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And there was me counting on this place being my sanctuary :P
It will be. Trust me. [/voice of experience]
It's a bit like Cheers, except here it's possible for no-one to know your name but still greet you with "Norm!"
Technically correct. According to ONS rape affects 1:200 women (to be gender specific).
I kinda enjoy my citrussy, rounded alter ego which isn't that far from the truth right now..
I've seen that figure quoted but I understood it was per year. But you're right we should compare like with like if we are going to bring up statistics.
My main point was as thus:
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And not actually to bore down into detail too much.
We can use statistics as we often do to try and explain trends etc, but even when violent crime and rape incidents fall, it still does not take away what has already happened to some victims.
The fact that we refer to rape as a crime or incident doesn't do justice to the pain and suffering someone can/has endured. I've often found it odd to use something as unemotive as "statistics" and numbers when talking about something as highly emotive as rape and sexual assault.
Agreed pretty much. My 'graphs' intentionally don't include any numerical values, more I'm trying to point out that the rape fear is disproportionate to the rape impact. Paedophilia exhibits the exact same phenomena too.
As far as skirts go, I think it's obvious its a shameful argument. Perhaps because people need to rationalise rape. It's so sickening there had to be a reason, right?
Other factors do affect risk of becoming a victim of crime. However I believe people should be allowed to take risks where they choose to as long as they are informed risks. Getting drunk makes us more vulnerable, particularly women to the kind of 'friend-rape' where the question of consent is blurry. However as adults we make the decision when and where to get drunk (except in the particular cases of daterape). We should not tell people not to drink because they are inviting rapists. We should advise everyone to drink responsibly and avoid becoming vulnerable. (to a whole host of crimes)
So that's my second point; managing risk vs 'victim blaming'.
Finally as far as 'difficult language' goes, well it's not lovely. Certainly sensitive persons would avoid using it. I personally have asked people to avoid using the word retard as I know it's hurtful to some. But do these words and jokes have a serious and significant impact that they deserve the amount of discussion they get? No.
I think people need to separate the two ideas. Managing risk is something you do for yourself. I lock my doors because I don't want my house to be burgled. I don't walk alone late at night because I don't want to be attacked. That is not to say in any way that if I didn't take those precautions and something did happen to me that it even slightly excuses that crime.
A victim is a victim. Personally managing your risk is something you can do to make it less likely that that victim is you. It's not a matter of blame, but one of probability.
Victim blaming is something that arseholes to to make them feel better about being arseholes.
I would be genuinely interested to understand sincere victim blaming more. I think a lot of the time extremist rationalism is mistaken for victim blaming when usually the person is just being insensitive and likely trying to be 'scientific' for want of another word.
But people who sincerely believe women are to blame for being raped. I am dubious of a lot of surveys that say 6/10 people think it's ok to rape women simply because they are usually politically purposed and the questions are fairly leading.
Exactly.
To suggest that if you havn't done all you can to minimize the risk of being a victim, then you are somehow partly responsible for being a victim is complete bollocks of course. Any body saying otherwise is clearly an idiot. If a crime is commited it is the criminal who is 100% responsible.
I've noticed that there are quite a few people who arn't too happy witht he idea of giving out advice designed to help people minimize the chances of becoming a victim, presumably because they're worried that it's this advice that leads to victim blaming. I don't agree that this has to be the case.
Until we live in a perfect world advising people on how to minimize risk from criminals is not bad advice.
It's not bad advice no, but there is a big difference between telling someone to lock their doors at night to telling someone how they should or should not dress on a night out. Locking your doors at night is just a very minor inconvenience (if even that), some girls like dressing up in certain way, so it's obviously very offensive and restrictive to tell a girl she shouldn't dress in a certain way just on the off-chance some scumbag will decide to rape her. There's not even any hard evidence that dressing "less provocatively" stops rapists, whether they are opportunistic strangers or family members/colleagues, it's just an excuse some rapists have used.
The best advice to avoid rape or other harm on a night-out is telling a woman something like "don't walk home alone through an alleyway at night" and stick with friends/call a taxi. That is a lot more productive than telling her she shouldn't wear her favourite outfit. It's like someone telling someone they can't wear a red t-shirt on the off-chance a Cripz gangster or something will come up to them and stab them
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The reality is that even acknowledging this idea validates it and makes the type of people who do it think that they have a valid excuse. In the UK, it's "she was wearing a short skirt." In Egypt, it's "she was wearing a tight niqab."
Which isn't to say that you can't tell when someone wants sexual attention based on the way they're dressed. Notice how even people with boyfriends or girlfriends will always put a lot more effort into their appearance when they're going somewhere where there will be other people, despite the fact that they might be perfectly happy with their partner. People do subconsciously want sexual attention when they dress up. However, there is a difference between men and women in this respect. Men generally aren't threatened by unwanted sexual attention from women. That's why we don't really consider a man getting his arse grabbed by a group of women to be particularly serious, and even a 15 year old boy having sex with a teacher generates a few chuckles and cries of congratulations. Women, on the other hand, find unwanted sexual attention far more threatening. And there are very good evolutionary reasons for this. It's far more costly for a woman to mate with an unsuitable partner than a man. So women end up in this catch 22 situation, where they are compelled to make themselves as attractive as possible to the opposite sex, but can naturally feel very threatened by unwanted sexual contact (even something fairly innocent, like a man trying to chat her up). What these men need to realise it that whilst wearing clothes that show off her best features may be evidence that subconsciously a woman is "up for it" it is no evidence whatsoever that she's up for it with you.
Good post.
I've always thought the niqab is such a crude way of not addressing a problem, and is as demeaning to men, in certain aspects, as it is women. Still, only with the special dispensation afforded to religion could you endeavour to put 50% of the population in cloth bags and not have a spade called a spade.
The solution? A short drop and a sudden stop. For you.
Strongly agree.
Not so much.
Analogies are useful because they can help us divorce ourselves, to some degree, from the emotional bias we often have toward a topic. Having said that, I've found an analogy needs to be pretty exact in order for it to be a useful tool.
I'm undecided as to the usefulness of the Unlocked House analogy. I think some people don't like it because they're wired to approach any discussion about rape with the notion that nothing about mitigating the circumstances of the rape should be discussed, lest blame or responsibility be seen to be put upon the victim. But as Skive has eloquently said, it's possible to have a discussion about rape where you discussing mitigating risks and still only place blame and responsibly for the crime on the perpetrator.
Just as most people are capable of walking past an unlocked house without stealing something, people are capable of walking past women without raping them.
The main reason why I don't like the analogy very much is that it does sort of imply that women should lock themselves up to avoid being raped, albeit an unintential implication.