10 tips to end rape

[Silent3]

76. I don't find the OP offensive at all, so I can't speak for those who are offended.

It merely strikes me as strange that the OP earns so much acclaim for something that seems to me a bit naive, and doomed to be ineffective.

But you see, we're all (mostly!) trained that taking things from other people is wrong from day one.

And yet, a great deal of theft occurs. More theft than rape. I think (at least in our American culture -- for all of our faults, some cultures are incredibly more misogynistic than ours) we do make it pretty clear that rape is considered not just bad, but heinous. It doesn't come up with what we teach kids at a young age because we're usually shy about bringing up any kind of sexual topics with young kids.

We don't explicitly tell kids not to murder their playmates either, but they still get the idea that murder is an even worse form of the hurting and fighting and bullying they've (hopefully) been taught not to do. I doubt that many people somehow miss that those lessons apply to rape as well.

The tone in which both rape and murder are discussed is generally so serious and harsh that I don't see how people could escape knowing they're both considered very wrong, not without applying their own rationalizations in ways that people who are determined to rationalize wrongdoing do anyway, no matter what. Sure, there might be contexts in which rape gets trivialized (someone might describe getting overbilled by a mechanic as being "raped&quot , but we trivialize killing much, much more often (casually phrases like, "oh, that's killing me", "I'm going to kill you", plenty of killing in games), yet I don't think that we often worry that this means the "killing is wrong" message isn't getting through.

And in the press or in court you NEVER EVER hear anyone excuse the crim of robbery by putting it on the victim. Never. That's what matters, because this enables rapists.

Not that we're exactly comparing apples to apples here anyway, but I certainly have many times heard victims of theft being blamed for being careless or naive. These things simply don't make it to court because there's no known suspect to charge, and don't make a big splash in the news most of the time because (unless it's a huge heist) theft is not considered a major crime.

If you, say, left your wallet on a table in a restaurant while going to the bathroom, and came back and found it gone, if you aren't too embarrassed to report such a theft, you can bet that the officer who takes your report would be considering that crime almost half your fault (no, I'm never saying that's true of rape, for anyone who misconstrues that I'm going there), and may or may not be polite enough to keep that thought to himself. Report a theft like that and you can be pretty sure the report will be filed and forgotten -- enough blame will be placed on you that the police won't think the crime worthy of further investigation.