A piece at XOJane:
It happened on a hot August night in Texas.
I’d left a party after deciding it would be more fun to walk home than wait until my ride got bored enough to bail. A three-mile walk at 1 am wasn’t my idea of a good time, but neither was that party.
I walked. And walked. After what seemed like forever but was probably about 45 minutes, a black Lexus pulled over. The driver was lost and trying to find I-35. I told him how to get there and he asked, “Why is a pretty girl like you walking alone at this hour?” When I explained, he offered to drive me the rest of the way home.
I was tempted. I knew better than to accept rides from strangers, but I was sick of walking and his car had air-conditioning. I wasn’t completely stupid, though; I made him promise not to hurt me before gratefully climbing into the passenger seat.
“I was at a party myself,” he said. “Would you like to go back to it with me?” New people, a new party — maybe a reboot was just what I needed.
“There’s just one thing,” he said. “My wife’s out of the country on sabbatical so I need to swing by my house and check on the kids.” Lexus, wife, kids, sabbatical — these were clearly good people, not dangerous criminals.
It has to be mentioned that this piece is written as part of a contest called “It Happened to Me” in which the winning writer wins “big money”, according to the website. Several small points hinder credibility. For instance, 45 minutes into a 3 mile walk would put her pretty close to home. But for the sake of argument we’ll play this story out assuming it’s all true.
The author “avoided rape”, as the headline states, by bolting out of the house after the man began taking cushions off of his couch and told her she should go take a shower since she had gotten so sweaty from walking “several miles” (again the distance incongruity that harms the author’s credibility here). She doesn’t indicate that she ever asked to be taken directly home, or that she thought twice about a married man asking to take her to a party, or that the guy was not prepared to take ‘no’ for an answer.
She begins walking:
In Texas, if you find a patch of grass you will find stickers, tiny balls of hatred and thorns. I hadn’t put my shoes back on, so of course I stepped into a sticker patch.
“Ow! Fuckfuckow!” I tried to balance on one foot while pulling stickers out of the other, all without dropping my shoes or falling over. I was so tired and this night was going to last forever and it would not stop sucking. I burst into tears.
This could be a very feministy metaphor, not that the author intended it as such. Other feminists do believe that Texas is full of “stickers, tiny balls of hatred and thorns” – rapists by another name. Texas is a Red State; Red States churn out soldiers in the War on Women. Yet young women continue walking alone in these places. This woman basically blames the stickers for stinging her foot even while she trounced through the countryside without shoe.
After the first run-in, while walking home and after speaking to a cop who she says didn’t know what to do for her, she repeated the mistake:
A car pulled over. The driver got out and asked what was wrong. I told him the whole story in one breath, a two-minute run-on sentence of epic proportions. “Where do you live?” he asked.
“Near campus,” I told him.
He said, “I work near campus. Why don’t you come use my phone? I have to be at work at 5.30, so if you can’t get hold of anyone, I’ll drop you off on my way to work.”
It sounded like a rescue, like a happy ending. Still. I hesitated, and he said to me, “I promise I will not hurt you.” I must have looked unconvinced because he added, “I won’t even touch you.” I got in his car, still sniffling.
When we got to his place, he put on some Pink Floyd. I sat on the floor and we talked for a while. He handed me a scrapbook his girlfriend had made. She was pretty, with short brown hair and a dazzling smile. He went into another room to change clothes while I made some calls with no luck. When he came back, he had a joint.
All of my tension fled — he was a stoner. The only way I’d be in danger was if I suddenly became a Cheeto. After a few hits I was buzzed and happy and safe, and when he tried to kiss me I started to let him. Then I remembered his smiling brown-haired girlfriend and pushed him away. That’s when it happened.
The man then penetrated her even while she told him she didn’t want to have sex. Summarizing: He took her home; he said he thought that everything “was great”; he asked her to go down on him in the car; she made excuses for his behavior to one of her friends; she later realized that she was raped and that it wasn’t at all her fault.
Little has been done to foster a new conversation for this type of situation. As of now, the discussions never get passed “his fault” or “her fault”. What’s the point? Just make factual statements: this woman increased her odds of a whole host of victimizations by walking around at night and getting into cars with strangers and going to their houses. She was absolutely stupid. She also increased her risk of getting run over by a car by walking on the highway in the darkness of the night. We can completely blame a guy who is driving drunk and swerving and speeding, but we’d also think it’s kind of weird that the pedestrian was walking right in the middle of the highway.
Both are to blame, but for different reasons. The key point is the punishment.
This is where taxonomy comes in. Some claim “rape is rape” while others like myself differentiate depending on circumstance. In fact, the cops do this too – not just for sexual assault but also for homicides and many other types of crimes. They differentiate between a crime of passion or anger and call it manslaughter whereas someone who commits pre-meditated murder is given a higher charge. People who murder while committing another felony receive a harsher sentence too. They indicate that they are a greater risk to society at large. The system does this as well with sexual assault, though when it enters the realm of feminist rhetoric all sexual assaults are lumped into one category. All of the perpetrators are considered cut from the same cloth. The criticism I’m writing here is basically saying that this woman had some amount of control. She made very many decisions and chose something that increased her chances of finding herself in a bad spot. There are many rape victims who aren’t given any choice at all, but we’re supposed to feel as much anger and sympathy for this girl as we do for them? Nah.
My question to feminists would be: does a young woman have any responsibility at all to keep track of how people around her are perceiving her behavior? And let’s say she does know that she’s doing things that men are often turned on by – the feminist argument taken to its extreme is that nary a condemnatory word can be leveled towards her.
Like this:
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For a moment, let’s imagine that you should listen to what women do and ignore what they say.
What did she do?
She put herself totally at the mercy of a total stranger, had a bad (and nearly horrific) outcome, and then took exactly the same risk again later the same night.
The bottom line with these chicks is always that the one absolute non-negotiable principle here, which must never be questioned or discussed, is that they WILL go out and put themselves totally at the mercy of complete strangers who can’t be trusted. They say they don’t like the bad outcomes they may get, but they’re not going to stop, regardless of whether the bad outcomes are made less probable or not.
I’m not certain what to make of that, but I’m pretty sure I’m a hitlerianly monstrous misogynist racist for noticing it out loud.
A Series of Poor Choices
You made a poor choice treating this mountain of bullshit seriously.
I love the last comment -
Please email me–the first guy may be one of my rapists (multiple attacks). fridawrites @ gmail.com. I can send you his photo and street view of his houses. Same car and same shower fixation, likes to pretend he’s a rescuer. Has kids, living with or married to someone frequently away.
You can set up a fake gmail account so as to protect your identity. A little about my assault is on my blog.
Amazing. What would be the odds of that ? Some chick gets (almost) raped and a commenter was raped by the same guy. In a country of about 300 million. Almost as long as the odds on someone being attacked by 2 rapists in one night.
Fuck me dead.
She is conflating 2 separate or imagined incidents for effect – people do that shit all the time. It’s called telling a good story.
…but also, I think you’re right that the story is at least partially made up. Twice in one night? Is anybody THAT dumb?
I’m sympathetic a bit, since I consider being 3/4 drunk and leaving a party of idiots to walk in the winter night one of life’s great pleasures. I did this many times in my misspent youth, but I was an ugly college guy, tall enough to be considered a non-easy target for crack addicts/alcoholic mexicans, and not a hot babe, which also explains why I was never offered a ride.
Young women don’t see that their sexual power comes with some special responsibilities.
But OK let’s take her account of the second incident at face value.
This – My question to feminists would be: does a young woman have any responsibility at all to keep track of how people around her are perceiving her behavior? is not the question at all.
The question is – if you get into an intimate position with a man (she was letting him kiss her) then if he pushes for sex what is your response ? Her response was to tell him no and push him away. She never says she violently struggled and as he gave her a lift home after the ‘rape’ then I’m guessing things didn’t get too violent.
Her statement the same day confirms her ambiguity – “Aside from the making me have sex thing, he was a nice guy,”
The issue is ‘soft rape’. If she is trying to convince me that this guy violated her and deserves to go down for 35 years then this Recently divorced, I’d been sleeping with anyone who smelled good and asked nicely. is not the way to do it.
Girls – the takeaways are many -
don’t hitchhike
watch out for the thorns and rapists in Texas
don’t smoke dope with strange guys immediately after meeting them at their house at 5 am
and ……put up a bit of a fight
is it wrong for a person to rape another, duh.. yeah. Is it wrong to murder, assault, or steal, uh.. yeah. Victim or not, does a person have the responsibility, at least to themselves, to take precautions to avoid dangerous situations? Obviously (or maybe not), YES! A person cant be blamed for being victimized, but they are 100% to blame that they put themselves in a position for it to happen.
Example: if I get in a car with someone who i know has been drinking, or using drugs, and i get injured in a car crash caused by the driver, they are at fault for my injuries. However, I am at fault that i put myself in the position where the injuries I sustained could happen.
If this story is true, dear god this woman is stupid. Her whole experience is like seeing Darwinism at work.
Remember kiddies Darwinism is not “survival of the fittest” aka the strongest, its survival of the best adapted to the environment. Clearly this woman has not adapted to survive in the real world. She overspecialized and can only survive on collage campuses, or her parents house.
Too stupid to live, to dumb to die… I’m sure she will head some government agency some day.
The driver was lost and trying to find I-35.
Yeeeeeeah, I’m sure the guy was lost.
Sounds like that chick ran into some weirdos that were trolling for prostitutes.
Victim or not, does a person have the responsibility, at least to themselves, to take precautions to avoid dangerous situations?
Here the dangerous situation is the smoking dope rather than the hitching. To me taking drugs alone with a girl was always an indicator that she was totally up for it. And (pigs that they are) a lot of guys figure that if they give a chick free drugs then she needs to make a payment via the ‘hairy chequebook’.
Yes, we can criticize her judgment without condoning the rape. Making a critical analysis is not blaming.
Agree that her writing style seems fictionalized. In the medical context I see raped patients, and the poor-judgment-by-anger or poor-judgment-by-sadness scenarios are not uncommon.
The rape is a damn shame, but it beggars belief someone could be this stupid. No one calls her out on any of about 5 bad decisions she made that night.
JZ
Remember who, and what kind of people we are dealing with. You used logic, therefor you are wrong. Critical analysis IS blaming to these people
Although I have to say I’m not sure why the cop couldn’t have given her a ride home. Am I off-base in wondering this?
She had walked for 45 minutes and was already “tired of walking”? No wonder America is fat…
Although I have to say I’m not sure why the cop couldn’t have given her a ride home. Am I off-base in wondering this?
‘Cos he didn’t believe her shit ?
Yeah if you’re walking at a fairly brisk pace, 45 minutes would put you about a mile from home, give or take.
Personally, I would’ve just toughed it out at the party. I’m not walking 3 miles home, buzzed, as a woman, in the middle of the night.
Although I have to say I’m not sure why the cop couldn’t have given her a ride home. Am I off-base in wondering this?
Police departments usually have the policy of not giving people rides home. They just end up being taxi services if they try to be the transport service for every poor, drunk or stupid person around.
@stickman, So how would I respond to that?
Criticizing , judging, scrutinizing, analyzing, appraising are essential human skills. Good luck without them. Good luck trying to escape from them.
I read rape scenarios imaging how the scenarios would play out to juries in my poor city with low income and high unemployment. I speculate the extreme feminist views would gain no traction here . I *never* get interviewed regarding the trivial medical evidence. I suspect the prosecutors see the “he said, she said” nature of these and do not pursue. Even when the victim is young, aged 10-18, there are rarely prosecutions…….seems to me.
i dunno.. 45 minutes into a 3 mile walk, even at a SLOW pace would still put her at least half way home. she had sandals, not heels, so that wasnt a factor. so when someone pulls over and says hey babe need a lift and she SHOULD have said, yea, i live 1.5 miles that way,
on a deserted highway at 1am that would take someone ohhhh about 3 minutes to drive in a broken down pinto, probably 1 minute in a lexus. But no, lets go party instead…
And OMG the fucking huzzah cheerleading in the comments section!??! its like watching a bunch of douches convince themselves that every girl at the bar is a fucking cunt cause none of them could get a blowjob in the handicap stall.
this is nothing more than rape porn. “married man. muuust have me. Stoner guy with pretty girlfriend.. must have meeeee too.. recently divorced and all nice smelling men muuuuuuuuuuust waaaaaaaaaant meeeeeeeee!!! i am soooooo desiiiireable that all men must want me.
i hope she doesnt win the contest either, cause for rape porn, it was Reeeeeeally nondescript and boring. i like it when the womens get all the nitty gritty details of the rape. Also, they usually laud themselves on how awesomely cute they were that evening but really not HOT enough to rape.. just cute, so they dont understand.. she did however include that the guy was nice, so it wasnt really her fault..
ugh.
Yeah Camlost, I thought about that. It makes sense in a way.
Also, that site is a piece of work. Headline: “I look like Lena Dunham, and I’ve banged hot guys.” Aye aye aye.
along the Alan B stream above,
Most rapes are tragic, but I recall one woman, aged 35, who mentioned how handsome her rapist was. She was congratulating herself for attracting the handsome rapist. // <—-notable exception to the norm. most of these girls are young and innocent or naive.
Another case of a woman not accepting the idea of consequences for her actions. News at 11.
Is there no such thing as calling a cab where she lives? What about calling a friend or family member for a ride?
Victimology is pornography for feminists. They clearly get off on this stuff, a fact that’s evidence by them holding a “contest” about it. Victim-porn is romance novels for those who prefer reality TV to sitcoms and dramas. And like reality TV, it degrades the real thing.
ok, ive been thinking about this a lot. why has “rape” always been a separate crime from assault and battery–which in essence is all it is. if a women’s chastity or fidelity no longer have value, what’s actually occured to her that’s so devastating when she experiences the soft rape of being pressured ABOVE AND BEYOND “assault and battery”? the struggle with rape has been a continuing struggle to define it as a separate category of crime as female value has disappeared.
i BELIEVE (no proof) rape was separate from other assault and battery because it involved the despoiling of female value to the person who held that value–the woman’s father or husband. if a nubile virgin was “raped” her marital value to the father and therefore her value to his reputation, position or purse were destroyed–depending on the culture. if a young wife was raped her value as a faithful vehicle for his seed was destroyed–rape as involuntary infidelity or involuntary cockoldry. when western men owned female value, they were protected from circumstances that would allow for or instigate rape and the determined rapist was undeniably the culprit. rape was not a separate category of crime because of how it made women feel, but how it destroyed their value to men.
enter female emancipation–without ownership of a females sexual worth by a husband or father, what actually CONSTITUTES rape anymore? what we saw was a shift from the MALE bright line definition of rape to the newly nebulous, emotion-based female definition and the subsequent confusion is understandable. how is it considered devastating to a woman who has had sex with 25 men willingly to have unwilling sex with 1? how does a woman’s behavior factor in to her personalized definition of rape when shes “entitled” to behave however she wants because “no SHOULD mean NO!”? leaving the definition of a crime up to the radically subjective perception of the victim as to whether or not they’ve been victimized makes it impossible to ever really know if you’re committing a crime and has been another pillar of the modern world’s anarcho-tyrannical rule by whim police state, women’s preferred form of government
@dana, check your hardened cynicism. Feelings are an essential guidepost to morality and must be respected, just as logic is.
This has to be the dumbest fucking story I’ve ever read. It almost makes it seem worthwhile to read random feminist sites, in the hopes of turning up nuggets of comedy gold like this one.
Although I have to say I’m not sure why the cop couldn’t have given her a ride home. Am I off-base in wondering this?
Because he didn’t really exist, would be my guess. He was just sort of a stock character in feminist rape fantasies: The Dumb Redneck Cop Who Looks The Other Way. According to Amanda Marcotte, there are entire communities in Texas who function like this imaginary cop.
It seems worthwhile to ask what really DID happen to this woman. Possibly she just met the stoner guy at the party and went home to have sex with him, but something about it was “off”, so when her ethnic, gay best friend “Pato” asked her where the hell she went the night before, she made up the story about almost getting raped, and the stoner rescuing her, to explain why she went home with some random stoner she never met before in the first place.
An ordinary person probably wouldn’t make up a story that actually makes them look MORE stupid than they actually were, but for a feminist, she knows that “Pato” would never dare criticize her actions leading up to her getting raped for fear of seeming like a woman-hater.
It’s also pretty funny because feminists are constantly obsessed with rape and our “rape culture”. But an ordinary person with an ordinary degree of common sense would never have done anything like this. Feminists, on the other hand, apparently don’t see anything wrong with it, and even cheer each other on when they do.
JZ I agreed with the post your post i commented on. My point was that to the Feminarchy, reasoned logical arguments against their point of view hold no merit. With that being said, my first post, however logical it may, or may not be, would be seen as victim-blaming. Any debate with them is doomed to failure from the beginning, because the rules of the debate are different for each side. They can claim whatever they think, or feel to be fact, on the other hand our conclusions drawn from logical thinking can be dismissed.
In a nutshell Feminists and like-minded people from ALL factions deal with “truth”, and for the most part their opponents deal with “facts”.
Truth, is subjective, and is an ever-moving goalpost. Its comparable to religion.
Fact, is objective, it is or it isn’t. New information can change your conclusions but generally facts are static. its comparable to science.
A good example of this difference in thinking can be seen on the topic of the “wage gap”
Truth–”for now”, working women make up to 23-30% less than working men. and it is true in a very general way.
Fact– If you take into consideration types of jobs, hours worked, and overall job experience, their is no appreciable wage gap.
The burden of proof on us is nigh insurmountable. its the difference between convincing a religious zealot there is no God, Vs. convincing a scientist their theory is incorrect.
good luck not getting burned at the stake.
@jz im sorry, where was “morality” mentioned? i was discussing Law. there has never been a civilization on earth in which the subjective emotional reactions of an individual where a feature of determining the law. you know where the subjective emotional reactions of the “victim” feature heavily? african cultures in which a mere accusation of witchcraft by a “victim” leads to death without a trial. ahhh, west africa,…the feminist dream society
also, i don’t speak “Content-free feminist shaming language”, can you please explain what “check your hardened cynicism” means and why i should do it? thanks maybe instead of emotionally characterizing my argument you’d like to, you know, refute something i actually said.
Dana’s “hardened cynicism” is what ten thousand through sixty years ago would have been called “normal.” I know people of recent Eastern European extraction, men and women, who think the same way as a matter of course.
JZ is a common American liberal woman, but with a small dose of conservative realism in a few limited areas stemming from her work in the medical field.
This would be like a guy telling a story about how he kept dipping his toe into an alligator pit and eventually one got a hold of him and ripped his leg off. Now he wants that alligator to be shot.
“how is it considered devastating to a woman who has had sex with 25 men willingly to have unwilling sex with 1?”
IMO, it’s amusing that you extend the above quote and posit as almost a rhetorical question, presuming the answer is consensually obvious —— but I think it’s quite possible for a woman to have willing sex with 25 people and be devastated by a single sexual assault; in fact, I would presume it of a female in that circumstance.
And not to put a ‘Men’s studies’ taint on these rueful matters, but, anecdotally speaking, this 40-something male has had sex with more than 25 women, in fact considerably more ——- yet I do believe I would be highly devastated if I were to, say, go to prison and end up being raped.
Is that really unimaginable? I also maintained that many-upon-mnay of those born living before 1952 and on back through antiquity could empathize and may even feel the same, despite PA’s historical framing and guesswork.
(OT@Dana, btw, just curious: Are you the Dana who used to post at OneSTDV.com —– the white nationalist yenta me and a few others joked about?).
@Dana, fair enough, you were addressing _legal_ theory and definition. You swiped at “emotion-based subjective personalized definition of victimization” . The totality of your last paragraph is women hating. My point is that emotions are a useful guideline for morality.
The idea of men “owning” women certainly seems archaic to my modern mind. However, I do think there is still a female desire to have a man feel that way about her. Yes, it comes with a loss of freedom, particularly sexual freedom, but it would make you feel valued.
@PA, JZ is a common American liberal woman, but with a small dose of conservative realism in a few limited areas stemming from her work in the medical field.
I’ll take that as an undeserved compliment.
I think it’s quite possible for a woman to have willing sex with 25 people and be devastated by a single sexual assault; in fact, I would presume it of a female in that circumstance.
Maybe, but if her story is true, it must not have been all that devastating in this case, if she wasn’t willing to put the slightest effort into avoiding being raped. Particularly since it had already happened to her once in the same night.
I think I’ve worked harder at avoiding bums, just because I don’t like being asked for money, than this woman worked at not getting raped.
C’mon Chuck- it’s all lies. People lie all the time now. Do you believe Te’o as well?
Be more discerning.
not to snipe..
JZ I don’t know you from Eve, but I wouldn’t consider being called a “common American liberal woman”, a compliment.
“JZ is a common American liberal woman, but with a small dose of conservative realism in a few limited areas stemming from her work in the medical field.”
Stickman Translation: “is a common American liberal woman” = feeling safe is worth any price as long as someone else, preferably men, (wealthy white men even better), have to pay it. And rainbows and cotton candy shoots out their ass.
“with a small dose of conservative realism in a few limited areas stemming from her work in the medical field” = understands that its still an ass…
@stickman, emphasis on “undeserved”
jz,
The less power/rights women have, the more men are solicitous of us. It would even out, and maybe even be better for us, if men had more power relative to women.
Tom,
thanks for your unsolicited advice.
this is getting annoying. it doesn’t really matter if the story happened just as the author says it did. what would we say to her even if it did go according to how she said it? the facts would matter completely if she was filing charges against someone. but since she’s telling a story (perhaps for $$) then we need to analyze it given what she says happened. even with that assumption we can still state with confidence that she was an idiot and that a lot of missing from the discussions of rape and soft rape.
so when you tell me to be more discerning i read that as you thinking that i think this story is 100% true. i don’t – i heavily discount every single thing i read on the internet; my first assumption is that everyone is lying. but it doesn’t matter.
I’ll have you know this is the first time I’ve ever jerked it to anything you’ve posted/linked to…
“My rape didn’t happen because of my bad choices — it happened because of his.”
I mean, WTF? Really, WTF???
This reminds me of “the Talk” thing with black parents, where they feel horribly wronged because they have to teach their sons not to start fights with cops.
nikrit, yes that dana
there was nothing rhetorical about the questions i posited. we have no guidelines for a culture with total female sexual freedom. we have no answers to the questions that have arisen in its wake. promiscuity was always held against women when making rape accusations against a man, as was her dress, comportment and demeanor–this was because the law actualyl tried to take into account how MEN responded to female sexual cues in determining rape. now the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction.
jz–yes, i hate women, nice to meet you
I think that analysing why she lies in the way she did is more interesting than analysing the moral of her story (regardless of whether it is true) – which is Chuck’s approach.
So why did she conflate (hate that overrused word – but here it seems to fit) the 2 incidents ? Firstly because she is trying to win a ‘Look at me’ award on some bullshit website.
Secondly because she believes that the first story helps with the second. To me the first story smacks of bullshit, whereas the second bears some prospects of being true. (The idea of the 2 happening on the same night is fucking laughable – pretty clear she has never told this story in real life – the disbelieving smirks would discourage her from telling it again.) The problem with the second story is that it is just a depressing story of some whore giving it up too easy to a pushy turd.
So why add the first story to the second ? Because it helps make the second story more serious.
She herself knows the second story was not ‘rape-rape’ so she adds the first (which is almost Jeffrey Dahmer territory) to give a background of rapiness to the events.
Have you ever told a story about a dangerous situation and when you get to the climax find that no-one is impressed…..and then added a little extra made up danger ? This is a bit like that.
I love ‘Pato’ too. The restating of events the same day to someone called Pato is just the sort of irrelevant detail which smart liars add.
On a moral note – it’s hard for me to get excited about a ‘crime’ which she doesn’t think is a big deal – she says Later that day I tried to explain to Pato, my best guy friend. I didn’t want to get the guy in trouble.. The key takeaway for the young guys is push as hard as you can for sex – there are a lot of cheap whores around who will give it up. Maybe if chicks took a more moral stance then they wouldn’t find themselves surrounded by scum – who the girls criticise 5 minutes after fucking them.
Just an FYI: the stickers bit is NOT a feminist metaphor. Nor is it a slam on Texas in any way. It’s the reality you experience if you ever step barefooted into a patch of the little f’ing bastiches! Been there, done that, and 45 years later I still remember it.
nikcrit,
I don’t want to see any woman get raped, but a woman, who has slept with a lot of men, is definitely less valuable, than one who has slept with very few, or is a virgin.
“I wasn’t completely stupid, though; I made him promise not to hurt me before gratefully climbing into the passenger seat.”
As if he would say “Well actually I was thinking about raping you, but if you are going to make me promise not to hurt you, I guess I’ll have to leave off.”
It is so completely stupid for her to say this in earnest, that it sounds more like flirtation: “You promise not to hurt me? After all you are a big strong man and I am just a widdle girlie, tee hee hee.”
Dana: “there was nothing rhetorical about the questions i posited.”
Ok, I see the point and context of the statement if not rhetorical, but I didn’t originally; I agree the ‘pendulum’ has shifted back too far —— still, the onus and shame of the rape isn’t something that a figurative woman could negotiate alone; it’s the context that the rest of society has pre-determined; e.g., it’s a ‘put-upon’ trauma, not something you can experience and shake off entirely of your own.
So, given those circumstances as reality, I still say it’s likely a devastating result.
I’m not walking 3 miles home, buzzed, as a woman
Would you like an escort?