When a car accident does happen, do we blame the innocent driver saying they should have known not to be on that road at that time? Around here it’s common to blame the drunk/inattentive/whatever driver, not the one they hit.
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A better analogy would be to consider a crime that is not as emotionally charged, such as theft. Obviously, if you leave your stuff unlocked and unattended (or even effectively unattended, like when passed out drunk), it is more likely that it will get stolen, and that is why taking some theft resistance and deterrence measures is often recommended. However, when theft does occur, the blame is still assigned to the thief.
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If my child is injured in an auto accident, my primary concern is the health of my child. I will eventually get around to who is to blame, but finding someone to blame doesn’t take away any injury that may have occurred.
I am sure most parents agree. This is why we teach them to avoid injury in the first place. We give them well maintained cars with good brakes and tires. And we teach them that some times to drive are much more dangerous than others (midnight - 3AM, New Year’s Eve, during heavy storms, etc.) and some locations more dangerous than others. We also teach them to recognize and avoid reckless drivers, and how to deescalate road rage.
If my child got into an avoidable accident, then eventually I would talk to him or her about what they could have done differently, and what they learned from it. We also use other people’s accidents as teachable moments. I don’t consider that victim-blaming.
I cannot rid of the world of bad drivers or dangerous situations. I can only teach my children to be good drivers and watch out for bad situations.
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I suspect most people teach their kids how to be safer. It would be nice if all people would place the blame where it belongs when things go wrong. Too many times I hear, “she was asking for it.” Uh, no, she wasn’t.
In NC a road rage driver just shot a passenger in a car headed to SC. The lady who died was relatively local to us and the incident happened because her H accidently tried to get into a lane the other guy was driving forcing that one onto the shoulder briefly (with no contact). He retaliated by coming up on the right hand side of the road and shooting the passenger.
One could say they shouldn’t have irritated the first guy (not sure that was possible when it wasn’t intentional), and we tell our kids to not get involved in road rage types of things when they drive, but I’ve yet to hear anyone say the poor folks who took the hit were, “asking for it,” the same way I hear when a gal in the wrong place at the wrong time gets taken advantage of.
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One last post before I give up the auto analogy (I promise). To me Maine’s post is a bit like saying “Don’t drink and drive”. On the one hand, saying “don’t drink and drive” has not rid the world of drunk drivers, which is why we still teach our children to recognize and avoid drunk drivers, or avoid the situations where lots of them are on the road.
But on the other, it is the repeated saying of “Don’t drink and drive” over decades, spearheaded originally by Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, that has increased awareness of the dangers of drunk driving and ways to mitigate that, such as having a designated driver. Drinking and driving is way down as a result.
So by all means, keep spreading the word that men have to treat women better. We want that to sink in and see a similar or better graph for sexual assault. But just realize that alone is insufficient, and that we still have to teach our children to act safely because not everyone is going to pay attention to the message.
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Holding you to it.
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Probably most parents try… but some parents do not have a good idea of relative risks of different situations. I.e. they may warn about the risks of X, but fail to warn about the risks of Y which are higher than the risks of X.
I hope I have a good grasp of the actual risks for a kid away at college! It’s easy to worry about the wrong things because anecdotal evidence is so convincing emotionally.
The big thing I talk to my kids about is alcohol. I tell them to imagine that they are out at night at a bar or fraternity party, and they are suddenly only five years old inside. That’s the equivalent of what alcohol can do to your judgement. I ask them to think about how they would protect a five year old (who looks 20) at a post-exam blowout party. That’s the level of vulnerability you have if you binge drink, and the kind of trust you are putting on those around you.
I also make sure they understand what blackout drunk means—not that you become unconscious, but that you reach a BAC where you continue to function, albeit badly, but are not truly aware and will have no memory of this time. They know about activities that don’t go with any amount of drinking: driving, boating, swimming, climbing, biking, wandering alone, and being alone with people you don’t know well. If they are going to drink, they need to have plans and fail-safes to make sure none of those activities will happen.
I don’t mean any of that as victim blaming, and maybe it doesn’t belong in this thread. But when I read these awful stories, I can’t help but think of how to get the message through to my kids about alcohol. (Not just sexual assault, but traumatic brain injury, drunk driving, etc. A drunk kid drowned in our town five years ago.)
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Sometimes I try to imagine what a society looks like that doesn’t expect women to be responsible for protecting men from their own bad actions.
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I don’t drink alcohol, but in some cases I would think it may be a case of both being drunk…one may not give consent but the other also so drunk they think the other consented or don’t remember?
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Seems likely that this happens (even though it is still illegal and undesirable for someone to have sex without consent), and the drunkenness causing memories of the event to be murky means that evidence quality is poor if any third party investigates the matter.
That may also be why actual sexual predators often go for drunk victims (or deliberately drug them) who may not remember enough to provide good evidence to anyone investigating the matter.
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That would be a world of fantasy. In the real world, women need to take steps to prevent themselves from being victims.
Yes, but … if people would adjust their thinking and stop with the boys will be boys c**p, perhaps men in future generations will be less likely to take what they want.
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