Why is telling girls to be careful rape apologistic

Or allow others to make their own innocent choices without risk of being held accountable if someone abuses you because of illegal choices made by others.

Would this message be more suitable.

Rapists are predators that prefer to target lone women that have been drinking.

In this they wouldn't be telling women not to do anything, they will just be giving out information about rapists.

Would this message be more suitable.

 

Rapists are predators that prefer to target lone women that have been drinking.

 

In this they wouldn't be telling women not to do anything, they will just be giving out information about rapists.

The information would be misleading. Lone drinking women are just one demographic. Rapists don't conform to a single demographic. If that was the case most rape could be eradicated by making it illegal for women to consume alcohol.

No, I don't. I would have posted one if I did. Responding to it will just extend this thread and we are getting nowhere. I've made my point, you've made yours, we don't agree.

I think it's a thread worth extending, it's something that is a serious problem and I feel that poster-blamers (the Mr.D's) unwittingly and indirectly side with the victim-blamers by reinforcing their belief that the posters should be interpreted as saying or implying something more than they are.

I don't think it's so much a case of us disagreeing, I'm always open to reason and I've had my mind changed by reasoned discussion several times over the years on SF. It seems to me that some poster-blamers simply can't change a long-ingrained opinion, even in the face of logic and reason. It's similar to when someone defines themselves as (what amounts to) an atheist, but can't bring themselves to accept that they are an atheist because they've thought of it being like a dirty word for so long.

The two reasons given for believing that advice/awareness campaigns are victim-blaming do not stand up to scrutiny, as has been shown;

1. The campaigns are victim-blaming because victim-blamers say so.

This is so messed up it's unreal, basing your opinion on the opinion of someone (the victim-blamer) who's opinion, overall, you believe is wrong. It's ****ed up!

Not only does that not actually give a reason for the campaigns themselves to be seen as victim-blaming, you're also giving the victim-blamers a helping hand in hijacking simple advice and turning it into a "Their own fault" campaign.

2. The campaigns advise and/or tell people to change their behaviour, this means the focus is in the wrong place.

Again, this in itself isn't a reason to see the campaigns as victim blaming. By "telling people to change their behaviour", you're talking about the advice not to drink yourself into a stupor and/or wander off on your own. There are many awareness/advice campaigns related to different crimes and situations, giving like for like avice. To claim that one of them is victim-blaming means that all the others must be victim-blaming, which they obviously are not.

EDIT: If it's a matter of focus, focusing solely on the rapists means that somebody has to be raped for the other person to become a rapist, that's too late. Tackling a problem like this doesn't involve a laser beam that can only focus on one thing, panorama is much more effective.

The information would be misleading. Lone drinking women are just one demographic. Rapists don't conform to a single demographic. If that was the case most rape could be eradicated by making it illegal for women to consume alcohol.

Why would it be misleading, most rape victims are lone women that have been drinking, that being the case its not difficult to conclude that most rapists target lone women that have been drinking. Most rapists don't target women in groups that haven't been drinking.

Risk assessment is based on knowledge and maturity. Children by definition are at risk or vulnerable simply because of their immaturity. By advising adults you are making the presumption some adults are children or childlike. The result of that presumption is either patronizing or simply seen as ' good advice'.

 

Adults are not guardian's of adults, we certainly are of our children though..until they reach a certain maturity or age that is. They then become guardian's of themselves. The vast majority of adults understand risk or threat whether they are attacked or not, children don't.

That would be all good and stuff if it weren't for such common factors as complacency, distractions, inflated egos, false sense of security and chemical intoxication (just to list a few). I myself am guilty of occasionally getting excessively drunk while out, falling prey to complacency. I'm a big fellah so I (quite wrongly) think little of what could happen to me in that state. If, on my way out for the night, I were to pass a poster showing a big bloke being mugged by two smaller teenagers while he's drunk, it may (or may not) make me more conscious of how much I'm drinking.

As I said earlier, there are a great many people who think that rape/illness/car accidents/muggings/house fires etc won't happen to them. These people are adults and don't usually have an adult guardian.

There are no campaigns focusing on children on how to avoid predators.

There are no campaigns on how to avoid being abused by your 'loved' ones in the home.

Why? Because it attacks the ethos of the 'family'.

As guardians we guide our children to a cut-off point, or do we continually tell them to look left and right well into adulthood simply because other adults also get knocked down?

There are actually even awareness posters about road safety when drunk. It might be worth noting the similarities in behaviour between some drunks and infants.

The only thing that addressed or highlighted the issue with children was Ester Rantzen's campaign for children to phone in if that child was being abused, which only addressed the after effects and not the cause, the abuser. Advising children an advising grown adults are not comparable IMO.

I wasn't just talking about awareness campaigns for children.

Question: If you and your partner climb a steep hill and you are ahead finding it a little tricky, do you reach back with your hand outstretched offering help? If yes why? If no, why not?

That depends, if my partner were Cyclone, then no because if he refused my hand and then fell, my offer would have quite obviously been victim-blaming.

If my partner was Olive, I would offer my hand because she could take it or leave it but if she fell she wouldn't think I was blaming her.

---------- Post added 27-04-2015 at 19:47 ----------

Why would it be misleading, most rape victims are lone women that have been drinking, that being the case its not difficult to conclude that most rapists target lone women that have been drinking. Most rapists don't target women in groups that haven't been drinking.

Can I ask what your source for this was?

Why would it be misleading, most rape victims are lone women that have been drinking, that being the case its not difficult to conclude that most rapists target lone women that have been drinking. Most rapists don't target women in groups that haven't been drinking.

You would have to quantify that with statistics as well as to the drinking habits of rapists. Maybe we could advise men not to drink for fear of them becoming predators as opposed to women becoming victims.

"Emily Yoffe stoked controversy earlier this month by writing that young women should avoid getting drunk, since it’s been proven that drinking is “closely associated” with sexual assault, the dialogue about alcohol and rape has been re-opened.

This entire conversation is predicated upon the assumption that the presence of alcohol increases the likelihood of rape, so we need to encourage college students to drink less. Yoffe played into a decades-long tradition of framing that discussion specifically around women, a method of victim-blaming that feeds into rape culture. But even when the discussion is properly framed around the perpetrators rather than the victims, how strong is the correlation in question? Will getting kids to drink less actually get them to rape less?

Toward the end of the USA Today article about alcohol’s function as a date rape drug, one of the experts who agreed to be quoted in the story noted, “People don’t get raped because they have been drinking, because they are passed out or because they are drunk. People get raped because there is a perpetrator there — someone who wants to take advantage of them.”

That gets to the heart of the complex issue: Even though alcohol is associated with sexual assault, it’s not actually a direct association. Getting intoxicated only leads to rape when there’s someone present to commit that rape. When you remove rapists from the equation, the risks of getting drunk — which, of course, do involve serious public health consequences — don’t include getting raped.

A 2001 research project into sexual assault and alcohol commissioned by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism puts it this way: “Although alcohol consumption and sexual assault frequently co-occur, this phenomenon does not prove that alcohol use causes sexual assault.” In some cases, the researchers pointed out, it may actually be the other way around. The desire to commit a sexual assault may actually encourage alcohol consumption, as some men may drink before assaulting a woman in order to help justify their behavior.

National statistics dispel the direct correlation between alcohol and rape, too. The Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey has found that the number of Americans who say they’ve been raped — regardless of whether they reported that crime to the authorities — has been declining since 1979. During that same time period, binge drinking has been steadily rising. As Slate’s Amanda Hess points out, that suggests something else besides alcohol consumption is actually factoring into the nation’s sexual assault rate. Indeed, research has found that intimate partner violence declines not as people drink less, but as society moves toward gender equality".

You would have to quantify that with statistics as well as to the drinking habits of rapists. Maybe we could advise men not to drink for fear of them becoming predators as opposed to women becoming victims.

We already do!.....

http://starsandspirals.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/greg.jpg

http://www.thesalfordian.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/no-consent-no-sex-campaign-poster.jpg

http://blogs.susu.org/officers/files/2012/07/24398-Rape-posters.jpg

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=drink+aware+consent+rape+campaign&espv=2&biw=1440&bih=799&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=n4U-Vd-aFIKUaobSgcgP&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ#imgdii=W6mzlP9v9AbiVM%3A%3BW6mzlP9v9AbiVM%3A%3BNcgntWgZH8JkpM%3A&imgrc=W6mzlP9v9AbiVM%253A%3BKqaPHzxlEA2I0M%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fblogs.susu.org%252Fsabbs%252Ffiles%252F2012%252F07%252F24398-Rape-posters.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fblogs.susu.org%252Fofficers%252F2012%252F07%252F25%252Frape-awareness-week%252F%3B2480%3B3508

EDIT: Sorry, I misread your post. Obviously advising men not to drink would be as ridiculous as advising women not to drink, which is what I assume you meant (having read it properly)

You would have to quantify that with statistics as well as to the drinking habits of rapists. Maybe we could advise men not to drink for fear of them becoming predators as opposed to women becoming victims.

 

What I wrote wasn't a recommendation for women not to drink, it was simply a statement about rapists.

Approximately half of all sexual assaults involve alcohol consumption by the perpetrator, victim, or both.

If it could be proven that number of rape victims could be reduced by giving women the skills and knowledge to avoid being raped, would you support it or oppose it?

What I wrote wasn't a recommendation for women not to drink, it was simply a statement about rapists.

 

Approximately half of all sexual assaults involve alcohol consumption by the perpetrator, victim, or both?

If it could be proven that number of rape victims could be reduced by giving women the skills and knowledge to avoid being raped, would you support it or oppose it.

Is that a statement or a question?

Is that a statement or a question?

A statement, I manged to put the question mark at the end of the wrong sentence.

A statement, I manged to put the question mark at the end of the wrong sentence.

...and is there a source for the content of that statement?

---------- Post added 27-04-2015 at 20:46 ----------

....listens to the internet make rustling noises as Smiffy searches for stats to support his statement...

For what it's worth I'll give it a shot..

 

Risk assessment is based on knowledge and maturity. Children by definition are at risk or vulnerable simply because of their immaturity. By advising adults you are making the presumption some adults are children or childlike. The result of that presumption is either patronizing or simply seen as ' good advice'.

 

As young adults going out boozing and clubbing a lot (during our student years) I don't think more awareness would have gone amiss with me and my friends. I know from experience we were naïve and trusting, and thought nothing bad could ever happen (when in fact bad or decidedly dodgy things did happen).

To be honest, I don't know how effective campaigns would have been. Maybe we thought we were too invincible, but perhaps it could have appealed to our collective sense of responsibility for each other? Maybe we would have got behind it and felt more empowered?

Maybe there's a lot more awareness these days anyway?