Men: do you ever talk about rape prevention?

Rape isn’t about sexuality rather than it seems to be about power. It’s hard for people to wrap their heads around the idea because it usually happens with couples or people who know one another, and have done so for a long time. The kinda thing nobody wants to talk about.

There’s a user on here who’s totally against rape and could tell you more, but outta respect I ain’t saying who it is. They might see this question eventually, and give a much better answer than mine.

I’ve never been told what I can do to help prevent other guys from raping women. It’s natural however for me when with a group of girls that are friends to look out for them and to observe their interaction with other guys when appropriate. I obviously know how guys think so a comment here or there could raise a red flag for me that the girl might over look.

i passed some bloke pushing a girl into a hedgerow once, i pulled over, turned round and checked it out, seems they were just fooling around. Does that count?

I walk through dark alleyways with a stun gun and a hammer, ready to stop a rape-in-progress. I do this every tuesday night. Makes me feel good.

Nope, I don’t talk about rape prevention with people. Nor rape in general. Nor any other sexual act (consensual or otherwise). I just can’t get, as you word it, “fired up” about rape.

My college requires that all first year students, male and female, attend rape awareness workshops that separate the two genders and go over rape prevention from both sides.

I don’t believe that the subject ever came up. I can’t imagine any of the guys I know doing such a horrible thing. Mostly we complain about how we are abused by our wives.

At least that’s honest of you guys. But do you think that’s something that should change?

@Haleth I can’t imagine a conversation where the subject would come up. The only time I have talked about it was when we were watching a movie on TV and a rape scene started. I turned away ( I can’t stand that or children being hurt) and we changed the station.

@Haleth It’s tough because you’re essentially trying to change the behavior of someone else and their actions. Women are educated about this stuff because they can personally change the way they act themselves to lower their chances of getting raped.

Perhaps a different way of attacking this problem is by changing the way men look at women in general. There were too many situations in college where guys would essentially talk about women as sex objects and not as people. When men get to the point where they can look at a woman as a sex object and not a person then rape becomes a real possibility.

I’m not comfortable talking F2F, especially to women, so there is little I can do educationally. But if I ever saw an attempt or rape in progress, you would know I was there (3×230grain JHPs to the head, Glock rifling pattern on the slugs). Maybe I should leave a silver bullet at the scene also?

@chrisf2009 Thanks for participating in this discussion. I believe that men should be educated to change the way they act, too. We tend to focus on women’s behavior and the act of rape as if there were no man involved. All a woman can do by changing her behavior is increase her odds of being safe, but a man can actually choose to not rape someone.

“What can we do to get both men and women fired up about women’s safety?”
There is a very small population of men, who are so psychotic, they will rape at any cost. There is no way to “convince” them not to rape.
Unless all women are trained in hand to hand combat, carry guns, pepper spray, and a taser, they are at risk. Even with weapons, a man could still over power a woman.
Ever hear of Chloroform? Stalkers? A person can track and stalk a women.

@Violet Good H2H combat skills override any size/strength differential. Firearms are not the answer unless you are willing to put in the long hours of training needed to become truly proficient and know that you are able to squeeze that trigger should it become necessary. There is am old saying “Don’t draw unless you are going to shoot, don’t shoot unless you intend to kill”. Better off without a firearm unless you can develop that mindset.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land I’m sorry, but as a man, I don’t think you understand.

I have always been outspoken to other men about issues concerning violence against women, including rape as a violent act, ties to power not sexuality. I was active in the white ribbon campaign from its inception after the Montreal Massacre on December 6, 1989

@Violet Principles of combat are irrelevant to gender. It’s merely a matter of learning them and having the willingness and determination to use them. Otherwise you’re just another potential victim.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land what about gang rape? GHB? Or when a women is knocked out from behind, and then bound/tied? There are some situations where women are completely helpless

@Violet You make a good point. It’s true of any serious crime that there are people out there who will do it no matter what. I agree that no matter what, there are some men out there who you can’t “convince” not to rape. My reason for bringing up this question is that there is a lot of emphasis on women doing all the work of rape prevention, and I believe that it’s possible to get men involved in a productive way. Most rapes aren’t by some random psycho stranger; it’s usually someone close to the woman. And education would be effective because so many rapes are “gray areas” like date rape or rape by a significant other.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land I have martial arts training, and men usually have much greater upper body strength than you would expect. It isn’t always possible to fight a man off. When my instructor was teaching us how to take down an attacker, he gave us all the same first lesson. What is the first thing you should do if someone tries to attack you: Run! He was more specific, because obviously if someone, say, has a gun on you you can’t run away. But the point was that physically fighting an attacker is a last resort. This was to a class of both men and women.

I have often wondered about this but thankfully have never had to find out, but I think if someone tried to rape me, they may succeed in the end but they are going to bear the scars of the encounter.

And if I had a gun I would kill someone who was attacking me. How much skill does it take to pull the trigger and hit someone who is on top of you. Of course in our protect the poor disengaged criminal society, I would go to jail for doing it.

@Violet That can happen just as easily to a man also. One reason why a kept a frag taped to my web gear in a combat situation. In my last second of conciousness I could pull the pin. @Haleth Maybe you haven’t taken the right kind of martial arts training. Strength and size can be turned against any attacker. It’s leverage and redirection of his own force that is the key, not your own strength. I’ve seen a 100 pound woman utterly destroy a 300 pound attacker. I was going to help her out but she didn’t need it. @Violet good combat firearms training will overcome a gang-rape situation, but you must be properly trained and utterly determined to shoot.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land That’s actually what I learned- turning an attacker’s strength and speed against him. What would you do after taking out that attacker? Most likely try to run away. If you are able to, it’s safer just to run away in the first place, but there will be times when that’s not possible. And then all that stuff really comes in handy.

@Haleth Your instructor left out a key point. Once he’s down, make sure he stays down. A stomp to the head or testicles will ensure that. Then get the hell out of there. A lady can run, but a man should walk away to avoid creating the impression that he is the guilty party. I was taught this principle by a Marine Gunnery Sergeant (my father’s driver) at the age of eight.

Reading all of the techniques and strategies to fight off a would be rapist just made me think, women shouldn’t have to be doing all that, combat, defence and firearm training. It makes me feel as though we’re living in the animal kingdom in a jungle somewhere. It’s sad that women have to do this kind of thing in the 21st Century. Life really isn’t fair, not one tiny bit.

@HumourMe We are living in an animal kingdom, regardless of the calender. As long as men visualize women as objects for their animal desires, such will always be the case. There will always be men who were never trained in civilized behavior. Such men are no more than two-legged predators and do not merit being treated as human beings. Unfortunately the law digagrees with this assessment, so you need to act quickly, then disappear unless you want endless legal hassles. A smart cop will figure out what happened and not persue the case further.

I understand that, it’s just disappointing and saddening that the small percentage who do act on their animalistic urges disadvantage the majority of society by causing fear and anxiety to women just wanting to walk down a street by themselves. I know we’re animals but we’re smart animals that should know better, most of us do. But the minority don’t and make life hell for the rest of us.

Not rape specifically…only in regard to my wife and daughters being aware of their surroundings, and to be mindful of placing themselves in potentially dangerous situations.

@HumourMe So true. And all feminist dogma aside, it is trained, civilized men who must stand ready to step in and stop these predators. At least until the vast majority of women are trained in effective defense techniques.

I discuss it regularly as part of an organization that acts partly as a rape crisis center.

My male friends are pretty much like me, they cant stand to see a woman disrespected in anyway, im pretty sure if they saw something going on anyone of us would attempt to stop it.

Remember kids, rape is only funny if youre a clown.

I talked to my sons as they were growing up about date-rape and not pushing a woman to go farther than she wanted. (I’m not a guy so i don’t know if that is relevant to your question.)

Bravo for the Q…I’ll come back to it later…

It is common knowledge and morally obvious that it is wrong to do. We don’t talk about rape prevention any more than we talk about murder prevention or car theft prevention from the perspective of the culprit.

Women learn ways to protect themselves because they are the most likely victims.

I suppose there are things we can do to prevent others from raping women but… the kind of morally inept people who do such things are probably not very receptive to common sense.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land you said “Firearms are not the answer” and now you are saying “good combat firearms training will overcome a gang-rape situation, but you must be properly trained and utterly determined to shoot.”
I don’t think you understand some rape situations. If a women is knocked out from behind her, then bound.. how is it that she has access to her gun “that is not the answer”?
And you think a woman can take on a group of men, who all may have guns of their own?

What about where there are multiple “innocent” bystanders watching a rape such as the recent one outside a high school? How can we educate people to the understanding that watching a violent crime such as rape and doing nothing is complicity at best? I cannot comprehend the moral failing that prevented even one person from using their cell phone or going in to the school to get help.

@janbb That is a different issue, the “Kitty Genovese” syndrome, and it has its own, complex sociobiolological etiology which is still being studied. It takes place in infra-human primates as well.

@pdworkin Yes it is a separate issue but don’t you think it is also an important phenomenon to discuss in a question about fostering an atmosphere of rape prevention?

Well, no. You can’t change an inherited trait by discussing it.

Surely part of ethics training and morals education is to obviate against instinctual or inherited traits? Otherwise, we’d all be fucking like rabbits and hitting each other in anger.

We do.

We do what – train to obviate against instinct or fuck like rabbits and hit each other? Some of each, I guess.

We fuck like rabbits and we hit one another.

(Sounds like a good party!)

So there are no lessons to be learned from studying the Holocaust, for example?

Learning and knowledge are not the same as behavior. I think a new Holocaust could occur at any time, and in fact, we saw it recently in Rwanda and Darfur.

Of course they have and “never again” is a crock, but I have seen students become more aware of bias and hatred through exposure to survivor’s stories. How that has translated into changed behavior, I can only speculate.

Though I am not a man (!), I know that there is a student group on my college campus (and on many other campuses) called one-in-four, which is a rape prevention group run by men, for men. The group’s name comes from the disturbing statistic that one out of every four women is estimated to be a victim of some form of sexual abuse by the time she graduates college. There are quite a few active members, and they give talks all over campus to frats, sports teams, etc to educate other guys on methods to help prevent rape as well as how to support a woman who has been a victim of rape. They are an incredibly amazing group—you check read more about them here >> “http://pennoneinfour.org/”.