posted
I decide to start a new thread on this rather than further derail Belle's sexism thread.
First, before I get things all muddled, let me say that I think sexual assaults of all kinds are very serious crimes and nothing I'm about to say is intended to minimize any kind of assault. Now on to some random musing on issues.
I think many of our cultural attitudes towards rape are misguided and make programs to reduce rape ineffective.
Rape isn't just a women's problem. I know women and girls are raped far more frequently than men and boys, but the number of sexual assaults against males is not insignificant. Women in American society are trained from an early age to see themselves as potential rape victims. We are taught to be constantly vigilant against the stranger in the bushes. We get classes in how to defend ourselves from being attacked. We are asked to limit our own freedoms and opportunities to protect ourselves from rape. (Never walk alone at night, never go into certain neighborhoods, . . .). I don't think young boys get any training at all on protecting themselves from assault. I don't know any men who are concerned about being raped (outside of a prison). Parents worry about their daughters being sexually abused but not their sons.
I think that bias is reflected in a number of problems. Over the past decade there has been a huge surge in the number of sexual abuse cases involving teenage boys. Many of those cases are decades old but are only now coming to light. I think this reflects two things. First, as a community in general we didn't do enough to protect young men. We thought of rape as a female problem, so we focused on protecting girls. We gave too little thought to the fact that young men were also vulnerable and so did basically nothing to protect them. Second, it seems that young men who were abused were even less likely to come forward with accusations than young women. It appears that accusations of abuse from young men were not given the same serious consideration as those from young women and that young men were given less help in dealing with the assault.
While I was a professor in Engineering at the University of Utah, we had a serious security problem in our building. The building was never locked and we had homeless people living in the building. Several of the female faculty members complained repeatedly about the safety concerns for both students and faculty who worked late at night. We told the administration numerous times that eventually someone was going to be assaulted in the building. Nothing happened, for years, except that the female students were discouraged from working in the building alone after hours and the students organized an service to walk girls to their cars after dark.
Eventually, someone did get raped -- a male janitor who was mentally handicapped.
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posted
Wow. To take advantage of someone is bad enough, but someone who is mentally handicapped is even worse.
I do think that females, more so than males, are conditioned in a way to keep an eye out for potential situations in which they could be raped. I think society has gotten better over the years in teaching this to both genders, but I don't think it is where it should be.
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When I was a young girl, one of my neighbors (two houses down and across the street) was raped and murdered by Ted Bundy. I'm sure that makes my experience some what atypical, but I'm not sure by how much. In my teenage years, my church and the local schools organized numerous rape awareness and self defense workshops. I was trained to be terrified of the boogie man hiding in the bushes. I was told to be terrified of ever walking (or even just being) anywhere alone at night and to be constantly alert for bad guys out to get me. My parents used to have these huge pine trees that crowded onto the front porch. When I came home late at night, I was always scared someone would be hiding in those bushes.
When I was in graduate school in Seattle, I had dinner with a male friend one evening on the University Avenue. After we ate, he went to catch a bus and I walked back to my office alone in the dark. Campus was quiet and I could hear foot steps of someone walking behind me. The steps got closer and closer. I felt a hand touch my shoulder, and planted my elbow squarely into the my attackers solar plexus. Except it wasn't an attacker, it was my friend. He'd missed his bus and was coming to walk me back to my office. He was totally stunned. He had never imagined that response.
Sometime after that, when reading rape statistics I realized how poorly I'd been taught. Yes, rapes are frighteningly common -- but very few women are raped by strangers lurking in the bushes. Those kind of rapes are actually very rare. The now common campus security programs where student volunteers escort young women across campus at night are highly ironic. Young women are far more likely to be raped by their friends and classmates than by a stranger in the parking lot. I was trained to fear the wrong thing.
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quote:Originally posted by Geraine: Wow. To take advantage of someone is bad enough, but someone who is mentally handicapped is even worse.
I do think that females, more so than males, are conditioned in a way to keep an eye out for potential situations in which they could be raped. I think society has gotten better over the years in teaching this to both genders, but I don't think it is where it should be.
The thing that bothered me most about this, is that the male administrators response to the problem was to "try to protect the girls" rather than to fix the building security problem. It was really gross negligence on the part of the University. They settled with the janitor and his family out of court, so the details are secret, but I doubt the janitor and his family were aware of the full extent of the Universities negligence on the issue.
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posted
Yeah, I'm all in favor of more education and knowledge to protect male victims of sexual assault (or potential victims).
I do wonder though, while its intuitive that women are more likely to be raped by friends and classmates then by strangers, I do wonder what the likelihood of date rape is. Thats a genuine question. Are we over-hyping that? (Or a scary thought, not hyping it enough?)
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posted
I am all for training, education and situational awareness, for everyone.
That being said, females are smaller, weaker, generally speaking less aware of dangers (unless educated as you were Rabbit to be wary) less likely to know how to defend themselves and more likely to be assaulted.
I do not mean in any way to be offensive here. There is a reason men's and woman's sports are segregated. As to situational awareness, I am only speaking from first hand experience, and perhaps you know more aware females then I. As to being able to defend oneself, I have been in a lot of martial arts, and there are not a lot of girls who are in those classes.
I always give the women in my life pepper spray (mother, aunt, grandmother, girlfriends, didn't have to give my wife one, she already had one) and let me say this, pepper spray is vital for any person who feels they might have trouble defending themselves.
My mother is 5'1", and she can't weight more then 100 lbs. I'm 6'2" 275 with extensive training. If someone like her was attacked by like someone like me, she would need something to be okay.
Knife, keys, batons, guns, etc must be wielded with skill to be effective, can be turned on their owners, can be potentially accidentally lethal (say if Rabbit had shot her friend instead of elbowed him), are possibly felonies to carry and can be lethal to children if found and played with.
Pepper spray!
Legal, effective with minimal training, effective against dogs, non-lethal, inexpensive, small and convenient.
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quote:That being said, females are smaller, weaker, generally speaking less aware of dangers (unless educated as you were Rabbit to be wary) less likely to know how to defend themselves and more likely to be assaulted.
This doesn't match my experience at all, which is necessarily second hand being male myself. Females generally live in environments that are much, much more dangerous or at least threatening than that of males*, and people are often surprised how aware they (women) are of dangers around them if we actually ask and don't just scorn them for being paranoid or something.
*By this I don't mean hyper-dangerous or anything, just more dangerous than the world men live in. That, I feel, is where the problem comes in-we often encourage women to use bad methods to deal with dangers around them, which isn't quite the same thing.
ETA: Re-reading that, I think I may've come off sounding harsher to you personally than I intended, since I didn't mean to sound harsh to you at all-just to say that many women in my experience, if asked in a way free of any kind of reprobation, might be alive to all sorts of dangers that us dudes don't even consider.
posted
I'll side with Rakeesh here in experience: just about all the women I've known are more aware of potential dangers then most of the men I've known, and certainly more than I am (who has no problem walking around alone at night wherever I am). I'm not clear what point was being made in the original post so I don't know how this impacts that.
Interesting points Rabbit. I find myself much more concerned with the lack of interest or belief that's paid to boy's/men's reports of sexual assault than the smaller amount of training. It seems like that's likely to cause more problems and make it more difficult to solve future problems. I don't what to do about it though.
I was at an outdoor event held at a high school last Sunday. There were no open bathrooms on site, you had to drive down the street for that. We were all told that if anyone got caught urinating on school grounds, not only could they get busted for public urination but they would have to register as a sex offender since it was on school grounds.
It kind of made me wonder, just how many of the people you see in the local offender registry really did something to someone else and how many just had there lives ruined for something stupid yet harmless?
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: ETA: Re-reading that, I think I may've come off sounding harsher to you personally than I intended, since I didn't mean to sound harsh to you at all.
No harshness detected.
This one time when I was about 17 years old my family went to Catalina island for vacation, and my mother, father and I were walking in Avalon after diner. My mom had a shopping bag with souvenirs, a doggiebag from diner and her purse. This squirley guy kept following us, eyeballing my mom's bags. My father slowed down a step and I moved to a flank. My dad and I exchanged looks, knowing that if something went down, we were on top of it. My mother kept walking and talking 100% oblivious not only to our twitchy friend, but also to the fact that my dad and I were no longer walking right beside her.
Our tail surges forward, then all of a sudden spots the fact that my dad and I are watching him and ready to pounce, and turns on a heel and walks away.
We fall back into position on either side of my mom, and she just continues talking, never aware of any of it. We never told her, to this day.
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posted
I don't understand-why wouldn't you tell her? And I mean this in a constructive way, but the experience of a woman who is shielded from danger by those around her who also don't tell her they're doing it...that's really not a good example of women in general being poorer judges of danger than men.
This IS a bit harsh, because I think it's pretty important: it's an example of a person being kept from knowledge of how to ensure their own safety.
For example, how will pepper spray be of any use to someone who is unable or at least less likely to detect a threat *before* it arrives? In fact it might be *more* dangerous to the victim if they tried to use it only when the victimizer is right on them; that is gets it from the purse or keychain, points it in the right direction, squeezes it.
Your anecdote actually serves my point pretty well, though I don't say this is your outlook in general: if women aren't kept from awareness of danger around them, either by some sort of criticism or overt protection and then ignorance, they're likely to be more aware of danger, not less.
It's pretty natural: the world is more dangerous to women than men, so other things being equal their having a better awareness is sensible.
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quote:From Rabbit: Second, it seems that young men who were abused were even less likely to come forward with accusations than young women. It appears that accusations of abuse from young men were not given the same serious consideration as those from young women and that young men were given less help in dealing with the assault.
Bingo. The bigger problem here than the lack of PSAs for young men is the stigma attached to these sorts of things. This goes beyond rape. Men talking about their problems is socially taboo. This is an intra-gender and inter-gender problem.
All sorts of men's health issues are dramatically underreported and misunderstood because men by and large, (relative to women) report their problems dramatically less than women. Many experts believe that there are increasing problems with male bulemia, male self-injury, male suicide attempts, male sexual abuse, etc, but as a gender we're far less likely to seek help for it. I experienced that one first hand, not for sexual abuse, but for self-injury. Mass culture bombarded teens in the late 90s with images of young girls with eating disorders and self-injury problems, but never young men. To be perfectly honest, it made me feel twice as bad, even more alone, and I was that much more discouraged from seeking help.
We're also not supposed to have self-image issues, since apparently mass culture only tells women they have to be hot, but that's not true either, which is why teen boys on steroids and other drugs to help them gain muscle are increasing problems with long term developmental effects.
Our society tells young men that to seek help for these problems makes you weak, and that bottling it up is what men do. I think until you tackle that problem, you're never going to raise this issue. Personally I think that in general a lot of male-oriented gender issues have taken a massive backseat in the last couple decades and they seriously need to be addressed. Whenever I've brought this type of thing up to female friends in the past, I generally get some variation of "So? Women have had it tough for centuries, your turn!" that I've never really understood.
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quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: I am all for training, education and situational awareness, for everyone.
That being said, females are smaller, weaker, generally speaking less aware of dangers (unless educated as you were Rabbit to be wary) less likely to know how to defend themselves and more likely to be assaulted.
Yeah... no amount of rape awareness changes the fact that I'm 6'1'' and 250 lb. Nobody ever messes with me, over anything. I'd be much more concerned with anybody who wasn't already very able to protect themselves physically.
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Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work!
1. Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior.
2. When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!
3. If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault them!
4. NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.
5. If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DON’T ASSAULT THEM!
6. Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry, do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.
7. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.
8. Always be honest with people! Don’t pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. Consider telling them you plan to assault them. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to rape them.
9. Don’t forget: you can’t have sex with someone unless they are awake!
10. Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone “on accident” you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do.
And, ALWAYS REMEMBER: if you didn’t ask permission and then respect the answer the first time, you are commiting a crime- no matter how “into it” others appear to be.
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posted
I grew up as a victim of violence, and no one has laid an unkind hand on my in seven years. Mostly due to my size, but learning to survive as I did made me paranoid about every situation and every person, I look people in eye no matter what to see how they react and I do my best to make sure there is no one behind me for atleast six feet. I dont care what anyone says, I have a scar on my face reminding me what complete strangers will do with no reason.
A few years back I was left with no option but to get a ride from a friend of a friend who had already seemed wierd to me. Driving along a thirty mile stretch of highway he asked if he could perform felatio on me, when I told him no he went on to explain how he wasnt gay but I did happen to be the kind of european look that he liked. That highway has claimed alot of lives of those stupid enough to walk along the side, either side is a twenty foot drop to rocks and trees. I stayed in that car, ignoring him as much as humanly possible as he kept talking, until we reached town where I got and kept as far away from him as possible. Back then he was active in the public chess meetings at the library, just the sort of thing a studious young mind might look into. He also spent much of his time helping illegal mexican families find places to live.
Yeah, there is alot more than people know about.
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quote:That being said, females are... generally speaking less aware of dangers
This is an odd thing to say, given that this entire thread is mostly about the fear that women have of being sexually assaulted or raped. Smaller and weaker, I'll grant you, you but "less aware of dangers"? I don't think so.
I sometimes walk by myself, occaisionally after dark. I enjoy walking by myself, but I am always hyper-aware of my surroundings when I am walking by myself unless I am in a busy area. I never walk with headphones in. I know who's in front of me, who's behind me, what the cars around me are doing, where the nearest house with a light on is. I carry keys and I look people in the eye when I pass them. None of that makes me safe, but I do refuse to hide in my house all the time. I think women are very aware of the dangers.
Not to mention awareness classes are often included in girls' gym classes (while not in men's): they were in mine, including fighting tactics and strategies to employ (or at least attempt) when faced with a larger, heavier man.
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quote:I don't understand-why wouldn't you tell her?
Why ruin a memory of vacation goodness?
Maybe you are right...*shrug*
I've found that pointing out that someone did something stupid that made them vulnerable isn't the best way of convincing them to change their behavior.
posted
Stupid...um...perhaps the wrong word choice. All I meant was she was 100% oblivious of her surroundings.
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I've found that pointing out that someone did something stupid that made them vulnerable isn't the best way of convincing them to change their behavior.
OK, back to being a bit confused and not intending to sound harsh: right now you sound like you're resisting the idea that it's a good thing to let someone know when there is danger in their surroundings that they've missed.
To respond to your statements in order:
1. I don't believe what I'm (and others) are suggesting would have the impact you're thinking it would. If you did it now it would probably be useless, because how could it be helpful? "Mom, remember on vacation how we were walking up the street and you didn't notice anything was wrong? And so far as you were concerned, nothing at all happened? There was danger that time." Not very helpful.
If, however, you'd said shortly after the event, "Mom, there was a man Dad and I thought was going to try and rob you just then," and describe the situation, there's an excellent chance she would've remembered the guy in question, because people are often aware of more than they're aware of, if you know what I mean.
Ideally the best thing to do would have been to put the larger, more physically imposing mass between her and the perceived threat and then say something along the lines of, "Hey, Mom, don't lose your cool, but Dad and I think there's something weird about that guy over there..." and get her to see the guy. Rather than letting her go about her day completely oblivious. The reason that's the ideal solution is pretty straightforward: there won't always be other people around, so it's very useful to be aware of their surroundings-and you don't get that awareness by having other people be aware of it for you and not tell you about it.
2. I don't think she did something stupid. In fact I wasn't critical of her behavior at all, Stone_Wolf. I was actually critical of your behavior (and your father's). Not for protecting your mother, obviously-but for the part where you never told her it happened. And I think you're exaggerating when you say she was 100% oblivious to her surroundings. She had the two of you right there, didn't she? Proxy situational awareness, it seems to me.
Obviously there's no way for me to know if this is a pattern in her life, that other people are responsible for her own physical safety...but for the purposes of this particular anecdote the people she trusted to be aware of her surroundings were aware of her surroundings, so I'm not sure calling her oblivious would be appropriate. And if someone isn't informed, "Hey, you made an error," as she did with her awareness, how will they ever learn?
-------------------
It's really interesting how the book The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker has, for lack of a better word, formalized my thoughts on stuff like this. I'm by no means a trained expert or even an journeyman or apprentice or anything, but it's helped me be a more informed layman I think. One of the ways it was most helpful was in pointing out how important it is for individuals to be responsible for their own safety-and how they really can be safe, even on their own, in most cases, if they take a few preventative steps.
Pretty much the single biggest step in the entire book is to listen to intuition when it warns of danger, and to recognize when it's intuition we should listen to and when it's something we should discard. The way individuals get to that point is not by having others shield them from experience, and this is potentially a vitally important lesson because of course we're all alone sometimes.
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posted
*sigh* There's no particular point I disagree with you on, but you have to understand, I have tried to make my mom more aware, I have tried a lot. But eventually you have to accept who people are. She has some great treats, and this is not one of them.
Her new husband is not healthy, and not robust or able to defend her as my father was. She doesn't carry the pepper spray I give her. *shrug*
Her choice. I can only pester her so much before it just makes her angry at me.
And heaven forbid, if something happened, I wouldn't feel bad, as we all make choices and have to live with the consequences.
I always tell my wife, our son and daughter will be taking self defense classes when old enough, and another class of their choice. She fully agrees.
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posted
Ahh, I see. Bear in mind I was just speaking to the anecdote, and couldn't have said how much it applied to, y'know, your mother's approach (and your family's approach) to her safety in general just from that.
If you don't mind talking about it, because I admit I'm rather curious about the frame of mind of someone so willfully...I hesitate to say ignorant when referring to your mother but it really does seem an accurate choice of words.
So willfully ignorant about something like physical safety-it's something I would've been curious about before reading the book too, though after reading it gives me new things to wonder about, such as what have you tried to make her more aware? And when you do, in what way does she get angry? Again, only if you don't mind talking about it.
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My mom has taken a self defense class...once...decades ago...so she thinks she is okay.
She told me the two inch long, half inch diameter pepper spray I gave her was too bulky and took up too much room in her purse.
When I ask her if she carries it, she rolls her eyes and heaves a deep sigh, and says "No." with enough attitude that it is clear that it will be a fight. *shrug* Again, her life, her choices.
As to her awareness...well, she just lives in her own world. She jokes about it with her new husband, who has started calling her a "snorkel" because they went snorkeling once and she was swimming about ten feet from a corral reef which would have torn her to pieces but since she was unaware of it and did not get hurt, they reason her innocence protects her.
They believe in "the power of intentions" and Riki (channeling the universe's healing power through your hands) and crystals and other things that I don't.
Her husband (who has a compromised immune system from childhood cancer) didn't get a flu shot, not trusting "western medicine" and got the swine flue and nearly died. Spent two months in the ICU, and had a stroke from a blood clot from all the IVs. Now he has been diagnosed with cancer, and is refusing chemo. My mom is refusing to believe that the cancer is in his stomach lining. High dose vitamin C, prayer, Riki, and other new agey cures.
*shrug* You don't get to control your family, only love them.
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posted
I'm curious what would convince people of either gender to change their behavior. I know I walk around without any special defensive precautions at night (with my mp3 player going). I've never lived in a ghetto, but some of the places I went in Austin weren't exactly upscale. I stopped walking here (Boulder, CO) at night outside the city after I was stalked by a mountain lion. When it comes to sexual assault the only person I know (personally) who has said anything to me about being raped was another guy. Though as is usually the case, like it was brought up here earlier, the abuser was family. I know for me hearing about close calls, or news reports of something happening to people I don't know has basically no impact on me. At least not in the change my routine sense.
Certainly overall I'm more concerned (for humanity in general here) about the unreported abuses that are instigated by people the abused knows well. I'm, however, curious about what it takes to change someone's behavior once they've exited the school system.
posted
That is a fundamental question about humanity.
What does it take to change someone's (beliefs, thus changing their) behavior?
Good question, and I could produce a laundry list of possible motivators, but have limited time at the moment and it would be limited in it's usefulness.
So I will open it to the floor...
What does it take to change someone's (beliefs, thus changing their) behavior?
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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My decision not to walk around here at night wasn't based on a change in my fundamental understanding of human belief or new religious conviction. It came from realizing that not only was there a chance of running into mountain lions, it happened. In fact it happened to me! The change was created by introducing something I already feared (getting mauled by mountain lions, which by the way happened to someone here a few months after I ran into mine). Introducing another element already emotionally charged and personal experience were my two factors. So I'm curious what other's had change their mind, or think would change their mind.
And anyway, fear of rape and good situational awareness are not the same thing.
Stone_Wolf, I think your mother is unusual in her apparent flippant unawareness. My point is that the default is usually that women are very aware of the dangers.
It just annoys me that you phrased it as if women are more ignorant than men on the very thing that, from day one, gets hammered into most of our brains.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: That is a fundamental question about humanity.
What does it take to change someone's (beliefs, thus changing their) behavior?
Good question, and I could produce a laundry list of possible motivators, but have limited time at the moment and it would be limited in it's usefulness.
So I will open it to the floor...
What does it take to change someone's (beliefs, thus changing their) behavior?
posted
On a more serious note, I believe that there is a current of social pressure in people not changing their beliefs. For example, Global Warming.
I find that, for me it's much easier to change my beliefs/behaviors when I stop caring what other people think and just look at facts.
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quote:Stone_Wolf, I think your mother is unusual in her apparent flippant unawareness. My point is that the default is usually that women are very aware of the dangers.
By my personal first hand experience, my mother's level of situational numbness is not average for her gender, it's above average. None the less, it has been my experience (and again, your experience may vary wildly from mine) that men have better situational awareness then women on average.
And why wouldn't they? 150,000 years of men hunting prey, protecting their families, fighting each other is written into our hard code.
I am not saying women are less, just different. I am hugely in favor of extensive self defense training for everyone.
quote:It just annoys me that you phrased it as if women are more ignorant than men on the very thing that, from day one, gets hammered into most of our brains.
I never mentioned ignorance. Awareness is not knowledge. It's a good habit, one that you have to develop, and while fear can be the motivation to develop it, fear does not in and of itself give you good perceptions of possible danger.
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: 150,000 years of men hunting prey, protecting their families, fighting each other is written into our hard code.
What do you suppose women were doing for those 150,000 years? And are you assuming these skills are all encoded on the Y chromosome or something?
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posted
Ok, I have to admit you're beginning to sound a bit sexist here, Stone Wolf. I'm not saying you are but to me, that's how your message is beginning to sound.
For one thing, as rivka notes we hardly know where something as broad as 'situational awareness' is to be found in one's genes, if it's to be found mostly there at all. Personally, I think that sort of trait is much more about experience than background, and *other* traits that might be handed down will be helpful to letting one last long enough to develop better awareness.
ETA: Most things I've read suggest fear is actually the trigger for danger awareness, so I think you're wrong about that. Or at least fear-related perceptions. And, listen, it's your family-but just by what you've said here, perhaps you should re-examine the decision to avoid a fight at the expense of your mother living dangerously. Not just walking down the street, but swimming, getting sick, so on and so forth. I mean...these are the kinds of things that have a measurable impact on length of *life*. If it were me (I mention this because you spoke about it-I'm really not trying to be the boss of you or aomething) that would be a decision I'd reexamine every so often, to let the mom lie, because of the consequences of being wrong.
Second, and I put this delicately, I wonder if your experiences with your mother might have more of an impact on your perception of women in general than you think-that'd hardly be unusual.
Third, just try an experiment, if you can, with women you're on good terms with. Ask them about what kinds of things they're aware of and think of concerning danger around them, obviously if that sort of thing can be asked without freaking out. Some trust would have to be there first.
Suffice to say your experience doesn't match mine, though it DOES match for one with a higher-than-usual percentage of really, really oblivious, ignorant people in their close life. That's not a shot, that's me pointing out that that sort of thing frequently has an impact on how we view the world that we're not aware of unless we really force ourselves to consider it. I know that's how it is with me, anyway.
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posted
I think most men would be surprised at the lengths woman go through to protect themselves from sexual harassment.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: If you don't mind talking about it, because I admit I'm rather curious about the frame of mind of someone so willfully...I hesitate to say ignorant when referring to your mother but it really does seem an accurate choice of words.
So willfully ignorant about something like physical safety-it's something I would've been curious about before reading the book too, though after reading it gives me new things to wonder about, such as what have you tried to make her more aware? And when you do, in what way does she get angry? Again, only if you don't mind talking about it.
Just speaking as myself here--my mother never taught me to be afraid of the dark, and I am extremely grateful to her for it. I walk and bike and ride public transit anywhere I want, any time I want. Like Rabbit said, the rapist hiding in the bushes is a fairly rare scenario. And tensing up every time you hear footsteps behind you when you dared to walk to your car alone in a dark parking lot is a crippling way to live and I refuse to do it.
This attitude may come back to bite me in the butt someday, but in the meantime, I will not have lived my life in fear.
Posts: 364 | Registered: Dec 2005
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quote:What do you suppose women were doing for those 150,000 years? And are you assuming these skills are all encoded on the Y chromosome or something?
Raising children, cooking food, treating hides, sewing leather cloths from said hides, gathering nuts and berries and wild vegetables...*shrug* What do you think they were doing? I am not an anthropologist, but I like science shows. I could be wrong.
quote:Ok, I have to admit you're beginning to sound a bit sexist here...
That was not my intent. In which way?
quote:I wonder if your experiences with your mother might have more of an impact on your perception of women in general than you think
Possible. My wife and a double stroller of kiddies and I went to the farmer's market today. A lot of people, not a whole lot of room. Their were at least five times that someone was looking at produce or daydreaming and would have simply collided with me had I not stopped dead in my tracks and waited for them. All of them were women. Some didn't even pay enough attention to notice they had cut off a guy with a six foot long double stroller and just kept on what they were doing with out even looking up.
I apologize if I'm coming off as jerk. I think that the law, employment, and many other aspects of our lives men and women should be treated equally.
I think it is every able bodied person's duty to come to the aid of those set upon by villains, regardless of gender.
I think that we should train ourselves as a nation to be so strong and able to defend ourselves that many violent crimes become all but impossible.
I think that anyone who kills, rapes, molests or kidnaps another human being should be killed (after a brief period for a secondary investigation). Zero tolerance.
Any man who puts his hands on a woman to hurt is not a man, he is a evil bastard and should be punished so severely that for him to do it again would be unthinkable. Lob off his pinkey? Something.
And at the end of the day, I still think men tend to have better situational awareness then women.
I could be wrong. Please do not take this belief as a slight on the whole gender, but merely my observation of people and the conclusions I drew from them.
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quote:This attitude may come back to bite me in the butt someday, but in the meantime, I will not have lived my life in fear.
I am all for not living in fear. One of my most deep seated and personal beliefs is that you can overcome your fear by personal strength.
Instead of "tensing up every time you hear footsteps", you simply have your pepper spray on your key chain and are ready, able and willing to defend yourself so there is no fear or need of fear.
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quote:What do you suppose women were doing for those 150,000 years? And are you assuming these skills are all encoded on the Y chromosome or something?
Raising children, cooking food, treating hides, sewing leather cloths from said hides, gathering nuts and berries and wild vegetables...*shrug* What do you think they were doing?
Plenty of them were also hunting. Perhaps you should not be basing your arguments on what you don't actually know?
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Raising children, cooking food, treating hides, sewing leather cloths from said hides, gathering nuts and berries and wild vegetables...*shrug* What do you think they were doing? I am not an anthropologist, but I like science shows. I could be wrong.
Men also did a lot of these things too-hunter-gatherers, well, it's my understanding that the woman didn't just stay back at the cave while the dude went out hunting mammoth. Just didn't work that way-not enough calories in it to sustain one's self. I think you may be mistaken about what life was like for hunter gatherers. Things changed when humanity started to shift to more agrarian lifestyles, but then once that happens your underlying point - men being more attuned to danger by way of genetic background thanks to their paternal history of hunting - falls by the wayside.
quote:That was not my intent. In which way?
Individually, not much-though the remark 'men are better at sensing danger because they're built that way' line of thought does actually sound pretty sexist to me. But that's pretty subjective. Taken collectively, though-women are smaller and weaker, women aren't as good at sensing danger, women are much less likely to be aware of their surroundings, women need to be taught (by men-this is implied repeatedly but never overtly stated, specifically by the story of your mother being protected but never actually told of the time she was nearly mugged) how to protect themselves instead of learning it or somehow knowing it on their own as men do.
Basically your overall theme seems to be 'other things being equal, women aren't to be trusted to watch out for their own safety as much as men are'. To me that has started to sound like what you're getting at anyway-and to me that sounds like a sexist message.
quote:Possible. My wife and a double stroller of kiddies and I went to the farmer's market today. A lot of people, not a whole lot of room. Their were at least five times that someone was looking at produce or daydreaming and would have simply collided with me had I not stopped dead in my tracks and waited for them. All of them were women. Some didn't even pay enough attention to notice they had cut off a guy with a six foot long double stroller and just kept on what they were doing with out even looking up.
OK, at this point I'm beginning to have trouble crediting your perceptions, because you're continually referencing anecdotes in which women are entirely worse than men at situational awareness. That is to say, we're not hearing about all of the doubtless many times you've been put at risk of minor injury by a man, even though it certainly happens unless you're suggesting the disparity in awareness is really drastic. Aside from that, some things to consider about your experience at the farmer's market: of those present, what proportion were women? Why were they unaware (meaning is it even relevant to this conversation)? How confident are you that none of these instances had you or your wife's stroller handling to blame, even partially?
quote:I apologize if I'm coming off as jerk. I think that the law, employment, and many other aspects of our lives men and women should be treated equally.
...well, OK, when you specify 'many', that's a bit of a sexist-sounding statement too. It begs the question: which aspects of our lives shouldn't men and women be treated equally, and why not?
quote:I think it is every able bodied person's duty to come to the aid of those set upon by villains, regardless of gender.
How?
quote:I think that we should train ourselves as a nation to be so strong and able to defend ourselves that many violent crimes become all but impossible.
I'm sure that training the population in general to be better at violence is an effective tool to curtail violence, Stone Wolf. That sounds snarky, but it really is just a means of pointing out a flaw in your reasoning. In fact, if looking at other nations where violent crime is less common, and looking at how they handle such things differently, we should be teaching our population to be less violent in order to curtail violent crime.
quote:I think that anyone who kills, rapes, molests or kidnaps another human being should be killed (after a brief period for a secondary investigation). Zero tolerance.
Well, the death penalty is an entirely different discussion, but there are of course a few problems with that outlook as well. One of them being you can't un-kill someone, and so what happens when (and it is when) we're wrong about someone raping, killing, kidnapping, or molesting someone. Another problem with that outlook is that in all but one of those crimes, the victim is still alive at the end of the crime, meaning it's possible that the punishment exceeds the crime. And finally, there's the problem with zero tolerance policies in general: that they don't take context into consideration, trusting more in some far-flung authority to mandate sentencing than they do in a smaller-scale judge and jury of one's peers.
quote:Any man who puts his hands on a woman to hurt is not a man, he is a evil bastard and should be punished so severely that for him to do it again would be unthinkable. Lob off his pinkey? Something.
I think that ejecting people who hurt other people from humanity makes them somehow the other and doesn't do much to address the real problem: people who hurt other people generally don't just happen, they're made or at least very predictable. Then of course there's the problem with this outlook that crime has decreased over time, not increased-whereas violent judicial punishment has also decreased, not increased. Your proposed solution doesn't fit with what appears to be a system that works for, over the long run, reducing violent crime.
There was plenty of theft in times when it cost someone a hand. There was tons of rape when the victim's family might kill the rapist, or force him to marry the victim.
quote:And at the end of the day, I still think men tend to have better situational awareness then women.
And at the end of the day, I tend to think that it's a risky business making sweeping judgments about such large groups one has such little experience with, as you do with women-as-a-whole. (As most anyone does with women-as-a-whole, or men-as-a-whole, or left-handed-people-as-a-whole; such groups are simply too large, too wide-ranging, to be lumped together in the ways you're doing.) From the things you're saying, it sounds like you mean well, but that your perceptions on the situational awareness of women-in-general are colored a lot more by your own preconceived notions about women than they are by actual experiences with any sort of representative sample.
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quote:Just speaking as myself here--my mother never taught me to be afraid of the dark, and I am extremely grateful to her for it. I walk and bike and ride public transit anywhere I want, any time I want. Like Rabbit said, the rapist hiding in the bushes is a fairly rare scenario. And tensing up every time you hear footsteps behind you when you dared to walk to your car alone in a dark parking lot is a crippling way to live and I refuse to do it.
I'm not against any of that, personally-nor did I suggest you should tense up in King-esque dread whenever a twig snaps or gravel shuffles in the parking lot on the way to your car. But there's a huge, cavernous, gaping chasm between constant body-numbing paralyzing terror and the sort of absolute 'won't be scared even of things that absolutely should scare me' things that Stone_Wolf has described of his mother.
For example, in the parking lot-if you hear a footstep, I wouldn't say tense up in dread. That's silly-it's a parking lot. There are bound to be other people in it. But if you hear a footstep unexpectedly, and especially if it's close, look-there's certainly nothing wrong with that. No freedom has been lost by doing so. Whatever hazards are or aren't around us are impacted exactly zero by our completely internal mental outlook-that is, our 'I will have lived free'. And such declarations are always worth a whole lot more in the abstract than in practice.
We've all got a great big powerful machine stuffed between our ears, telling us things all the time. There's nothing wrong, nothing un-hopeful or pessimistic or alarmist, by checking out something if that machine says to us, "Hey, examine this for a brief moment, wouldya?"
ETA: For the record, I'm only even talking about this kind of awareness because of the way the discussion with Stone_Wolf has gone-not because I think attacks from completely random strangers in completely random places are what women, or anyone has the most to fear from. That's never been true at any point in history I'm familiar with. Just wanted to clarify.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
The best things you can do are 1)prepare yourself, 2) always be cautious of your surroundings, 3) Stranger Danger take extra steps to analyze a person who's taken interest in you. -- 4) for parents, if your kids say someone in the family is messing with them look into it (an issue my girlfriend had to deal with growing up, being molested by her moms boyfriends and her brothers) 5) for parents, teach your kids that it's not right for people even family to mess with your 'parts' under most circumstances. 6) when outside always keep your ears open don't wear headphones, this makes you a big target. 7) Always have several methods of defense though up, and on the ready -Mace, a knife, a gun, or hands/fists if you're really skilled 8) Over revealing clothes means you're asking for it...
It's up to the parents to teach their children how to defend themselves by family, friends, and strangers alike... -- I think most males are better suited for copping with the emotions accompanied with rape, more-so than females, so they are less likely to seek help. -- I think Rabbits paranoia wasn't a bad thing, your friend could have been someone else, why did he walk up behind you not saying anything O_o maybe saying "Hold on Rabbit" would have prevented you from causing him pain. -- I'm thinking here that, most males are molested by close-ish family and friends, but very rarely by strangers, usually stories of people being molested by family/friends doesn't get out that often (from both genders) which would make it seem like this never happens to guys... -- Doing things under the influence is considered rape, I wonder how often it's reported (alcohol). -- A lot of sex offenders, are considered sex offenders because of dumb rules and such, I remember reading a story a long while back of an older guy (20) dating a younger girl (17) parents caught him and her doing stuff, and he got convicted for it, a year later they married and he's a still a registered sex offender for it .__. -- The Rabbit have you ever considered the fact that rapes (on females, outside family/friends) are occurring less due to the lessons that are being taught in classes nowadays? I think this is pretty damn true....
quote:The best things you can do are 1)prepare yourself, 2) always be cautious of your surroundings, 3) Stranger Danger take extra steps to analyze a person who's taken interest in you.
Well, OK-this is fine. I wouldn't say 'cautious', I would say 'aware', but that's pretty subjective and one person's 'cautious' is another person's 'aware'.
quote: 4) for parents, if your kids say someone in the family is messing with them look into it (an issue my girlfriend had to deal with growing up, being molested by her moms boyfriends and her brothers) 5) for parents, teach your kids that it's not right for people even family to mess with your 'parts' under most circumstances.
Also, I think, excellent advice and according to experts I've read good advice as well.
quote:6) when outside always keep your ears open don't wear headphones, this makes you a big target.
Well, it would depend on a variety of factors. Wearing headphones doesn't automatically make one a target, but it is a means of taking away a big sense-and it's a visible means.
quote:7) Always have several methods of defense though up, and on the ready -Mace, a knife, a gun, or hands/fists if you're really skilled
Several of those methods are either illegal or statistically more likely to be a greater danger in the long run to the person possessing them than a completely random stranger. Or both.
quote:8) Over revealing clothes means you're asking for it...
OK, I have to ask, are you serious? Because this is just plain stupid as hell for a variety of reasons (not least its enormous inaccuracy). You are aware that the vast - and I mean the overwhelming majority - of people who are victims of sexual assault, y'know, are victimized by people they trust, not random strangers who judge them (as stupid as that is) completely on their choice of clothing?
Suggesting that it's not choice-of-clothes that results in someone being raped, but much more likely to be their relationship to a rapist?
Freaking hell, man-I and a whole host of others could go on at great length about how asinine that argument is. I hope you were only making a tasteless, stupid joke, showcasing your adolescence-it would fit with your overall style. The reason I'm so irritated, bordering on actually angry, is that I think you're not judging by the rest of your post.
quote:I think most males are better suited for copping with the emotions accompanied with rape, more-so than females, so they are less likely to seek help.
...why does this even make sense? Because men are more familiar, as a gender, with being the victims of violent identity-altering sexual crime than women, and thus have developed emotional coping mechanisms to better handle the ensuing problems? That's not an absurd opinion to hold, is it Rawrain?
Perhaps the reason men are less likely to seek help than women, if it is true that they are less likely, is because the stigma for a man being raped is different than it is for a woman being raped, and we don't yet, as a society, have a counter-message in place that it's OK for a man to admit to being a victim of such a crime. Just a thought.
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I also can't help but acknowledge that your opinions on dealing with random danger are, well, completely at odds with your totally irrational opinions on things like wearing a helmet while cycling, because only klutzes fall down.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
You're boring, whether what I said about males being better emotionally able to cope is in fact debatable, I considered removing it in-case someone wanted to attack it, it's ONLY an observation, if you want to blame anything blame estrogen. Me raped by Aunt, friend(male) raped by nanny(male) = both recluses, almost no noticeable emotional damage. Sister raped by Aunt, Girlfriend(female >_>) by brothers and mothers boyfriends, and friend raped by ??(she won't talk about it) = all emotionally unstable as nitro-glycerin is explosive. ------------ I've spent over 50 days of my life in time on a bike, I've even gone as far as building ramps and jumping them, all my accidents revolved around doing stupid things on my bike, none of which landed me on my head, IT IS A FACT if I don't do stupid stuff on my bike I will not crash, now on a skateboard, that's a whole 'nother thing, for that I will need a CUP and a Helmet...
Posts: 461 | Registered: Nov 2010
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The four major symptoms of Rape-related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder are:
Re-experiencing the trauma (Rape victims may experience uncontrollable intrusive thoughts about the rape) Social withdrawal Avoidance behaviors (a general tendency to avoid any thoughts, feelings, or cues which could bring up the catastrophic and most traumatizing elements of the rape) Irritability, hostility, rage and anger
Posts: 127 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Rawrain: I've spent over 50 days of my life in time on a bike, I've even gone as far as building ramps and jumping them, all my accidents revolved around doing stupid things on my bike, none of which landed me on my head, IT IS A FACT if I don't do stupid stuff on my bike I will not crash, now on a skateboard, that's a whole 'nother thing, for that I will need a CUP and a Helmet...
What will save you from a stupid person in a car? You can be completely competent on your bike and still die horribly due to someone else's carelessness.
[As a totally unrelated aside, I think I hopped on this little thing because of my current situation. Living and commuting in NYC has made me think that most bikers and pedestrains hit here probably were responsible for their own injuries. Daily, I have to deal with bikers breaking the law by riding in the wrong lanes, running red lights, lane splitting, and going the wrong direction. Pedestrians are worse - waking out on greens, crossing the street without crosswalks, popping out from between cars or around a bus, and generally being dumb.
In other words, you think you're being smart, but I highly doubt you are.]
Posts: 1069 | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
If lack of situational awareness were actually an important contributing factor to women being raped more frequently than men, I would expect that women would also be more likely to be victims or other types of violent crimes such as robberies, muggings, assaults and murder.
We aren't. In fact women are rather dramatically less likely than men to be victims of any violent crime other than rape. I suspect that this is in part due to the fact that women are more likely than men to avoid dangerous situations, like walking alone at night in a sketchy neighborhood. In my experience, men very frequently assume that they are safe anywhere because they are large and manly. Or more significantly, men frequently feel that choosing to avoid a dangerous situation makes then less manly.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: I suspect that this is in part due to the fact that women are more likely than men to avoid dangerous situations, like walking alone at night in a sketchy neighborhood. In my experience, men very frequently assume that they are safe anywhere because they are large and manly. Or more significantly, men frequently feel that choosing to avoid a dangerous situation makes then less manly.
I agree. In some ways, such as this, men are socialized to act stupidly. Even being aware of this in myself, I still sometimes fall for it.
Posts: 1069 | Registered: Feb 2005
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Rawrain, I note without surprise your ongoing habit of addressing only parts of a post that offers a challenge to one of yours, with a brief (attempt at) pithy zinger to dismiss the rest of it.
Someone actually describing themselves as a recluse is probably a pretty good indicator of emotional damage, actually. It's certainly noticeable. Just saying, "It's only an 'observation'," doesn't free you from the usual need not to say something that's not, well, sexist and foolish.
As for FACTS...well, you don't know the definition of the word 'fact', which is a shame because it's a very easy word. "IT IS A FACT that if I don't do anything stupid in my car, I won't get in an accident. Therefore I don't wear a seatbelt."
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Perhaps you should not be basing your arguments on what you don't actually know?
At least Rakeesh explained his position in detail and was not such a condescending rude person. I have no expectation that everyone will agree with me and praise my wonderfully fascinating world view, but golly, you could at least attempt to be nice.
quote: women need to be taught (by men...women aren't to be trusted to watch out for their own safety as much as men are'.
This is not what I think, and I'm pretty sure not what I said. If you got that from what I said then perhaps you're projecting or assuming, but no matter where you got this idea, it is not what I think or have said.
quote:OK, at this point I'm beginning to have trouble crediting your perceptions, because you're continually referencing anecdotes in which women are entirely worse than men at situational awareness.
Why would I tell stories of things to disprove my point? That is silly. You don't like my conclusion so you are doubting my perceptions is highly insulting. The story of my mother was an extreme one, to help make a contested point, the same is true of the farmer's market, but involved multiple strangers as you again called my perceptions into question, suggesting that my judgment might be clouded by my close relationships.
quote:...of those present, what proportion were women? Why were they unaware (meaning is it even relevant to this conversation)? How confident are you that none of these instances had you or your wife's stroller handling to blame, even partially?
Proportion = mixed, couples/singles/groups, male/female, young/old, it was pretty diverse. Why? They were shopping, eating, talking, daydreaming, is it really important why someone is not paying attention and wonders into strangers? Is it pertinent, I'd say yes, or else I would not have brought it up. How confident, very. There were times that day that other missteps happened that were not as one sided, where I either had equal blame or more, but never did I just turn off my radar and expect people to make way for me as the people in my example did to me and others.
quote:you specify 'many', that's a bit of a sexist-sounding statement too. It begs the question: which aspects of our lives shouldn't men and women be treated equally, and why not?
Men and women are different, to try and set up systems otherwise is ludicrous. We have different interests, different needs, different size clothing and styles. Is it sexist for Lifetime network to have their slogan (until recently) be "Television for women"? You can not possibly be calling for the uni-gendering of all, right?
quote:I'm sure that training the population in general to be better at violence is an effective tool to curtail violence, Stone Wolf. That sounds snarky, but it really is just a means of pointing out a flaw in your reasoning. In fact, if looking at other nations where violent crime is less common, and looking at how they handle such things differently, we should be teaching our population to be less violent in order to curtail violent crime.
I see no flaw in my reasoning but a huge glaring one in yours. The more you make the law abiding citizens sheep, the more wolves will eat. Let us say for the sake of argument, you are a violent, raping robbing murdering son of bi**h, and "we have been teaching our population to be less violent", do think it will be hard to find a victim? Or if you know for a fact that almost everyone is carrying pepper spray, a gun, a knife, or a tazer as well as at least a year of training in self defense...
How about you are a ham fisted, bull headed wife beating son of a gun...and you know that your neighbors aren't trained and are afraid of you...or your neighbors, wife, children and everyone else is trained, so fear isn't holding them back. In which scenario are you more likely to get away with it?
quote:One of them being you can't un-kill someone, and so what happens when (and it is when) we're wrong about someone raping, killing, kidnapping, or molesting someone.
That would suck, but that is why I said a brief time for a secondary investigation. If mistakes are made, then I'm sorry, you died for a good cause.
quote:Another problem with that outlook is that in all but one of those crimes, the victim is still alive at the end of the crime, meaning it's possible that the punishment exceeds the crime.
No, ask a rape victom if they are ever the same again. The person they were is now dead forever, and the person they have become will always be haunted by ghosts, always carry scars. And to tell you the truth I don't give a flying fiery crap about "punishment exceeds the crime" when it comes to this. As a group society has the right to protect itself, and once you prove that you are a danger, the ONLY way to 100.00% guarantee that you will never do it again is to kill you.
quote:And finally, there's the problem with zero tolerance policies in general: that they don't take context into consideration, trusting more in some far-flung authority to mandate sentencing than they do in a smaller-scale judge and jury of one's peers.
You still would have to be charged with that particular crime (instead of say, a lesser count of manslaughter) and proved guilty in a court of law. As a deterrent to others, zero tolerance is awesome. As a deterrent to repeat offenders, it is unquestioningly the best!
quote:Your proposed solution doesn't fit with what appears to be a system that works for, over the long run, reducing violent crime.
Lets see the numbers, and their sources, those are some very vague statements you are making.
quote:I tend to think that it's a risky business making sweeping judgments about such large groups...
Agreed.
quote:your perceptions on the situational awareness of women-in-general are colored a lot more by your own preconceived notions about women than they are by actual experiences with any sort of representative sample.
Again, you disagree with my conclusions so you question my ability. Uncool.
My original point was that women should remain the focus of training and awareness efforts when it comes to sexual assault, which was in response to Rabbit's original offshoot post.
The situational awareness offshoot discussion is rather unimportant I feel, as many people have pointed out, rape is not usually a random act of violence, but instead a targeted act of someone the victim knows. Further, the in depth discussion my opinion that, in general, one gender has a slight advantage in one category because of my experience is even less important.
quote:8) Over revealing clothes means you're asking for it...
Rawrain, this statement is undefendable. There is no "asking for it" when it comes to sexual assault. There are "less safe" and "more safe" ways to go about things, but to imply that someone deserves to be raped because of the way they dress is worthy of ridicule and shame.
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