Shouldn’t women take responsibility in certain assault situations?

[Sonic_Spork]

Originally Posted by Uncle Bully

I have a daughter who is very young. When she gets older, should I not teach her to look out for herself, because the world owes it to her not to offend against her?

Oh, you certainly should. Do your best.

My kids are teenagers. I've tried my hardest to teach them all the wise things I possibly can. They are still teenagers. Sometimes they are going to make mistakes. I pray they aren't terrible ones, with terrible consequences.

The more important question is, if your daughter, as a teenager or a young adult, whose brain has not yet developed wisdom or maturity, comes to you one day and admits that she went to a strange man's house while kind of drunk, and ended up being assaulted...will your response be anger at the man who did this, or will you explain to her why she needs to take some responsibility for it?

And this is where we keep having a disconnect in this thread. "Taking responsibility" can mean COMPLETELY different things, depending on whether a rape is only a possible outcome, or whether it is a concrete reality that has happened, a bell that can never be un-rung.

Asking any woman (any person) to take responsibility for behaving in sensible ways to safeguard themselves against violations of various kinds...that is sane. Reasonable.

A sane and reasonable adult should also know however, that there is a timeframe in a human life (teens and early 20's usually) where our brains aren't done cooking and we are far more vulnerable because we lack the ability to truly place weight upon the possible consequences of our actions. If you reasonably expect a 17 year old to be as wise and careful as a 30 year old, then you've either forgotten what it was like to be 17, or you are an idiot, or you're trying to defend the right of predators to have a shot at easy prey. Plain and simple. Some allowance should be made for the fact that youth and wisdom just don't naturally always go hand in hand.

And REGARDLESS, if there actually IS a situation, that is happening, or has happened, it is no longer a possibility to try and prevent, but an actuality that has occurred, then expecting the victim to take "some responsibility" is...well, it's kind of heartless. No matter the circumstances of the "situation." Because now you are dealing in blame, because a horror has occurred in fact. And every ounce of responsibility placed on the plate of the victim, is taken directly OFF the plate of the perpetrator. There is no amount of temptation on this earth that makes it ok for a person to rape another person, that makes it justifiable or morally acceptable in a civilized society that recognizes the humanity of all people regardless of the differentials in power that they wield.

The only manner in which it is acceptable for a victim or survivor to have "responsibility" after the fact, is if it is how THEY have decided to cope and empower themselves, by trying to take some learning and wisdom from events in the hope of better outcomes in the future. But again...how a victim copes with sexual assault and heals, is a personal thing. Unless they cope by victimizing others, I don't think it's something that should be judged by anyone.

[Sonic_Spork]

Oh, and on a note from my last post, it occurs to me to contemplate the other side of the "teenagers are unwise" coin... What about young people who commit sexual assault?

I personally believe that there should be a more situational and flexible approach to sentencing a young person who commits such a crime. It should focus first on evaluation, then on education and restitution, and include a probationary period and a chance to redeem themselves from any lifelong offender registries. A young person, might be simply acting out of sheer youthful idiocy. They may not be a lifelong predator who needs to be kept out of society. I believe that sentencing for older perpetrators should be far more rigid and harsh. By the time you're 30, you pretty much know what your moral positions are.

I speak from the perspective of someone who did things as a teenager that I know understand were unarguably WRONG, but I did not understand that at the time. To say nothing of all the things that were merely very risky.

[PJSaturn]

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