Protecting Women

I have a sixteen year old daughter. When I was about a month older than she is now, I met the man I am currently married to. In a bar. Where I drank to excess. So did he. And then we went to the local illegal drag strip where he raced his truck at over a hundred miles per hour, while I and many other drunks stood at the side of the road, cheering and waiting to get killed. I made a lot of stupid and irresponsible decisions, and it’s only by God’s mercy that I’m alive today.

My daughter is a great deal more sensible than I was. She’s also better supervised. But the supervision is secondary to her own hard-headed common sense, which includes the concept that she is responsible for her own safety and needs to practice situational awareness and self-defense. In “Women Cannot Be Expected to Look After Themselves, Part 15” Laura W links to an apparently controversial story where a police chief suggested that based on a study that states that victim’s alcohol consumption is significant in a third of attacks

“a lot” of the 1,100 rapes a year could be prevented “by people not allowing themselves to be in a vulnerable position”.

This, naturally, earned him a knee in the groin from Sandy Brindley, the national coordinator of Rape Crisis Scotland, who said

“Women should be able to drink and not worry about being raped. Far too often reports of rapes focus on the woman’s behaviour and the perpetrator becomes invisible.”

Call me crazy, but I think that police chief is more serious about protecting women than the Rape Crisis coordinator. As Laura W says, “Yes, it would be nice for women to be able to drink themselves blotto whenever they want and be safe as can be. But frankly, all people need to be responsible for their own safety. [Brindley's] retort to the police chief’s conclusion is, how do you say, idiotic and counterproductive.”

The Brindleys of this world will say that they just want women to be treated equally, but that’s a lie. They think that we should be able to do what we want, when we want, and to be free from consequences. In other words, they want women to be sheltered, spoiled children. I want better than that for my daughter.

Linked to Blue Star Chronicles.