This digressed quickly.

[sorcyress]

WARNING: This post talks a bunch about rape, and about fear, and about blaming the victim, and behaviours that people should take in order not to get raped, and behaviours that people should take in order to not, you know, rape anyone. If any of that is likely to trigger you, please skip the rest of it.

Someone linked this, and I don't remember who. But it made me laugh, in that pathetic, oh god, why do we even need to say this? sort of way.

Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work!
1. Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior.
2. When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!
3. If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault them!
4. NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.
5. If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DON’T ASSAULT THEM!
6. Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry, do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.
7. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.
8. Always be honest with people! Don’t pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. Consider telling them you plan to assault them. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to rape them.
9. Don’t forget: you can’t have sex with someone unless they are awake!
10. Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone “on accident” you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do.
Credit to No, Not You

((I especially like that it's a non-gendered list on all accounts, and can easily apply to all manner of hurting-other-people, not just sexual assault.))

Lesley is not the sort of campus where they pound into our heads the "YOU WILL BE RAPED AT ANY MOMENT!" paranoia that a lot of places seem to feed -which is actually odd, now that I think of it- but I'm still tempted to print out a couple copies of this one and leave them somewhere casual.

And no, I don't particularly think anyone on my friends list needs to learn any of these lessons. I'd like to think that they wouldn't be "friends" if they did.

But seriously. It really really really sucks to be a woman, and constantly be told that YOU need to do the work, that YOU need to change your habits, and your clothing, and your behaviours because if you don't, the poor defenseless men around you just won't be able to control themselves, and they'll just *have* to rape you on principle.

It sucks to know that I shouldn't leave the house in that flighty little skirt that looks really cute, that I have to wake my roommates up with a text message so they know I got where I was going safely, that I won't ever drink around college kids¹ because I can't trust that they won't try to push me too far. Yes, they're all actions I take, and just some of the actions I take to keep myself safe --I walk a half mile or more most nights in order to get to the beds I sleep in. I keep my eyes open, and I keep a sense of where people are around me. When I go to Rocky, if I'm by myself, I wear a big coat over my slut-clothes, or try to find other groups to walk with.

When people offer to walk me home, no matter how much it sucks, I take the offer. Because yes. It's embarrassing to have to be walked home, like I was some kind of defenseless child, and it hurts my pride that I have to accept help like this, and sure, I can laugh it off, or maintain that it'll be nice to talk to the boy for a little bit longer. But it really really sucks to have to have someone else help me with as simple a skill as walking from point A to point B, just because I'm small and female. And I hate that I'm too smart to argue them out of it and walk around alone.

So yeah. I try and do the stupid behaviours that the internet and the college advisors and the sweet and well meaning and patronizing professors tell me I should do. I try to keep my head up, and my mind clear, and make my agenda known. I do my damndest to be a good little girl, and skip the parties² with the drinking and the idiocy and the potential for danger.

But I really wish that I didn't have to feel like being raped was dependent on anything that *I* did or didn't do. I really wish I *could* wear short skirts when I feel like it, or go to Rocky all by my lonesome, or wander for hours under the stars and lights of a sleeping city. I wish I didn't have to check in to anybody at all, not ever. I wish I didn't have to worry, and I really wish that some of these behaviours are so ingrained I don't even realize I'm worrying.

It sucks sometimes to live in an imperfect world.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: There are other reasons for this, too. But I don't trust college kids sober, and I definitely don't trust them drunk.

2: I don't actually get invited to this sort of party. But if I did!

WARNING (again, for people who read their friends list from the bottom on up, like me): This post talks a bunch about rape, and about fear, and about blaming the victim, and behaviours that people should take in order not to get raped, and behaviours that people should take in order to not, you know, rape anyone. If any of that is likely to trigger you, please skip the rest of it.

Comments

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

It might be worth pointing out that there are thousands of young women in Boston who do go out in miniskirts and plunging necklines and whatnot, frequently at night, frequently intoxicated, sometimes alone. A discussion could be had about whether they're being irresponsible by doing so, but if you choose to dress provocatively you will not stand out from the crowd — I trip over half a dozen women wearing less than you ever do whenever I come back to Brighton via the MBTA at night.

Stranger rape is rare in Cambridge. From 2003 to 2006 (http://www.cambridgema.gov/CPD/reports/2006/third%20quarter%20report/2006q3.pdf), there were 0 to 3 stranger rapes (or attempts) reported in each nine-month reporting period, for the whole city of 100,000 people (not counting students). And rape (as I'm sure I don't need to tell you) is not generally a crime motivated by sex; there's no reason to think wearing a short skirt will make you any more of a target. Rapists go after grannies because they can't fight back, not because they think grannies are hot.

This is not to say you should be foolhardy; there's nothing wrong with letting people know where you'll be (as grownups like K and I do for each other), carrying a cell phone and a whistle, sticking to populated and/or well-lit areas. And you're free to be as cautious as you feel you need to. But if you're frustrated with letting fear tell you what you can and can't wear, as you seem to be, the statistics and the observations both say that you can wear whatever the heck you want without increasing your risk.

I say this: something bad might happen at any time, but you can't live life scared. Muggings are fifty times more common than rapes, but apart from taking basic precautions (and finding myself in the rare creepy situation), getting mugged hardly ever crosses my mind.

[jannyblue.livejournal.com]

Rapists go after grannies because they can't fight back, not because they think grannies are hot.

You ever try running in 4-inch heels and a miniskirt?

Pretty damned defenseless there, too.

[kdsorceress.livejournal.com]

Now I really quite want pictures of jere7my in four inch heels and a miniskirt.

And pigtails. Because he looks awesomely adorable in pigtails.

~Sor

[kdsorceress.livejournal.com]

I've never really had a strong fear of stranger rape. To me, it's about as useful as having a strong fear of being murdered by a serial killer, or beaten up by an anonymous mugger. It's so utterly black and white, open and shut that I couldn't possibly be at fault if such a thing happened. Yes, it would suck, and I would be a little less right in the head for a bit, but in the case of a stranger rape, it was nothing I did or didn't do to them --I was simply there. Maybe I could've arranged life to not be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but then it just would've happened to some other sweet little girl, who maybe would not be so able to deal with it.

~Sor

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

Well then, I demand you wear flighty little skirts.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

yes, exactly.

[ndkid.livejournal.com]

Well, it's worthwhile to note, I think, that "non-stranger" is a pretty large category, too, and that "non-stranger" includes lots of people outside of "friends I'm absolutely confident will never sexually assault me".

This is probably also the right spot for the knee-jerk response to reported statistics about how many sexual assaults go unreported, whether stranger or non-stranger.

[kdsorceress.livejournal.com]

Thank you for noticing how intentionally I was wording things. I'm a lot less afeared of stranger-rape. It's the idea that I could be enough an idiot to have befriended someone who'll take advantage of me that makes me shiver.

~Sor

[ndkid.livejournal.com]

This (rather indirectly) reminds me of Five Geek Social Fallacies (http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html). Specifically, how friend-of-friend links, and people who like to act as though all of their friends should be able to get along, can lead to situations where one is around people that make one uncomfortable; I sometimes suspect that situations such as this lead to the majority of those non-stranger, non-friend sexual assaults.

[kdsorceress.livejournal.com]

Oooo. Good point!

Someday I need to do a decent post about the Geek Social Fallacies, and how they make me feel guilty and such and such. This should certainly tie into it.

~Sor