Through the eyes of a rapist

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Through the eyes of a rapist

Poll ended at Thu Sep 30, 2021 9:45 am

I am a woman and have seen this or something like it before
7
21%
I am a woman and have not seen this or something like it before
2
6%
I am a man and have seen this or something like it before
13
39%
I am a man and have not seen this or something like it before
11
33%
I do not identify as a man or a woman and I have seen this or something like it before
0
No votes
I do not identify as a man or a woman and I have not seen this or something like it before
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 33

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wilsontown
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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by wilsontown » Thu Sep 23, 2021 10:17 pm

My wife runs at night (normally early in the morning) specifically to avoid being harassed (verbally) by men who are out and about in the day. Normally at the sort of hour she runs it's dog walkers and students who are still getting home from last night so no-one is up for a bit of light misogyny.

I am, frankly, embarrassed that my wife doesn't feel safe to run whenever she wants here in what is supposed to be one of the safest cities in the UK.
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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by Bird on a Fire » Thu Sep 23, 2021 10:28 pm

snoozeofreason wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 12:41 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 10:47 am
In Europe I never really think about this stuff, as I don't really have anything valuable and don't fear for my personal safety. But I was given advice as a child by my mum, and by school as a teenager after some students got mugged nearby.
I'm always slightly surprised when I hear things like this, as I have been attacked in the street several times over the course of my life* . I tend to assume that most men have had similar experiences, and have adjusted their behaviour accordingly. Do you look exceptionally fierce? Or was your mother's advice just very good?

* In the UK (and once in Portugal). Was unscathed while living in France, though did occasionally have moments that gave me pause for thought.
Never was probably too strong. I generally know what's going on around me and would avoid anything looking dangerous. Angry drunks get a wide berth. But while I've seen plenty of fights, nobody has ever tried to involve me in one, even when it's been one of my friends kicking off. I'm about average height, out of shape, and normally scruffy, so I don't think my appearance would be that off-putting. I've probably just been lucky (or haven't been unlucky).

I think, though, that the homicide rates of Porto Alegre suggest that a level of caution beyond Londoner-level is necessary. I definitely see people using mobile phones in public in London, for example. But it was also even worse for women - I was more worried about being robbed (a major inconvenience) than shot (pretty unlikely in absolute terms, if relatively much likelier) or otherwise physically attacked. Whereas my female friends would take an uber to go two blocks that I'd happily walk alone at 1am while drunk. Inside a bar was much safer, because they have armed guards.
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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by bagpuss » Fri Sep 24, 2021 9:54 am

I've definitely seen things very like that before - I specifically remember the hair length thing and also the grabbing people from grocery store car parks. I would strongly question the validity of several of the "facts" as they simply don't chime with reports of sexual attacks and rape that I have read about in recent years - especially the time and location "facts". In every case of rape or serious sexual assault that I've seen reported, it was a woman girl walking alone either late at night or in an isolated location in the afternoon or early evening. "Flashing" incidences have mostly been during the daytime or very early evening, and on fairly popular walking routes in quieter spots but very close to the town, never more than about 5-10 mins walk from the (small) town centre. I have not seen mention of a single case reported in the time frame mentioned in the link in the last few years, and I would have done as that's the time of day when I run. I've always felt safer running at that time of day partly because of the fact that you never hear of any attacks happening then.

I don't have a problem with sensible advice being shared about how to make yourself less of a target but firstly it should be directed at everyone and secondly it should never be given out as the main or only response to a specific attack. I am fed up of the way that the moment a woman is attacked, the police and other organisations tell you not to do x, y, or z - and nearly always the person attacked outrageously did one of x, y or z (like, having the cheek to walk 5 minutes alone to the pub after dark to meet a friend). So although they absolutely don't intend to blame the victim, it very much does add to the idea that the victim is at least in part to blame, even though all they have done is something that the vast majority of men do without even thinking about it. I have never yet seen any official body give advice to how people could make the streets safer for everyone. I know that's not as easy as telling people not to go out by themselves but I'm sure that with a bit of imagination and some thought, people could come up with some reasonable suggestions. It's not as if it's a new problem so no-one has had time to think about possible solutions.

I should add that I seem to be a lot less worried about things than many other women of my acquaintance. I think that this is probably because I've lived in Brighton and London and now live in a very small town where it's definitely considerably safer and I feel much more relaxed being alone here, although I'm always a little bit on my guard. We have had several cases of flashers in the years I've lived here, and in places where I've walked and run alone quite often*, so I'm not daft - I do know there's always a possibility of bad things happening anywhere. I was, though, surprised a few years ago to hear a couple of friends here say that they always get a taxi home from the station after about 10 at night as they won't walk home** in the dark by themselves. Certainly, I've happily done that walk alone at around midnight or later, many a time. I also run by myself, out into the countryside, early in the morning, often seeing no more than 2 or 3 people in a run of an hour or more, although it's true that until last year's lockdown combined with half marathon training, I was more nervous about doing that than I am now.



*although, as mentioned already, at very different times of day.
**they both live slightly further from the station than I do but it's still only a 15 minute walk for them and from what they said, the distance wasn't the issue, and the extra bit is the safest part as it's on a well-lit main road.

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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by purplehaze » Fri Sep 24, 2021 10:04 am

The 'whisper network' was around when I was a teenager in the 70s between all my cohort in school. Most mums described it as salacious gossip perhaps because they feared their husbands or sons would end up on it. It was mainly though male doctors and priests with several teenage boys who were described as rapey - one of these guys lost his kneecaps to a punishment shooting - I grew up in Northern Ireland.

My daughters had lists of guys who were 'bad boys' and teachers who crossed the line.

Regarding safety, I'd like to think I could do all the things listed but when I was abused, I simply froze, terrified - I was only 12. I did get angry and laughed at a flasher, I was with my sister who was enraged. This was in Spain and we were on a day out. I could see he'd been following us from the corner of my eye, so was on my guard but it still came as a shock. I shouted loudly, fire, waving to a group of people who were ahead and he scarpered PDQ.

ETA: I do not condone the violence that was outlined above - knee capping.

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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by Tessa K » Fri Sep 24, 2021 10:44 am

purplehaze wrote:
Fri Sep 24, 2021 10:04 am
The 'whisper network' was around when I was a teenager in the 70s between all my cohort in school. Most mums described it as salacious gossip perhaps because they feared their husbands or sons would end up on it. It was mainly though male doctors and priests with several teenage boys who were described as rapey - one of these guys lost his kneecaps to a punishment shooting - I grew up in Northern Ireland.

My daughters had lists of guys who were 'bad boys' and teachers who crossed the line.

Regarding safety, I'd like to think I could do all the things listed but when I was abused, I simply froze, terrified - I was only 12. I did get angry and laughed at a flasher, I was with my sister who was enraged. This was in Spain and we were on a day out. I could see he'd been following us from the corner of my eye, so was on my guard but it still came as a shock. I shouted loudly, fire, waving to a group of people who were ahead and he scarpered PDQ.

ETA: I do not condone the violence that was outlined above - knee capping.
It's interesting that you say you shouted 'fire'. I've read that if you shout that you're more likely to get help than if you shout 'rape'.

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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by Woodchopper » Fri Sep 24, 2021 1:13 pm

Tessa K wrote:
Fri Sep 24, 2021 10:44 am
purplehaze wrote:
Fri Sep 24, 2021 10:04 am
The 'whisper network' was around when I was a teenager in the 70s between all my cohort in school. Most mums described it as salacious gossip perhaps because they feared their husbands or sons would end up on it. It was mainly though male doctors and priests with several teenage boys who were described as rapey - one of these guys lost his kneecaps to a punishment shooting - I grew up in Northern Ireland.

My daughters had lists of guys who were 'bad boys' and teachers who crossed the line.

Regarding safety, I'd like to think I could do all the things listed but when I was abused, I simply froze, terrified - I was only 12. I did get angry and laughed at a flasher, I was with my sister who was enraged. This was in Spain and we were on a day out. I could see he'd been following us from the corner of my eye, so was on my guard but it still came as a shock. I shouted loudly, fire, waving to a group of people who were ahead and he scarpered PDQ.

ETA: I do not condone the violence that was outlined above - knee capping.
It's interesting that you say you shouted 'fire'. I've read that if you shout that you're more likely to get help than if you shout 'rape'.
There has been some research on this.

An old article from the 80s finds that shouting "Help, rape, call the police" is much more likely to result in a bystander intervening than shouting "Fire".
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1981-26051-001

More recent research finds that people are more likely to intervene if a situation is unambiguously one of rape or sexual assault (compared to the situation being ambiguous).
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3149/jms.1601.3
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1987-10216-001
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2012-23045-008
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24313697/

A consequence of shouting 'fire' may be that it confuses people if there evidently isn't a fire in the area, if so they might be less likely to intervene if they don't know what's going in. In addition, the 1980s article suggest that people are deterred by what they perceive to be risks to their personal safety. If someone assumes that a fire is dangerous they may decide not to intervene directly.

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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by Stephanie » Fri Sep 24, 2021 1:35 pm

My husband got bottled once when he was a teenager. There used to be an endless grungers vs townies war that would take place at the station and on the train after they were coming home from their respective nights out. My husband is extremely chilled anyway - I could probably count the handful of times I've seen him fully lose his temper - but when he got attacked he was also very drunk. So when the bottle smashed on his head... he didn't react. That seemed to spook the lads who wanted a fight, and they f.cked off.

He wasn't uninjured. He woke the next day with a lot of blood on his pillow, and some of his ear missing, much to the concern of his mum. But it did make me wonder how much being able to take a punch (or indeed a bottle) plays into how men assess whether it's worth continuing a fight.
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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by Cardinal Fang » Fri Sep 24, 2021 5:58 pm

As a side poll

How many women here, at the end of an evening out with (female) friends when people are heading home, say some variant of "text me when you get home" and worry if they don't?

How many men, at the end of an evening out with friends, do the same?

CF
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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by monkey » Fri Sep 24, 2021 6:18 pm

Cardinal Fang wrote:
Fri Sep 24, 2021 5:58 pm
As a side poll

How many women here, at the end of an evening out with (female) friends when people are heading home, say some variant of "text me when you get home" and worry if they don't?

How many men, at the end of an evening out with friends, do the same?

CF
My SO does that with friends as a general thing (male and female). I have asked men and women to do it, but only when they've had a few too many and there might be more reason to worry. I have also been told that I will get a text when a female friend gets home, without asking. When apart, I let my SO know when I'm leaving a place (and she does the same for me), but that's not just about getting attacked - me and SO are normally on bikes and it can be risky on a weekend night when you have to share the road with drunk Alabama drivers.

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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by nezumi » Fri Sep 24, 2021 6:42 pm

Cardinal Fang wrote:
Fri Sep 24, 2021 5:58 pm
As a side poll

How many women here, at the end of an evening out with (female) friends when people are heading home, say some variant of "text me when you get home" and worry if they don't?

How many men, at the end of an evening out with friends, do the same?

CF
It's never occurred to me to bother but I am ND so I'm not really the right person to ask :lol:
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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by Bird on a Fire » Fri Sep 24, 2021 7:06 pm

I do that.

I can't remember if it was a specific bit of advice, or I just noticed women doing it.
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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by Bird on a Fire » Fri Sep 24, 2021 7:12 pm

Stephanie wrote:
Fri Sep 24, 2021 1:35 pm
My husband got bottled once when he was a teenager. There used to be an endless grungers vs townies war that would take place at the station and on the train after they were coming home from their respective nights out. My husband is extremely chilled anyway - I could probably count the handful of times I've seen him fully lose his temper - but when he got attacked he was also very drunk. So when the bottle smashed on his head... he didn't react. That seemed to spook the lads who wanted a fight, and they f.cked off.

He wasn't uninjured. He woke the next day with a lot of blood on his pillow, and some of his ear missing, much to the concern of his mum. But it did make me wonder how much being able to take a punch or (or indeed a bottle) plays into how men assess whether it's worth continuing a fight.
That is an impressive amount of chill. Sounds seriously nasty.

I sometimes wonder how I would react if physically attacked. I tend to freeze with fear, rather than get angry or run off. But I'd have absolutely no idea how to fight back if I had to for some reason.
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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by basementer » Fri Sep 24, 2021 7:16 pm

Cardinal Fang wrote:
Fri Sep 24, 2021 5:58 pm
As a side poll

How many women here, at the end of an evening out with (female) friends when people are heading home, say some variant of "text me when you get home" and worry if they don't?

How many men, at the end of an evening out with friends, do the same?

CF
(man) I usually do after I've been out with a (one) female friend. Not with one or more male ones, or with couples, unless there's a confounding factor like adverse weather or train cancellations. The other night I was out at dinner with a group that included a woman who is (AFAIK) single, and though we've known each other for ten years I didn't even think of asking her to text me. We're not that close, it would be creepy.
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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by raven » Fri Sep 24, 2021 10:56 pm

To answer the original question, I've not seen anything like that but that's probably because my teen years predated chain emails. I got the standard advice - don't walk alone at night, in unlit areas etc - from various friends/older adults etc. But my dad gave me the best bit of advice before I left for uni: Don't drink with anyone you don't trust. Which I think is sterling advice to this day, especially with the implied message to trust your own judgement.

The standard advice I broke fairly often as a teen/in my 20s. Walked home alone at night many times. I was lucky.

On the Judo/Karate thing, I had a male friend at uni who was a black belt in one or other martial art. He came home late one night, wide-eyed and shaken, having been jumped by three guys. (This was Liverpool, late 80s.) He'd got away unscathed by virtue of adrenalin and going into some kind of martial arts autopilot. It all happened so fast he couldn't remember much of what happened, except for a loud crack so he was worried he'd left one of them with a broken wrist. We were just glad he'd made it home in one piece.

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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by bjn » Sat Sep 25, 2021 1:05 am

The original thing smells of b.llsh.t and looks like mostly bad advice (long hair? seriously?).

As a boy growing up and as a young man in Sydney I was never offered advice in that form. There were various pubs and areas you didn’t go near that you got to know by osmosis. The biker pub just near the station where I caught the train to school was notorious for fights.

The only real street violence I was involved in was when I was out drinking with some friends in my mid 20s, we’d gotten spectacularly drunk. Very long story, but drunken us walk into a mini race riot on the way to the station. I wake up in hospital missing a tooth with cracked ribs and concussion. It had an ‘act of god’ feeling about it.

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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by Tessa K » Sat Sep 25, 2021 6:52 am

Both male and female friends have said to me to text when I get home but I always wonder what they would do if I didn't. Would they call/text me? And what if they didn't get a reply? Some of them would already be asleep by the time I get in. It's well meant but rarely thought through - and I don't mean that to sound churlish.

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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by snoozeofreason » Sat Sep 25, 2021 8:09 am

I am finding it difficult to answer the poll question because I am not sure how much leeway is offered by the "or something like it," bit at the end of each option. But I have certainly seen plenty of material on the internet that resembles the post that fishnut shared.

When I come across such stuff, I am afraid I end up breaking a personal rule, and I start speculating on motive. It's pointless of course, because no one can know what motive someone had for putting up a (presumably anonymous) piece of wibble such as the one we are being invited to look at. But when you are presented with garishly formatted, evidence-free, advice of that nature it's hard not to ask why it was written.

You can call me an old cynic if you like, but I doubt that the anonymous author had any genuine interest in helping women. I suspect that the aim is to get the post as widely shared as possible (I vaguely recollect that we had a whole thread about such posts on the old place). Obviously, if that is the motive, then we are being unwittingly helpful to the author, because we've all looked at the post now. But, since we have done that, and we can't undo it, we might as well think about why such posts get shared.

Firstly, I'd guess that the garish formatting, and evidence-free nature of the post, might draw in two demographics. There are plenty of people who like garish formats and freedom from evidence (circulation figures for the Sun still seem to be holding up). And there are others who will share such posts in a "Hey, look at this garishly formatted, evidence-free wibble!" sort of way. So there's a potential for a double win there.

Secondly, If you are going to write something that is wrong, but still expect people to share it, it probably helps if you are not absolutely 100% wrong - in the sense that you can write stuff that no sense, but there has to be some thread connecting it to something that could make sense. As others on this thread have pointed out, there is nothing intrinsically wrong in offering people advice on how to avoid becoming victims of violence. If what is being offered is just simple advice and tips, it probably makes more sense to offer them to potential victims than to potential perpetrators, because victims don't want to be victims whilst perpetrators - at least at some level - want to be perpetrators (that, of course, does not mean that you shouldn't try to stop offending behaviour, but it's a bit more complicated to do than just offering a few tips). The post does offer advice on how to avoid victimisation, so people will read it (or at least start) reading it, even if the advice is silly.

Thirdly - and probably most obviously - it helps if you are tapping in to genuine and legitimate fears that people ought to be worrying about. That guarantees you get attention, even if you are encouraging people to worry about them in ways that are futile, or even counter-productive.

Having said all that, I probably haven't looked at the post as carefully as I might have done. I followed fishnut's instructions and clicked through to read it, but I didn't want to click through again and re-read it because I think I might be just helping the author improve their hit count.
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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by nezumi » Sat Sep 25, 2021 8:30 am

I am quite tempted to write one of these lists myself, with citations and stuff. Maybe later though.
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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by Stephanie » Sat Sep 25, 2021 11:07 am

I mean, the link itself seemed pretty old to me, so I doubt a few hits from a tiny forum count for much, and Fishnut only included it as an example of the type of thing she'd seen.

But it's trivially easy to search and find equivalent ones, for eg via Snopes, if you're that worried. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/assau ... -wont-fly/
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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by snoozeofreason » Sat Sep 25, 2021 11:43 am

Stephanie wrote:
Sat Sep 25, 2021 11:07 am
I mean, the link itself seemed pretty old to me, so I doubt a few hits from a tiny forum count for much, and Fishnut only included it as an example of the type of thing she'd seen.

But it's trivially easy to search and find equivalent ones, for eg via Snopes, if you're that worried. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/assau ... -wont-fly/
Yeah, I don't imagine that we are making much difference by clicking through. Just for the avoidance of doubt, I wasn't trying to suggest that we were we shouldn't be looking at this sort of stuff.

I am not going to click through to the post again but, from memory, the worst bit was the advice to engage potential assailants in conversation. When I have been attacked, there has always been some weird preamble in which the attacker tries to engage the victim in exactly that sort of small talk. I don't quite know what the purpose of that is. They could be trying to size you up, or it could be that humans are such deeply social animals that even the worst of us doesn't have the bad manners to just walk up to someone and punch them without so much as saying hello. But by engaging with an assailant that way, I'd guess you are just speeding the whole process up.

Most of my experiences involved non-sexual assault, apart from a couple (both of which occurred a long time ago, when the rules were a bit different and would probably not have been thought of as an assault at the time), but I wouldn't be surprised if the same weird social process happens for all assaults.
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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by monkey » Sat Sep 25, 2021 5:25 pm

snoozeofreason wrote:
Sat Sep 25, 2021 11:43 am
Stephanie wrote:
Sat Sep 25, 2021 11:07 am
I mean, the link itself seemed pretty old to me, so I doubt a few hits from a tiny forum count for much, and Fishnut only included it as an example of the type of thing she'd seen.

But it's trivially easy to search and find equivalent ones, for eg via Snopes, if you're that worried. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/assau ... -wont-fly/
Yeah, I don't imagine that we are making much difference by clicking through. Just for the avoidance of doubt, I wasn't trying to suggest that we were we shouldn't be looking at this sort of stuff.

I am not going to click through to the post again but, from memory, the worst bit was the advice to engage potential assailants in conversation. When I have been attacked, there has always been some weird preamble in which the attacker tries to engage the victim in exactly that sort of small talk. I don't quite know what the purpose of that is. They could be trying to size you up, or it could be that humans are such deeply social animals that even the worst of us doesn't have the bad manners to just walk up to someone and punch them without so much as saying hello. But by engaging with an assailant that way, I'd guess you are just speeding the whole process up.

Most of my experiences involved non-sexual assault, apart from a couple (both of which occurred a long time ago, when the rules were a bit different and would probably not have been thought of as an assault at the time), but I wouldn't be surprised if the same weird social process happens for all assaults.
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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sun Sep 26, 2021 11:57 am

My sister got followed last week while walking home in London.

She turned around and shouted "can you stop following me", but he just followed from slightly further away.

She turned around again, got her phone out, and he legged it. This was on a major road in London at about 9pm. He'd have been on loads of cameras I expect.

Not reported to the police, as she didn't think it was that serious. But called a friend who stayed on the line with her till she got home (20 mins later).

She says it's the first time anything like that's happened to her (in 29 years).
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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by Stephanie » Sun Sep 26, 2021 6:20 pm

snoozeofreason wrote:
Sat Sep 25, 2021 11:43 am
Stephanie wrote:
Sat Sep 25, 2021 11:07 am
I mean, the link itself seemed pretty old to me, so I doubt a few hits from a tiny forum count for much, and Fishnut only included it as an example of the type of thing she'd seen.

But it's trivially easy to search and find equivalent ones, for eg via Snopes, if you're that worried. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/assau ... -wont-fly/
Yeah, I don't imagine that we are making much difference by clicking through. Just for the avoidance of doubt, I wasn't trying to suggest that we were we shouldn't be looking at this sort of stuff.

I am not going to click through to the post again but, from memory, the worst bit was the advice to engage potential assailants in conversation. When I have been attacked, there has always been some weird preamble in which the attacker tries to engage the victim in exactly that sort of small talk. I don't quite know what the purpose of that is. They could be trying to size you up, or it could be that humans are such deeply social animals that even the worst of us doesn't have the bad manners to just walk up to someone and punch them without so much as saying hello. But by engaging with an assailant that way, I'd guess you are just speeding the whole process up.

Most of my experiences involved non-sexual assault, apart from a couple (both of which occurred a long time ago, when the rules were a bit different and would probably not have been thought of as an assault at the time), but I wouldn't be surprised if the same weird social process happens for all assaults.
I included a Snopes link that is identical in the advice so you could look!
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Cardinal Fang
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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by Cardinal Fang » Sun Sep 26, 2021 6:42 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sun Sep 26, 2021 11:57 am
My sister got followed last week while walking home in London.

She turned around and shouted "can you stop following me", but he just followed from slightly further away.

She turned around again, got her phone out, and he legged it. This was on a major road in London at about 9pm. He'd have been on loads of cameras I expect.

Not reported to the police, as she didn't think it was that serious. But called a friend who stayed on the line with her till she got home (20 mins later).

She says it's the first time anything like that's happened to her (in 29 years).
Shiiiiiittttt

Is she alright now?

Try and encourage her to go to the police anyway. Low level creeping like that sometimes escalates into worse behaviour. At the very least it will put that area (and perhaps the creeper) on their map

CF
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Re: Through the eyes of a rapist

Post by Fishnut » Mon Sep 27, 2021 2:01 pm

Apologies for not engaging until now - I've been dog-sitting for the last couple of days (including an un-house-trained 11 week old puppy) and it's taken almost all my attention. But I'm home now so can have a read of the replies.
Opti wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 11:04 am
...ddb has had a couple of incidents, but she's f.cking fierce, she frightens people ... even me sometimes.
When we lived in Gloucestershire, she got flashed at down a quiet country lane...
Well done to DDB for taking him on.

My junior school was separated from the senior school by a public footpath and apparently (I never saw him) a flasher was hanging out and sometimes coming into the playground. Our headmistress told us about him and gave us the most awesome advice in case we saw him which has stuck with me to this day. The advice was to not be scared but instead to point at him and laugh.
Woodchopper wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 2:33 pm
Yes, among bored drunk young men violence is often part of a weekend's entertainment. This caused me problems as a teenager as I'm really not into violence, but the pubs which served underage drinkers were also the ones where the fights would break out every Friday or Saturday night. So we got there early and tried to leave before the trouble started. Didn't always work out. There was one night when all three exits to the pub were blocked by fights.
This is an interesting point as it's definitely true that getting into pub fights are practically a cliché for young men and the obvious advice is to avoid those pubs, which constrains the person listening to the advice while doing nothing to tackle the problem. That said "avoid these pubs at these times on these days" is still nowhere near the blanket "don't go out after dark" that women so often get.
Tessa K wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 3:16 pm
Fishnut - I hadn't seen the advice about hair before or the timing of when most rapes happen but the rest I'm familiar with. Is the timing data from the US? I wonder if it's different here.
The chain emails I saw in the 90s were always US-based - they were clearly quicker off the mark with the possibilities for spreading b.llsh.t than we Brits were! That said, I've seen some British versions of the advice, but it's usually just the "source" that is changed, e.g. it's from "Manchester Police", but then they still use all the American terminology so it's clearly a cut-and-paste job that's adapted to a new audience.
nezumi wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 3:59 pm
The advice itself is solid.
I have to ad a caveat to this. The advice on how to defend yourself isn't bad but the "facts" they provide to frame that advice are b.llsh.t. Snopes does a debunking of a version of the "Through the Eyes of a Rapist" post and says,
If rapists choose their victims based on hairstyle and length of tresses, it’s news to those in law enforcement; they’ve never noticed this trend. Rape victims have short hair, long hair, and no hair. They’re also young and old, short and tall, fat and skinny, femininely dressed or looking like they just fell off the tractor, and all points in between...

According to Denver Police Sgt. John Burbach, most rapes occur in the evening hours and into early morning, ending before dawn, not “between 5 and 8:30 a.m.” as claimed in the e-mail. Statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice fully support him in this claim: The DOJ says “Approximately two-thirds of rapes/sexual assaults occurred at night — 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.”

As for the tidbit “The number one place women are abducted from/attacked at is grocery store parking lots. Number two is office parking lots/garages. Number three is public restrooms,” Kathie Kramer, public relations coordinator at the Denver Rape Assistance and Awareness Program (RAAP) says, “Statistics in studies I’ve found don’t support this idea about grocery stores or parking lots being especially unsafe.” Location is important in a violent sexual assault, but there’s nothing inherently dangerous about parking lots or public restrooms; what matters is their isolation. Areas heavily frequented by foot traffic are far less likely to be chosen by a rapist. Likewise, badly-lit, less-frequented places will be favored for this type of attack.
Rape and sexual assault statistics for the UK for 2020 show that car parks account for the location of 1.1% of rapes and parks and other open spaces account for 5.0% of rapes against women. Surprisingly, parks and open spaces are the location for 10.2% of assaults by penetration against men yet there's no campaigns telling them to avoid these areas.
nezumi wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 3:59 pm
There are gradations of rapey bastard and there is a branching career path. At the top end of the scale we have serial violent rapists, then we have coercive rape, date rape, manipulative rape, I never thought I'd say that word so many times in one paragraph and I haven't even run out of types! The underlying desire is power and control (with the added bonus of satisfying a fetish in many cases) but rapists are rare.
I totally agree with this, and it's something I find so frustrating about so much of the "advice" provided for women. It's all predicated on stranger rape when the latest UK figures show that 'only' 15% of sexual assaults and rapes on women were by a stranger - the vast majority (45%) were by partners or ex-partners and the bulk of the rest are by people already known by the victim. Yet the vast majority of advice is about protecting ourselves against strangers.
nezumi wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 3:59 pm
We have to teach ourselves and others how not to be victims because reality. It's a shame this gets used after the fact to blame victims for not automatically knowing the contents of the list via osmosis or for taking a risk once in a while because she's f.cking human.
I agree with this and would add that this gives us an imperative to ensure that the information we are teaching ourselves and others is correct. While some of the advice is good for anyone to heed, I do worry that a lot of it is too sweeping to be useful.
Cardinal Fang wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 7:47 pm
...to my mind, the "if women don't dress modestly, stay at home, avoid alcohol etc, then they're responsible for what happens to them" argument is more offensive to men because it implies that men are incapable of control in the first place and that you require certain dress codes and certain behaviours to be employed so that you don't just jump someone i.e. that requiring women to temper their behaviour presumes the natural state of men is rapist
Thank you for saying this! I've often thought the same thing - surely it's insulting to your humanity to be told you can't control your 'animalistic' urges.
bagpuss wrote:
Fri Sep 24, 2021 9:54 am
I don't have a problem with sensible advice being shared about how to make yourself less of a target but firstly it should be directed at everyone and secondly it should never be given out as the main or only response to a specific attack. I am fed up of the way that the moment a woman is attacked, the police and other organisations tell you not to do x, y, or z - and nearly always the person attacked outrageously did one of x, y or z (like, having the cheek to walk 5 minutes alone to the pub after dark to meet a friend). So although they absolutely don't intend to blame the victim, it very much does add to the idea that the victim is at least in part to blame, even though all they have done is something that the vast majority of men do without even thinking about it. I have never yet seen any official body give advice to how people could make the streets safer for everyone. I know that's not as easy as telling people not to go out by themselves but I'm sure that with a bit of imagination and some thought, people could come up with some reasonable suggestions. It's not as if it's a new problem so no-one has had time to think about possible solutions.
+1 to all of this. We've had women being given curfews, informal and formal, for our 'protection' for decades. The Reclaim the Night movement started after police advised women to not go out at night while the Yorkshire Ripper was at large (for those who haven't watched it, I highly advise seeking out The Yorkshire Ripper Files from the BBC, a documentary that focused on the victims, their families, and how the police consistently failed to give the murders with the sort of attention they deserved because they were 'only prostitutes'.) It's infuriating that we've not moved beyond this, or even recognised that telling women to curtail their lives in such dramatic ways is an admission that we don't know how to fix things or care to work out how to.
Cardinal Fang wrote:
Fri Sep 24, 2021 5:58 pm
As a side poll

How many women here, at the end of an evening out with (female) friends when people are heading home, say some variant of "text me when you get home" and worry if they don't?

How many men, at the end of an evening out with friends, do the same?

CF
Excellent question. And yes, I do this, and do it with my friends. I've also done the thing of pretending to be on the phone to someone even when I'm not while walking home. I've also had headphones in but discretely taken one out or turned off whatever I was listening to so I could hear someone walking behind me without them knowing in case I'm being judgemental and suspicious for no reason (also useful for eavesdropping on juicy conversations!)
nezumi wrote:
Sat Sep 25, 2021 8:30 am
I am quite tempted to write one of these lists myself, with citations and stuff. Maybe later though.
I love that idea! We could do it together :D
it's okay to say "I don't know"

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