The best explanation of this problem you’re having that I’ve ever heard came from Film Critic Hulk in his article “We need to change how we talk about rape”.

It’s not a woman’s responsibility to stop herself from getting raped. That’s a really, really bad lesson to pass down. You can talk to girls/women about stuff they can do to avoid being raped without making that leap in logic.

It’s like someone getting mugged and blaming it on them for having a wallet and a phone.

Most women are raped by someone they know and trust, not by a stranger. What they are wearing has very little to do with it.

Just like child rape, there is only one valid defense to having sex with someone in police custody -

The point we’re trying to make that you seem to be missing is OUR ATTIRE DOES NOT IN ANY WAY PROTECT US. I was walking down a busy street in a long-sleeved long dress in broad daylight with a group of friends and a stranger ran up behind me and grabbed my ass. I was wearing a long skirt and ugly sunhat and was with…

The concern is that when you focus on the “good decisions keep you safer” lessons *when talking about sexual harassment and assault* what a child hears is “when someone is assaulted they must have made bad decisions.” The “good decisions” talk is a general discussion of general safety things, not a talk specifically…

You know what some abusers like? Women who are not confident enough to wear whatever they please. Women who are afraid of attracting a “certain kind” of attention and who dress accordingly. Women who are mousy because they lack a certain self-confidence.

Re: your parents’ instructions about police, most women have similarly been raised from a young age with warnings about controlling our own behaviour in order to save ourselves from assault. Most of us don’t walk alone at night, for that reason. Those rules also give us a false sense of protection and fail to…

Well, I’m a black woman who was raised with all of the guidelines to protect myself from sexual harrassment/assault and racism. The emphasis on personal choice and risk management helps establish a sense of control over what happens to you and in theory establishes rules of whom abuse and oppression is “supposed” to…

I get what you’re trying to say. But I mean, there’s so much that goes into being a target for assault beyond attire or even “acting flirtatiously.” I’ve been talking about street harassment, because that’s the situation that personally always jumps to mind when questions of “how someone is dressed” come up, but a lot…

Yup, they get off on making you scared or uncomfortable. And no matter what your response is, they will deny anything is amiss other than you are too sensitive and you need to just “grow up” or “get a sense of humor.”

yeah, that’s kinda where I am with this too.

This is spot on. The thing about a lot of sexual harassment analysis is that it assumes harassment is always about some kind of arousal, and therefore the solution is to either cause women to avoid arousing men or to teach men to control their impulses around women.

We’re not powerless against society. We have the power to change society. But these minimizing strategies don’t work to the extent you might wish that they do. As a white person, I can’t speak to the comparison you’ve made and I’m not comfortable speculating. But again, sexual assault and abuse don’t magically…

Where are on earth do you get the idea that abusers like Harvey Weinstein allow women to set boundaries?

But that assumes those precautions actually do protect ourselves. And they don’t. That was the major flaw with her statement and its underlying implications. I know women who have been harassed while wearing sweatpants. I know women who have been harassed while wearing a big heavy winter coat. I know women who’ve been…

Two things can be true at the same time.

Right, but those boundaries are meaningless if men don’t respect them — which they frequently don’t. The framing of her attire and comportment choices as “Here are the things you can do to make yourself less likely to be sexually assaulted” is galling both because it suggests the converse is true (that there are…

Disagreeing with someone about something they wrote isn’t trying to “shut her up.”