Not that a potential victim is in control,but that a person can do things to be less of a potential victim. sometimes all it takes to deflect attention is walking like you own the sidewalk. If an assault still take place, that’s still not your fault. Victims are never asking to be assaulted. “What did they expect?” is never a reason to dismiss an assault. Still, knowing that, if an assault happens to you, you can try to escape and hurt the attacker can be useful.
Ok.
The only thing that upset me was the notion that we weren’t supposed to say that the girl did the right thing.
I dislike the idea that any hint of giving credit to this girl, even while strongly stating where the blame lay, means we’re somehow propping up the patriarchy.
But if that’s what it is, I’ll listen and try to learn.
The point is less “propping up the patriarchy” than it is victim-blaming other victims who were not able to fight off their attackers. The specific circumstances of this incident led to the child being able to escape. The implication that she escaped because she “fought like hell” or whatever implicitly supports the “if she didn’t fight him off then she really wanted it” rape defense, which, as I have pointed out previously, has a very long and sordid history in our legal system. It also supports the idea that it is up to women and girls to avoid being abducted and raped by “rape-proofing,” “situational awareness,” or whatever term you please. It is not and never is the responsibility of the victim to not be victimized, and anything that implies that is the case will get fairly vicious blow-back. Men (and I am one) seem to struggle to understand this. It comes across as mansplaining and is very not cool.
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You’re not thinking this through.
What if a girl is told to fight in these situations by all the adults in her life, but when something like this actually happens she doesn’t fight and gets hurt because in the moment of panic she gets tricked or freezes or whatever else can naturally happen? Most people when they don’t do the exact right thing people say is correct blame themselves for not being good enough to do the right thing, and relying on messaging about how to prevent crime against women and girls leads to well documented accounts of making the fallout even worse for the individuals that are victims of a crime. And that’s on top of the extremely broad societal expectations for women to be perfectly polite and perfect fighters against all strangers and having perfect judgement about when someone is “actually” dangerous - and whether you tell your kid that or not other people will press those expectations on her.
No one is taking away from a girl that fought for herself by saying local law enforcement shouldn’t say that the girls that didn’t fight could have prevented whatever happens. They are literally the people in society we should expect to be empathetic to victims and know how important their word choice is. What she did is incredible in a bad situation, but we have to cool it on the weird culture of coaching what the “right” thing to do in a stressful and dangerous situation is since most people can’t even remember to let off the gas and steer into an ice slick in their car or only remember half the time. We can’t pretend people know what to do instant to instant across the board.
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Other wise, it’s THEIR fault, right? /s
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This story was on our 6AM local news yesterday. One of the broadcasters touched her ear, and said, “Our producer has just told us that he’s been arrested.” The sense of relief in the studio and in my living room was as obvious as it was on the broadcasters’ faces.
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This story is related in a very sad way, again, taking all the right steps but not enough
Years after college student says she was assaulted, alleged confession leads to new push for justice: ‘It was a sense of validation’ - ABC News (go.com)
The Gettysburg Police Department and the Adams County district attorney at the time, Shawn Wagner, declined to bring charges against the student.
“They called me and said, ‘Unfortunately, we don’t feel we have enough evidence to move forward with your case and prosecute,’” said Keeler. “And on top of that, when alcohol’s involved, it’s really difficult to prove that a sexual assault occurred.”
You had a couple drinks? You did not take adequate precautions! You are now fair game!
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That’s the mind set. It’s our fault always, unless it is a very narrow set of circumstances that mark us as “good girls”…
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Typing as a woman who fought off and escaped from two male attackers, and have too many female friends and acquaintances who were also attacked, it sounds absolutely fucking great.
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It seems you are suggesting we should stop teaching people how to handle an ice slick just to avoid making the ones who don’t remember feel bad about it. That is an extreme position.
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Ultimately, though, we need to socialize boys in a very different way than we do now. too much of our culture is committed to the narrative of gender norms about men and women, especially regarding sex - that men are just naturally more sexually driven and that drives some to commit acts of sexual violence against women. Well, no. That’s not the case. Women are people, independent people, who deserve the same level of respect as men. All women. Full stop. 
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Ok, I often find myself, a middle aged woman, walking around in Chicago at 0darkthiry because that’s when my job starts. (Bakers have weird hours). I am cautious about the people I see on the street. I know full well that if most of the men I see did decide to accost me I would be in trouble. I know that wouldn’t be my fault. I also know that having some idea of what might help get me out of trouble makes me feel more secure in the situation. Telling girls that’s it’s ok to fight back, instead of “thinking of England” is not telling them they deserved to be assaulted because they couldn’t do so.
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No one is saying it’s not okay to fight back. We’re saying that women who don’t are made to feel like it’s their fault for NOT fighting back. The victim of assault is never the one at fault.
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Whataboutery.
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I don’t think anyone here has even hinted at that. We certainly need to change the way our society reacts to victims of assault.
People like to think that they would respond perfectly in a given situation, and are surprised when they don’t. Saying “I would have fought harder!” Is a way of saying “that wouldn’t have happened to me!”, of whistling past the graveyard.
People who are ready to blame victims will always find some way to do so.
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This is precisely what some of us are arguing to the people who are saying that women just need to fight in every single situation, though. People are telling us what this young lady did was the right thing in each case, when it’s very much not. Each case is individual, and saying that there is some singular solution that is on the victim is contributing to the problem of victim blaming.
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Seriously, that’s what you are going with? No, that’s not even an analogy. Take that to it’s logical conclusion, that would suggest that somehow the laws of physics (remove friction and the car will continue on a straight line) is somehow analogous to rape? Fail to take proper actions and men will assault you? Nope, I don’t buy it. And the point being made over and over again, is that contrary to your analogy, in which the driver does, in fact, have decision making capacity and some degree of responsibility in the situation, the victim of an assault does not bear any responsibility for the situation. It is not “fighting them off” that is the issue here, it is the implication that if you don’t fight them off, it is somehow your fault that it happens. That is unacceptable. If being trained in self-defense makes you feel better, then by all means get trained. I can assure you, until you are in a tense, very rapidly evolving situation, you will not know how you will respond.
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Even in cases of “good girls” we see people in power, along with family and friends of the attacker, bending over backwards to excuse the crimes committed by bad boys and men. Most of the time*, it’s because those predators are good at sports, or in leadership positions in school, business, government, etc… No matter how much evidence the good girl has, the criminals rarely see any charges or they get a slap on the wrist after the “justice” system and court of public opinion drags the victim through hell a second time.
*When it’s not just another example of males being valued and believed more than everyone else by default.
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To highlight this further, it’s important to see how this particular crime is being talked about in our culture in general. This did not happen in a vacuum, where how we think about gender and sexual assault plays no role…
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No one here said nor even implied that.
The girl’s reaction to being accosted is NOT the problem with this story.
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