what they consider "slutty", are bringing themselves open to rape.
I was actually floored when I've heard this. I really can't understand why you would ever want to blame the victim of rape. Everyone seems to agree rape is bad. That the act of rape is illegal and a terrible crime. So why does blaming the victim even exist?
Do we do this with any other crime (such as murder)? ie. the person left themselves open to murder?
I was actually floored when I've heard this. I really can't understand why you would ever want to blame the victim of rape. Everyone seems to agree rape is bad. That the act of rape is illegal and a terrible crime. So why does blaming the victim even exist?
Do we do this with any other crime (such as murder)? ie. the person left themselves open to murder?
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Maybe this will click for some of you if you start thinking about this happening to your mother instead of hot girls you've seen. Would you blame her in any way?
It sucks that these sorts of appeal to humanity have to even be made, though.
It sucks that these sorts of appeal to humanity have to even be made, though.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
I guarantee no matter how careful a women is, if she's raped there will be something you can argue she could have done to be more careful.
Not true. People are actively denying that we even have the right to imply that the advice is ever even relevant.
Someone earlier said that it's totally reasonable for a woman to walk around a dark alley in a bad neighborhood blindfolded and with no pants. Even the most basic level of precaution was being denied by commenters in this thread, and that's how the debate continued to move along.
As far as I know, the victim's appearance is almost irrelevant when it comes to rape. Rapists mostly want to feel powerful and dominant. They aren't just trying to get off.
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