"Not Ever" - A Campaign Against Blaming Rape Victims

[Schrodinger's Cat]

Fine.

I will accept that assertion.

Now...go and read my above posts, and the different scenarios that I posted. Are you going to say that the women involved would have been raped regardless of their behavior in every situation? That a change in their behavior would not have changed the situation also?

Yeah, the guy who gets pissed off cuz a girl has turned him on, then won't let him have sex...its about anger, and its about power. [I]But if the girl hadn't turned him on in the first place[/I], she would not have found herself in that situation.

And again -- no, it is not her fault, she does not bear any of the blame for being raped. But a claim that she would have been raped had she acted differently (ie. not engaged in overtly sexual activity with the man) is so fundamentally ludicrous that I have a very difficult time understanding how anyone can seriously be making it.

I haven't read the entire thread, so not sure if this has been addressed, however, here's the fundamental problem with this argument; for some guys, it just doesn't take a lot to turn them on.

I go to dance clubs a lot. Now I'm married, so I don't do any bumping and grinding when I dance with men. Besides, the clubs I go to don't really play bump and grind music. When men start doing this with me, I will extricate myself from dancing with them. I keep a slight distance, and don't rub myself all up against them. Yet every now and again, I will notice that even with this fairly casual dancing in which I take care not to rub myself up against him or do anything overtly sexual, the man I am dancing with has an obvious hard on. I obviously have turned him on.


Another example; in high school and college I was Catholic. I was a very chaste girl. I really wouldn't do more than make out with a guy - keeping it to kissing and on rare occasions some over the shirt action. Now the majority of boys/men, when they then tried to go further than this, were completely respectful of me when I said no, and were content to keep kissing. However, a few times I got some jerk who had kissed me for about thirty seconds and then made a grab for my crotch, and when I told him no, got very upset with me for being a tease who had turned him on. Now none of these guys tried to rape me, they just got pissed. But they made it clear to me that they thought I was a tease and that they assumed the fact I had let them kiss me = I would have sex with them.


Wolfman, by your standards, I should not even kiss or dance with a man because it can turn him on, which invites rape upon myself, and would be irresponsible on my part for "putting myself in that situation." And that just isn't reasonable. It is not reasonable for me to feel like I can't let a guy kiss me unless I am prepared to sleep with him, and it is not reasonable for me to not even casually dance with someone unless I am prepared to sleep with him simply because kissing and dancing can turn a guy on.

 

[commandlinegamer]

From a court case in 1988, in which a man broke a woman's jaw because she would not have sex with him, a judge made these remarks

[Women] are entitled to dress attractively, even provocatively if you like, be friendly with casual acquaintances and still say no at the end of the evening without being brutally assaulted.

Compared with other justices' remarks in similar cases where women had been called 'foolish' and prostitution had been implied, this was a significant turn of events.

Misogynies, Joan Smith, 1989 - chapter entitled M'Learned Friends.

 

[3point14]

<SNIP> It is not reasonable for me to feel like I can't let a guy kiss me unless I am prepared to sleep with him, and it is not reasonable for me to not even casually dance with someone unless I am prepared to sleep with him simply because kissing and dancing can turn a guy on.

This.

Just for the record.

 

[TraneWreck]

I haven't read the entire thread, so not sure if this has been addressed, however, here's the fundamental problem with this argument; for some guys, it just doesn't take a lot to turn them on.

[...]

Wolfman, by your standards (and the standards of these men), I should not even kiss or dance with a man because it can turn him on, which invites rape upon myself, and would be irresponsible on my part. And that just isn't reasonable. It is not reasonable for me to feel like I can't let a guy kiss me unless I am prepared to sleep with him, and it is not reasonable for me to not even casually dance with someone unless I am prepared to sleep with him simply because kissing and dancing can turn a guy on.

I don't think you're going far enough.

I promise you there are men in the muslim world that become "turned on" when a woman in the full hijab walks up a flight of stairs allowing them to make out the faintest impression of a hip.

That means that the source of the problem is that women are allowed in public. Keeping them locked away, out of sight, is the only way to prevent men from becoming turned on.

Of course, knowledge of a house somewhere filled with women...hmm...that doesn't work either.

Damnit.

 

[Skeeve]

Something I found and posted in a few places.

How to prevent rape:

http://atheiststoday.com/forum/viewthread.php?thread_id=1049

How NOT to prevent rape:

http://www2.tricities.com/news/2010..._religious_leaflet_claims_ungodly_-ar-236411/

 

[bookitty]

The things I'm thinking of are more:

Do not leave your drink unattended
Don't walk through the bad neighbourhoods
Don't use an unlicensed cab
Don't get passing out drunk alone and surrounded by men you've never met.


I freely admit that the above should be things that any lady should be free to do without fear of being accosted, but sadly that's not the case.

Unattended drinks - Slight of hand isn't terribly difficult with a little practice. As a bartender I caught two guys putting something in a girl's drink while the girl was sitting right there. (In one case it was a candy. The guy was pranking his female friend.) I had the benefit of a different angle and saw it happen.

Bad neighborhoods - easier said then done. If you live in an iffy neighborhood and use public transportation, you probably walk through a dangerous neighborhood on your way home.

Unlicensed cabs - This is a great tip, especially for travelers. If you're not in your home town, you may not know how to identify a real cab.

Passing out drunk - With a few exceptions, people don't plan to pass out. They either misjudge their tolerance, don't have enough experience with drinking to know it, or aren't familiar with the proof of a specific drink. Most passing out is a complete accident.

Unfortunately, most people see it as a weakness and shun, not protect, the extremely inebriated. Especially since very drunk people are messy, annoying and occasionally violent. There's almost a built-in schadenfreude.

Personally, I'd like to see more people take care of their own friends after they got wasted but it's not that simple. It's a social problem with no silver bullet answer.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Um, yes. I don't get why this is logically hard to understand; if you point out to a rape victim that "you shouldn't have engaged in behavior X", you're assigning culpability to the behavior and thus blame. Same thing with assaults.

So if I say that you shouldn't have left your keys in the ignition and your car unlocked I am blaming you instead of the people who stole your car?

dichotomy* And while sex is the medium through which power issues are channeled, it still is about exerting power over another individual.

And again too complex and intermingled for this to be a blanket statement.

Well, I'm sorry (and by that, I mean not really), but most American courts and university guides to sexual assault disagree with you. And most perpetrators in date rape situations are males, though that's not to say women can't be sexual aggressors.

Again this all depends on how one defines rape. If second thoughts on sobering up counts that could well change the dynamics.

Weak comparison is weak. A woman who drinks and gets raped is not accountable for the man who thinks that hearing "Yes" while drunk means consent. Furthermore, a woman who gets behind the wheel of a car while intoxicated presents a threat to the public safety, whereas a woman who is drunk at a college party does not. Rapists present the threat.

And why is a man accountable? If he has sex with someone he would not because of beer goggles why can't you say that she raped him? He was drunk and his ability to consent was diminished just as much as in the reverse after all.

Drinking responsibly is a separate issue. If you want to start a campaign against alcohol, be my guest. But when a woman is raped after getting really drunk, it isn't about the alcohol. It's about the men who raped her.

It all depends on how one defines rape. If we are talking saying yes at the time and then retroactively revoking consent then I would say the alcohol is the issue.

Absolutely baseless claim made out of genderized apprehension. Male rape victims are never to blame for being raped. You can't even cite the part of the website that lends credence to your claim because, like God, it simply doesn't exist.

But you call them rapists. If two people get drunk and rape(your definition anyway) each other you seem to clearly blame the man.

I've had this discussion in a class about feminist epistemology and there was a time where I agreed with this. It's intuitive to think "her claim may not be true" and thus, you'd be inclined to demand proof. On the other hand, this is precisely why other rape victims may be afraid to come forward; proving a rape is harder than proving a murder and when people—especially friends—question whether or not the victim is telling the truth, this makes it more difficult for other victims to come forward.

So now proof beyond a reasonable doubt is a poor legal standard?

So our class has a solution: accept the rape victim's claim that she was raped as true until proven otherwise and acknowledge that the alleged rapist is innocent until proven guilty. At the end of the day, there is only one truth, but while pursuing the truth, you can avoid unjustifiably stigmatizing both sides. No one should have to go to jail based on an accusation alone and no one who was raped should be afraid to address it in a court of law.

So I believe that you where raped and believe that he didn't rape you until proven? How do you make society behave in two mutually contradictory ways simultaneously?

 

[3point14]

Unattended drinks - Slight of hand isn't terribly difficult with a little practice. As a bartender I caught two guys putting something in a girl's drink while the girl was sitting right there. (In one case it was a candy. The guy was pranking his female friend.) I had the benefit of a different angle and saw it happen.

Bad neighborhoods - easier said then done. If you live in an iffy neighborhood and use public transportation, you probably walk through a dangerous neighborhood on your way home.

Unlicensed cabs - This is a great tip, especially for travelers. If you're not in your home town, you may not know how to identify a real cab.

Passing out drunk - With a few exceptions, people don't plan to pass out. They either misjudge their tolerance, don't have enough experience with drinking to know it, or aren't familiar with the proof of a specific drink. Most passing out is a complete accident.

Unfortunately, most people see it as a weakness and shun, not protect, the extremely inebriated. Especially since very drunk people are messy, annoying and occasionally violent. There's almost a built-in schadenfreude.

Personally, I'd like to see more people take care of their own friends after they got wasted but it's not that simple. It's a social problem with no silver bullet answer.

Can't really disagree with much of this, but you play the easy, tiny percentages and hope they add up.

The bolded section, however, I don't recognise as the actions of myself and those I have drunk with. The unwisely drunk were always looked after. Laughed at. But looked after.

 

[ponderingturtle]

"It's natural" or "I was born that way" seems to be a meaningless statement that somehow makes some things legitimate while having no effect on others. E.g., "I was born this way" somehow makes homosexuality OK but not pedophilia, or "we were evolved to do this" makes infidelity less morally blameable but not rape.

It makes pedophilia OK in the sense that I don't think we should persecute pedophiles who do not abuse children.

It is rather the difference between a couple acting out a rape fantasy and someone being raped.

But surely if homosexuality is morally neutral, it is so because it is a free act that hurts nobody, unlike pedophilia, not because homosexuals were so born. If infidelity is seen as something that shouldn't be blamed, it's because people think it is a "victimless crime", (though I would disagree), is non-violent, etc., while rape isn't -- not because infidelity might have spread in the population for genetic reasons hundreds of thousand or more years ago.

If "we evolved to do this" or "I was born this way" was something that made action X less (or not at all) morally bad, it should apply across the board. It doesn't, since all those two statements mean is "I think behavior X, which many people consider blameworthy, actually is OK". It might be, but in that case whether or not we were born or evolved to want to do X is simply irrelevant to the question.

That depends it refutes some arguments, saying that homosexuality is unnatural for example. It forces people to then use more evidence based arguments.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Lets say there's a college girl who goes to parties and gets drunk. She's done this a number of times without being raped. Then at one party she gets raped. What is the difference between the previous parties and that one? Her behavior was the same. The only difference is that there was a guy there who decided to rape her.

Which definition or rape are we using here? Is this she has a hook up she regrets while drunk rape or molesting her when she passes out rape?

 

[Schrodinger's Cat]

I don't think you're going far enough.

I promise you there are men in the muslim world that become "turned on" when a woman in the full hijab walks up a flight of stairs allowing them to make out the faintest impression of a hip.

That means that the source of the problem is that women are allowed in public. Keeping them locked away, out of sight, is the only way to prevent men from becoming turned on.

Of course, knowledge of a house somewhere filled with women...hmm...that doesn't work either.

Damnit.

Excellent point, TW. I read the autobiographical comic book "Persepolis" about a girl's coming of age in Tehran after the Revolution. She tells one story about how she (dressed in ankle length robes and a veil) was walking or running somewhere because she was in a hurry. A member of the Revolutionary Guard stopped her and reprimanded her for doing so because in running, it had made her garment press against her backside, which revealed to him the faint outline of her buttocks through her robe. The Guard reprimanded her for doing something so provocative.

 

[ponderingturtle]

I haven't read the entire thread, so not sure if this has been addressed, however, here's the fundamental problem with this argument; for some guys, it just doesn't take a lot to turn them on.

I go to dance clubs a lot. Now I'm married, so I don't do any bumping and grinding when I dance with men. Besides, the clubs I go to don't really play bump and grind music. When men start doing this with me, I will extricate myself from dancing with them. I keep a slight distance, and don't rub myself all up against them. Yet every now and again, I will notice that even with this fairly casual dancing in which I take care not to rub myself up against him or do anything overtly sexual, the man I am dancing with has an obvious hard on. I obviously have turned him on.


Another example; in high school and college I was Catholic. I was a very chaste girl. I really wouldn't do more than make out with a guy - keeping it to kissing and on rare occasions some over the shirt action. Now the majority of boys/men, when they then tried to go further than this, were completely respectful of me when I said no, and were content to keep kissing. However, a few times I got some jerk who had kissed me for about thirty seconds and then made a grab for my crotch, and when I told him no, got very upset with me for being a tease who had turned him on. Now none of these guys tried to rape me, they just got pissed. But they made it clear to me that they thought I was a tease and that they assumed the fact I had let them kiss me = I would have sex with them.


Wolfman, by your standards, I should not even kiss or dance with a man because it can turn him on, which invites rape upon myself, and would be irresponsible on my part for "putting myself in that situation." And that just isn't reasonable. It is not reasonable for me to feel like I can't let a guy kiss me unless I am prepared to sleep with him, and it is not reasonable for me to not even casually dance with someone unless I am prepared to sleep with him simply because kissing and dancing can turn a guy on.

This feels a bit like a fallacy of the excluded middle. It is probably best to go by societal norms as a guide, with a notation that some societies have screwed up norms.

 

[bookitty]

Which definition or rape are we using here? Is this she has a hook up she regrets while drunk rape or molesting her when she passes out rape?

She passes out and is assaulted with penetrative sex.

 

[ponderingturtle]

She passes out and is assaulted with penetrative sex.

I would say that getting hammered and passing out repeatedly is probably a problem for her. If she does this repeatedly around strangers she is engaging in behavior that is sufficiently risky that I would advise against it. If it was her "friends" then I wouldn't fault her.

Her behavior of course in no way mitigates the guilt of her rapist though. Rather like no matter what someone says I do not condone assault, but I also recommend against making certain kinds of comments and statements.

 

[bookitty]

I would say that getting hammered and passing out repeatedly is probably a problem for her. If she does this repeatedly around strangers she is engaging in behavior that is sufficiently risky that I would advise against it. If it was her "friends" then I wouldn't fault her.

Her behavior of course in no way mitigates the guilt of her rapist though. Rather like no matter what someone says I do not condone assault, but I also recommend against making certain kinds of comments and statements.

What if she's gone to parties, gotten drunk, flirted a bit too much, but hasn't passed out? Had a pretty good time actually. Started to consider parties part of her social experience.

What if there was a rapist at this party. One who finds passed out women easy. One who has learned that a bit of playful teasing and a drinking game can cause a woman to pass out. One who has the unspoken but oft acted on support of his housemates, who stock up on 151 and put it in jello shots or fruity drinks.

Rapists aren't always mere opportunists.

 

[ponderingturtle]

What if she's gone to parties, gotten drunk, flirted a bit too much, but hasn't passed out? Had a pretty good time actually. Started to consider parties part of her social experience.

What if there was a rapist at this party. One who finds passed out women easy. One who has learned that a bit of playful teasing and a drinking game can cause a woman to pass out. One who has the unspoken but oft acted on support of his housemates, who stock up on 151 and put it in jello shots or fruity drinks.

Rapists aren't always mere opportunists.

Then they are accomplices.

 

[Last of the Fraggles]

What if she's gone to parties, gotten drunk, flirted a bit too much, but hasn't passed out? Had a pretty good time actually. Started to consider parties part of her social experience.

What if there was a rapist at this party. One who finds passed out women easy. One who has learned that a bit of playful teasing and a drinking game can cause a woman to pass out. One who has the unspoken but oft acted on support of his housemates, who stock up on 151 and put it in jello shots or fruity drinks.

Rapists aren't always mere opportunists.

According to some of the arguments on here it would be wrong to tell this woman who goes to parties that she should go to parties and have a good time but be careful not to get so drunk she doesn't know what's going on and to be a bit suspicious of strange guys who want to play drinking games with her?

Am I misunderstanding? I certainly hope so.

I'm also struggling with this concept of 'too drunk to give consent' meaning a guy rapes you even if you say 'Yes' but somehow the guy should be able to discern this fact even if he's off his face on booze because he's responsible for deciding whether or not to have sex when drunk but a woman isn't. How can that possibly be?

 

[Soapy Sam]

I don't think it's fair to compare physical models to assumptions about what people deserve when bad things in the world happen. Apples and oranges, mate. Also, the way you quoted "cognitive bias" seems to connote that you don't think it's a legitimate term (if I'm wrong, correct me), when this is actually a term used a lot by psychologists and sociologists. The just-world phenomenon is one of many cognitive biases reported by researchers.

I know what cognitive bias is. I put it in inverted commas because I was quoting you without using the quote function, but I don't think it's an apt label for objective fact, in this case, or any other. It's a term describing an incorrect perception due to preexisting attitudes.
That stepping off a cliff will result in a fall is not a bias of cognition or observation; it is a predictable outcome of known facts.

Statistically, other acts have predictable consequences too. Wander, drunk, down the middle of the road and you are more likely to be knocked down than if you walk on the pavement (sidewalk). Stagger, alone and drunk, through certain areas of most cities and your chance of being assaulted, robbed and possibly raped goes way up. This is very sad, deeply regrettable, wholly undesirable and true. It's not cognitive bias in any way.

We are ( I think ) all agreed that the culpability for any crime lies with the perpetrator, not the victim. I also accept your statement that it is unsympathetic to point out that a bad event might have been avoided with a little forethought.
However it is my belief that the same comment prior to the event just might have avoided it in the first place. A stitch in time... as the old proverb goes. Giving a woman the impression she will be safe in spite of her most irresponsible action is doing her no favour at all.

We are all at risk, alone in the dark. Rape is a particularly nasty risk, but It is generally similar to any physical assault in terms of what can be done to minimise risk. Don't get hopelessly drunk. Stay with friends. Don't go off , alone, with someone you don't know.

This will not be enough in every case. We all know this. A rapist may be a friend, even a husband- but that does not mean the elementary precautions cease to be valid. Most cars are not stolen because the keys are left in the ignition. But it still makes sense not to leave them there.

My concern about the campaign in the OP is that it skips this elementary step and jumps straight to the more complex point that nobody sets out to be raped. I'm sure nobody does- and that's a damned important fact to hammer into male heads. But what the campaign might do is give women the impression that not setting out to be raped should be protection enough. Of course it should be.
But it's not.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Murder has been with our species for quite a while and animals killing fellow animals of their species certainly is not exclusive to us.

But funnily enough, I never hear any garbage pop evo psych rationizaltions* for murder when there's one on the news. Pretty telling of the people who always invoke this hogwash in the context of rape. Evo pop psych is use to rationalize or justify a social behaviour as an evolutionary adaption or byproduct—sometimes by misconstruing data or sometimes through sloppy reasoning without any real evidence.

I suspect that's because people aren't making unintuitive, irrational political claims about murder and trying to pass them off as scientific fact.

If I went around saying "Bashings in the pub are all about rival schools of art", then people might well respond by saying "You're an idiot, chimpanzees bash each other and they don't have rival schools of art".

Also will you kindly stop pretending that anybody here is rationalizing rape? This is the kind of behaviour that gives internet white knights a bad name.

See, this is the problem; when scientists investigate claims regarding what things have been with us since evolution, they don't use Ockham's Razor. They actually investigate it...

...and they have, and it turns out it's a behaviour found in our closest relatives as well as throughout human societies all around the world throughout history, so if you think that it's not the product of our evolution then I don't know what the hell you might think it is.

And I'm actually not the one conflating explanations with excuses at all. The explanation is that men choose to rape women. The ones who ultimately make the bad choices are the rapists. And there is no excuse for it.

I'll try to make this really simple for you. There are two possibilities:

1a. We know absolutely nothing about how or when rape happens. It strikes out of the blue like Zeus' thunderbolts. Nobody can predict even in the vaguest way when it is likely to happen and when it is unlikely to happen, or in what circumstances. You are just as likely to get raped in broad daylight at the vicar's tea party as you are in a war zone.
1b. Therefore there is nothing you can do to minimise you chances of being raped.
1c. Therefore it is always factually wrong to say to a woman "If you had made different choices, you probably would not have been raped".

Or...

2a. We have scientific data about how and when rape happens. It is not entirely random, although it's not strictly deterministic either.
2b. Therefore there are evidence-based things you can to that will minimise your chance of being raped.
2c. Therefore it is not always factually wrong to say to a woman "If you had made different choices, you probably would not have been raped".

Now it seems to me that what you are doing is going with option 2, then adding a final clause:

2d. But you are not allowed to say this, because it's politically incorrect.

That final clause is where you part ways with rationality. We all agree that women shouldn't have to worry about being raped, or feel like they should avoid some behaviours, drugs, places or people because they are a rape risk. We all agree that anything we can do to make those behaviours, drugs, places and people safer for women is a good thing. Nobody is rationalizing rape no matter how many times you assert otherwise. But the fact remains that from an evidence-based perspective, in the world as it really is with the men that really exist, that those things are a rape risk.

It seems to me that your political stance is one that's going to lead to more women being raped... but on the bright side, hey, at least some people will be less inclined to tell the rape victim that if she had behaved differently she would have been at less risk of rape. I don't think overall that is a win.

 

[bookitty]

Then they are accomplices.

Yes, and one of the reasons for that is because in a scenario like this, the response will often be "She should have known better." not "He should not set women up to be assaulted."

Everyone knows that he should not being doing that. Everyone also knows that women need to be careful in that situation. So why does the conversation revolve around one and not the other?