Consequences in "why to ask first"

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I am seeing an infinite loop here. :p

Double post

^ Acquaintance rapes happen unexpectedly tho.

How not to get raped 101 (or better, how to stop it):

1.
-carry a weapon at all times (you can carry a folding knife at all times, except places that have metal detectors. They're rare, and it's probably a low risk area, like on a plane or courtroom)
-use it when being assaulted

2.

-only drink from unopened bottled drinks that you bring with you

#1 is the most practical, and it can apply to all unprovoked attacks, including animal attacks. #2 just makes sense.

And this is in response to all forms of rape, whether your husband or a group of young men.

If your BF or husband can't take "no" and keeps at it/forces it, put a knife in his neck or several rounds through his chest. There's "no".

Well having caught up with the posts here; the overall impression I'm left with by starvingartist and tarantella is that men should butt out of the conversation about rape. Apparently men who do try to engage in the conversation and try to offer any help or suggestions are misogynists i.e. women haters Go figure!

All men know it is wrong / immoral / illegal to commit rape as they know it is wrong to commit murder or do armed robberies. However, a minority of men will still commit these violent crimes regardless. So it isn't a question of education. This applies equally to stranger rape or rape by colleagues, friends or family members. ALL men already know it is wrong.

Stiff punishments are the only deterrents available but considering how the prisons are already overflowing with men who have committed violent crimes, it is clear such deterrents are of limited success.

Based on the responses in this thread, there doesn't seem much point in men continuing to be involved in the discussion. Apparently we have nothing to offer or to say that is useful in any way. We can offer our sympathy and compassion to the victims but that won't stop more rapes from happening. So we are back to square one again and tomorrow will be the same as today which was the same as yesterday.

See, there's where the disconnect is: I (perhaps we) are specifically NOT talking about the violent-rape-by-a-stranger kind of rape. Every one of us women who has a mother, or an aunt or an older sister, or has grown up with the influence of any adult female in their life, has been warned practically since birth to never be alone with a strange man, don't wear provocative clothing (although, as teens, I'm sure most of us utterly ignored that one because, well, that's what teens do), don't go into bad neighborhoods, don't leave a drink unattended, etc.

Pardon me for not remembering who posted the statistic that 27% of rapes are perpetrated by a stranger. Yep, that's a pretty good slice. What you've got to look at, though, is the fact that that particular statistic also means that 73% of rapes are perpetrated by someone known to the victim. Most of the women (and men) on WP who have been victims of sexual assault were, indeed, victims of someone they knew and trusted. It follows that none of our mothers' advice and therefore none of the advice being put forth here would have helped in that situation. And, guess what, it didn't.

So, if traditional "how to avoid being raped" advice did not help 73% of rape victims (again, women AND men), it is not realistic to assume that all rapes, or even most of them, can be avoided using that traditional advice. Again, it becomes a matter of "what constitutes consent?" - a question on which it seems impossible to reach consensus.

It's not really something I talk about but when I was a lot younger I was raped on a regular basis by someone who I trusted.

I know today that I was conditioned by a man who was quite a lot older than me and for him it was about the power and the control just as much as the sexual gratification.

He made me believe that was all I was for, it went on for years.

It's too easy for me to blame myself (even now) because I believe I should have known better. But unfortunately I didn't.

I have no answers to this problem.

Which leads back to what seems to be the problem: that these family members, friends, boyfriends, co-workers, bosses honestly do not see that they did anything wrong. Quite possibly there was no force involved, but the girl (often underage) didn't know enough to protest violently. Or perhaps she was sick, or asleep, and the man said "shhhh, it's alright."

I know enough women who've been the victims of date rape that I know the overwhelming sentiment during their assaults was of: "even though I don't want this, I must have somehow given him the wrong signal, so it's really my fault." A lot of victims of incest are *told* by their abusers that it's happening because of something the victim did, and this is their punishment for "being bad."

As Dox said, it's cognitive dissonance that allows the person forcing him/herself on an unwilling victim to believe that "she/he wanted it, so it's not really rape."

So between the victims feeling that they must somehow have caused this great betrayal, and a lot of the perpetrators believing that they have done nothing wrong, it gets swept under the rug and not reported.

Here's a rather amazing set of statistics: of all the people I know who have been sexually assaulted (off the top of my head, I'd guess that I have personally heard 1st-hand accounts from somewhere around 100 women and 2 men), 1) all of the incidents happened with someone they knew and had no reason to distrust; 2) none of them were reported. Most of them didn't even talk about the incident until many, many years after it happened.

What this discussion here on WP is about, from my perspective, is a combination of two things: attempting to do away with the shame component of being a victim plus educating people so that they can't delude themselves that "she/he wanted it."

An open discussion of the issue I feel is helpful for the first of those two things. The other is getting people (yes, women, too) to understand the importance of getting clear consent from their partner before laying a hand, lips, or genitalia on someone in a sexual manner.