So I should keep on a gun on me at all times (even while sleeping or grocery shopping) and never leave my house?

I too am very sick of the whole "It's up to you to prevent getting raped!" mentality. No, it's not up to someone to get raped or not. It's up to someone to rape or not, and THAT's where we should be focusing.

The advice you quoted is pretty bad.

I believe that there is some very good advice out there. In a perfect world we wouldn't need that advice, that this isn't a perfect world. I believe that every woman should learn some good defense moves just in case it happens, and there's a lot of advice that just boils down to being aware of your surroundings. This is good advice, and it's worth passing on. The problem is that if you fail to follow it then the rape is all your fault. That doesn't mean it's not good advice. It just means that people suck.

And then there's the godawful advice that basically says you can't have a social life. You can't drink, you can't wear slutty clothing, you can't ever be alone with a guy you don't know, and you can't ever go anywhere alone at night. It's impractical, and for some reason, the more impractical the advice is the more people are likely to blame the woman for her rape when she doesn't follow it.

(Damn it, I am a college student. Getting drunk with strange people while wearing low-cut shirts is kind of what I do.)

The article in question definitely seems to fit into the second category. This guy makes me sick.

I hate that all of the "ways to prevent rape" are directed at dictating a woman's behavior. I can think of one great way to prevent rape, make sure there are good, enforceable laws against it, and that your police station takes reports of rape seriously. It seems like the best common-sense way to prevent rape would be arrest rapists, but sites like this aren't interested in that.

I know a girl who went to a party, met a cute guy, went to his house, made out with him, and made it back to her dorm without him forcing her pants off and raping her. It seemed like once he realized she wasn't gonna screw him, she was taken back to her dorm and pretty much forgotten about. He's a jerk for treating her that way, but you know what? She put herself in a situation where she could be raped and *gasp* left without having anything forcibly put in her vagina. The worst that happened was he tried to touch it, she pushed it away, he tried again. But he never forced her to let him do anything. He's still a jerk, but at least he had the sense to stop after he realized he wasn't getting what he wanted.

We need to teach guys that it's not ok to continue trying to do something the girl is with doesn't say she wants. While I agree that in our imperfect world girls need to be taught how to defend themselves and to use the buddy-system, we can do it without making it seem like if a girl doesn't do these things and gets raped, she isn't the one to blame.

It's certainly true that there are things you can do to reduce your chances of getting raped, just as there are things you can do that will reduce your chances of getting mugged. But that isn't the same as saying it's the victim's fault that it happened.

We need to work on getting the conviction rate for rape increased above 1% or whatever embarrassingly low number it's currently at, and we need to work on convincing guys that rape is not OK. But in the mean time, there's nothing wrong with helping people people avoid risky situations.

Well, if we're going by statistics here, as these people seem to be, you know, with the drinking, and the "dangerous situations" (danger being a measure of likeliness of being raped, per statistics), one of the best things a woman can do to avoid being raped is never be involved in an intimate relationship, or, God forbid, a marriage.

I'm so glad it's not just me! I thought I might be overreatcing to the site fora while, but I know in my heart I'm not, it just left me fuming with anger! (and apparenlty being angry means I:m more likely to be raped...)

Yeah What the hell? I want to live in a fucking world where women are valued enough that its not their JOB to keep people from being violent towards them. Fuck this!

Btw, as if we weren't fed up enough. When polled by Newsweek, 20 percent of college guys said they would rape a girl if they knew they wouldn't get caught. Where are these young men's fathers?

I vote we fix this b.s. before we tell women when and where and what they should do.

I have a suspiscion the "near rape story" is made up... and I think if he was talking about a man, it would just be "outrage", not "emotional outrage". That's the kind of sexism you can expect from someone who buys these rape myths.

The problem is that all rape prevention seems to amount to is telling women "how not to get raped." we should be devoting FAR MORE time and resources to teaching men that no means no, "i don't know" means no, passed out means no, too drunk to know one's surroundings means no, i don't want to anymore means no etc, and that he is responsible to know FOR SURE that the other person is consenting. we should also be devoting more time and energy to figuring out how to get more women to report and how to get convictions.

If a woman can use these tips to keep herself safe, that's great. But the fact is that rapists still exist, and will find women to prey on.

And as we all no, there is NO technique that will always work. Rapists don't wear signs identifying themselves, but everyone wants to believe that they have such impeccable judgment that they could pick out a rapist from a mile away. the things people convince themselves to hold onto a sense of control.

How many women have been raped while stone cold sober? How many women have been raped by someone they would have trusted with their lives?

*sigh... rape culture is so, so frustrating.

erm, that's "as we all *know*"

Okay, full disclosure: this is not a comment aimed so much at the people already contributing to this discussion, but at any one who may be reading this as part of research around the topic of rape and attacks against the person of any nature--sexual or not

Here's the soundbite:
Do yourselves a favour and DO read through this advice, as well as other parts of the site, regardless of what these sorry excuses for feminists tell you. And when you're done, fire up your email application and shoot this off to all the adults in your Address Book for good measure (or at least the ones you care about).

The details:
Yes, it does sometimes sound like it's a stereotypical marine out of an action movie talking (or for all I know, a real marine, which may even be what this guy is), and yes, it is blunt talk and often brutal to hear. But so is what it's trying to show you how to protect yourself from. You can't talk about brutal topics in a non-brutal way; there just isn't the vocabulary to do so. It may be more comfortable to think there is nothing you can do to prevent a crime being committed at your expense (including crimes against your person such as physical attacks, which are by far the most devastating). No doubt it feels much better to bury one's head in the sand. But here's the catch--if there IS something you can do, _do you really think it's worth it not doing it just to make a point_?? What do you want to be, right and dead or wrong and alive? Because honey, that's what it comes down to all too often.

Listen here. Of course it is your right to get as drunk as you like, anywhere you like, in any attire you fancy, just basically knock yourself out, without having anything done to you that you don't want done. In an ideal world you would do just that. But since when is this an ideal world? Since when precisely did having a right, _any_ right, acknowledged in law and mores alike mean that it is universally respected by every single person in the world-ever? Because it only does take one person not respecting your right, and that one person crossing your path, for your life to change--in a bad way. You have no way whatsoever of magically obliterating this hypothetical person, for sure; all you can do is make it very, very hard for them to get their way with you. Actually you can't even do anything about them not harming others; all you can do is protect yourself. Somebody said that even if these pages help some women keep themselves safe, rapists will still be in the picture and the perps out for women to victimize. Well, isn't it enough for you, and perhaps your loved ones, not to be one of these women? You can't save everyone; people need to do a lot of their own saving. As for putting rapists behind bars as a preventative measure--well, any person only gets called a rapist after they have raped someone. Are you prepared to be a rapist's first victim, even if your tragedy means he gets thrown in jail til Kingdom come and there is no second or third victim? Well, you're more of an altruist than I am then.

I want to stress that all of the advice given on the link has been distorted so much in this thread that reading the post and the comments made me wonder whether I had read the same page as the commentators. I am especially baffled by the constant complaining that the advice, if followed, would prevent anyone from having a social life or even intimate relationships, as if the only valid ways to have those or even to have any kind of fun are to get so hopelessly intoxicated that you lose all sense of surroundings and self-preservation. That's not a mark of independence and a free mind people, that's just being hopelessly, cripplingly inhibited; so repressed that you can't have fun without an excuse without a way out to say: 'well, that wasn't me doing a Marilyn Monroe impersonation, I was drunk!'. Note that the page never tells you you can't have a drink or two to loosen up a bit in new company; nor do they say you can't get hammered at your closest friend's house after graduation. It just says you shouldn't get hammered in a bar full of people you don't know. BIG, big, (did I say big?), difference. It's the same advice you'd give to a guy: son, don't wander over to the dodgy side of town after ten beers down the pub, because the muggers will love you and you don't wanna help them, do ya? I really object to the ridiculously pervasive idea common to many of these posts that you can't be a happy, rounded individual unless you engage in behaviour that puts you at risk. It assumes a dangerous either/or mentality: either you carouse and get so drunk you don't remember anything the next day, or you're a wallflower who never lets her hair down. Are you gals so sheltered that you haven't any idea of the variety of human experience between these extremes? Well, that's sad; what's the point of doing wild stuff if you're too drunk too remember them?

And this is just the distortions to do with the points the page makes regarding excessive drinking as a risky behavior. I'm not even gonna start on the other stuff, because it's late and I've a cold to nurse So I'm just gonna wrap this up by stating my reasons for making this post. With the prominence of feministing as a blog on issues affecting women, I was worried that people who are still young and impressionable for lack of a more elegant turn of phrase could be reading this and getting a completely distorted idea of reality, and thus be driven to take risks that are unnecessarily high because they think, oh well, there's going to be rapists anyway, no matter what I do it's still a matter of complete bad luck whether I get raped or not. But it isn't. There is a world of difference between theoretical discussions of How Things Should Work, and the sheer _crassness_ of this world m'dear, and the practicalities of keeping yourself alive and whole to have them. The women who don't get raped aren't ONLY lucky, they are also sensible and empowered enough to take personal action to skew chances in their favor, rather than being content to meekly leave something so important as their own physical integrity in the hands of some external authority, which is now some vague idea of 'society' or 'the police', or whatever, but used to be, simply, your husband/father/brother--also called 'your protector'. Exactly the sort of attitudes feminism was all out for eradicating! The mawkish fatalism displayed in this pathetic thread never helped anybody; having a fighting spirit, however, did in the past and always will Nobody's trying to blame victims there. They're just trying to tell you how to do the best you can not to become one. I don't know how much my post would help counter that, especially since it depends on whether it will be censored, completely or in parts. But in good conscience I couldn't let this go on spreading misinformation without a peep *shrug* I'm not going to silently sit and accept it as okay to keep this information from people to make a point any more than i 'm going to let anyone spread misinformation about the effectiveness of the condom as a contraceptive and a barrier against disease without putting up a fight.

One last thing: the one who implied that getting paralytic with strangers while wearing saucy clothing is what one does as a student should be ashamed of herself. Sweetheart, generations of past feminists from before Mary Wollstonecraft didn't fight for women to gain access to education just so you could partay. You've been able to do that as a barmaid-cum-sailor's helpmeet in the harbors since the dawn of time. They fought for you to be able to access an education and earn the intellectual power to haul yourself out of the abiding fear, powerlessness and misery that breeds in ignorance. Girl, you call yourself a feminist?!! Check you bum, i think feminism just got up and bit it and you didn't even realize!

We are not putting 'something so important as their own physical integrity in the hands of some external authority' we are just recognising that when a crime such as rape occurs we are not SOLEY responsible for it and we should not be seen as such. We are individuals and we have an individual responsibility for ourselves but we also exists within a society which has a responsibility towards us, just as we do towards others. The two do not cancel each other out, just becuase we are calling for society to treat us better it does not mean we are going to start walking down dark alleyways in our underwear just to 'make a point'.

Who says we;re all out getting rat arsed in bikinis to make a point? I take precautions to make sure I am safe but that does not mean I will stop fighting against ignorant attitudes such as those displayed on the site which only ADD to the social problem of rape.
There are places like the suzy lamplugh trust that offer advice of safety etc that DON"T patronise me and insult victims. But at the end of the day I don't see why this guy should be exempt from having his attitudes (which are offensive to most of us) questioned just because he offers some advice that might save someone being raped.

Why did that guy feel the necessity to further patronize us with his "sweethearts" and "m'dears" How nice for this benevolent man to come in and set us poor silly dears straight.

P.S. The women on this thread ARE fighters.

... well that was pretty ridiculous. i love how saying that rapists cause rape and therefore women alone can't prevent it apparently means i am "prepared to be the rapist's first victim"

and no, having myself and my loved ones not be among the 25% of women that are raped is not enough for me. too late though, since some of my loved ones and i are already survivors. not because we took risks to prove a point, but because being female is in itself a major risk as long as men are willing to commit rape.