How do we give them the tools to wade through this muck? I don't even know what those tools are.
And this brilliant post…
And this brilliant post from Fugitivus about rape and our day-to-day culture makes me despair about raising a daughter in this society. And a son.
http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/bonding_process.html
There’s a lot of good stuff on the site, follow the sidebar, high risk behavior, avoid rape, rapist profile, high risk behavior.
> The way men and women interact on a daily basis is the way they interact when rape occurs.
Of course it is, because those methods of interacting are specifically designed (or evolved, or whatever) to make women feel submissive — to make them submit.
Those eight rules she lists at the top of her post, are fucked up. Anyone who reads those eight rules and says “yeah, that sounds right, that makes sense to me” is fucked up.
> She followed the rules. The rules that were supposed to keep the rape from happening.
That’s not what those rules are supposed to do.
What do you do about it? Make it abundantly clear to your son and daughter that those eight rules are bullshit. (And anyone else you can, but your kids are easier to indoctrinate, at least for a while.)
I had an interesting experience at work yesterday. I was told that I was dressing too provocatively (it was implied, not stated) and the ‘rape/blame the victim’ argument actually showed up. Because men are apparently all driven by their base desires and are nothing but animals, if I continue dressing this way, I cannot go back to the Barney Library when it reopens, because some man might get it into his head to follow me home and ‘because you live alone’ we don’t want anything to happen. Ok, because I wear slacks that show that I have a figure (not tight!), and tops that fit, I’m going to get raped? Yeesh.
And then I was venting to a friend, and he said ‘oh, isn’t that nice, they are looking out for you’. GAAAAAAH.
Check out http://www.uky.edu/StudentAffairs/VIPCenter/greendot.html It’s an innovative approach to violence prevention.