Seen in many places

[firecat]

A lot has been said about how to prevent rape.
Women should learn self-defense.
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 a.m., 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 report him as a rapist.
Tell your sons, god-sons, nephews, grandsons, and sons of friends that it's not okay to rape someone.

Don't just 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, y or z.
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.

My comment reposted from clawfoot's journal:

It makes sense to read male-bashing in the meme. At the same time - only five of the suggestions even include references to men. The rest are just as applicable to anyone who rapes or considers rape, regardless of sex.

It does bug me that the five suggestions using male nouns and pronouns imply only the raping of women by men is worth discussing. OTOH, I also see the point when people say that the raping of women by men occurs much more often than other kinds of rape and thus deserves more discussion.

But I think both of these things - "rape is an integral and constant element of the male psyche," singling out rape-of-women-by-men for discussion - occur partly because men-raping-women is "an integral and constant element of" our culture. Other sorts of rapes occur and are equally horrible (if not more so because of their invisibility) but the culture doesn't get as excited over them.

I think it's unfortunate that the meme essentially perpetuates this men-raping-women cluster-of-ideas-thoughts-and-imagery by presenting a list of situations where one is invited to visualize a woman's getting raped.

I also very much agree with one part of its message: Rape is not the fault of the person who gets raped.

Comments

[jenk]

Rape is not the fault of the person who gets raped.

Fault, no. The fault is with the perp not the victim. Just like the fault for theft is with the thief. Not locking your front door while you go to the mailbox does not mean people can just walk off with your stuff. Even if you stop to talk with a neighbor. Theft is theft. Rape is rape.

But I am a little leery of the idea that the victim is always powerless & the perp is always powerful.

None of the above means locking doors isn't smart.
None of the above means that going to a frat party and getting drunk is a good idea.
Or getting drunk in a bar.
noelfigart quoted a conversation from a martial arts class:

Student: "What's your favorite bar fighting technique?"
Instructor: "Not going to bars."

I've seen statistics that up to 80% of violent attacks involve some sort of intoxicating or imparing substance. Yes, I drink. I just don't seek out a roomful of intoxicated & potentially violent strangers to do it with. When I lower my ability to enforce boundaries I want to be with people who I trust to back me up, and perferably on my home turf.

And yes, these sort of guidelines apply to both men and women. Men are more likely to be victims of violent assault than women (note that's assault in general, not sexual assault).

[jenk]

I think it's unfortunate that the meme essentially perpetuates this men-raping-women cluster-of-ideas-thoughts-and-imagery by presenting a list of situations where one is invited to visualize a woman's getting raped.

Yeah. I think that list could easily turn into sexual fantasy material...

[daltong.livejournal.com]

I was in the position of trying to get help for a man who was being physically abused by her girlfriend. I called several crisis centers and other similar places, and all of them responded like this:

"I need help for a man who's being abused by his girlfriend."

"How long has he been abusing her?"

If I managed to get them to understand that he was the victim, not her, then either they weren't set up for that and had no suggestions or were openly snotty and doubtful about the possibility of a man being abused.

It was pretty gross.

[ailbhe]

I think that more attention being paid to - and more sentencing and less social acceptability for, even in nasty subcultures - male-on-female rape, the more will fall onto other kinds of rape, just as a side-effect. I think that the reason rape by women isn't seen as a big crime is the general perception of female powerlessness in re sex, and the reasons man-on-man rape isn't much noticed is because it happens to "men who are like women", ie men who are fucked. So it's all tied into societal perceptions of masculine and feminine sexuality, regardless of the actual sexes of people involved, and those perceptions are fucked up.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

so why don't you change the pronouns? in my book true memefication is about the gist, the idea, not the precise wording. i see that the attribution has already been lost since i first saw this one, *little grin*, so how much does the precise wording matter?

aside from the gendered pronoun use, i feel this one doesn't particularly bash men. ad even the pronoun use makes sense, because the lead-in is pretty specific to the things said about how women should behave. i don't recall ever hearing that men might be asking for it by the way they're dressed, or just by the fact that they're walking alone after dark. victim-blaming directed at men is different. i think it avoids male-bashing for me because of the way it's addressed, and it uses the hypothetical voice.

[leback.livejournal.com]

I think that essay is valuable in that it makes the point that the fundamental problem lies with the rapist, not the victim.

I was bothered when I first read it, because it was presented under the heading "How to stop rape," and I read that as implying that these are things the reader is likely to be able to do to stop rape. As such, I felt accused, and I resented that. I like this presentation better.

Meanwhile, I think jenk made good points above, in that in a world where I am personally powerless to wipe out rape entirely, there is value for me in knowing what I can do to protect myself. I wish the cultural baggage coming from widespread victim-blaming didn't make it so hard to talk about how one can protect oneself without muddying the issue of who is fundamentally to blame for rape.

[gconnor.livejournal.com]

It makes sense to read male-bashing in the meme.

I'm male and I didn't read it as male-bashing. Even if the message is targetted at men, it doesn't contain any generalizations like "Men are natural born rapists". If the method of delivery implies "Men need this advice to keep from becoming rapists" then that would be slightly leaning toward a type of bashing, but as presented here it doesn't ring that way to me.


using male nouns and pronouns imply only the raping of women by men is worth discussing

Well, presentation of a message that certain people need to hear is not the same as saying "other messages are not worth presenting". Saying "Women: protect yourselves" is not to say "Men: You don't need protection". Certainly saying one message over and over may imply an emphasis on that specific message, but doesn't exclude other messages. Same goes for "Men: Don't rape women" - it doesn't imply that men raping men or boys is OK.

(It's possible that this was in response to something else in the other/original entry that I'm not seeing here...)


"rape is an integral and constant element of the male psyche,"

wtf, who said that? Rape is not an element of my psyche, certainly not an integral and constant one. *That* part qualifies as male-bashing. I'm guessing that the original writer of that meant it as more of a straw-man that needed to be disputed, rather than any kind of a statement about how men actually think/feel/believe/behave.

I think we have emotions by way of being animals, and we have the power to assert intellect and willpower between our emotions and our behavior by way of being human. I also think that if a person has a tendency to behave a certain way without engaging thoughts and conscious decision first, that means he/she hasn't received the proper training necessary to qualify as "human". Therefore, someone who rapes another person and then says "But, but, but she was wearing a short skirt!!!1" as far as I'm concerned, he is not human.


I also very much agree with one part of its message: Rape is not the fault of the person who gets raped.

Oh yeah, definitely. Hear hear! There's a difference between advice that tells people to protect themselves, and saying it's their fault if they don't. Some people misread helpful advice as scolding those who don't follow it. That seems to be the whole point behind the meme. (Makes it kind of a counter-meme I guess :)

[dbubley.livejournal.com]

It would probably be very interesting to do an in-depth study of gender and rape. I don't think this society even thinks of a woman as a rapist, except possibly of children, or other women, which is why it almost never comes up unless it's a teacher with a student. Nobody talks much about lesbians anyway.

So when you hear of a male getting raped, the first thought is probably going to be that it was a homosexual act. Rape, however, is not really a sexual act as much as a power-over act that uses sex as its expression.

Males have trouble admitting that they were raped. Young males seduced, or even forced, into sex by older women often gain status among their peers. Rather than being the shameful act that it at least used to be for women, a male is going to be high-fived by his peers, who will see him as the one who made the conquest. As long as it's an opposite sex scenario, there have been studies which conclude that young men recover faster and with fewer problems than young women. Raped females are seen as somehow being devalued, but males supposedly gain value from the experience. Make it a same sex scenario and it doesn't translate.

I could say more about this, but I don't want to. As it is, every time I come across the news it's front and center way too often. Nancy Grace talks a lot about beautiful girls or women missing or raped. Then there was that pretty blond school teacher who was too beautiful to do jail time. Why is beauty even mentioned, doesn't rape stand alone? It all drives me bonkers on many, many levels.

DON'T RAPE.