... and rape victims should not be called "morons", and educating men is important, there is an important point behind all this.

People should not engage in needlessly risky behavior.

Now, apologies if everyone already knows this, but this article looked like it was conflating "she asked for it" and "she shouldn't have done that." Admittedly the articles it cites seem to have been saying both, but the latter statement is no less true for being associated with morons.

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This is what WSJ uses to mug Main Street. If Al Quaida were to destroy Wall Street literally, America would finally get a better shot at actually being land of the free.

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Being stupid isn't against the law. Rape is. And I've never heard anyone say car thieves shouldn't be arrested just because the car they stole was parked in a deserted spot with no street lights, with the key left in the ignition. People who get mugged are not blamed because they were well-dressed and prosperous-looking, thus advertising that they probably had money in their wallets. Rape victims are blamed because most of them (with the exception of prison rape) are women; it's just another tool of the patriarchy to keep women frightened and stop from them participating in the public sphere. This should be pointed out immediately whenever any fool advises women to restrict their lives in the interests of "personal safety."

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...If women deserve to be raped because they cannot bother behaving like Perfect Princesses then men deserve to be taken to the cleaners if they are dumb enough to marry or spend too much time with any of we Bitches.

That's cool - if men treat us like shit, they deserve no better.

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However a woman is dressed, and even if she is not dressed at all, violence against her person is simply wrong. However 'enthused' another person might be because of the woman, violating the person is not something that society should ever forgive. We have a fundamental right to be safe in our persons - that is not a right conditioned on appearance or behaviour.

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I suppose all the elderly women who get raped should stop wearing those provocative, bloomer-style underpants and long dresses. They're obviously asking for it too.

Now excuse me while I go put on my chador so I can go out to the all-night convenience store to buy some milk for my children.

Kia

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Let's say I supplement my income, quite legally, by jumping out of cakes, and I've done it since the passing of my wonder years. I'm holding up pretty good at 19, so I'm working my way through college.

Is it that the laws of the land are suspended for me because I was hired by a bunch of sadistic creeps who intended to attack me? Or maybe I violated some statute by failing to activate the Vicious Predator detector on my phone, thereby rendering me an accessory to my own rape? Or maybe I was all right with everybody BEFORE I was raped, even many feminists would have stuck up for me, but afterward I enjoy the status of 'polluted woman' who was asking to be targeted by previously innocent college boys who involuntarily drugged me and couldn't help giving me a beating and sticking it in because they were so aroused by my naked gyrations?

Fuck that.

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In Vegas, a city I've visited many times, hordes of "provocatively attired" women are as common as neon lights. They're everywhere: in the casinos, clubs, restaurants, hotels, poolside. For whatever social and cultural reasons, the prevalence of young women who dress in a sexually brazen and seductive manner---lowrise jeans, thongs, short skirts, form-hugging pants, stiletto heels, baby doll camisoles, barely concealed, bulging breasts---is a fact of life, especially visible in Vegas, where they've come from all over the world to "strut their stuff", "cut loose" and have fun, whatever that means in the world capitol of hedonism. From the looks of it, booze and drugs offer the same accompaniment as they did at Woodstock almost 40 years ago.

At any given moment, 20-something "kids" can behave like idiots, male or female, simply because they're still young, exuberant and inexperienced. To behave badly at times is a right of passage, one of the ways young people learn about being civilized, respectful and responsible for their own actions as we all grapple with the compexities of life in a era of catastrophic war, turmoil and chronic fear. However, the rape of any woman under any conceivable circumstance can not be explained away as situational, provoked or misconstrued. Rape is rape, and we have long ago moved beyond the sickening effort to rationalize or somehow justify it through blaming the victim or excusing the perpetrator. View the DVD "Irreversible", a recent French picture starring Monica Belluci, if you want to see the most realistically depicted rape ever filmed. If you cannot see it is an act of pure violence and degradation, with only deviant "sexual" overtones, you are either blind or a potential rapist yourself.

Rape is a crime of deranged power and vicious domination, intrinsically carrying the threat (or commission) of bodily harm or death, and as far away from any consensual sex act as a hate-mongering fundamentalist is from a true Christian. To claim in some putatively erudite forum that a woman who's drinking alone in a bar at 3AM in NYC (when literally thousands of young people are still out and about socializing and walking the streets...we're talking about NYC) is responsible for ultimately being tortured, raped and murdered by a career criminal is to ignore facts in favor of a hidden agenda. What might that agenda be?

Some rich white male students at an elite university, suffering from the arrogance of entitlement, surrounded by a local minority community whose members often work in servility to these same students, leap across the line of civilized behavior and allegedly rape a stripper at a booze-fueled private party. Not all the boys participated, which proves the pivotal assertiion that not all were compelled to abuse the stripper, whose occupation and deportment might have convinced many a randy young male, privileged mind that she was "easy", that she was a "pro", that she wasn't worthy of the same basic human consideration that would automatically be given to a white girl of their same class.

It's 2006, but I'm hard pressed to see how this scenario, if proven true, is any different from the plantation owner wandering down to his slave quarters on any given night and taking one of his female slaves with the same sense of entitlement he felt in owning her in the first place? The historical arrogance of this scenario---nothwithstanding acknowledgment that the female slave was considered property, like a mule---which in the present elicits revulsion in many of us (unfortunately, too few), is again played out 150 years later at Duke, in the cradle of former slave country. Given the incessant protests that have occurred around this alleged act since it occurred, and the high tensions of race and class that underscore those protests, is it too much to suggest that perhaps some things haven't really changed much since the plantation days?

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look, the WSJ article was rather stupid and insensitive, but before throwing out the baby with the bathwater, consider the following scenario, which removes the incendiary bits about females, feminism etc. but is aperfect parallel.

I go out of my house with a wad of $20 bills in my hand. about $2,000. it's visible. 5 minutes later, on a busy street, i'm mugged and the mugger makes off with my $2,000.

Of course, the theft is just as illegal as if I had had the money safely tucked away in a pocket or under my bed, but that doesn't mean i wasn't a total fool for walking around with $$ showing.

in other words, the bouncer and the team can't use the women's behavior as a defence for their criminal actions, but that doesn't mean that risk can be blithely ignored.

and i don't think you have to be anti-feminist to understand that point.

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Back in the day (the '80s), I was a little bit wild and stupid - went out, drank a lot and, quite often, relied on the "kindness of strangers" (mostly men). One incident I remember well (unfortunately, I was never blessed with the "gift" of blacking out - remembered every damn, stupid thing I did when drunk) - my girlfriend had abandoned me in a bar and a young man I had just met, an old school acquaintance of my friend, took a very, very wasted me home to my apartment. And you know what happened? Absolutely nothing. And you know what else? Nothing ever happened on any other occasion of drunken excess and stupidity - unless I wanted it to. Was I just insanely lucky to happen upon some good men in a sea of evil, vicious and brutal thugs? Of course not. I am in no way advocating stupid behavior - my point is simply this: most men are not rapists and murderers and will, in fact, behave decently or, at least, not criminally. Rapists and murderers engage in extremely deviant behavior - that is why we punish them. And as my story demonstrates most women who behave stupidly (and that is, probably, most of us at some point) do NOT end up as crime victims. Therefore, the victim's stupidity has no relevance whatsoever to this issue.

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Women are the only things that hold society together. Men especially unempowered men, cannot gain higher ground and treat women like the powerful, strong, amazing people they are. Women buy into this male dominated society thinking which is sad. I can't tell you how many corporate women I see trying to emmulate their male counterparts and talk sports, drink with the guys, work harder, faster, be more competitive....Women, stay strong, but get your own power back. If you buy into what society tells you you will end up in burquas.

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and why no one wants to talk about it?

What would you do?

Sugar and spice and everything nice.

This is suppose to every little girls life.

What happens when life is not like that?

What if your life is filled with constant abuse by the people who suppose to protect you?

For little Katelynn of Indiana, her life is filled with this from a father, stepmother and father's family; everyone but her the relatives that love her have been deined the ability to see her.

What happens when the police will not stop this?

Than try Child Protection Service, but they will not stop this either.

The next thing to do is go to the court.

What would you do if the Child Protection Services and the court helped the abusers hurt her?

The media might work but they ignore majority of average people.

In this search for help, several politicians ignored or said stop bothering them.

If these people will not help little katelynn than who will?

Will this little girl have to pay the ultimate price for these adults mistakes? What would you do?

Indiana's Shame Teardrops for Katelynn

referral sources
* www.courageouskids.net
* Mary Kay Ash Charitable Foundation :: Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories Aired on PBS http://www.mkacf.org/BreakTheSilence.html
* Battered Women, Abused Children, and Child Custody: A NATIONAL CRISIS http://www.batteredmotherscustodyconference.org/
* Petition for Justice for Katelynn:
http://www.gopetition.com/online/5918.html

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What would you do?

Sugar and spice and everything nice.

This is suppose to every little girls life.

What happens when life is not like that?

What if your life is filled with constant abuse by the people who suppose to protect you?

For little Katelynn of Indiana, her life is filled with this from a father, stepmother and father's family; everyone but her the relatives that love her have been deined the ability to see her.

What happens when the police will not stop this?

Than try Child Protection Service, but they will not stop this either.

The next thing to do is go to the court.

What would you do if the Child Protection Services and the court helped the abusers hurt her?

The media might work but they ignore majority of average people.

In this search for help, several politicians ignored or said stop bothering them.

If these people will not help little katelynn than who will?

Will this little girl have to pay the ultimate price for these adults mistakes? What would you do?
Indiana's Shame Teardrops for Katelynn

referral sources:
www.courageouskids.net
Mary Kay Ash Charitable Foundation :: Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories Aired on PBS http://www.mkacf.org/BreakTheSilence.html
Battered Women, Abused Children, and Child Custody: A NATIONAL CRISIS http://www.batteredmotherscustodyconference.org/
Petition for Justice for katelynn: http://www.gopetition.com/online/5918.html

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Spoken like a true 'adaptive feminine' making sure she fits in nicely with the powers that be in her profession. She has to portray the 'tough on feminist' to the people who write her paycheck. Real women, you know, intelligent, caring, equal gals who don't have to be ashamed of being a woman, pay absolutely no attention to this type of asinine rubbish. We don't have to side with the guys who put down feminism in order to hold a job. I feel sorry for her actually, she can't be who she was intended to be, and that's very sad.

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Rape is (except for children) a male crime because men prefer the expediency of force to take what they desire to have, including children.

Men do not yet view economic fraud as rape but, in fact, they could, and should.

If more men were raped, it would bring awareness to the fact of rape and that it is a violation of the person and his dignity just as it is for women. But women are rarely forceful enough to rape since they haven't the strength of males.

The glorification of male strength that condones rape is a dilemma that works against women and for men in allowing force to be the measure that is considered acceptable, insignificant, and desirable, the neanderthal method of social interaction. Because it is difficult for men to be violated, and society justifies violent retribution by men, men cannot understand what it is to be raped. Their biology and freedom prevent it. It is that injustice that offends women even more because it is a male problem, and males can prevent it by peer pressure that they are unwilling to exert. In most cases, men not only condone rape, but ridicule the women who suffer it, and enjoy the details of rape to stimulate their prurient interests in violence, especially when it involves sex.

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