Quick and Dirty Rape Apologist Quiz
(…with not-so-quick explainy stuff before and after)
Do you seem to get into a lot of arguments about rape, and you don’t really know why? Have you ever wondered why your statements about rape get negative reactions from feminists and victims/survivors? If you’d genuinely like to understand what’s going on, and maybe even reevaluate your stance on sexual assault, please read on…
It has occurred to me that many people may not understand what being a rape apologist means versus someone willing to be an ally to victims. Like it or not, in a discussion about rape, you will usually come off as one or the other. There is no side of any rational argument saying “Rape is great! There should be more rape!”, so often when people think they’re representing a middle ground they’re actually the extreme side, the apologist side, against the “Rapists are made of pure, unadulterated suck!” side. Just accept now that “Rape is never okay, but what did the victim think was going to happen when she went back to that dude’s apartment wearing that postage stamp of a skirt!?” isn’t the cool-headed voice of reason between two equally valid arguments.
We tend to not see self-described rapists entering public, philosophical debates about rape. So an apologist ends up as the rapist’s de facto voice (most often not intentionally), representing the rapist’s interests and trying to divvy out the blame more evenly. This is why people, especially rape victims or those who empathize with them, don’t tend to exclaim “Thank you for your brilliant and original perspective! Bless my buttons! I’ve simply never thought of it that way!” when confronted with an apologist’s comments.
Rape apologists aren’t rapists (see: rapists), nor are they consciously trying to defend rapists (see: trolls). Blaming the victim or insinuating that the victim has some responsibility for an attack (a maneuver coincidentally known as “blaming the victim”) are rituals woven into the fabric of society. It doesn’t make you an automatic monster, or even rare. But understand, please, that because of this your opinions are also far from revelatory, marginalized, and vital to the discussion.
This type of discourse about rape can be very hurtful, and I can’t for the life of me figure out how it’s helpful. You might not know if you’re coming off as speaking from a rape apologist platform. You probably don’t feel like you are. “Rape apologist” isn’t exactly a self-identification. But, you know, there’s an internet quiz for everything these days, and ZOMG here comes one now!
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Quizzical Pussy’s Quick and Dirty Rape Apologist Quiz!
Read the following statements and try to react to them naturally:
- Approximately 1 in 6 women is raped or otherwise sexually assaulted in her lifetime. Approximately 1 in 33 men is raped or otherwise sexually assaulted in his lifetime.*
- Rape is underreported.
- Nothing any rape victim does or leaves undone before, during, or after a rape can make the rape her or his fault or responsibility.
- Rape can and does occur by means of physical force, coercion, and/or lack of the victim’s ability to consent.
- Rapists are responsible for the rapes they commit, and they have the choice to not rape.
If you can fundamentally agree with these statements, not just here, but when you confront them on the internet or in real life, and (this is key) you don’t feel compelled to add a “but…” then we can probably have a productive conversation about rape. If you contest them or continually need to add a caveat, then the way you discuss rape might come off as more compassionate toward the perpetrators than the victims. In that case, you are being a rape apologist.
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Be really honest with yourself here. If you fall into the latter group, it doesn’t mean you’re a horrible ogre and have no right to speak your mind, ever. It doesn’t mean you have to suddenly agree with everything I say, or even that this five-item list comprehends the entirety of points and truths related to rape. And yes, you have every right to voice your opinions. But you’re very likely not as useful to the dialogue as you believe you are.
I simply don’t understand what you think is going to happen if you just listen to the anti-rape, pro-victim point of view without getting defensive and argumentative. Do you feel like we anti-rape extremists are going to get too comfortable with having our views go unchallenged and start filing police reports indiscriminately? Do you think we’re going to collectively decide that every time we had consensual sex in the past, gee, now that we think about it, we were probably raped?
The whole “All intercourse is rape” thing is about as much a strawman as “Rape is great!” Sane people don’t feel that way. Believe sex bloggers don’t feel that way. What we (I’m going out on a limb and speaking for others here) really want is to not be raped. But at very, very least we want to be taken seriously if we are, and to be allowed to be compassionate to rape victims without getting blamed and lectured, or having our experiences trivialized.
* Please note that rape is also perpetrated upon those who don’t identify as fitting within the gender binary.
I suspect this may be directed at me, so I’ll respond.
I have no problem with any of your quiz statements. (Okay, I’ll admit the statistics make my inner statistician twitch and start demanding margins of error and definitions and methodologies and links to the study group data, but all statistics do that, and I generally try to ignore it.)
You’re saying that the “other side” is defensive and argumentative after listening to the anti-rape, pro-victim point of view – is that true? Yes.
But here’s the key thing: only once they’re part of the “other side.”
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence; they don’t start off there. They start off as noobs making noobish comments, which is the majority of what I think you’re describing. The “other side” is rarely present to flame them or inform them, as the other side doesn’t actually find rape discussions that compelling; your side -is-, and invariably chooses to flame rather than to inform, to mock rather than to explain.
Advocates -created- the defensive opposition, a group of people who when they do come into the discussion, come into the discussion believing that the advocates are operating in bad faith, and are determined to prove it. Almost nobody starts into this discussion being critical of rape victim advocates; why on earth would they be?
They get that way because the advocates tend to be -extremely- hostile to anybody who does not 100% get it already. They’re defensive because advocates are so frequently offensive.
I think you hit it on the head with the “Rapists don’t argue” point, actually. Advocates looking for an argument are looking for an opposition to argue with; the hostility they’d like to direct at rapists gets directed instead to Tim McNoob, who came in and said something stupid because nobody has ever told him what the right (and wrong) thing to say is, and WHAM, suddenly he’s shoved into the position of representing the Rapists and the Rape Apologists. He wasn’t trying to shift blame to the victim, he was simply making the same kind of innocent (and largely irrelevant) comment he uses in every other argument about every other subject, and he starts getting personal attacks from every commentator around. Those don’t make for a more sensitive commentator in the future; they make for a bitter, defensive one.
We aren’t born with an instinctive knowledge about how to appropriately discuss this subject, and it’s not something which enters the public discourse frequently enough for most people to pick up on. What you’re demanding from people, and the response they get if they don’t measure up is, frankly, unreasonable. Not everybody discusses rape on a reasonable basis; we should be very happy when somebody who has never discussed it before decides that, y’know, maybe this topic is worth discussing, and maybe we should treat them in -that- respect, instead of the “rape apologist” one.
Incidentally, can we drop the “rape apologist” designation? An apologist is somebody who defends an institution; you’re effectively saying they’re defending rape, which is a strawman in itself. “Rape discussion noob” is generally more accurate.
*not everybody discusses rape on a regular, not reasonable, although that is probably true as well
@Orphan This is definitely not directed at you, although you’re more than welcome to respond, of course. Some of the comments you’ve made helped inspire it, along with other comments, several blogs I’ve read recently, and real life conversations. I’d consider it fairly passive-aggressive to post this with one person in mind– essentially calling him out–and to not mention that person in any way. This wasn’t made with any “Orphan will probably get something out of this” intention. I honestly wouldn’t have expected you to if I’d thought about it. If I ever want to address you specifically, you’ll know (like right now).
I don’t believe that rape apologists usually start or end up coming from a place of malice. I think they blunder in with what they feel are good intentions and end up defending rapists whether they mean to or not. The best solution I can think of is for them to turn off their gut reactions and really listen to people who’ve been through sexual assault. Essentially, to LURK MOAR, as your noob analogy is rather apt. Learn what’s really going on, learn what supporting victims means, and then we can start a useful dialogue. So many people never dedicate themselves to listening uncritically to the people who are, regrettably, experts. So they never get to that point.
But guess what? New or seasoned in the rape conversation, they are defending rapists through obfuscation, misdirection, and good, old-fashioned victim-blaming. This is not necessarily intentional, but it’s what they’re doing. What better way for your average citizen to defend the institution than to defend the perpetrators and further attack the victims? I think rape apologist is a fair term, and I don’t intend to drop it. We need something with some teeth to convey that it’s not a value-neutral choice, defending rapists.
Orphan, QP already said this while I was typing, but sometimes restating helps: the very same bits of advice that noobs offer are used to weasel out of prosecuting rape, in virtually all rape cases I’ve heard about. That means the rape apologist tag is often literally correct in exactly the “advocate for rape” sense, for people offering the exact same advice as the noob; the apologist is distinguished from the noob only by intention, not by action.
It’s hard as hell to hear, when the noob is presenting the advice out of a position of visceral hatred of rapists that the “Rapists are made of pure, unadulterated suck!” side feels is unreasonably harsh, which happens fairly often. A lot of men (like myself) hate rapists with an unreasoning burning passion (I’ve suggested stoning and, long ago, flirted with the idea of murdering someone I thought was a rapist). Often the noobs in question who offer the advice (that they imagine is how to foil and destroy rapists) are thus self-selected to be the ones most hurt by the rape apologist identification. Part of the shame of the these noobs starting with this blunder is they’d probably otherwise be the easiest ones to make advocates from.
But they aren’t ever going to -learn- to “really listen” if they aren’t taught; that’s the job of the seasoned, to inform the new, not to alienate them. That’s pretty much the divergence. I see these rants, this frustration, as being hugely counterproductive; yeah, there are endless hordes of noobs. We just have a big job ahead of us. No sense making it harder than it has to be, though.
These people aren’t defending rapists by derailing rape threads through ignorance. They are the rightful -targets- of the rape threads. They’re the customers, the end point – they -are- the society we should be seeking to change. It’s no good to have rape threads with nobody in attendance but the people who already agree. These are the people we need, we should be celebrating every time a newcomer shows up trotting out the same tired line we’ve heard a dozen times over.
The people defending rape are the ones who alienate the very society they claim to be trying to change, the people who should know better who derail rape threads with accusations of rapist tendencies or rape apologism, who destroy the basic civility necessary to conduct a reasonable discussion.
Even the trolls, shit, even genuine rape apologists should be treated with civility and corrected rather than attacked. If Tim McNoob comes in and sees Ed McJerk being attacked for what seems to a newcomer a perfectly reasonable thing to say (that’s phrased rather oddly, he might think…), he’s not going to conclude Ed McJerk is an asshole, and he’s probably going to come to his defense.
Quizzical Pussy, for what it’s worth, as someone who feels like good intentions have gotten me a lot of kicks in the teeth, I really like this post.
I agree. It’s sort of ridiculous to look at rape as being okay under any circumstances. As you probably know, my blog is on Xanga. Recently, the entire community seems to be up-in-arms about this subject – everyone’s posting their opinions on it. I was actually about to do a post about a specific part of rape this afternoon – how women are often blamed for the clothing they’re wearing and made to seem like they’re somehow “guilty” in their own rape.
I feel like most rape apologists give examples like, “Well, what if a woman was intoxicated and said yes to sex, but didn’t know she was doing so and later thought it was rape? Then it’s not the all the man’s fault, HUH???”
And I’m just thinking, “Do you not understand what the definition of rape is? It’s NOT CONSENSUAL!, whatever the circumstances! So your example doesn’t even constitute rape in the first place!”
Ugh, I’m getting so ridiculously riled up, lol.
Mousie -
Wholehearted agreement. I just think the intention is really, really important; as you say, these people are the easiest converts that can be made. And they have the virtue of being -loud-, and willing to put their opinions out there. Loud is good. If we can keep them from making the same mistakes we’ve been making.
(By the way, QP, I tend to use a lot of the plural “you,” which means you tend to get the short end of the stick – you’re actually the nicest person I’ve encountered on the issue, and go out of your way to accommodate other people’s perspectives. Probably -too- nice, judging by your opinions. If I thought what you thought about these people I’d be slamming them at every opportunity with the biggest verbal stick I could find. In your case I more object to how you think of them than your methods, and you’re, not very fairly, getting some flak which other people rightfully deserve.)
(Which is to say, my apologies, and while I’ll probably do it again, I’m sorry about those, too. I’ll try to do better, and if you’ll point it out to me when I do (as Mousie unintentionally did), it might help.)
@Orphan I didn’t write a rant here. This post is meant to fill the exact void that you’re talking about. It is made with education in mind, and I don’t understand how it’s insulting to anyone. I don’t see how it attacks people. It’s not meant to be a joke; it’s not intended as cynical, nor snarky (besides, arguably, one paragraph), nor mean-spirited. Sure, I don’t relinquish the “rape apologist” term, but I try to explain why it exists and is valid. But it’s a very sincere attempt to get people to the point where they’re honestly reexamining their statements. Sure, the entire tone is not the tone I’d use talking to a skittish kitten, but I’m trying. This is me trying. Maybe it’s a failed attempt because I’m not being conciliatory enough, but I so honestly have my limits on how much I’m willing to ignore the damage that rape apologists actually do. Maybe it doesn’t come across as earnest and helpful to you. I hope it will to others.
Just to be clear, though, your tone arguments are not valid. “You angry feminists are making it harder for yourselves” and “People would listen if you would put things more pleasantly” just don’t fly with me. It’s still wrong to defend rapists no matter how I choose to declare that fact. So while I’m willing to talk about this in this case because I was consciously trying to meet people halfway and catch more flies with honey and all that, I do not make a habit of engaging with tone arguments.
QP -
I think I addressed that post before you wrote it. :-)
It’s more that they -aren’t- trying to defend rape, they’re -trying- to deal with it, and are just causing lots of collateral damage in their ignorance in the process, unfortunately primarily to the side they are trying to help.
Think of them like… children who used iron wool to clean your teflon pan. (I don’t know if you cook, you don’t tend to blog about it, but it’s one of my favorite activities, hence this example.) They’re trying to help, they really don’t have it in for your cookware.
I’m kind of getting that you’re saying the equivalent of “If you do hate my cookware that’s okay.” No, it’s -not- okay if they did it to destroy your cookware, really, you don’t have to advocate accepting genuine assholes. (I’d argue it’s important to for the tone reason; you don’t agree, and that’s fine, as beyond my example I don’t have any firm arguments there.) But that’s not where they’re coming from. They aren’t trying to defend rapists, they’re trying to defend rape victims, and they’re just getting it wrong.
@Orphan Gotcha. I was responding to a more personal interpretation of “you”, but at the same time, what I said about tone argument stands for anyone who chooses to confront rape apologists. Just because I’m trying to “be nice” about it doesn’t invalidate anyone else’s way of saying that it’s not okay to defend rapists.
@Mousie762 Thanks. I think of you as someone who’s gone through a really honest process of thinking about why you were getting the reactions you were getting, so your opinion on it very much interests me.
Sigh, sorry, I’m not doing very well at addressing your original post anymore, that was completely wrong. My original response was directed more to the final two paragraphs, which were the ones I was remembering when I wrote this, as you did make the distinction earlier. I’m going to quietly slink away for a little while and drink coffee.
@Serena Dante What rape apologists don’t realize is that they not only perpetuate a culture that makes it easier for people to get away with rape, but they also make it much less likely that rapists will stop and ask themselves if they’ve really gotten consent. Rapists are human beings, with free will, and a huge percentage of them never stop to wonder if what they’re doing is rape. They just ride the excuses that are so easily available. For rape to stop, we need to stop tolerating it and stop enabling it.
I hadn’t seen the comments on your repost of Holly’s “People You Meet When You Talk About Rape” list before now, but many of them seem to be textbook rape apologists in the internet flesh.
Ah, coffee. To address what I guess is our remaining point of dissent – apart from the “rape apologist” terminology, which I don’t think I’ll convince you of at this time – the tone argument.
Let’s say you convince somebody that pointing out what the rape victim did wrong is counterproductive and leave it at that – and instead he goes on to point out what the rape victim did wrong because this will help inform other women so they can help avoid a similar fate but this is in no way condoning the rapist nor does it absolve his guilt and by the way the rapist should be hung.
Okay, not a terrific analogy, but say you take away all of what you would call the rape-apology, which is to say, take away the counterproductiveness, and leave only the hurtfulness. Does this resolve your problem? Would you defend this?
Because beyond that we’re talking about a tone argument.
Tone arguments -are- valid. How people feel -matters-. Okay, not to me personally, but that’s because I’m an asshole; I usually try to stay out of arguments where my disregard for other people’s feelings will hurt my purposes. (I’ll apologize, but because I think I’m in the wrong, not necessarily because I care how anybody feels.)
The tone argument matters. In particular here, where a foundational part of what somebody needs to learn, in order to conduct the rape argument well, is to respect other people’s feelings. It’s nearly impossible to teach somebody to respect other people’s feelings while you are disrespecting theirs.
(Again with the general “You,” my apologies.)
@Orphan I’m not saying to anyone, “If you approached your rape apologetics differently, I’d be more receptive to them”. I wouldn’t. I think insidious, polite rape apologists can do as much harm as belligerent ones. I disagree with the fundamentals of victim blaming.
If a person uses harsh language to explain why defending rapists is wrong, then this person might very well not be using the most persuasive means possible to reach apologists, no. That doesn’t make those harshly-expressed arguments wrong. It’s not every rape activist’s prime concern to cater to the people who hurt rape victims. If you agree that rapists shouldn’t be defended and that rape apologetics are intrinsically harmful, launching a tone argument is an unnecessary derailment. If you don’t agree with me on these points, then that’s another thing altogether. But transforming a defense of rape apologetics into a tone argument doesn’t change the game for me. That would just seem like you were adjusting tactics in a larger disagreement.
It’s always been a tone argument, in some sense; my disagreement has never been about whether the people targeted are right about their claims, but whether they should be treated the way they are. I’ve played a lot of devil’s advocate in the process, trying to explain why somebody can hold a position and still be a good person, but that has been the argument.
You missed the point of my analogy, it was bad, I see why.
Let’s say your person explaining why defending rapists is wrong in a harsh way has a habit of hurting rape victims in the process; his harshness affects them particularly. He doesn’t apologize for the rapist, and he conveys his point to the person he’s explaining it to, so they won’t defend rapists anymore, but he manages to make victims feel like shit anyways. Would -that- be wrong?
@quizzical pussy
I completely agree.
And goodness gracious, I thought I was going to get a bruise on my head from facepalming so much from those comments >.<
@Orphan I don’t really understand how that hypothetical works, so I’ll just do my best to try to explain a distinction that I believe may have gotten lost here.
As you may have noticed, I write about rape from time to time. Just by using the words I do, and putting them up on the internet for everyone to see, I could very well be hurting rape victims by reminding them of what they went through. That definitely isn’t what I want to do. If it turned out that I was causing pain to people who’d been raped, I’d want to seriously evaluate the choices I’m making on my blog. I consider that a kind of “wrong”, sure, since the result would be so far off from my intentions. I would have literally gotten it wrong by missing my goal, and I done something that I consider wrong in hurting people who didn’t at all deserve it.
But when I talk about the “wrongness” of rape apologists, I’m not just talking about hurt feelings. I’m also– hell, mostly– talking about an attitude that excuses and even indirectly encourages rape. I’m talking about reinforcing a victim’s cycle of self-blame and reinforcing a rapist’s feelings of blamelessness and entitlement. Hurt feelings are part of that mosaic, but they’re far from the entire picture. So someone attacking rape apologists who ends up hurting the feelings of rape victims is definitely doing something wrong, in my mind, but not in the same sense as a rape apologist does. If there’s some way for someone to simultaneously dismantle rape apologetics and meaningfully contribute to victim-blaming and rapist empowerment, then that’s also wrong on both levels. But I’m having trouble buying that as an actual, plausible, non-hypothetical scenario.
If you’re at all tempted to suggest that an impolite tone alienates rape apologists/noobs to the point of increasing their numbers or making them more militant (thus indirectly reaching the harm threshold described in my previous paragraph), I should say now that that argument doesn’t ring true for me. A backlash is very often going to occur when someone speaks out with conviction and challenges deeply-entrenched beliefs, and it can happen regardless of tone. For instance, a harsh diatribe might be less diplomatic objectively, but if a more tempered statement reaches a wider audience it may offend more people, and the resulting backlash is worse. So no, I don’t think that offending people is intrinsically harmful in the sense that defending rapists is, or that a backlash is the fault of the activist. I probably won’t have a lot more to say regarding hypothetical situations. No offense or anything, I just feel that there’s a point where this ends up a go-nowhere imagination exercise.
I’m putting myself right in the crosshairs with this one, so have fun people!!
“3. Nothing any rape victim does or leaves undone before, during, or after a rape can make the rape her or his fault or responsibility.”
Saying this unequivocally is wrong. I’m not looking at it from a “she was wearing THAT, what did she expect” kind of perspective, I’m looking at it from a self-defense perspective.
Suppose we replace the word “rape” with some other violent act, that involves someone else imposing their will on you. Murder, perhaps, or armed robbery. Or assault. Claiming something that happened to that person is not their *responsibility*, when it is their own body they’re in charge of defending, brings up the question: then who’s responsibility is it to protect? Everyone else’s?
Saying that someone has a responsibility to defend themselves is *not* automatically putting them on the side of the rapist. We don’t look at a murder victim and say: well, since he/she wasn’t able to fight back, they deserved it, and the murderer was right to do it.
The perpetrator is absolutely the wrong one, and should be punished heavily for their crime!! But that does not mean that someone doesn’t have a responsibility to protect themselves, because who else can you trust to do it? I don’t look at this like I’m blaming the victim. I don’t think they deserved it in any way. There are countless ways to make someone do what they don’t want to do, many of which are relatively unknown or extremely difficult to defend against. That’s why it’s far more important to educate people about the dangers, than it is to demonize the rapist.
They’ve already done that to themselves.
Old timer here. Once in a heavy makeout session. Clothing was removed. Condom in place. Bodies positioned. At the last possible moment I hear, “NO”! Stopped right there. Ensuing conversation was, “I wanted to see if you would stop”. Damn cock teaser; wierd fore play? In any case, got dressed, left, and never went out with her again.
This is the point. Women who play power games will often lose. Men are stronger. Maybe the women want to lose. Sick puppies.
@Jesse In this case you are indeed taking the side of the rapist more than that of the victim. The contract of living in civilized society says that we are not required to fight for our lives and physical well-being. It’s not our fault if someone else violates the rules. A rapist is a human being with free will. The rapist is the one who’s responsible for a rape. Whatever the victim might have done– even if it was unwise– doesn’t shift the burden off of the rapist.
Might a victim wish s/he’d done something differently? Believe it. Is it smarter to be cautious? Sure. But the rapist always, always had the choice to not rape. So focusing on what the victim did is apologist misdirection.
Put it this way: it’s not my job to not get raped. It is my job to not rape others, and it’s their job not to rape me. I’m doing my job right now. In fact, I’m awesome at it.
Your argument also doesn’t work because it can’t be applied universally. Everyone can choose to not rape. That’s a fair expectation. Some people are able to defend themselves from violent crimes, and it’s great when they can do that. They can even take that on as a personal responsibility if they choose. However, for you to decide what the victim is/was capable of is messy at best. For instance, I’m a disabled woman. There are days when I literally don’t have the physical strength to defend myself against anything. And no, I could not support and aim a gun etc. on these days (I’ve tried to shoot recreationally on a sort of iffy day and could barely hold a gun in position). But I’m still an adult with all the rights and responsibilities of any citizen. You’re setting up a standard that I and many other people can’t live up to. Everyone. Everyone can fulfill my standard of not sexually assaulting people.
I believe in educating people in self-defense, and situational awareness, assertiveness, and their personal rights of sexual sovereignty. Most rapes are perpetrated by acquaintances, so the latter two are the most important. Understanding that saying no is always okay, and it’s illegal when your friend/boyfriend/whatever ignores your right to give or withhold consent is, in my experience, a better form of rape prevention than any other. But once we’re talking about an actual sexual assault, let’s focus on what the rapist did and focus on supporting the victim. What good does it do to focus on what the victim did and make excuses for the rapist?
I approve of this posting. That said, I would like to offer a counter opinion, if a bit specific.
I have been on the side of “what the hell?” myself in this topic, and have had several conversations with people at work (perhaps not the best of places, but I find that in a factory environment, provided the job gets done and nobody gets hurt, they don’t give a damn) on this topic. I often play devil’s advocate on the matter of sexual abuse of children, largely due to the knee-jerk reaction most often applied to the concept. Condoning an abusive act does not in any way equate to understanding it; understanding the underlying processes and motivations, especially in the youth offender segment, is both important and edifying.
(Yes, I’m one of those who believes in change. Not all acts are eternally condemning.)
Without getting too personal, I will say that I’ve spent the best part of two years of my own life dealing directly with youth sexual offenders, ranging from Peeping Toms to guys who no longer have a family (due to the nature and selection of their transgressions.) There are two types of offenders; the ones who do it with impulse-driven need, and the ones with a psychological (no matter how twisted or convoluted) basis for their acts. The former isn’t particularly receptive to reprogramming treatment; even if they recognize the socially unacceptable nature of the acts, impulse driven needs (think eating, sneezing, or going to the bathroom) eventually must be met. Absolved of motivation does not mean absolved of guilt, but I’ll leave that for another time.
Those who are psychologically driven to act out are the ones who can be restructured and reprogrammed (brainwashed, if you like.) There are victim and abuser treatment guides in use that describe a mental framework for reasonings and precipitative events that fall into place to create an environment, both within and without, that can lead to action.
Frankly put, some kids act out because they get picked on, some kids act out because they were abused. We hear about it often enough, but rarely put particular thought as to what creates an environment that leads to these instances. Absolutely, girls with postage-stamp skirts should have at least a mild expectation of being looked at- duh. Now, should they have the expectation of being groped because of it? No, but let’s still use some common sense- short of defending unwarranted and unwanted advances, if you go looking for attention, you can get it. There’s not a lot of recourse from the flip side of that coin, beyond blue balls and irritation (this assumes the girl’s going tart just to get looks, skipping the social interaction.) Or maybe I’m just transferring my high school years here.
I’m sorry, I have to agree some with Jesse here. If that makes me an apologist, so be it. It is my responsibility to protect myself. I don’t feel that rape is EVER justified. However, I don’t think it’s a smart idea to go to a hotel room with a guy I just picked up in a bar. I also don’t think it’s a good idea to walk down a dark street in a bad neighborhood. But if I did, I wouldn’t deserve to be murdered any more than I would deserve to be raped. It is my responsibility to make smart decisions. Have I always made smart decisions? No. Have I been VERY lucky to have never been raped? Yes.
@Dixie “It is my responsibility to protect myself” isn’t an attitude I have a problem with whatsoever. “It is your responsibility to protect yourself, person who isn’t me, whom I probably don’t even know.” is where I have issues. I totally respect your desire to assess risk and try to minimize it; I don’t mean to discourage that in any way. I feel like there’s a big difference, though, between consciously trying to make cautious, wise decisions–deciding that your safety is your responsibility, and making that a standard you judge others by.
I totally get why someone would choose not to go into a hotel room with a guy she just picked up in a bar. That is the safer choice, absolutely. But I also support any individual’s right to go into that same hotel room and choose what happens next. That is a human right. And if that choice is taken away, saying “You were being irresponsible! You should’ve known what would happen!” is a) not helpful or actually instructive, b) not telling the victim anything s/he isn’t telling herself, and c) taking attention away from the choices the rapist made.
Without even touching on the above comments except to say that Orphan needs to read “Derailing for Dummies” (google it!) and learn why “it’s oppressed people’s job to always be kind patient educators holding the hands of their oppressors and speaking in soft sweet voices” is an asshole sentiment…
I think the biggest fear the “you have to take some responsibility crowd” has is… well, losing an Internet argument. But the second biggest fear is that women are going to start running around blind drunk in their undies with strangers in the dark alley behind a frat house at 3AM.
If we weren’t governed by the fear of getting ourselves raped, that’s totally what we’d do, right? Like all the time.
@Holly Pervocracy
If we weren’t governed by the fear of getting ourselves raped, that’s totally what we’d do, right? Like all the time.
@Dixie
Oops…hit enter before I was finished!
That made me LOL, Holly