Rights versus responsibilities
Jul. 27th, 2012 11:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pktechgirlbackupThere is a lot of debate on sexual assault prevention education tactics. Generally it takes the form of warning women not to do things. The argument for this is that:
I don't think any of those conditions are always true, but I'm willing to grant there's a significant subset of rapists that fulfill conditions 1 through 3. Enough that 4 is a worthy angle to attacking the problem, although not one we should use exclusively. There's also a wide range of how useful the advice is, and how restrictive. "Don't leave a drink unattended at a bar" is a pretty good idea (for both sexes- robbery is a thing), and has minimal impact. "Stay indoors after 7 PM" is effective (-ish), but highly restrictive. There is never, ever a discussion about exactly how risky a given choice is and how that weights against the potential rewards.
The anti- argument focuses on the unfairness of making women feel afraid when they're doing nothing wrong. If points 1-3 are correct, this is irrelevant even if true. I think most of the people on this side are implicitly focusing on the (many, many) cases in which they are not true, but there is also an ideological component that is simply orthogonal to the practicalities. It's easy to dismiss this as a luxury to be tackled later, but I think there are second order effects that may be relevant.
The focus on "what women should do" to prevent the implicit big, scary, obviously ill-intentioned man from raping her subtly shifts rape prevention from a woman's right to a woman's responsibility. The best example of this I can think of is in children. I got what was as far as I know fairly standard little-kid molestation prevention education: "private areas", stranger danger, tell a trusted adult when something makes you feel uncomfortable, etc. If a stranger ever told me there was a box of puppies in the back of his van, I would have been prepared. But that never happened, so the main effects were: 1. I became suspicious and uncomfortable about levels of touch I hadn't before (which, to be clear, were totally non-sexual and appropriate) 2. But couldn't speak up about it, because then I'd be calling a relative a CHILD MOLESTER and that was THE WORST THING EVER. I didn't think much of this until I talked to a friend (as an adult), who had the exact same experience. I haven't run the poll, but the fact that this friend, who had a very different temperament, went to a different kind of school, in a different city, makes me think that there are enough other kids who feel this way that it's worth addressing.
What I think would have been actually helpful is to focus on our right to bodily autonomy without mentioning what we were protecting ourselves from. Actually, look at my phrasing there: protecting. That's a big job to give a six year old. I think the most we can hope for is teaching them to recognize and assert their comfort levels, and to escalate if they feel disregarded. This is not without costs: you have to teach them the difference between the discomfort of molestation and the discomfort of a doctor's visit. But learning to do things you don't like because of the future benefits is a good thing to learn. You have to teach them how to escalate properly, but that too is a useful life skill. If we do this (plus a section on how the puppies in the van are a lie), stranger danger will take care of itself, plus the much greater risk of molestation by people who are known and trusted by the family, plus it's a great foundation for enthusiastic consent when they're ready.
It's sort of like our bioterrorism effort: right now we throw a ton of money at a very unlikely problem with no idea if it will even help, while ignoring things like flu-preparedness. If we threw that money at anti-flu infrastructure instead, we would not only immediately improve our standard of living, but build a robust system that is totally reusable in event of black swan epidemic or attack. Giving kids a robust system of recognizing when something is wrong and giving them the tools to share that without making it a huge thing is the equivalent of well staffed urgent care clinics and a stockpile of tamiflu.
Emphasizing bodily autonomy is not without its costs: you'll have a lot more arguments about whether or not your kid needs to wear her mittens, and you will have to allow yourself to lose the argument about whether he hugs his gross uncle. Many embarrassing things will happen in grocery stores. I can't see how it's not worth it.
How does this translate to adults? Counterintuitively, one of the things we need to do is deemphasize the terribleness of rape to potential victims in favor of of helping people figure out what sex "should" feel like (for them), and the tools to communicate with their partners about how to get there.
- Rapists know what they are doing.
- They know it is wrong.
- Rape is strictly a male-on-female crime.
- Therefore, the only people with an incentive to work on the problem are women/victims and their supporters. Potential rapists and their supporters have no incentive to change
I don't think any of those conditions are always true, but I'm willing to grant there's a significant subset of rapists that fulfill conditions 1 through 3. Enough that 4 is a worthy angle to attacking the problem, although not one we should use exclusively. There's also a wide range of how useful the advice is, and how restrictive. "Don't leave a drink unattended at a bar" is a pretty good idea (for both sexes- robbery is a thing), and has minimal impact. "Stay indoors after 7 PM" is effective (-ish), but highly restrictive. There is never, ever a discussion about exactly how risky a given choice is and how that weights against the potential rewards.
The anti- argument focuses on the unfairness of making women feel afraid when they're doing nothing wrong. If points 1-3 are correct, this is irrelevant even if true. I think most of the people on this side are implicitly focusing on the (many, many) cases in which they are not true, but there is also an ideological component that is simply orthogonal to the practicalities. It's easy to dismiss this as a luxury to be tackled later, but I think there are second order effects that may be relevant.
The focus on "what women should do" to prevent the implicit big, scary, obviously ill-intentioned man from raping her subtly shifts rape prevention from a woman's right to a woman's responsibility. The best example of this I can think of is in children. I got what was as far as I know fairly standard little-kid molestation prevention education: "private areas", stranger danger, tell a trusted adult when something makes you feel uncomfortable, etc. If a stranger ever told me there was a box of puppies in the back of his van, I would have been prepared. But that never happened, so the main effects were: 1. I became suspicious and uncomfortable about levels of touch I hadn't before (which, to be clear, were totally non-sexual and appropriate) 2. But couldn't speak up about it, because then I'd be calling a relative a CHILD MOLESTER and that was THE WORST THING EVER. I didn't think much of this until I talked to a friend (as an adult), who had the exact same experience. I haven't run the poll, but the fact that this friend, who had a very different temperament, went to a different kind of school, in a different city, makes me think that there are enough other kids who feel this way that it's worth addressing.
What I think would have been actually helpful is to focus on our right to bodily autonomy without mentioning what we were protecting ourselves from. Actually, look at my phrasing there: protecting. That's a big job to give a six year old. I think the most we can hope for is teaching them to recognize and assert their comfort levels, and to escalate if they feel disregarded. This is not without costs: you have to teach them the difference between the discomfort of molestation and the discomfort of a doctor's visit. But learning to do things you don't like because of the future benefits is a good thing to learn. You have to teach them how to escalate properly, but that too is a useful life skill. If we do this (plus a section on how the puppies in the van are a lie), stranger danger will take care of itself, plus the much greater risk of molestation by people who are known and trusted by the family, plus it's a great foundation for enthusiastic consent when they're ready.
It's sort of like our bioterrorism effort: right now we throw a ton of money at a very unlikely problem with no idea if it will even help, while ignoring things like flu-preparedness. If we threw that money at anti-flu infrastructure instead, we would not only immediately improve our standard of living, but build a robust system that is totally reusable in event of black swan epidemic or attack. Giving kids a robust system of recognizing when something is wrong and giving them the tools to share that without making it a huge thing is the equivalent of well staffed urgent care clinics and a stockpile of tamiflu.
Emphasizing bodily autonomy is not without its costs: you'll have a lot more arguments about whether or not your kid needs to wear her mittens, and you will have to allow yourself to lose the argument about whether he hugs his gross uncle. Many embarrassing things will happen in grocery stores. I can't see how it's not worth it.
How does this translate to adults? Counterintuitively, one of the things we need to do is deemphasize the terribleness of rape to potential victims in favor of of helping people figure out what sex "should" feel like (for them), and the tools to communicate with their partners about how to get there.
