Latest Breaking News
In reply to the discussion: Mayor of Cologne says women should have code of conduct to prevent future assault [View all]anigbrowl
(13,889 posts)I do not think it is a matter of women changing their behavior instead of men, and have never held that opinion. I can't help it that other people sometimes blame rape victims, but I am not one of those people and nor have I ever been.
However, since telling people not to commit rape (or crime in general) does not automatically cause rapists (or criminals in general) to abandon their criminal practices, I do think it's OK to give advice on how to avoid being a victim of rape (or crime in general), because would-be rapists (like other violent criminals) don't care about the law or cultural prohibitions against violence. So I think it is worthwhile to give advice on risk awareness etc. in addition to - not instead of - reminding criminals that sexual assault is never OK and will be investigated and prosecuted.
I have had this conversation with a lot of different people, and I do not understand the objection to basic safety advice. You can't eliminate rape culture by simply saying that it's unacceptable and expecting that criminals will just abandon the idea. If that was true we wouldn't have any murders - pretty much every culture has laws against murder and such laws date back thousands of years, yet people still commit murder despite the huge cultural prohibitions against it.
You can call me clueless all you want, but I have never once suggested that victims of sexual assault are to blame for being assaulted. I am suggesting instead that some advice on risk awareness can be helpful in spotting and avoiding sexual predators, because we don't currently know how to predict or prevent every would-be rapist from coming into contact with potential victims. Rapists and other sexual predators are typically not people who forgot or didn't hear that sexual assault is bad, but people who know that and try to do it anyway.