Several weeks ago, at the beginning of the semester, there was a story about crime in the campus newspaper. Actually, there were several. One discussed the surge of crime our town experiences when the students come back, pinning the blame on alcohol unleashing fights and vandalism. Another talked about how students aren't accustomed to looking after their things, and are easy targets for property crime. Yet another mentioned what to do if you are a target for crime.
Among the comment and advice given by the university and its public safety division, there are statements like these:
1) "We want to tell people it's a safe community, but if you place yourself in a risky situation in an intoxicated state, you're making (that) job more difficult."
2) "[Public Safety] puts forth a proactive approach and offers tips and advice to students to try and teach people how not to be the victim of any incident."
Avoiding late walks alone and always traveling in pairs are just a few ways to ensure one's safety and lower the overall crime rate on campus.
3) Do not argue or attempt to fight with your assailant. Give them what they want so they can quickly leave the area.
Each time I see one of these articles with their admonishments about safety, I think about how useless and wrongheaded this advice is for young women at risk of sexual assault. Especially the last bit of "advice" irritates me, because even though it is aimed at robbery victims (i.e. your wallet isn't worth your life), following through on the logic for sexual assault is extremely dangerous. I thought of a host of reasons why, but being a busy blogger, filed it in my "to-do" research list. Lucky for me, Melissa McEwan is a better blogger, and in her response to a post about how feminists are doing nothing to help the problem of rape, she hits many of the same points::
Hardly a week goes by that I don't read an article saying the same goddamned thing, whether women are being admonished to "learn common sense" or "be more responsible" or "be aware of barroom risks" or "avoid these places" or "don't dress this way" or whatfuckingever. If Cox wants to make a serious contribution to a conversation about rape prevention, he could try writing something that answers this question: Why is it always more important to lecture women on what they should be doing to avoid rape than to talk to men about the fact that they do not have the right to women's bodies without express consent?
...
Cox, and all the other victim-blaming rape apologists hiding behind this "feminists aren't helping rape victims" bullshit, can talk to me about what "feminists" should or shouldn't be doing on behalf of rape victims when they've spent as much time as "feminists" have talking about women who are raped on the job and denied captivity benefit for union members for not being held hostage long enough, who are threatened with jail for not wanting to watch the video of her rape, who are threatened with jail because her case didn't result in a conviction, whose rape cases are dropped for lack of a translator, when they've spent as much time as "feminists" have talking about laws that say women can't withdraw consent after sex begins, about judges who blame children for their own rapes, about cops who are rapists, about ministers who blame their underage victims, about women's magazines that engage in preemptive victim-blaming, about the media refusing to call rapists what they are, when they've spent as much time as "feminists" talking about rape being treated as a compliment, about how women are forced to submit to all manner of absolutely hilarious rape jokes, about every last unmitigatingly infuriating detail of the rape culture in which women must walk and talk and live and breathe every fucking day and the perpetuation of which is often integral to male-exclusive bonding.
And the most powerful argument of all:
Posted by binky at September 30, 2007 01:59 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Random ThoughtsLeft to my own devices, I never would have been raped. The rapist was really the key component to the whole thing. I was sober; hardly scantily clad (another phrase appearing once in the article), I was wearing sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt; I was at home; my sexual history was, literally, nonexistent-I was a virgin; I struggled; I said no. There have been times since when I have been walking home, alone, after a few drinks, wearing something that might have shown a bit of leg or cleavage, and I wasn't raped. The difference was not in what I was doing. The difference was the presence of a rapist.