Jesus fucking christ, this thread is about rape culture. Why the fuck are we still talking about guns?
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That’s the nature of rape culture. Shift goalposts, blame the victim for not doing a better job, make wild fantastical claims about the nature of reality. Just don’t let them talk about it because they might do something that inconveniences men.
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By and large, advocates of Second Amendment choice in regard to self defense are more concerned with and focused on the “solution” than the wider problems of sexism and racism that make that choice less clear-cut for a woman or PoC than they do for white males. In a topic about rape culture, that willful and typical blindness to privilege is going to understandably rub some people the wrong way.
In the Epstein case, or in the majority of cases of rape (i.e. ones that don’t involve an assault by a stranger), a woman having access to a firearm wouldn’t do much to protect her and, in many cases and venues, make things worse.
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Or perhaps it’s about how some people are presumed* to have been trained and others are not.
* Anybody pointing out that police officers in the United States receive way too little training would be correct but even further off topic.
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In modern-day America, guns have more rights than women? /s
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Some of those tactic even have names.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/DARVO
It’s 100% guaranteed to appear in any public internet discussion about rape.
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“There are lots of good reasons for the courts to prosecute individual cases, but justice will not be done until might is no longer right, and power that includes the power of being heard and valued is distributed equally.”
Every single person who comes to this thread to derail, blather about guns, or try to flex on their history of reading dictionaries, is part of this-- actively part of this.
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As a wise woman here stated - every single one of these diversions is to try to silence women from talking about sexual assault. Some quite purposefully.
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Holy fucksocks…
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So anyway: Rape is a big problem. Rape fucks people up but dying is worse. Rape is tolerated to some degree by our society. People in power sometimes use rape as a way to enjoy their power. People not in power sometimes use rape as a way to gain a feeling of power. Most people get triggered when they hear about rape and their first instinct is to protect themselves by “shutting up the victims” and shutting down discourse or engaging in some kind of gun-dick power fantasy where they totally own.
Think I got the bullet points down.
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Honestly, the best way for women (and men, because it does happen to them too) to defend themselves against domestic abuse and assault is to learn how to recognize the signs and nope out quickly if they see that a new relationship is heading that way. That requires EVEN MORE training than learning how to use a gun, but it’s actually more useful, and a million times safer.
By the time you’re behind closed doors with a loved one and you think you need a gun to defend yourself, the die is already cast and you will probably end up very harmed or dead, at which point the other person will finally be through with you.
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This is America.
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If you’re talking about a specific person, I don’t have a problem with whatever they decided to do to feel safe. But I was talking about a specific comment above, made by a man, which was assuming that the only real solution for women is to carry a gun so they wouldn’t get raped. Considering the vast majority of rapes aren’t some guy breaking into their house or jumping out of the bushes, it’s not a silver bullet solution. To assume if we just carry a gun we’ll be safe from rapes is basically victim blaming, that it’s our fault for not doing enough to stop rape from happening. It has nothing to do with an individual choice, it’s about someone just saying “if I were a woman I’d never ever get raped, cause I’d just have a gun at all times.” How does that help when it’s someone you know and have some trust with?
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“… and I’d never go out at night, and I’d always dress like a nun, and I’d kick every man in the nuts who even asked me the time of day, and I’d do everything in my power except tell men not to rape…”
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And I dont remember now if someone’s stated it above, but those “solutions” put the onus on the victim, and in an egregiously individualizing manner, ignore the patriarchy, which is what Solnit’s article is about, and which, sadly enough, is what so little of this thread is about.
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Is this a good time to mention that when I worked as a victim advocate (5 years), one specific day that I can still remember is when I had barely finished the acute part of the case of a 8yo who was sent by her mom to the corner store in their quiet neighborhood to get her cigarettes (these small ma-and-pa stores, they know the families and will allow kids to do that) when I got a call about a 68yo in another part of town.
8 and 68: neither were sexy, or wearing provocative clothing, or doing anything other than walking in their own neighborhoods. And neither were able to defend themselves from being violently attacked.
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Of course they do. They also:
- display a lot of machismo and/or focus on harming the rapist
- show a stunning lack of awareness of how often predatory behavior occurs
- rely on broken stairs and whisper networks, basically “don’t hang out with that guy, he’s kinda rapey… yeah, I’m gonna hang out with him anyway because I’m a dude”
- lack empathy to an appalling degree
Really, the only solutions that benefit anyone are those that force rapists not to rape.
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And I’m not judging her for that. We all do what we can to get by, but what works for one person may not work for someone else.
No one said nor even implied that.
Just fyi, getting all huffy on someone else’s behalf won’t solve any problems.
You beat me to it.
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Well, your reading comprehension does, anyways. You’re wildly - and seemingly deliberately - missing the point here and ignoring what I said. So…
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