labellementeuse | (no subject)

I found this on my wanders and thought it was important enough to re-post, even with my relatively limited time. Not sure where it originated.

A lot has been said about how to prevent rape.

Women should learn self-defence. Women should lock themselves in their houses after dark. Women shouldn't have long hair and women shouldn't wear short skirts. Women shouldn't leave drinks unattended. Fuck, they shouldn't dare to get drunk at all.

instead of that bullshit, how about:

if a woman is drunk, don't rape her.
if a woman is walking alone at night, don't rape her.
if a women is drugged and unconscious, don't rape her.
if a woman is wearing a short skirt, don't rape her.
if a woman is jogging in a park at 5 am, don't rape her.
if a woman looks like your ex-girlfriend you're still hung up on, don't rape her.
if a woman is asleep in her bed, don't rape her.
if a woman is asleep in your bed, don't rape her.
if a woman is doing her laundry, don't rape her.
if a woman is in a coma, don't rape her.
if a woman changes her mind in the middle of or about a particular activity, don't rape her.
if a woman has repeatedly refused a certain activity, don't rape her.

if a woman is not yet a woman, but a child, don't rape her.
if your girlfriend or wife is not in the mood, don't rape her.
if your step-daughter is watching tv, don't rape her.
if you break into a house and find a woman there, don't rape her.
if your friend thinks it's okay to rape someone, tell him it's not, and that he's not your friend.

if your "friend" tells you he raped someone, report him to the police.
if your frat-brother or another guy at the party tells you there's an unconscious woman upstairs and it's your turn, don't rape her, call the police and tell the guy he's a rapist.

tell your sons, god-sons, nephews, grandsons, sons of friends it's not okay to rape someone.

don't tell your women friends how to be safe and avoid rape.
don't imply that she could have avoided it if she'd only done/not done x.
don't imply that it's in any way her fault.
don't let silence imply agreement when someone tells you he "got some" with the drunk girl.
don't perpetuate a culture that tells you that you have no control over or responsibility for your actions. You can, too, help yourself.

discussion welcome, as per usual. Repost if you wish.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yeah, and that was me discussing. :P Feel free to continue; I mean, if I minded I'd have banned you from my journal, like, years ago. ;)

I know you do and sometimes it frustrates me. Er, scratch that, all the time it frustrates me, and I will just continue to discuss that until you, like, cave. Or forever, whichever comes first. :P

and rape is simply a sort of violence, albeit the most invasive and emotionally damaging one

Half of me agrees, and half of me doesn't. I mean, yes, it is a sort of violence. But it is a violence that is loosely defined, half-condoned and in almost every case committed by men, and for the vast majority of cases against women. (If you have statistics on the numbers of rapes committed against men by men, and against men by women, I'd be interested, I really would.) And I generally believe that the point of this meme/address/whatever you'd like to call it is addressing something that is, IMO, a significant prejudice or attitude or problem in society that men are violent and will committ violence against women, and it is the women's responsiblity to protect themselves, not the men's responsiblity to say "enough is enough, men are not going to be like this anymore." rape does not just mean attacking someone in an alley, it means date rape, it means having sex with your drunk female friend or aquaintance, it means taking advantage of a very significant biological difference between men and women. So in that way, no, rape isn't just any other form of violence, it is a form of violence that society views very very oddly in that, unlike the committers of almost any other type of violence, violent rapists are immediately demonised and separated from the male population- thus absolving them; I believe if there was one sort of violence women committed almost exclusively, people would not get offended when this was pointed out as maybe a problem for men to deal with. And non-violent rapists- date-rapers, etc etc etc, are sometimes not even condemned at all.

Okay, that was a very confused paragraph, but there are a couple of things in there that I think are important, so let me just try again.

*rape is a type of violence committed almost exclusively by men.

*yet most, if not all, of our efforts towards preventing rape focus around telling women what to do, where to go, and how to behave.

*by demonising violent rapists and excluding them from the male population, society implicitly absolves the wider male community- this man X would not do this, it's only these men Y. this is not unique to rape, it happens with other types of violence as well and it's just as bad then but I think it is most dramatic in violent rape and paedophilia. The demonising needs to be against the kind of society that does not talk to men about preventing rape by men, but talks to women about preventing rape by men.

*non-violent rape- god that's a bad pair of words, there's no such thing, but I mean date rape, taking advantage and pushing too hard and stuff- is not condemned and is occasionally applauded, yay guy X, you got some, hahaha the drunk slut haha. *shrug* And I think that is very much a male community thing.

Um. Yeah. Dunno how that goes, and I think to some extent I'm preaching to the choir- you did say you agreed with most of the OP- I'm just trying to sort some ideas out, OK? :P

I see where you're coming from now, and I realise now what I said sounded a bit confused. I do get that that's the position the OP was trying to take, too, but it doesn't stop me taking issue with how simplistic and knee-jerk it came off as to me. Yes, we need to change the culture around what people think of rape, but would it hurt some people not to act like banshees all the time? lol

I hate the attitude that dimisses anyone who really believes in what they're talking about. I think the whole point of this was to be radical and sometimes that's what you have to be, when you're challenging something that is a totally unquestioned part of society. Its point is in its shock value and while therefore it's not 100% "correct" or whatever, that's not the

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I hate the attitude that dimisses anyone who really believes in what they're talking about. I think the whole <i>point</i> of this was to be radical and sometimes that's what you have to be, when you're challenging something that is a totally unquestioned part of society. Its point is in its shock value and while therefore it's not 100% "correct" or whatever, that's not the <i?point.</i>

I've grown up in a house of pedants. My dad got offended at the Simpsons because Grandpa made a mangle of history in one of his deluded stories!! For fucks sake.

And I'm not dismissing any people, just the fact that any time someone expresses an opinion in our society, it seems like it's 99%rage and only 1% substance.

(even when I do it because I know I do. I never said I wasn't a hypocrite!)