re: #2 kerFuFFler

However, encouraging women to be cautious is also a good thing. Yes, the rapist is the criminal in these situations, but denying that there are criminals about in the world or demanding that there be none is ineffective.

Nobody denies there are criminals in the world, so this is just a strawman. You shouldn’t say it.

Would it make sense for someone to forgo wearing their seat-belt arguing that people who drive in a criminally reckless manner are the ones responsible for accidents ?

Never use this analogy again. Seriously. You can , obviously, get into an accident on your own. You can’t rape yourself. For fuck’s sake.

Would we take seriously the demand that robbers stop robbing because it is not fair that they impose the burden of locking doors on potential innocent victims?

Another tortured and horrible analogy. If we had a culture that nodded and winked at young men robbing other people, where whether or not you robbed something only came down to he-said/she-said most of the time, then the crimes would be comparable. They’re not. Rape is not like other crimes. Analogies involving other situations and crimes cannot do anything but confuse the issue: don’t use them. Treat rape as what it is.

So yes, it would be a great thing if attitudes towards rape in our society changed and we must all work on that. But there will always be some criminals out there and we should encourage women to be aware of the risks involved in binge drinking, especially if they are not surrounded by people they can trust.

A woman who doesn’t realize “If I binge-drink, I may make bad decisions” isn’t going to understand your explanation. Fortunately, such women are incredibly rare, because it is a totally easy concept. Do you seriously think women don’t know that binge-drinking can go awry? Women know it can, they also know that they can get date-raped by seemingly nice guys, too, which happens all the time, too. Women get raped by people they think they can trust.

So what are you teaching them, exactly? What do you propose to teach women that they don’t know, and how do you balance the good of that teaching with the obvious message of “If you got drunk, you intentionally raised the risk of getting raped”?