Ten Ways Sexual Assault is Not Like Getting Robbed

[ismnotwasm]

Anytime someone speaks up about victim blaming and the expectation that women drastically limit their own lives in order to prevent themselves from being raped, someone will appear like clockwork to go, “Yeah, well, shouldn’t people lock their homes so they don’t get robbed?”

I am not an authority on what people should and should not do (besides not rape people), but I would argue that sexual assault has vanishingly little in common with robbery, and preventing sexual assault is not at all like locking your front door.

All analogies are imperfect by definition; if they were perfect, they would not be analogies anymore, but rather comparisons between two nearly or practically identical things. You can always find spots in which analogies fail.

But the sexual assault-robbery analogy fails on so many levels that I believe it to be useless for any sort of explanatory function.

None of this is to say which is “worse.” I’ll leave those pointless exercises to Richard Dawkins. I would personally imagine that most people who have experienced both found sexual assault to be “worse,” but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that they are sufficiently different that an analogy between them doesn’t really make any sense and is usually only used to silence people who speak out about sexual assault and victim blaming.

So, here’s how sexual assault is not at all like robbery.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/brutereason/2014/08/28/ten-ways-sexual-assault-is-not-like-getting-robbed/

[ForgoTheConsequence]

1. I agree, but.....

I wish all bad things would cease to exist tomorrow, murder, rape, war, all of them. But because evil does exist and there are people out there who want to hurt people (all the education in the world wont fix this completely) we should give people tools to protect themselves. Education and empowerment aren't mutually exclusive.

[ismnotwasm]

2. Sure, I understand your point.

The problem isn't protecting oneself-- I protect myself--the problem is the onus of protecting oneself expected as the responsibility of the raped or potentially raped person, rather than blaming the rapist. The focus, the dialogue needs to change.

This is shown in the court system, in the conviction rate, in the lack of reporting. Women are blamed for there own rapes and men hardly dare even report such are crime, which incidentally leads to the illusion that men don't get raped.

It's a hot mess.

[ForgoTheConsequence]

3. I agree with you.

I think that needs to change, in fact the whole justice systems needs to be grabbed by the ankles and shaken until all the racists and sexist neanderthals fall out.

I just think that while we're fixing the system we can give people the tools to stay safe or ways to speak out if they are victimized or feel like they're at risk of being victimized.

I think solutions to problems as systematic and culturally embedded as sexism, racism, rape culture, etc need to be comprehensive.