Worst Rape Apologist Editorial Ever

[Ron Webb]

As has been pointed out, girls from about 12 to 15 seem to have a particular risk. If you tell one of them that they look older, generally, they'll be flattered.

We were talking about women, not girls. (I hope, anyway. The very idea of discussing the "attractiveness" of 12 -15 year old girls in this context is creepy.)

4) Nevertheless, people seem to assume it.

In past decades, they assumed it. Currently the politically correct stance is to assume the contrary, as we see in this discussion. But so far I haven't seen any convincing evidence for either claim.

I am inclined to believe that this has more to do with judgment systems.

Not for me. I'm not judging anybody, except the rapist.

He was the one making a claim and in that claim the two groups were exclusive so as I said if he wants to retract his claim fair enough as there is nothing wrong with being wrong, we are all wrong from time to time.

I have no idea what you're getting at with this. I never claimed that the two groups were exclusive or even well-defined. But whatever. The observation that youth is associated with attractiveness (in adults, not in children) is one of those "sky is blue" type propositions that I'm not interested in debating. Believe what you want.

I doubt anyone would mess with me now since I'm nearly 6 feet tall and also because I've gained some weight and gotten "bigger." So I'm not a target. Sometimes I worry about petite girls out on the town when they get drunk because I feel like they are painting a target on their backs.

Getting drunk seems to be a lot more part of the problem than the way you dress.

Absolutely, I agree; but again, just because drunkenness is a contributing cause doesn't mean that choice of clothing can't be. It also doesn't mean that drunkenness, sexiness, flirtiness etc. are reasons to blame the victim. She has the right to get drunk (not that I approve, but it's none of my business), to wear whatever she likes, and to be overtly sexy or flirtatious if she wants. The rapist does not have the right to force himself on her. Period.

 

[Dave Rogers]

By the way, it's amazing to me how (on a forum dedicated to skepticism!) everyone is throwing around this 4% figure without any interest in its source or its accuracy. It purports to originate from a "Federal Commission on Crimes of Violence" study. If you do a search for that specific string (in quotes) on Google you will get 102 hits. As far as I can tell all of them are references to this apocryphal 4% (or 4.4%) figure, but none of them give a precise reference for the source.

OK then, let's discard that figure because we can't substantiate it; as I've already pointed out, it's meaningless anyway without population statistics on what proportion of women dress provocatively. Having done so, other than pure speculation by the uninformed, what evidence do we have to support the positive claim that dressing provocatively makes a woman more likely to be selected by a rapist as a potential victim? I rather think the answer is "none whatsoever". So why was Rottenberg making it as a positive claim, and why are other people defending it?

Dave

 

[Darat]

OK then, let's discard that figure because we can't substantiate it; as I've already pointed out, it's meaningless anyway without population statistics on what proportion of women dress provocatively. Having done so, other than pure speculation by the uninformed, what evidence do we have to support the positive claim that dressing provocatively makes a woman more likely to be selected by a rapist as a potential victim? I rather think the answer is "none whatsoever". So why was Rottenberg making it as a positive claim, and why are other people defending it?

Dave

It's even more meaningless since "provocatively/attractively/sexily dressed" and all such variations will vary from person to person and situation to situation. Indeed even starting with such a notion is assuming the conclusion, what would be needed would be a complete survey to see if there is even a correlation with any identifiable "dressing style" to begin with never mind causation.

 

[Darat]

We were talking about women, not girls. (I hope, anyway. The very idea of discussing the "attractiveness" of 12 -15 year old girls in this context is creepy.)


...snip...

It might be creepy but it has to be considered if you want the claim that "attractiveness" is part of why some females are raped since they account for a significant number of females that are actually raped.

 

[Dave Rogers]

It's even more meaningless since "provocatively/attractively/sexily dressed" and all such variations will vary from person to person and situation to situation. Indeed even starting with such a notion is assuming the conclusion, what would be needed would be a complete survey to see if there is even a correlation with any identifiable "dressing style" to begin with never mind causation.

Exactly. And then, of course, it comes back to the point made earlier that provocative dress is relative, rather than absolute. From which one might deduce that, if women dress less provocatively (whatever that actually means), then it won't reduce the number of rapes, just re-allocate who are the victims. And that's one of the stronger counter-arguments to Rottenberg; if we want to reduce rape as a social evil, telling women to dress more conservatively will do sweet FA, whereas better policing, more enlightened social attitudes and self-defence classes actually have some chance of working.

Dave

 

[3point14]

I think that sexy clothing is a contributing cause in at least some cases, based solely on my personal acquaintance with the male psyche and human behaviour, but I'm not claiming I can prove it. My only purpose in joining this discussion was to point out that you can't disprove it merely by pointing out that there are many other contributing causes of rape.

That's true.

You also can't disprove that not wearinig deely-boppers isn't a contributing cause either.

 

[Ron Webb]

You also can't disprove that not wearinig deely-boppers isn't a contributing cause either.

I think that's the first time I've ever seen a quadruple negative in a sentence. It took me about five minutes to parse it and I'm still not sure what you said.

But all seriousness aside, if you can deny that the lack of avoidance of sexually unattractive attire is intuitively unlikely not to encourage unwanted sexual attention, then I give up.

 

[Darat]

I think that's the first time I've ever seen a quadruple negative in a sentence. It took me about five minutes to parse it and I'm still not sure what you said.

But all seriousness aside, if you can deny that the lack of avoidance of sexually unattractive attire is intuitively unlikely not to encourage unwanted sexual attention, then I give up.

"intuitively unlikely" has nothing to do with whether something is a fact or not.

 

[3point14]

I think that's the first time I've ever seen a quadruple negative in a sentence. It took me about five minutes to parse it and I'm still not sure what you said.

But all seriousness aside, if you can deny that the lack of avoidance of sexually unattractive attire is intuitively unlikely not to encourage unwanted sexual attention, then I give up.

If you can't demonstrate that your opinion is any more than merely an opinion and has no evidence to back it up then I give up too.

 

[TraneWreck]

It's even more meaningless since "provocatively/attractively/sexily dressed" and all such variations will vary from person to person and situation to situation...

I was involved in a case that presented a very stark example of this truth. Our firm was appointed counsel of a person accused of multiple sexual assaults. I watched a recoreded interview between a state psychologist and our client. He was asked what caused him to commit the crime (all paraphrasing, obviously).

He went into great detail about how he saw his victim every day. She would look over and smile at him as she walked by. She would wear revealing clothes and wiggle her hips as she walked by. He described (and this I remember very clearly) her "full, pouty lips." He claimed that she would flirt with him, but then reject him, she was playing games with him. He "knew she wanted it," so eventually he became more aggressive. When he was rebuffed, he assaulted her.

The victim was 5 years old.

The girl was dressed like a normal 5 year old, it was the assailant's sickness, not any characteristic of the victim that caused the crime. Though that is an extreme example, this dynamic is almost always true. It doesn't matter how a victim presents themselves, it only matters how the assailant perceives them. Because assailants see the world as they will, there is no way to anticipate what will stimulate their perverse tendencies and preemptively make oneself unattractive to sex criminals.

It's a really dumb idea. Do only conventionally attractive women suffer abuse? If not, why could that be?