No feminist I knows believes that it’s actually a bad idea to caution a person on how to limit the likelihood that they’ll be the victim of a crime—but a lot of the pieces haven’t really communicated well that when you sexualize the message itself (the liquor control board’s poster, for example), it becomes less about “limit your appeal as a potential victim to a rapist” and more about “ooh, tantalizing rape scene! She had it coming by wearing underwear that was so easy to pull down around her pretty little ankles. Oh, and she was drinking. SLUT.”

I’m really frustrated by how poorly we’re moving on the “actually holding rapists accountable for their actions” front—this article finally articulates it.

True story: a family member (who worked at a rape crisis center for crying out loud) realized that a friend at the bar had a roofie slipped into her drink, they were able to collar the guy who did it, and the police arrested THE FRIEND because she wasn’t 21. Guy (and the bartender who likely helped) walked off without even being questioned. It was exactly what you were talking about: Woman bent the rules of society that *everyone bends* and is punished when someone was demonstrably in the process of getting ready to commit an actual crime and rape her, but that’s not important because she was having a drink and she was only 20. Off you go, you little rapist scamp! Make sure you read that information booklet on being a more successful rapist before your next night out and don’t pick a victim who’s out with friends who actually know what the symptoms of Rohypnol look like!

Whoa, read the linked article about Jeffrey Marsalis:

Investigators would discover 21 women who claimed Marsalis drugged and raped them—many listed in a file on his computer called “The Yearly Calendar of Women.”

If the jury won’t believe women accusing a guy who records his rapes like they’re fantasy football victories…

I would be curious to hear explanations from the jurors.  Unless that article is omitting something really important, that verdict is not only appalling but baffling.

I keep these posted on my office door:
http://www.feministlawprofessors.com/2009/09/sexual-assault-prevention-tips-guaranteed-to-work/

Rape prevention needs to focus on rapists and potential rapists. I’m a big fan of the Don’t Be That Guy Posters.

I’d also like for police departments and courts become more accommodating to rape victims. More women would come forward, there would be more arrests and more convictions. This would act as a deterrent as your typical rapist is a calm and collected fellow, not some thoughtless force of nature.

Men need to helped to understand what is and isn’t part of rape culture and how to call out their peers when they hear expressions of rape culture.

But hey, these three things are smart and would actually empower women. So much more fun to concern troll women into blaming themselves. And as Amanda points out, rape prevention messages like the ones mentioned in the article probably encourage or instruct rapists.

Oh, hahahahahaha, that zany PCLB ad.  My hometown paper thinks the ad was AWESOME.

One thing that’s very telling is that telling men that if they’re worried about not being able to “read signs” properly (I.E. Control themselves), that they should perhaps lay off the alcohol is such a repulsive statement, and yet we say the same thing to women on such a regular basis.

I don’t even think it’s just a double standard. It’s completely ass backwards.

I’ve said this before, but rape prevention tips serve the same function as fairy tales and say:  Don’t go into the woods, little girl, there are wolves in the woods and we are unwilling and/or unable to do anything about them. 

But the real critique of this kind of tips is that they don’t keep people from being raped.  If a rapist is looking for a victim, they may bypass me for being “vigilant,” but eventually they come across a more socially acceptable victim.  So the number of rapes that occur is not affected at all by the campaign.

If a rapist is looking for a victim, they may bypass me for being “vigilant,” but eventually they come across a more socially acceptable victim.

Exactly. I always try to bring that up, but you just put it perfectly. If not me, then someone else. Apparently, for a lot of people, “better you than me” is just fine as a general principle.

I’m really glad that Tracy and Jaclyn both mentioned that most people are already aware of these dumb tips.  The people dispensing them are almost never experts in anything—they’re just recycling the same “common sense” they and everyone else have absorbed from email forwards, stupid memos from their building security about the best time of day to walk to your car (like it’s totally up to you when to leave work every day), and maybe a “rape prevention” class in college.  I wasn’t really convinced that these tips are just awful until I was encouraged to think about how insulting they are.  Dispensing advice about walking somewhere populated and brightly lit, paying attention to your surroundings, not looking lost, etc., really implies that the women hearing it are too ignorant to have absorbed the most basic of common sense and the most prevalent of empty tropes.

Dispensing advice about walking somewhere populated and brightly lit, paying attention to your surroundings, not looking lost, etc., really implies that the women hearing it are too ignorant to have absorbed the most basic of common sense and the most prevalent of empty tropes.

I won’t speak for the e-mail forwarding and social dispensing of that stuff (no one sends it to me), but I will point out that ads like the PCLB occur on every subject.  Anyone need to be educated about seat-belt wearing?  Did you know that elder abuse is totally crappy?  Hey, dig this impressive new finding: turns out cigarettes aren’t great for your health.  And by the way, don’t kill yourself, the other girl from Blossom says you’ve got a lot to live for, and an emaciated fashion model wants you to know that beauty comes from the inside.

That’s not a statement about the substance of any of the discussion concerning rape (way more going on than in these other examples), nor about the appropriateness of the specific PCLB ad, but we’re bombarded by idiotic, useless repetition of obvious facts on a regular basis.  This a result of 1) an overly litigious society where everyone needs to constantly cover their ass 2) “the more you know” type public service ads that seem to all have been written at a PTA meeting in Wisconsin in 1956 and 3) the fact that a lot of our countrypeople really are dumb as fuck and do probably learn from that type of “shockingly obvious information spam.”

Again, not a criticism of the substance, but there are reasons other than just the assumption that all women are ignorant for the obnoxious repetition—but, of course, some non-trivial portion of those “tips” are motivated by exactly what you describe.

Which is to say, the jury just used “consenting sluts express regret” as a cover story for what they were actually saying with their verdict, which is that “bad girls” don’t deserve the protection of the law.

I’m not entirely sure I buy this sort of active malice towards women who don’t fit antiquated standards of chastity - and I’m basing that on the earlier reaction to Julian Assange’s accusers and the women who have accused Herman Cain of sexual harassment and assault. If multiple women are coming out and saying “hey, this person raped me”, it’s frequently said that one was lying and the rest jumped on the “give me money or throw him in jail because I want revenge” bandwagon.

Granted I don’t know the details of this case, so I don’t know if they all came forward independently and without knowledge of the other women having come forward, but my guess is that’s more likely what the jury was thinking.

It seems like consensual sex with someone under eighteen is punished worse than sex with someone against their will, especially in cases where one person was seventeen and the other one nineteen that seems really messed up.

I will say that some sexual assault prevention tips don’t bother me.  For example, one university I was at had posters in the library informing students that if they had to walk around late at night, they could call a number and receive a free security escort from campus police.  Rather than say “don’t walk alone at night,” which is pretty useless, they offered a service that would provide protection to people who walked alone at night. 

I also am a big proponent of education about the dangers of binge drinking, but it ought to be for men and women, and focus on how drinking to excess can make you more vulnerable to being a crime victim (not just of rape), or to committing crimes, as well as accurate information about the medical risks and the fact that drinking too much compromises your judgment and ability to assess risks.  It should also include the fact that intoxication =/= consent, and that if your partner is too drunk to say no, it’s rape.  (I LOVE the Edmonton posters!)  If she’s sending out mixed signals, take that as a no.  Make sure you have clear consent in the form of words or actions before you have sex—the mere lack of active resistance is not enough. 

Telling people to watch out for their friends is not a bad idea, but it should focus less on “it’s your job to prevent rape,” and more on all the ways that friends can get in trouble at a party: signs of incipient alcohol poisoning, for example, as well as signs that someone is using alcohol to render a potential victim more compliant or targeting someone who’s too intoxicated to protect themselves.  “Look out for each other” isn’t a bad message, but it should be targeted at men and women, and it should be a broad-based thing, not just “watch out to make sure your drunk friend doesn’t get herself raped.”  “Looking out for each other” includes calling out friends who are mistreating women or expressing ideas that justify rape. 

It is not women’s job to prevent rape.  I think that women should be given accurate information that will enable them to best assess risks, but rape prevention requires that everyone challenge rape culture.  Will some guys still rape?  Probably.  But we, as a society, have to stop enabling it. 

It is goddamn sickening to me that this victim blaming rape culture is still so alive and well in 2011!

Hobbes, you make an interesting point about reactions to accusers of Assange & Cain - that people accused them of being liars and money grubbers.  But I think these sorts of accusations go back to the same ugly roots - that women (since, in most of these cases being talked about, the victims are women - social narratives about male victims of assault may be a bit different, I do not know enough about that to say) are essentially liars trying to bring down a good man.  Whether they were labelled as ‘sluts with regrets’, or lying gold diggers - it all comes down too unreliable women lying about men.  Jesus Haploid Christ on a pogo stick, it makes me sick to write these words, but that is how messed up things are.  (If people bothered to think it through for a moment - who in her right mind would lie about something like this just for all the fun of having her name and reputation dragged through the mud?  I mean really, who would do that?  It makes no damn sense).

To take the victim blaming train wreck of ugly a little further, just poke around in the swamps of Right Wing Xtian land.  You know those folks won’t disappoint, right?  A couple of weeks ago I was reading through blogs by people who had escaped fundamentalist churches of one stripe or another.  Apparently a big deal these days in some of these churches is the ‘strange woman’ spirit.  According to this f’d up bit of theology, the strange woman spirit is some sort of force of prostitution and adultery that some girls are born with.  So, if a girl or woman is molested or raped, it is ENTIRELY her fault for leading a Christian man astray for assaulting her.  She must be prayed over, and the abuser is given a free pass.  One woman wrote how when she was 15, her mother shaved her head and said she had the strange woman spirit, and that is why her stepfather had assaulted her.  There are no words for this kind of fuckery.

For an ongoing case of ugly, there is the grim case of a fine upstanding church member raping a then 15 yo girl.  The pastor, Chuck Phelps, blamed the girl for the rape and made her apologize to her rapist and the congregation of the church for her this!  And nothing was done to the rapist.  The blog http://chucklestravels.wordpress.com has the ongoing story of this plus Chuck Phelps. 

So this is how far this demented victim-blaming culture can go.

Hobbes, since the sexual history of all women involved in brought up, it is chastity policing. I fail to see how it’s not. Thus is misogyny.

doubtthat:

But there is a difference between obnoxiously repeating common sense advice that is true; smoking *will* give you cancer; elder abuse *is* crappy, etc., and repeating common sense advice that is false; women aren’t safe doing things that are legal for adults to do, drinking alcohol, walking alone, wearing attractive clothes, and should beware lest they be punished for doing those (perfectly legal and acceptable) things by being raped.

Great post. I have one complaint: even a rabid wolf doesn’t deserve that kind of comparison, let alone the normal kind.

I suggest an alternate animal: the rooster. More obnoxious and loud than a dozen drunken frat boys, puffed up, strutting, neck-scrotum-sporting little rapists each and every one of them. Fits perfectly.

Comment #16: hideandseek

Totally agreed.  There’s a massive substantive difference between the “assault advice” and the other things I listed.

It still just baffles me that people even consider women’s dress as having anything to do with rape.  Let’s observe a part of the world where women wear formless black sacks from head to toe: no assaults in those countries?  Everything great for women over there?

If a woman walking around in a shapeless bag can be assaulted, there’s literally nothing a woman can wear short of an electrified suit of armor that will have much effect on her chances of being assaulted.

And by the by, those same parts of the world have pretty strict rules against drinking…

short of an electrified suit of armor

Which I would totally wear if it were available, although for different reasons.

I’m not entirely sure I buy this sort of active malice

It’s a good thing ‘active malice’ is in no way required for that statement to be true.

I suggest an alternate animal: the rooster.

Or a dolphin.

Completely beside the point of a great piece, but stop it with the anti-knitting already.  How did you form this idea that it’s only for Cosby sweaters and uptight Good Girls (or even just girls)?

This is interesting, and depressing, coming on the heels of the EC furor.  A while ago Amanda theorized that rapists serve as vigilantes in our society by “punishing” girls and women perceived as straying from propriety in some way.  After reading comment after comment by supposed liberals expressing distress over the idea that teenage girls might be able to get emergency contraception without permission I’m not exactly confident that most of my fellow human beings really want to eradicate the best form of chastity policing there is - rape.  Pregnancy is a close second.

Unwanted pregnancy, I mean, of course.

Such ads also reinforce the extremely common misconception that most rapists are “urban” young men who hide in dark parking lots until they are overwhelmed by that part of the lady-thigh that makes a man’s conscience turn off when, in fact, most rapists are nice-seeming young chaps from your same social status who ask you on dates. Then when nice-seeming young chaps are on trial, the jury thinks “why, this gent does not look like a rapist!”

There was a lot of date rape/acquaintance rape going on in my little rural hometown when I was in high school; girls tended to travel in packs and watch out for each other and pass around lists of known offenders or just plain skip the only social events happening in a town of 2000 people because it was clear that if anything bad happened, the “crime” of underage drinking would be used against the victim first and foremost, followed up by a heaping dose of slut-shaming and victim-blaming.  Sad that things haven’t progressed that far since…

Also, Hobbes, if you read the original article in Self, it’s pretty clear that the government was driving the prosecution (seeking out victims to testify) and there were multiple trials with multiple victims (most of whom were educated professionals with no obvious credibility problems other than being women testifying about date rape) at each trial testifying to the same MO.  There is no explanation other than misogynistic ideas about rape and how rape victims are supposed to look and behave to explain the verdicts.  I mean, one woman who says she was drugged, with no forensic evidence, might be a tough case, but seven or eight women who don’t know each other all testifying to the same MO?

One big reason Marsalis was able to basically get off in PA is because PA is the only state in the country that doesn’t allow expert testimony in sexual assault cases. So, defense lawyers are free to exploit misogynist societal bias to discredit victims without fear of a behavioral expert telling the jury that the way most people think—i.e., expect—“real” victims to act is not in fact how they act at all. One legislator here was so enraged by the Marsalis case that she drafted HB1264 to allow expert testimony. It took 3 years to pass the House and is currently sitting in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Comment #19: Kit-Kat

There are literally few reasons not to purchase such an item the moment it drops.

By the way, here’s my “how not to get raped” advice, promised to be close to largely effective.

Step 1: Never leave the house unless you’re wearing one of these:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0ByF0yMgGLM/TVnT7qbtDuI/AAAAAAAABFM/Yv4hBi04Vt8/s1600/bear+proof+suit.jpg

Step 2: Also wear it in the house.

It’s telling that anyone would hold up a bill that would allow experts in psychology to testify about victim reactions to rape, for fear that this might push juries to convict men who are clearly fucking rapists. Who will police skirt length, then?

I want 24 hours in which men don’t rape female persons (the more groups the better though) in the US. (The more countries the better but this will be a US centric post) (-after Dworkin)

In order for that to happen it would require that men, the justice system, the media, and society as a whole take rape seriously. Men would have to recognize and excise the destructive parts of masculinity that’s been hammered into them by society; to actually realize the humanity of non-men; and be on active alert for men who are predators of all stripes: hunters of the inebriated; ambushers of those who are alone (or even not alone); and especially the relatives, “friends,” or co-workers who strike the ones who trust them. There are more predators than I’ve listed though.

I think this is a small thing to want for, and if it could happen, just once, then maybe people who are female, and women, and non-men could finally start being considered human in a society that rejects their humanity yet gleefully accepts their bodies as things to be used and minds to be relentlessly twisted.

@Amanda #15 - I agree that it’s chastity policing and misogynistic absolutely. 100%. What I was trying to contest was the assertion that “sluts don’t deserve the protection of the law”. I think it’s more “clearly they wanted it because they’re sluts, and now they’re lying about it to get money or revenge.”

@ Hobbes - you say you don’t know the facts of the case.  Perhaps you could be bothered to read the original article.

When they arrested Marsallis they found contact information for 58 women.  Of those, 21 accused him of rape. The government picked 9 and went to trial with them.

Now, it is true that they did not independently come forward with this story. But when 21 out of 58 women are all willing to tell the police that the guy raped them, that is extremely compelling set of facts.

Though I agree that the actual behaviour of wolves vs. roosters makes roosters the more appropriate image from that standpoint, culturally I’d go with the wolf. So often it seems like the werewolf myth is used to excuse male anger (and yes, rape), even in modern retellings. Yeah, totally appropriate image. People think of dolphins as cute, so that doesn’t work either, even if their actual behaviour is terrible.

It is goddamn sickening to me that this victim blaming rape culture is still so alive and well in 2011!

Just wait a few weeks and you can feel sick that it’s alive and well in 2012.

The more I interact with conservatives, the more I understand that they are simply pro-rape in a general sense.  Recall that Herman Cain’s sexual assaults actually improved his poll numbers, but the revelation of a consensual affair ended his campaign.

Hold the phone. 1 to 3 drinks is considered a “moderate” number of drinks? That’s… lunch.  Am I supposed to be a drunken slut/unreliable witness after I have two glasses of wine?

@Hobbes: no, the point is that the transparent lie about “clearly they wanted it” is used as social control.

laurab, the biological differences between the way men and women process alcohol means that if you weigh 120 or less, and have 2 drinks, you’re likely to have a BAL of 0.08%(usual DUI trigger in many jurisdictions), as for lunch,  food in the stomach slows this process down a little but doesn’t lower the terminal level either.

An unscrupulous defense attorney can use the ignorance of this fact to his/her advantage, and they often do.

I won’t speak for the e-mail forwarding and social dispensing of that stuff (no one sends it to me), but I will point out that ads like the PCLB occur on every subject.  Anyone need to be educated about seat-belt wearing?  Did you know that elder abuse is totally crappy?  Hey, dig this impressive new finding: turns out cigarettes aren’t great for your health.  And by the way, don’t kill yourself, the other girl from Blossom says you’ve got a lot to live for, and an emaciated fashion model wants you to know that beauty comes from the inside.

I hadn’t really given much thought to that before, but you’re right.  And a lot of those campaigns aren’t redundant—they’re how everyone knows the common knowledge in question.

The big difference between those campaigns and rape prevention advice that someone pointed out upthread is that rape prevention advice largely doesn’t work.  It isn’t true.  But I also think rape—the implicit threat of rape in certain interactions and situations, the routine awareness that one could be raped, narratives about who is raped and how and by whom—is part of the scummy patriarchy water we all swim in.  Gender is salient in nearly every situation (and gendered abuse, including rape, in many of those).  Even though it’s also sickening (and I hope this won’t read as minimizing) I don’t think, say, elder abuse really compares as a constant threat most people live under the threat of experiencing randomly or a subtext of “normal” daily interactions and tasks.  And it can include rape and other gendered abuse as well.

I think there is a fine line here.

I was recently out at an event and started talking to a group of women.  One of them was really very drunk.  We are all talking and as the party winds down I end up walking with the very drunk one towards the coat check.  I am thinking at the time that she is really drunk and her friends should make sure she gets home ok. She’s kind of falling over me and I am holding her up. I get outside and look at her friends, and they are hailing a cab and wave goodbye to us.  At this point my reaction is

1) annoyance because now I have to make sure she gets home ok

2) shock at what terrible friends they are since they really don’t know anything about me, and don’t know that I fully intend on getting her home. 

I do not think that me thinking that her friends were being irresponsible leaving a very drunk woman with a strange man is a “blame the victim” sort of mentality.

THAT SAID

Nobody ever does public service announcements about how to avoid being murdered by getting caught in the cross fire of a drug war, avoid being mugged at night, avoid being ripped off by your business partner etc.  That people think this is an appropriate way to prevent rape strikes me as exceptional.

Of course, when there is a specific threat (a serial rapist who targets a certain area, a serial killer who does the same) it is a good idea to warn the public.

This is also different from the standard “don’t take candy from strangers” advice in that it is given to children, not adults.

Even though it’s also sickening (and I hope this won’t read as minimizing) I don’t think, say, elder abuse really compares as a constant threat most people live under the threat of experiencing randomly or a subtext of “normal” daily interactions and tasks.

I guess that depends on how wide the definition of “elder abuse” is.  Elderly people are at great risk of being scammed out of their money on a pretty much daily basis in normal interactions.  They’re much more likely to fall prey to fake billing, emergency calls from people claiming to be their relatives, and other outright con jobs.  But they also can get bilked by telemarketers and other sales reps, because they’re often easy prey to bullying sales tactics.  One of the proponents of the “do not call” list pushed it because he was sick of his elderly mother having to deal with those assholes.

I do not think that me thinking that her friends were being irresponsible leaving a very drunk woman with a strange man is a “blame the victim” sort of mentality.

Her friends were being irresponsible for leaving her with a strange man if and only if someone other than the strange man is responsible for preventing him from raping her.  One step further, it’s her fault she didn’t make sure she had friends who would look after her with her at all times.  Same logic, when she didn’t have friends with her at all, e.g., drinking alone, she would have been more vulnerable than the situation you described where she had somewhat aware friends.  In other words, she would have been in a more vulnerable situation if she went out on her own.  If you believe 1) someone other than a potential rapist is responsible for her danger when she was with friends and 2) that she’s in worse danger alone, and it’s still someone other than the rapist’s fault that she’s in danger…who are you blaming when she’s out without her friends?  Hint: there are two people, a victim and a rapist, and it’s someone’s fault other than the rapist.

Really, you just said, “I could have raped her, and it would have been her friends’ fault for being so irresponsible.”

Jon S, it’s impossible to follow all the rules all the time. I can think of dozens of situations in which, had I been raped, it would have been ‘my fault.’ Working on a joint project in a guy’s dorm room? Asking for it. Bringing a guy home, making out, then stopping and saying good night? Practically demanding it. Walking home from the library with a guy who lived in my building? Asking for it. Getting drunk with a platonic male friend alone in his apartment? Asking for it.

Despite my terrible risk taking, I wasn’t raped in any of those instances (all of which happened, because I’m dreadfully irresponsible). You know why? Because I wasn’t with a rapist Just luck of the draw, really.

Jon S, you’re perfectly justified in thinking they were shitty friends, b/c what they did was shitty.  I don’t think anyone’s going to defend them for ditching someone they came with, whether she was drunk or not.  But they weren’t responsible for her safety, ultimately.  In a perfect world, what they did would just be considered crass.  In our world, we blame them for not preventing any and all potential rapists from raping.  Not good.

I find it ironic that the pic is of Marsalis blended with what appears to be Courage Wolf, an internet meme about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps (I’m sure there’s been a “You were raped? WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?” variation). Or that a rebuttal to CW was “Insanity Wolf”, who is known for being a raping/murdering psychopath (and therefore probably more apropros for the pic).

But word, of course.

“Don’t go into the woods, little girl, there are wolves in the woods and we are unwilling and/or unable to do anything about them.”

* wails at modern fairy tales *  * hides under the cover with my copy of Zipes “The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood” *

“So often it seems like the werewolf myth is used to excuse male anger (and yes, rape), even in modern retellings.”

See, I think this made some sense in older fairy tales - the oral tales that had several versions and the like - because you are talking about a time when there wasn’t always a whole lot that society could do, just because it wasn’t very large and it was very spread out.  But there is also a very different feel to the older tales of Little Red Riding Hood, in which she escapes by herself (or not) and she is understood to be older and of an age where she can take care of herself, and the literary fairy tales in which she is a little girl who is foolish enough to disobey a direct order from her mother.

“I’m not entirely sure I buy this sort of active malice towards women who don’t fit antiquated standards of chastity”

bzzzt.

I know someone who was on such a jury once.  They guy whose fate they decided was acquitted of rape, but found guilty of attempted murder.  It’s important to know, first of all, that the rape (that apparently did not happen) occurred directly before the attempted murder.  Also, that opinions like “well, what did she expect, going to his house like that at that time of night?” were expressed repeatedly in the discussion of the rape charges but - strangely - never with regards to the attempted murder charges.  Which, need I remind you, happened on the same night in quick succession.

(for the record, this attitude drove the person I knew on the jury crazy, which is why I heard about it once the trial was over)

so, srsly, do us all a favor and either get a clue or take a long walk off a short pier

Her friends were being irresponsible for leaving her with a strange man if and only if someone other than the strange man is responsible for preventing him from raping her.

Perhaps I was being unclear.  I do not think anyone other than a rapist is culpable for rape.  But other people are responsible for preventing rape. The police, to start with, are supposed to prevent rape.  Any citizen, if they see a particular situation, is responsible for preventing rape.  If I am out with friends and I see a guy friend has seen a girl who is too drunk to consent, it is my responsibility to step in. If I see a female friend who is too drunk to consent with some guy who she just met, I would feel responsible if I did not step in.

Same logic, when she didn’t have friends with her at all, e.g., drinking alone, she would have been more vulnerable than the situation you described where she had somewhat aware friends.

Well, if somebody goes out alone and gets blackout drunk, that’s irresponsible. You don’t even need to bring risk of rape into the picture. It’s irresponsible for all sorts of reasons.

Saying that a rapist is entirely to blame for rape is not the same as saying that if you see a friend in a situation that looks like a potential problem you should do something about it.

Jon S, it’s impossible to follow all the rules all the time. I can think of dozens of situations in which, had I been raped, it would have been ‘my fault.’ Working on a joint project in a guy’s dorm room? Asking for it. Bringing a guy home, making out, then stopping and saying good night? Practically demanding it. Walking home from the library with a guy who lived in my building? Asking for it. Getting drunk with a platonic male friend alone in his apartment? Asking for it.
Despite my terrible risk taking, I wasn’t raped in any of those instances (all of which happened, because I’m dreadfully irresponsible). You know why? Because I wasn’t with a rapist Just luck of the draw, really.

I never said it was anybody else’s fault and it’s pretty insulting of you to read that into what I said.  Maybe best not to straw-man.

Jon S, you’re perfectly justified in thinking they were shitty friends, b/c what they did was shitty.  I don’t think anyone’s going to defend them for ditching someone they came with, whether she was drunk or not.  But they weren’t responsible for her safety, ultimately.  In a perfect world, what they did would just be considered crass.  In our world, we blame them for not preventing any and all potential rapists from raping.  Not good.

Am I the only one who thinks I am responsible for the safety of my drunk friends? Leave the risk of rape aside.  At some point you should make sure your friends don’t walk into traffic or get thrown in the drunk tank.

Also, w/r/t the idea of a perfect world - there’s a lot of violence in the world, and there always has been.  in fact there is less now in this country than in most times in history.  I have a hard time imagining a world without rape, murder, assault, and all the other terrible things people do to each other.

@jennygadget

My mother was on a jury for a rape trial…I won’t recount everything here, but suffice it to say that EVERY PIECE OF EVIDENCE used by the prosecutor (like, the fact that the nurse who took performed the rape kit went back to school to specialize in sexual assault exams therefore she must be a radical, ugly old feminist out to get the menz) was over-analyzed in the most gross forms of gender/chastity policing. If my mother had not been on that jury, they wouldn’t have gotten the conviction because though most of the jury agreed she had been raped, the fact that she opened her door to the rapist late at night (and vaguely knew him from work—they both worked at Walmart—and the fact that SHE WAS FAT THEREFORE UNRAPEABLE) the sheep jurists were almost convinced by the two male blow-hards who really thought that it was all a misunderstanding. Thank goodness my mother is a tough cookie w/ an elementary school teacher social cache (that allows for scolding the fucking little boys in the room) to get the conviction. In terms of time-served though, less than 2 years. Meanwhile, the other jury she served on during that time involved a guy stealing some meat from a Save-a-Lot (he got five years). So, ladies, take note: your bodily autonomy is worth less than a pork roast.

Am I the only one who thinks I am responsible for the safety of my drunk friends? Leave the risk of rape aside.  At some point you should make sure your friends don’t walk into traffic or get thrown in the drunk tank.

We’re talking about rape and rapists; why would we leave that aside?  The woman’s friends were not responsible for keeping her from being raped.  That responsibility lies with all the people who choose whether or not to rape.

We’re talking about rape and rapists; why would we leave that aside?  The woman’s friends were not responsible for keeping her from being raped.  That responsibility lies with all the people who choose whether or not to rape.

So do I understand this right? I am responsible for protecting my blackout drunk friend against all risks except rape? Seriously?

@Jon

Stop pretending that you don’t understand what people are saying.

Good friends help their drunk friends home, yes. BUT the issue isn’t about you and your super-human ability to protect your friends, its about the narrative that drunk women SHOULD be raped to teach them a lesson about daring to be human and drink too much on occasion. For daring to do what most everybody does, that is, to NOT BE PERFECT. Tip sheets about preventing rape are really tools used against victims of rape because if I pop out at 10pm to get something at Walgreens, I am an unbelievably stupid, careless woman who invited rape. She (I) should have known better, stupid stupid girl. You are 5’2’’ and blonde, you vulnerable stupid girl. Did you read that forward I sent you? Did you see that no woman/girl of worth is out after dark? Let alone walks to a drugstore to get cold medicine and a candy bar? The bar is SO GAWDDAMN HIGH as to WHO constitutes a “real victim” because rape culture is about controlling women. Its about hating women. When the “prevention” narrative is 100% WOMEN DON’T DO THIS and 0% Men, Don’t Rape—there is no “prevention” just blaming women/victims who don’t “act” 100% correctly, 100% of their lives.

p.s. I only mention the blonde thing because I have been told (I shit you not) that since most adult women are dyed blondes, that blonde hair signfies that you “are trying” and is like a mini-skirt or lots of make-up. As a natural blonde who gets her hair cut maybe twice a year (and bemoans that little expense), I am in effect a “legacy” slut. I blame the patriarchy!

jenny/Theal

I always brace myself when I read threads about rape because I know I’m probably about to hear some truly f*cked up sh!t from real-life cases.  This one is no different.  Guilty of attempted murder, but not rape?  I guess the jury was afraid of sullying the young man’s reputation.

Jon S,

I can understand where you’re coming from, but you’re (unintentionally) veering too close to the language used by rape apologists—not that I think you are one. 

Survivors—and those of us who know them—have to be constantly on alert for people eager to deflect blame from the perpetrator, and a LOT of it is couched in language about ‘responsibility.’  There are too many awful people who take that ball and run with it into some pretty vile victim-blaming territory (I’m looking at you, Katie Roiphe).

@ Thealogian - The first post I made, I said two things

1) if you leave a very drunk friend to your own devices you are acting like a shitty friend but

2) public service announcements regarding how to behave to avoid being raped set a double standard when you think about how other crime prevention is talked about

I also think you are touching on something different.  The bar does get raised very high as to what behavior is considered “responsible” and that is unfair.  But that is one issue. The fact that, even if somebody behaves irresponsibly, that does not justify a rapist’s behavior or suggest somebody is asking for it. 

I also at no point criticized actual victims. I am criticizing friends and the public for not stepping in to help women in a vulnerable situation.  Correct me if I am wrong but that is against rape culture.

Jon S.,

I was responding to this statement of yours, which is 100% butthurtedness: “So do I understand this right? I am responsible for protecting my blackout drunk friend against all risks except rape? Seriously?”

A while ago Amanda theorized that rapists serve as vigilantes in our society by “punishing” girls and women perceived as straying from propriety in some way.

As one who lacks time to pay vigilant attention to all internet traditions, I missed this earlier post.  (rats!)  However, it sounds as though it was spot on.

The current post got me thinking about the different attitudes toward the serial killer vs. serial rapist.  We all (thank god) agree the victims of the serial killer did not deserve their deaths.  Yet, we apparently do not all agree that the victims of the serial rapist did not deserve their rapes.  Why is that?  Probably multiple rationalizations. 

I think there is some “policing” of “bad” girls. 

I also think the patriarchy also displays a lack of empathy or understanding, such that unless a rape and assault also causes extreme and/or permanent, physical damage in addition to the physical violation of the rape, i.e., you have visible scars or disability that never goes away as opposed to internal or emotional scars, then maybe the rape really wasn’t all that big a deal.  I suspect there remains a nasty, mostly hidden, undercurrent of belief that women are little more than receptacles for sex, voluntary or not.  I think the continuing cling of this old view of women as sub-humans is further evidenced by the fact that a rape of a wife and mother (i.e., property of husband) is viewed much more gravely than the rape of a young, single, barhopping “co-ed” or even (how to even compare?) the rape of a prostitute.  The first is an invasion of another man’s property.  The second—common property of any and all men? 

Aren’t they all people, deserving to not be raped?  Yet, they receive much different degrees of sympathy for their plight.

@ Sour Kraut

I understand exactly what you are saying and I tried to be careful by avoiding ever suggesting responsibility on behalf of survivors themselves, as opposed to society (including friends).  I in no way am attempting to apologize for rape.  I actually think there is a miscommunication whereby people who are engaged in advocacy against rape are very vigilant against language that is suggestive of rape apologism that people who are not attempting to apologize for rape are often left confused as to what is the problem.

I was responding to this statement of yours, which is 100% butthurtedness: “So do I understand this right? I am responsible for protecting my blackout drunk friend against all risks except rape? Seriously?”

I was trying to say that generally speaking, good friends watch out for their drunk friends, and used the first person as a shorthand. I was not trying to imply that I’m such an awesome friend and I always watch out for everybody and I deserve a cookie. Not butthurt, just making a general statement using myself as an example.

I don’t quite get the piling on Jon S.  True, her friends are not responsible for the actions of a rapist, but they are responsible for acting like friends.  If Jon had been a rapist, her friends would not have been responsible for his actions.  But they are responsible for their own, and leaving your clearly wasted friend with a strange guy without making any effort to ensure that she wanted to go with that strange guy or getting some information about that guy or something is not the behavior of a decent human being.  Maybe it’s that I think the behavior of the friends was born of rape culture—the message they sent to Jon was “She’s all yours!”  Again, just to be clear, this wouldn’t absolve him of one iota of culpability if he raped her, but part of rape culture is the idea that a drunk girl is sexually available and that she has forfeited protection. 

I’ve gone out drinking with friends, and if one of them looked like she was about to head out with someone we didn’t know, I would make sure that I talked to her to (1) verify that she was not about to pass out drunk and (2) get a clear verbal statement from her that she did, in fact, want to head out with this guy.  I know that I would do this because I have done it several times.  Sure, he could still have been a rapist, and there would have been nothing that I could do about that.  But the fact that I am not responsible for preventing rape does not mean that I am not responsible for being a good friend, and standing up for my friend if she was not capable of standing up for herself. 

A culture in which people feel an obligation to look out for each other, to try to ensure that the vulnerable are not victimized, where we treat rape like a crime committed by criminals rather than a punishment for “irresponsible” behavior, strikes me as a good thing.  A culture where we see a guy leading a clearly drunk girl out of a bar and think “I’d better make sure she’s okay” and not “That guy’s getting lucky tonight!” would be a much better culture.  I don’t think we fight rape culture by acting like the fact that it is the rapist who is entirely culpable and responsible for rapes and a woman’s behavior never makes it okay to rape her means that we don’t have an obligation to intervene when we see something suspicious.  I mean, if your drunk friend was about to get into a car with a bunch of people armed with baseball bats and pipes, you wouldn’t say to yourself “Well, I’m not responsible for her safety.  If she gets beat up it will be 100 percent the responsibility of her assailants.”  Even though that is true.  Maybe it’s just a problem of how we assign blame after the fact v. how we evaluate threats before the fact. 

I think that we do have a responsibility to each other, and it’s unfortunate that “responsibility” is the same word that gets used in victim-blaming narratives.  If someone can suggest a better word, I’m all ears.

Just one clarification here. Male victims of serial killers: just ordinary people going about their unexceptionable business, even when their business might have involved being dead drunk in isolation places. Female victims of serial killers: prostitutes, drug-addicted postittutes, women who dressed like prostitutes, women who the killer might somehow have had reason to think looked like drug addicts or prostitutes.

Female victims of serial killers: prostitutes, drug-addicted postittutes, women who dressed like prostitutes, women who the killer might somehow have had reason to think looked like drug addicts or prostitutes.

Add minority status and you’re talking about why the Grim Sleeper was able to kill and get away with it for so long:

All but one of his victims were black females. One of his suspected victims was a black man.[18] Many of his victims were prostitutes.[23] One witness recalls that Franklin would frequently bring prostitutes into his home. The Grim Sleeper would have sexual contact with victims before strangling or shooting them. He would shoot all of his victims with a .25 caliber gun.[16] Franklin took several photographs of nude prostitutes and kept them in his garage.[24]

It’s a nice sort of catch-22: if you’re a woman and the victim of a serial killer, you must be a prostitute, and if a serial killer is only killing prostitutes, then why would the police make them a priority.

See also Peter Sutcliffe (the Yorkshire Ripper of the 1970s), who the police only started to take seriously when ‘nice girls’ started dying.

But even when a woman who isn’t a prostitute is murdered, there’s still often a narrative of sexual blame. Joanna Yates was murdered in Bristol a year ago. The initial police response was too tell women not to go out alone in the dark (it got dark at 4pm). Then they arrested ... her landlord. He was released without charge*. Recently they convicted ... her next door neighbour, Vincet Tabak. so much for telling women to protect themselves by staying indoors.

The narrative of events was pretty obvious - nice new neighbour comes round, somehow gets indoors, attempts a pass/goes straight to assault, Yates is killed. The question at the trial was murder or manslaughter. The defence, naturally, turned it in to the trial of Joanna Yates: “yes, he was cruel to conceal her body, but it wasn’t murder, she let him in, no struggle, her boyfriend was away, she was a slut, he just had to shut her up when she changed her mind and screamed, if only the silly bitch had shut up he wouldn’t have had to kill her by accident”. The conviction was a majority verdict, 10 guilty, 2 voting to acquit. After the trial, the police released information that Tabak had been watching seriously nasty porn featuring a woman closely resembling Yates being strangled. I really want to know what the two jurors who voted to acquit thought. Probably, I fear, that she was still a silly slut who shouldn’t have opened the door.

*Though not before being pilloried in the press as a paedophile weirdo for the crime of having an unusual hairstyle.

I mean, if your drunk friend was about to get into a car with a bunch of people armed with baseball bats and pipes, you wouldn’t say to yourself “Well, I’m not responsible for her safety.  If she gets beat up it will be 100 percent the responsibility of her assailants.”

People should look out for each other and ideally we are “responsible” for each other if we see others in danger.  I’ve just never heard anyone suggest that my stumbling drunk male friends shouldn’t be left alone with a new friend they met at a party because he might rape them.  Raping a guy would be considered such completely abnormal, shocking behavior that the risk is considered negligible, and men are not expected to take any special precautions to prevent it from happening.  However, it’s supposed to be common sense that a woman being alone and drunk with any random guy she meets is in immediate danger, the equivalent of a car full of people armed with baseball bats, because…

We keep getting the message that women are vulnerable to men.  We should think all the time about how vulnerable we are.  And other people should think all the time about how vulnerable women are.  So it’s only responsible to be constantly aware of situations where we or our female friends might be raped; and the list of these situations is so impossibly long that a woman could not “responsibly” go out alone, nor her friends leave her alone, at all.  If they had called her a cab, should they have let her go with a male cab driver?  She’s still climbing into the baseball bat car.  If that’s her only choice of transportation, should they have let her go out at all?  It implies that it should be normal for a woman to never be alone with a man she doesn’t know well unless she’s physically able at that moment to fight him off and that it’s her friends’ responsibility to make sure that she never gets in that situation.  That’s not humanly possible.

I don’t think Jon is trolling actually.  But it does contribute to rape culture to say “don’t you think part of prevention is to tell women/the protectors of these women to be just a little more vigilant?  Because I saw a situation once where not everyone was on the lookout for a rapist; they had left her out like uncovered meat.”  It’s suggesting that some measurable part of the problem is that people just aren’t aware that women are in danger of being raped, and that if they were more aware they’d never slip up, which is frankly stupid.  It’s blaming the friends for slipping up and not seeing a potential rapist situation, but it’s still a variation on the blame the victim theme.  As noted, we already do try to look out for ourselves and other women to the best of our human ability, which means sometimes we do not follow the useless and intentionally soul-crushing rules that tell us when we can be blamed for our own victimization.

The problem is that a man raping a woman is thought of as just naturally commonplace, kinda understandable behavior, and as something that a reasonable, “responsible” woman or her friend could have (should have!) prevented by acting virtuously, instead of as the same kind of unusually depraved act that raping a man is.  Telling women again and again that they are vulnerable to rape unless they do [life-limiting thing] creates the culture of women being considered fair game if they participate in almost any part of public or private life, and they’re blamed for “irresponsible” behavior that isn’t irresponsible when men do it.  None of what we’re expected to do is necessary to prevent rape for men, and it doesn’t prevent women from being raped with far greater frequency.  If we were serious about preventing men from raping women, the message wouldn’t be “all we’re willing to do about it is tell you to fend for yourself and hope you have friends around” - it would just be socially unacceptable to rape women and perpetrators would actually be punished.  And then women and their “protectors” would get the same kind of advice for “not letting themselves get raped” as men and their protectors do now.

I don’t think Jon is trolling actually.  But it does contribute to rape culture to say “don’t you think part of prevention is to tell women/the protectors of these women to be just a little more vigilant?  Because I saw a situation once where not everyone was on the lookout for a rapist; they had left her out like uncovered meat.”  It’s suggesting that some measurable part of the problem is that people just aren’t aware that women are in danger of being raped, and that if they were more aware they’d never slip up, which is frankly stupid.

It would contribute to the rape culture for somebody to say that.  In fact, I never said that though, and I don’t appreciate the implication that I did.  I never suggested that a measurable part of the problem is that people aren’t in danger of women being raped.  I just said that when I saw that particular situation my gut reaction was “that was irresponsible on the part of the friends.” Is this reaction somehow indicative of internalized misogyny?

I also think you are conflating two separate problems

1) the fact that the bar is set outrageously high for what is considered virtuous behavior.

2) the double standard between rape and other crimes, such that “well, she wasn’t behaving virtuously” is some kind of defense.

For instance, a while back the journalist John Conroy was brutally mugged in a very bad chicago neighborhood. http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/September-2009/A-Mugging-on-Lake-Street/

While it might be reasonable to say that it is a bad idea for a middle class white guy to be in that neighborhood alone, at night, and many people would say that, nobody ever says “well he was asking for it, so why prosecute.” We still prosecute. Juries still convict.

By the same token if you leave your iphone out nobody thinks you deserve to have it stolen, if you leave your door unlocked nobody says its ok somebody robbed your house.

I also think you are conflating two separate problems
1) the fact that the bar is set outrageously high for what is considered virtuous behavior.
2) the double standard between rape and other crimes, such that “well, she wasn’t behaving virtuously” is some kind of defense.

These are not separate problems. The bar is set outrageously high IN ORDER TO INSURE that “she wasn’t behaving virtuously” REMAINS a defense.

Your reaction is not internalized misogyny so much as it is internalized rape culture. It’s not that *you* personally think that woman deserved to get raped for misbehaving, it is that once you shift the blame from the rapist to ANYONE ELSE, you’re participating in the cultural tendency to avoid dealing with rapists in favor of somehow “dealing” with their potential victims.

acknowledging that, due to the existence of a rape culture, some situations are more dangerous than others is only “internalizing” the rape culture insofar as it acknowledges that it exists. If somebody says “oh, im going to avoid that dark alley” or “hey, maybe don’t go down that dark alley, looks dangerous” is that internalized rape culture. If you see somebody going down a dark alley and say “what are you doing, don’t go there” is that internalized rape culture?

Or another example.  I was in DC a few years back coming from an interview in the early evening.  I was walking back to my hotel, wearing a suit, and at some point a guy who was standing on the street saw where I was headed and said “hey, you’re walking towards a rough part of town, you might want to think about taking this other route instead.” Is this somehow perpetuating a culture of violence to acknowledge this?  If the guy had told a woman in the same situation not to go down that street, would that perpetuate rape culture?

The drunk friends discussion (40, 42-44, 47-49):  I would be really upset with my friends if we went out in a group and they did this, but when I go out, we usually designate who will be the DD (or walker/cab hailer).  The exception being when I drink while traveling for work when I only do so somewhere close enough to walk back to my room and not to excess, even when with what I think/hope/assume are trusted co-workers.  I have hammered this into both my children.  If you go out in a group, someone has to remain aware so as to get everyone safely to bed somewhere.  I admit it has stuck with my daughter better than my son, and my daughter often gets stuck with the DD role as her friends tend to be less responsible about it and she has a lot of fun dancing even if totally sober.

I have always framed this as a general danger thing, not a rape thing - mostly connected to never drive after drinking.

I think Jon S was getting unreasonably piled-on, and I think those “friends” he describes leaving their drunk friend behind with a stranger were shitty people.  A lot of bad things can happen to a helpless drunk, quite apart from being left with someone who is evil / malicious and intending to assault the drunk.

Now can we move on from it being all about Jon’s feelings?

Mighty Ponygirl: True story: a family member (who worked at a rape crisis center for crying out loud) realized that a friend at the bar had a roofie slipped into her drink, they were able to collar the guy who did it, and the police arrested THE FRIEND because she wasn’t 21. Guy (and the bartender who likely helped) walked off without even being questioned.

Jesus WEPT.  Now that is a classic case of police going for the easy target to boost some arrest figures, as well as rape culture dismissing the wanna-be rapist and his assistant because they’re just being a “playboy”. (Defense lawyer really used that word defending a serial rapist. I understand a lawyer is required to make the best possible defense for his client, but brushing over “raped at least fifty women using rohypnol” with “oh, just a playboy”....)