What Thunderfoot knows about Rape Prevention.

Agreed.

I don’t see how any reasonable person could interpret “stay out of shady areas”

1- to include their own bedroom

2- to not include a bad part of town, late at night, alone, that’s literally quite dark.

I am for whatever achieves the best happiness, safety, freedom, well-being of people, and the other values of humanism. It is unfortunate what society we live in. Similar to how we teach drivers to drive defensively, we ought to teach all people reasonable effective strategies – if there are any – to avoid harm.

IMHO, an entirely apt metaphor:

We do need to change the culture. When a crime happens, we should not talk at all about how they were not driving defensively enough. I never want to see the police, or the news, or the prosecutor talk about how the drunk driver accident could have been avoided if the other driver just was a little more cautious and defensive behind the wheel.

Instead, we need to find the criminal, and prosecute them.

We also need to change the culture of how it’s ok to drink and drive. We need to instill that it’s bad, and dangerous, and actually hurts people. We need to change the culture so that other people look down on people who drink and drive.

However, a minimal amount of education based on the facts – if any – should be done to new drivers.

End metaphor.

There’s nothing wrong with telling people the sad facts of the world and what is likely to get them hurt or not. I suspect that walking alone, in the dark, in a bad part of town, is a good way to get yourself hurt. How much more likely? Maybe not that much. If you do get hurt, will I ever tell you that you could have avoided it? Nope. If I see the news or the police saying how you could have done better to avoid it, I’ll tell them the f off.

But, I care about the well-being of people, and ignoring some realities of what is dangerous and not is idiotic.

PS: I haven’t seen the video, I have no clue what a wasp or lion or whatever is meant as a metaphor for, and I think all of that alpha male bullshit of TF is bullshit. I don’t know what works, and in the short term I’m only defending the idea that walking in a crime-ridden part of town, at night, alone, is a bad idea. I lived near Detroit. You could not pay me enough money to go to the east side alone at night.

My vagina is not a car. I do not need a licence to own one because it is me. Defensive vagina having should look like what exactly? How is a rapist like a bad driver? Do people get distracted and accidentally rape? How does that work? After all, I need you to teach me how not to be raped. I have two daughters. Your imput cvould clearly save us all, so be specific.

Jesus, you sexist rape apologists are thick as bricks.

@Jackie teh kitteh cuddler

The only one being unreasonable is you. I used an analogy to explain certain things, and then I explained htem in great detail, in that post and others. Nowhere did I even mention the word “license”.

What would “defensive vagina” look like? I’m not going to get dragged into the specifics as that is a discussion for which I am ill-prepared to do. However, I will do this. Do you think that there are absolutely no practices which you could employ to prevent getting raped, at all? That seems to be your position. What do you think of the following practices? Staying in groups instead of being alone, not going to a frat party alone and getting drunk until you pass out, and so on. We can dispute the relative effectiveness of those things and others and I am more than willing to listen and learn in such conversations because honestly I don’t know.

However, 1- I think it’s insane to say that there are no alternatives to some behaviors which can make you less likely to be a victim, and 2- I think that in the proper context teaching useful defensive habits is a good thing and it is not victim blaming. Please see my rather lengthy posts above for more information, as I do not want to just copy and paste it here. The short of it is that this should be in no way misconstrued as lessening the culpability of the rapist, and lessening the need to change our culture to make rape both despised in the culture and make rape less common in the culture. Further, this should not be misconstrued as a defense of whatever idiotic “defensive techniques” that TF was endorsing.

And this is what we get, EnlightenmentLiberal. We state our opinion in the best way possible, we seek to understand, and yet we still get called “rape apologists.” I’m not sure it’s possible for us to do anything right.

So, let me get this straight. As far as I can tell, you either think 1- there is absolutely no practical risk prevention advice on the individual level for even a single person on this planet when it comes to avoiding rape, or 2- even if there is some practical advice, talking about it is necessarily victim blaming and necessarily props up the rape culture no matter the delivery or context.

Do you subscribe to either position? Both? I think position 1 is highly implausible. Position 2 is asinine. I’m rather lost as to what you actually think, and right now getting out what you actually think is like pulling teeth.

@A Hermit

So, your argument is “T-Foot is an idiot and advancing rape apologetics, and thus you should shut up when you see someone abusing someone else acting reasonably here, and you should shut up about what kind of public education and public policy we want” ? Brilliant!

I’m going out of my way to try and be nice. In normal circumstances, I would react with vulgarities to the rudeness that you A Hermit just showed me.

And frankly, you can call me ignorant, but I’m going to need a lot more convincing to start seriously considering that passing out drunk at a frat party, alone, does not statistically-significantly affect the chances that you’re going to be raped – or robbed – and that avoiding that scenario is somehow unreasonable or impractical.

As another example, surely we can teach people to be somewhat careful of accepting drinks at bars from strangers when it’s delivered by the stranger and not by the bartender. And watch your drink, just like you would watch your purse or wallet. This is something I already practice.

It is totally unfair to judge me and other people by the actions of someone completely unrelated. I have went out of my way to distance myself from TF’s idiotic antics. Just because someone is acting like an idiot is not an excuse to shut down a reasonable conversation, and to call reasonable people sexist rape apologists. I have been completely mishandled in this conversation. Frankly, what I would like to see is the mob descend on that person who called me a rape apologist, but instead I am the one who is getting accosted. So, no, you’ll understand if I don’t just shut up and surrender.

@ EnlightenmentLiberal October 9,

So, your argument is “T-Foot is an idiot and advancing rape apologetics, and thus you should shut up when you see someone abusing someone else acting reasonably here, and you should shut up about what kind of public education and public policy we want”

I was responding to this comment of yours :

PS: I haven’t seen the video, I have no clue what a wasp or lion or whatever is meant as a metaphor for, and I think all of that alpha male bullshit of TF is bullshit. I don’t know what works, and in the short term I’m only defending the idea that walking in a crime-ridden part of town, at night, alone, is a bad idea.

Thing is, you’ve jumped into a conversation about a video which you admit you haven’t even watched, you tell us in another comment that you “don’t know much about this” and then proceeded to lecture people about why their responses to the video were wrong. You might think I’m being rude, but if I am it’s in response to your even greater rudeness. Do you even realize how patronizing and condescending it is of you to start preaching elementary level stuff at people who have long since moved past it as if they don’t already know all of that? You are not being reasonable at all, you are presuming that your kindergarten level advice is somehow the most important thing to talk about when the rest of us have graduated to something a few academic levels above that…

you can call me ignorant, but I’m going to need a lot more convincing to start seriously considering that passing out drunk at a frat party, alone, does not statistically-significantly affect the chances that you’re going to be raped – or robbed – and that avoiding that scenario is somehow unreasonable or impractical.

As another example, surely we can teach people to be somewhat careful of accepting drinks at bars from strangers when it’s delivered by the stranger and not by the bartender. And watch your drink, just like you would watch your purse or wallet. This is something I already practice.

Yes, and it’s something the vast majority of us already practice. It’s trivial advice, because we’ve all heard it before ad nauseum and it isn’t advice that even begins to address the other side of the problem ie the rapists behaviour. What some of us are trying to do, and what Tfoot is resisting, is to move the conversation beyond what victims can do to protect themselves (because that’s frankly been talked to death) and focus on the other side of the equation. So when you jump in and start prattling on about dark alleys and making bad analogies to defensive driving you are turning that conversation back onto the victim’s behaviour when everyone else is trying to talk about the rapist’s. That’s why you get lumped in with the rape apologists. you are doing their work for them.

Now I’m charitable enough to grant that this is not your intention, but it is the effect of what you are doing; you are trying to get people focus on the victim’s behaviour and not talk about the rapist’s and about how we change the culture to educate people about consent and sexual autonomy and boundaries and all these other issues which may actually do more to reduce the incidence of rape than rehashing the same old “stay out of dark alleys” trope.

The argument here is over whether offering such blindingly obvious, marginally helpful (at best) and frankly condescending “advice” to people who have heard it a thousand times before is a more effective approach to dealing with the phenomenon of rape than a program to educate the public about what rape really is, about the importance of consent, what constitutes consent, etc. So that when someone does pass out at a party the other people at that party won’t ignore it and think it isn’t really rape when someone rapes them…

So before offering any more opinions or complaining about my rudeness you might be better off taking some time to catch up to where the rest of are in this conversation.

And maybe actually watch that Tfoot video, read the detailed response to it starting here: http://somegreybloke.blogspot.com/2013/09/thunderf00t-has-decided-to-talk-about.html and then decide whether you’ve actually contributed anything of value here.

ANNNND my analogy left off the biggest point of all in criticizing TF’s logic: assume that 80% of ODI attacks occur against odd-digit-drivers who are following the guidelines perfectly.

What we have here is an over-the-top kneejerk reaction by you and others like you, you are so jaded and so far up your own ass that any sort of civil sane discussion about reasonable defensive practices are thrown in with the MRAs, despite my absurd precautions to the contrary

The question is why do you think this is a conversation about “reasonable defensive practices?” I used to teach self defense classes; there is nothing here that I’ve seen that fits that description…certainly not your weak little defensive driving analogy.

The point about “shady areas” including your own bedroom was intended, I believe, to point out that most rapes don’t happen to people walking down dark alleys in strange neighbourhoods, so it’s kind of a trivial, meaningless piece of advice in the big picture.

You and other people are so quick to demonize anyone else who goes against your insane mantra that “it’s never the victim’s fault (which is true) and any and all talking about any and all ways to avoid victimization is necessarily victim blaming (which is obscene)”.

Wait a minute; if it’s true that it’s never the victim’s fault why is it “an insane mantra” to say so? It’s hard to know where you stand when you switch positions in a single sentence…

And again, you’re missing the point which is that we have all spent enough time talking about ways to avoid victimization; we’re trying to move the conversation past that stuff, so it isn’t helpful to have you trying to drag it back there.

And yes, context matters; the context in this case being an hours long video chat about Tf00t’s awful video which is full of weird useless analogies and victim blaming crap about the kind of clothes women wear and how they aren’t honest enough when flirting with men…(which you haven’t even bothered to watch…)

By the way, can you explain what I’ve done to “demonize” you exactly? I’ve disagreed with you , certainly, but I think you’re being a bit thin skinned there…

You and other people are so quick to demonize anyone else who goes against your insane mantra that “it’s never the victim’s fault (which is true) and any and all talking about any and all ways to avoid victimization is necessarily victim blaming (which is obscene)”.

Wait a minute; if it’s true that it’s never the victim’s fault why is it “an insane mantra” to say so? It’s hard to know where you stand when you switch positions in a single sentence…

I was quite clear. The “insane mantra” precedes a double quoted section of text. This means it applies to the whole of the quoted passage. I even went into further detail with parentheticals inside the quoted passage, one per point, making two parentheticals for the two points. The parentheticals explain that the first point is correct, and that the second point is insane. Together, these two points comprise the whole of the double quoted section of text. One correct point plus one insane point equals one insane double quoted text segment.

In other words:

“It’s never the victims fault” – correct

“Any and all talk of victim avoidance is necessarily rape apologetics” – insane

“It’s never the victims fault” and “Any and all talk of victim avoidance is necessarily rape apologetics” – insane

E.G.: correct + insane = insane

I could not have been more clear.

I used to teach self defense classes; there is nothing here that I’ve seen that fits that description…certainly not your weak little defensive driving analogy.

Really? Not passing out drunk alone amongst strangers at a frat party? That’s not good advice? … Really!?

But anyway, this is a red herring. It’s a moving of the goalposts. You are trying to attack me for being ignorant as to if there are any good methods at victim avoidance to deflection attention from your insane seeming position that any and all talk about victim avoidance no matter the context and clarity is necessary rape apologetics. Even if I cannot name a single good victim avoidance technique offhand does not mean that talking about such things in all ways in all contexts is rape apologetics. It’s simply a non-sequitir.

I do not appreciate this (perhaps unintentional) dishonest tactic.