So, when the cops came to our office a few years back giving suggestions on how to remain safe - such as locking your car when driving through rough neighborhoods, or telling women to hang on closely to their purses to avoid purse snatching, etc. - by this person's logic the cops were promoting crime!?

I use this analogy. Say you live in a rough neighborhood, and you sometimes aren't very careful about locking your doors at night. Say some criminal in the neighborhood observes this and decides to break in to your place one night. In the process, said criminal decides he doesn't want any witnesses and shoots you in the head.

Now, say the criminal is caught and the justice system works perfectly; the guy is convicted and sentenced to whatever the most severe punishment under your state laws is. And everyone remarks on the criminal's shame and how you were such a nice person who in no way deserved what happened to you. The fact that you left your doors unlocked will probably not be noted, except maybe in passing as a caution to others who live in your neighborhood. You can say that justice has been served, and indeed it has.

But the fact remains: you're still dead. All the criminal justice and police work in the world didn't revive you. There was no way it could have. Clearly, it would have been better for you if the crime had not happened in the first place. So: if there is a reasonable chance of being broken into if you leave your doors unlocked, then why not take a minute to check them before you go to bed? Of course, in doing things like this, you have to make an assessment of what a "reasonable chance" is. You can't go through life afraid of every little thing. So many drink-spiking stories are urban legend. But if there is some reasonable suspicion that your drink might be spiked by someone, then why not keep an eye on it? (Or better yet, go to a higher class of establishment where you don't have to worry about that sort of thing.) Nobody's going to blame you if your drink gets spiked... but the criminal justice system can't un-rape you.

I took a class with a woman who barely survived a drugged drink. Her heart stopped in the ambulance. She was lucky.

Those who won't learn from the lessons of others are free to learn for themselves.

By that logic, telling people to look both ways before crossing the street is "blaming the victim."

Telling someone to take prudent steps toward ensuring their own safety is not blaming them if they are subsequently victimized.

These sheltered naifs who think that the world would be safe if only we'd stop discussing bad things, are going to get people killed, either someone who follows their advice or someone who comes to their rescue.

If you're in a horror movie, you don't go into the basement alone. Freddie doesn't care that you're categorically opposed to his "murder culture."

So, don't be naive; look both ways, keep an eye on your drink, and stay out of horror movie basements.

"But the fact remains: you're still dead. All the criminal justice and police work in the world didn't revive you. There was no way it could have."

A level of denial bodering on the psychotic is practiced by a good part of the population. Insurance and health care are code words for a "do over", in which no loss or hurt occurred.

It's not just college kids painted up like My Little Pony weeping for a "safe space", and they'll vote for anything promising to protect them.

I'm all about practical personal safety advice. I hate impractical personal safety advice. People get up in arms about personal safety advice because we are bombarded with so much useless crap.

"Locking your door" = practical. It takes a second to do.

"Not going out at night ever and going alone anywhere and don't EVER go to parties after 9pm" = impractical if you have a job that requires late hours and a normal social life.

"Wearing a belt and layers so you're a more difficult rape target" = ridiculous. I mean, come on.

"Watching your drink" falls somewhere on this spectrum, and I'm not sure where. My personal, immediate reaction is to roll my eyes. Yeah, I can chug my drink really fast and hold onto it when I get up and move seats and never, ever avert my eyes from it. But, over the course of a normal party, I'm maybe setting it down or holding it off to the side as I talk with/greet someone. Most women know drinks can be drugged, but normal party behavior makes it hard to be 100% safe.

I don't find the advice victim-blamey, so much as I find it impractical.

There is a belief that "culture" causes crimes and if you just change culture, crime stops. However, this is absurd (see Sowell's The Quest for Cosmic Justice). Culture isn't that powerful. Some people are lazy and just want to take what they want. Some people are drunk and lose their self-control. Some are crazy. The police can't be everywhere. No culture ever has been crime-free. So be careful.

I was on the student group that handled new student orientation at my university back in the 90s. We had a sex safety program that new students took and it was mostly taught by grad students in human sexuality and women's studies. They specifically taught that there were a lot of bad people out there so don't walk alone when drunk or at night (we had escorts on demand to walk people home,) don't hesitate to call the police, and yes, don't accept drinks from strangers.

In the 90s this was considered feminist advice. What's changed?

Apparently, it's now the college's job to hire at least one person for every female student to visit the campus bar or local bars and stare at the drinks they buy so no one puts any drugs in it.

Thanks, sofar.

Conan: Rapists - that is, people who want to hurt people (or who don't want to "hurt," but still have no sense of empathy and don't see forcing people as wrong) are not comparable to innocent drivers who simply cannot help but hit those who step in front of their cars. (And, regarding the latter category of rapist: As I've mentioned before, if the phone rang during consensual sex and the man knew it was a very important call, he'd be able to stop, so what's the difference?)

Columnist Dan Savage, who very much pushes for personal responsibility and who has said "regret is not rape," had this exchange in 2005, about drug-support payments:

http://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/the-savage-debate-continues-on-drug-support-payments/Content?oid=2180918

Q: The idea that the person with HIV is going to have to pay even part of the drug costs for someone they are deemed to have infected is ridiculous. To suggest that if I willingly have unprotected sex with a stranger and am infected as a result that the other person is responsible for infecting me is a recipe for disaster. You seem to like metaphors, Dan. Try this one. The little old lady has a tumor that is growing and decides to jump in front of a train. Is it the conductor’s responsibility when he hits her? Okay, she doesn’t have a tumor. She is a little kid who is playing "chicken." Even if you did charge the conductor, it doesn’t solve the problem. HIV and AIDS are not going away as long as people continue to have sex. If a person doesn’t want kids or sexually transmitted disease, they need to stop having sex. If they don’t want to stop having sex, they need to decide what personal level of risk they are willing to take and take responsibility for themselves. —Sex Is Something Society Yearns

A: If the train conductor can see the little old lady and can stop the train before it hits her and hits the gas (or whatever they use on trains) and speeds up … yes, he’s responsible for her death. Someone with HIV and a hard dick is a not an unstoppable train, SISSY.

(end)

Somehow, I doubt he would say anything different about anyone who hears the word "no" or who can see that someone is unconscious.

Also: There are perfectly good reasons we tend to get FAR more outraged over crimes of gratuitous violence than over crimes of profit. Which is one reason it's likely to provoke outrage when we imply that the former is somehow just as forgivable or "natural" as theft.

And here's the other reason: Can you imagine the uproar if it were implied that white-on-black violence, for its own sake, is just as "normal" as burglary and that black people need to take more "responsibility" to avoid drugged drinks so they won't get easily beaten to a pulp?

In other words, it's not necessarily what warning you say so much as HOW you say it. (I don't know just how it was phrased by the school, of course.) I do believe that young women would really rather be warned than not warned, of course, but the idea that women are being targeted as a group by a drug when no minority group is being targeted is clearly something that can't just be "accepted."

"Can you imagine the uproar if it were implied that white-on-black violence, for its own sake, is just as "normal" as burglary and that black people need to take more "responsibility" to avoid drugged drinks so they won't get easily beaten to a pulp?"

I don't think that's a good analogy. A better analogy might be advising blacks to avoid an area where a KKK rally is going to take place in the near future. A prudent black person might decide that their chances of being harmed will be greatly reduced by following the advice. But some black person might decide they want to prove a point and provoke a confrontation. If that's what they want to do, and they accept the risk, then more power to them. And if they are harmed, no one is going to blame them because, y'know, the KKK is a bunch of thugs. What will not be socially acceptable is for that person to then go file a bunch of lawsuits against third parties who were not, in their opinion, sufficiently diligent in preventing them from being harmed. They knew or should have known the risk when they made the decision to go in.

There is obviously a line somewhere, where we do in fact blame the victim for not taking responsibility for their own well-being. I think the line is where a person puts himself in a position to be harmed by ordinary, non-criminal conduct of others, or by foreseeable circumstances of nature. To use your train analogy, there is going to be limited sympathy for the person who jumps in front of the train, somehow survives the experience, and then sues the train conductor. The train conductor had no intent of causing harm, and probably used whatever very limited means were available (trains obviously can't stop on a dime) to try to avoid the harm. The person who jumped out in front of the train was irresponsible.

Conan: Rapists - that is, people who want to hurt people (or who don't want to "hurt," but still have no sense of empathy and don't see forcing people as wrong) are not comparable to innocent drivers who simply cannot help but hit those who step in front of their cars.... ~ Posted by: lenona at February 19, 2016 10:37 AM

That's true, to an extent. Yes, rapists are actively seeking victims whereas bad drivers are not. And, yes, many an accident is actually caused by a the victim stepping in front of a moving car and not by the driver seeking a victim.

However, the analogy stands in that urging people to take steps to protect themselves from the dangers known to be in the world (rapists, muggers, traffic, bad drivers, etc.) is not tantamount to blaming the victim.

Situational awareness is a good thing to get used to practicing - even if you're not Jason Bourne.

http://www.artofmanliness.com/2015/02/05/how-to-develop-the-situational-awareness-of-jason-bourne/

If the train conductor can see the little old lady and can stop the train before it hits her and hits the gas (or whatever they use on trains) and speeds up … yes, he’s responsible for her death. ~ Posted by: lenona at February 19, 2016 10:37 AM

Small nit: The train is driven by the engineer. The conductor is somewhat akin to the purser on cruise ships and airlines,, overseeing the crew responsible for the comfort and safety of the passengers and the smooth operation of the vehicle.

Side note: My grandfather was a conductor on one of the commuter rail lines in Chicago.

In other words, it's not necessarily what warning you say so much as HOW you say it.

This.

When providing advice, we should always ask, "Is it helpful?"

Saying "Watch your drink" to a general audience could MAYBE be helpful. Although, as I said in my post above, it's empty, impractical advice.

Saying, "You should have watched your drink," to someone who was already a victim never is helpful.

The issue is that, historically, women have been bombarded with the unhelpful and insensitive kind of advice (including about what clothes they should and should not wear) and lots of after-the-fact "you shouldn't have walked to your car alone" advice. And so, the social pendulum has swung to the opposite side (hypersensitivity), meaning that even helpful, well-meant advice is causing people to freak the eff out.

The pendulum will hopefully soon end up somewhere in the middle.

"... but the idea that women are being targeted as a group by a drug when no minority group is being targeted is clearly something that can't just be "accepted." posted above by lenona

Please re-state as I don't get your point.

I've not heard of men being drugged to be raped so I did assume that women were being "targeted" by predators that use drugs for the purpose of rape (alcohol included).

Minorities are "targeted" by violent youth when those "minorities" are in the youth's territory. Thus here in Texas I avoid the barrios at night sticking to the main streets because I (being white) am a minority in the barrio.

In college I was the only white (and only college student) at my summer/weekend workplace.

My co-workers were "cool" not "cold", however during a break they asked me where I lived.

My reply indicated what streets I used to get to work. A brief silence was followed by "Bob, WE don't even use that street. Guys, let's get a map so this white boy can get home safely." I was good with them after that.

"Minority" has many definitions and well-intended warnings are ignored by fools.

Saying, "You should have watched your drink," to someone who was already a victim never is helpful.

If it serves to remind them to watch their drink the next time, it is helpful.

To avoid criticism, schools should warn only the men. The women can infer what they want.

Example: There are stories about drinks being drugged with roofies. Men should be especially careful to watch their drinks.

If it serves to remind them to watch their drink the next time, it is helpful.

Pretty sure having their drink drugged and getting violated would teach someone that lesson, even without your "helpful" advice. If it didn't, your advice wouldn't help anyway. If it did, your advice would make them feel even worse.

There is obviously a line somewhere, where we do in fact blame the victim for not taking responsibility for their own well-being. -Cousin Dave
____________________________________________

And the trouble starts when we use the word "victim" for an adult who steps in front of a moving car - or who knowingly goes into an avalanche-prone area. It is not appropriate, in such cases, to use the same word that we use for a person targeted by a criminal. (I don't know how often journalists write that way - but with all the grammatical errors one sees in newspapers these days, it wouldn't be surprising to see that too.)

While suing third parties is often inappropriate, at least sometimes it isn't - such as a certain case where a woman was raped in a parking garage by a homeless man - and 12 days earlier, he had raped an employee OF the garage. Yet, the security guards were in the lobby at the time, instead of where they apparently should have been. I.e., the owners already knew it had become a very dangerous place for their customers and didn't do much to change that.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/08/08/interest-safety/hj3U0EGaqG0hqhpNuEc2NO/story.html#comments

There's plenty more coverage, if you search on any of the names involved.

Furthermore, while I have never supported getting really drunk even at a same-sex gathering (because even then, one could say something very embarrassing or private that is bound to get repeated to the worst possible person) parties at colleges are not public events and they should not have to be prepared for as if one were going to battle. After all, if it's a nighttime alcohol-free party, should one have to make sure the soft drinks weren't drugged too?

To sofar (and Patrick): One doesn't even have to say "watch your drink." The officials could simply have said "there have been rumors that some people's drinks have been drugged when they weren't looking. We want to let everyone know this." Anyone could figure out the warning implied.

I don't know whether it's possible to rehabilitate adult serial drunken drivers. While such drivers don't mean to cripple or kill anyone, they don't exactly care when they do, and there lies the common pathology they have with rapists. In the same vein, the parents and teachers of young people are the ones responsible for seeking out and curing such pathologies before they can escape their parents' authority - and the same goes for young people who grow up to become violent racists. Of course, it's difficult for teachers when the parents are abusive or neglectful, but it has to be done.

To Bob: My point was, if racist violence isn't common on a college campus (as it seldom is, with or without alcohol or drugs), what excuse is there for other gratuitous violence to happen or for the college to say they can't really do anything to prevent it?

The officials could simply have said "there have been rumors that some people's drinks have been drugged when they weren't looking. We want to let everyone know this." Anyone could figure out the warning implied. ~ Posted by: lenona at February 19, 2016 2:45 PM

Except that kids who have never been allowed to face any sort of risk and who have been given trophies all their lives for participation cannot be expected to "figure out [what] the warning implied." These are kids who equate emotional harm with physical harm, never having known any serious physical harm beyond a toe stubbed in a no-scorekeeping soccer game.

It may indeed be sexist to only warn the women about roofied drinks, but until there's a rash of men getting roofied and assaulted, it makes sense to focus on the potential victim population and worry about hurt feelings and damaged egos later.

"To Bob: My point was, if racist violence isn't common on a college campus (as it seldom is, with or without alcohol or drugs), what excuse is there for other gratuitous violence to happen or for the college to say they can't really do anything to prevent it?" via lenona

Sorry if I'm nit picking but no society or college can prevent physical/emotional violence gratuitous or not.

Both sexes bully, are petty towards others, vie for social position, prey on the weak/uninformed, and lack compassion towards those that think "differently".

(And that does not includes those who have not learned better but will make mistakes and learn from them.)

A college can not do anything to prevent the above. Students take advantage of others as do professors. Life is life.

"... what excuse is there for other gratuitous violence to happen ..." is not a logical thought based the definition of "gratuitous".

The officials could simply have said "there have been rumors that some people's drinks have been drugged when they weren't looking. We want to let everyone know this." Anyone could figure out the warning implied.

The unisex warning. Silly to pretend like this.

Must we really deny biology to not offend the feminists?

Women evolved to be the choosier sex. As I've noted before, straight men would have as much sex as gay men if they were attracted to men. In a gay bar, a guy can get another guy to go in the bathroom stall with him pretty easily. Not so likely to happen with a woman in an "all audiences" place.

Women, for the most part, do not have to trick men into sex. They just need to be willing and make that clear.

So stating the obvious, that the "drinker" needs to be aware of what they are drinking/who made the drink is "blaming" the drinker.

Student wrote: "This is textbook victim-blaming, and it is coming right from the people who are hired to protect us." (Is this Joe Biden's granddaughter and her SS protection unit took the night off?)

Do they need school crossing guards to help them cross the street, i.e. "making their campus safer". (note: went to inner-city college w/no campus so street smarts were mandatory).

Student wrote: " “Constant visual contact with your cup” is physically impossible, and ridiculous to expect out of anyone. Especially someone drinking alcoholic beverages. (Like ?????)"

IT'S SO HARD!!!!! IT'S NOT FAIR!!!!! I HAVE THE RIGHT TO DO WHAT I WANT!!!!!

Maybe in your home and maybe not. (We have a sexual abuse trial going on here in town where a teenager drinking at her parents home party was abused at night after parents went to bed so ...)

"Not going out at night ever and going alone anywhere and don't EVER go to parties after 9pm" = impractical

Hows about not getting drunk, taking a guy home in your car, disabling your alarm, having sex with him, having sex again when you wake up, take him out to breakfast, take him back home, have sex with him again, tell your ho-bag friends about it, and decide to call it rape (because you were to drunk to consent to one in three fuckings) after being slut shamed by them?

How impractical is that?

I don't think that's a good analogy. A better analogy might be advising blacks to avoid an area where a KKK rally is going to take place in the near future. - Cousin Dave
____________________________________

You're implying (maybe you didn't mean to) that a woman should assume, every time she goes to a party that isn't a dinner party (or maybe including those too?) that the men there are all potential thugs/criminals (like Klan members), even if she knows them already and doesn't think they're anything like that - or that they would drug her drink.

What was so terrible about my analogy?

Another example: Do we fail to get activated against homophobia when gay men get horribly beaten or worse because they didn't happen to know that the neighborhood they wandered into was hostile to them? Sure, the media and society might have ALREADY done plenty to paint those neighborhoods in highly unflattering terms in ways that would warn gay men of the risks, but we still don't tend to say "stay away from there" unless we're addressing a close friend.

And even if the person giving the warning IS a close friend of the listener, it's easy for me to imagine the average gay person getting offended.

In the same vein, I would hope that most young men would be offended to be constantly regarded as criminals who can't even be allowed to serve a soda to women who have KNOWN them for years.
__________________________________________

Must we really deny biology to not offend the feminists?
_________________________________________

Not sure what you mean. While as I said, I don't like comparing rape to theft, it's certainly true that men who get drunk and pass out get their wallets lifted quite often (and for all we know, roofies are being used for the same purpose), so what IS wrong with simply stating a crime fact in a "unisex" manner without implying that women - but not good men - need to work to prevent it? (I'm not saying men should be unpaid chaperones or even should have to watch over their girlfriends all the time; I'm talking, just for starters, about parents teaching boys to speak out against rape instead of treating it as a joke whenever the boys are in all-male gatherings. You can't assume your kids are growing up with any sense of empathy just because you THINK they have clean records so far - and if boys are surrounded by amoral jocks, as in Glen Ridge, NJ, 1989, the job gets even harder, which is why ALL parents - and teachers - have to be involved.)

Besides, as your books imply, etiquette IS very important. It helps prevent all sorts of unpleasant situations from becoming much worse.

Finally, I think most people here will enjoy this Mary Gaitskill essay, from Harper's Magazine (1994):

http://genedseminars.umb.edu/engl273-2/spg09/documents/HarpersMagazine-1994-03-0001592.pdf

"On not being a victim: sex, rape, and the trouble with following rules."

I've quoted the sensitive paragraphs near the end before. Here's what came just before those ones:

"I am not idealistic enough to hope that we will ever live in a world without rape and other forms of sexual cruelty; I think men and women will always have to struggle to behave responsibly. But I think we could make the struggle less difficult by changing the way we teach responsibility and social conduct. To teach a boy that rape is 'bad' is not as effective as making him see that rape is a violation of his own masculine dignity as well as a violation of the raped woman. It's true that children don't know big words and that teenage boys aren't all that interested in their own dignity. But these are things that children learn more easily by example than by words, and learning by example runs deep."

Also note the paragraph at the end of page 39 (that one is also excerpted in capital letters, at the top of the page). In a nutshell, she said that rape by a stranger could, in some ways, be less horrific than rape by someone she knew and trusted. (That's just one small part of the essay.)

lenona, I'm not sure you are including in your thoughts the following rape statistics (which I am assuming to be true):

Approximately 4/5 of rapes were committed by someone known to the victim.1
82% of sexual assaults were perpetrated by a non-stranger.1
47% of rapists are a friend or acquaintance.1
25% are an intimate.1
5% are a relative.1
https://rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assault-offenders

Advising a girl to be aware of the above is not "blaming the victim".

It is simply advising "situational awareness" concerning her drinks, her walk to the car in a dark parking lot, her letting a "friend" take her home, and so on "even if she knows them already and doesn't think they're anything like that."

You can imagine and hope for all things but you can not go back in time and undo an unguarded moment.

And please don't tell me college girls "know" the boys they party with. Let's be real here.

Define "know." They don't necessarily go to huge parties, just because some do. Some parties are relatively small - a dorm party, for one.

Yes, I knew very well that most rapes are not committed by strangers - I was surprised it wasn't HIGHER than 80%.

Parents, high school teachers, and administrators can simply hand lists of basic facts like that to the students (who are 18 and older, after all) and let them come to their own conclusions as to what precautions to take. (The list can, of course, include the most common tactics used by rapists in targeting victims - including cases of date rape, of course.) Not to mention answers to questions like "who is a rapist" when it comes to those men who do not try to get women drunk but who can't imagine that a woman has a civilized (or legal) right to say no under circumstances x, y, or z (like her accepting three paid dinner dates in a row).

In the meantime, why not focus at least HALF the energy on the people who COMMIT rape, whether they fall into one category or another?

From an old thread:

Personally, I believe that women would really rather be warned than not warned as to how and when a man tends to rape - it's all in how you say it. Since parents understandably are afraid of making their daughters angry and defensive, often all they say is "stay away from drinking parties" without saying exactly why, which is why you don't often hear girls complaining of not being warned about such parties.

I would suggest a different approach for parents and teachers alike: Simply hold an all-female class (including the teacher - and do NOT call it a rape prevention class, just say it's about rape), hand out two pieces of paper (one on acquaintance rape and one on stranger rape) with the statistics on the left-hand side of each paper. Then tell them to write their conclusions on the right-hand side of each sheet and keep a copy for themselves (plus maybe give a copy back to the teacher). Then tell them that if they want, you can provide them with some extra advice,
but only if they want it and not if they don't.

Of course, they are free to compare notes after class. That way, they at least have a sense of whom to avoid dating or partying with - and when to avoid it.

Not to mention that if you, as a parent, give girls copies of the book "changing bodies, Changing Lives" and ask them to read ALL of it, that will include the chapter on rape, so it will come off as far less preachy. It's all about context, when it comes to making people hear what you want them to hear. Besides, in that chapter, it's the TEENS who give advice on avoiding rape, so it's easier to accept for the young reader. (The chapter also includes the section "Who is a Rapist?" It mentions that even serial rapists are not, apparently, mentally ill as a rule, but they do have a poor sense of self-awareness and communication. Near the end of that section, it says "probably most importantly, rapists cannot see women as human beings. They see them only as 'cunts' or 'whores'.")