In PurplePillDebate — that surreal subreddit in which Red and Blue Pillers seek common ground — one alleged woman offers a rather original solution to the problem of acquaintance rape, telling women who are afraid of being raped by someone they know that they should only hang out with guys they think are hot. Because then if one of them decides to rape you, hey, at least he’ll be good-looking!
Here’s the, er, logic that led lauren_collins to this conclusion:
i haven’t read any rape stats and never met anyone who was raped as far as i know, but from what i understand, stranger rape is pretty rare. like a guy dragging you into an alley way. i’d imagine its especially rare in urban (city, not black) areas where there is a lot of foot traffic so stuff like that is harder to get away with. because the chances of someone walking by, seeing it, and intervening are much higher.
Today I Learned that stranger rapes only happen in dark alleyways, and also that women never have to walk through dark alleyways.
anyway, i’m assuming that most rapists are actually acquaintances / friends / relatives of the victim.
Well, ok, at least that bit is true.
so my question is why do you hang out with people you don’t wanna have sex with?
Oh dear. This isn’t going anywhere good.
like if you’re more likely to be raped by someone you socialize with rather than a stranger, doesn’t it make sense to only socialize with attractive men? so that if you are forced to have sex, it will at least be with someone you like.
Uh.
How does that even
this question is specifically for women who think all men are potential rapists.
Yeah, that doesn’t really help.
edit – imagine if you were forced to work construction because your education level prevented you from getting an office job, wouldn’t it make more sense to live in a city with warm weather? like ya, you’re doing work you don’t wanna do, but it could be worse. i don’t wanna work outdoors, but i’d rather work outdoors in san diego than anchorage. just like forced sex is bad, but its not as bad if the guy is good looking.
Yeah, that doesn’t really help either.
To their credit, most of the commenters in the PurplePillDebate thread are at least vaguely horrified by Lauren’s er, logic, though it is perhaps a little telling that the only person in the discussion who openly proclaims himself to be a Red Piller thinks that “this would be a sensible policy for women to follow. But of course ‘muh freedoms’.”
I honestly can’t tell if Lauren is a troll or not. She’s posted a bunch of rather boring and non-trolly comments in other threads, which suggests she’s either real, or a very dedicated troll.
Of course, she also posted this thing that totally really happened yeah sure:
one time my ex and i were smoking a joint in his backyard when his neighbor smelled it, came up and yelled at him for it, and later told his mom about what happened. his mom grounded him for a few weeks, he more or less got over it, but i was furious. his neighbor was an older guy, kind of fat, poorly groomed. and i thought basically “how dare this 3 raise his voice to an 8?”
Uh, really?
so i defecated in my hand and rubbed it all over the neighbor’s car windshield.
You did what now?
Ok, maybe Lauren is a troll. Or a monkey.
H/T — r/TheBluePill
You’d be surprised how many women hold this shitty view too.
It could be that she’s a woman who has said shit like this before in front of people she knows who have been raped, so they’ve stayed silent around her because they know she wouldn’t care or understand and would say shit like this to them.
I stayed silent with a few people about my own traumas because I hear them say shit like that and I know they’re not worth talking to about anything.
My example (also TW): Before he turned on me, the asshole who raped me and I used to joke about how much he looked like Johnny Bravo. Blond hair, blue eyes, Jersey Shore haircut, the conventionally-attractive works. Didn’t stop him from being a violent paedophile!
(I know I’ve mentioned that before, but it’s so relevant to so many MRA delusions.)
@Epsilon
Thanks, Epsilon! For a few weeks, I was pretty scared and walked in the middle of the street (when there was no traffic) if I was alone outside. Therapy helped. I’m doing well now.
Cognitive bias attaching appearance to character, is, unfortunately, a reality . (Here for a tabloid level summary.)
The lesson, and to some extent good news for less attractive men – since an equivalent study hasn’t been done with women – is that it only applies if you happen to be bothering people in public or if your behaviour is strange or creepy/borderline creepy.
Hello.
Well, on the Internet, nobody knows you are a monkey. Specifically a monkey who pooes on car windshield. Until you open your mouth and…
About attractiveness, i agree. Cialdini has recalled it, there are some studies which show that when presented to two persons doing the same job, the majority of people tends to assume that the most good-looking one works better than the other one. Further stats obviously proove that it is wrong (no link between attractiveness and work efficiency), but on first impression, there is a big bias.
It quite remembers me the (bad) joke about the recruitment question asked to three women : what are you doing if you found a wallet in the buildinf of the company ? Guess who is recruited ?
Have a nice day.
Hugs to Kat and M and everyone else who’s been through violence. Or if you prefer, given the topic, I’ll keep a respectful distance and give you my best wishes instead.
@Kat
Scary to think you need to go in the middle of the road to feel safer … I’m glad you’re doing better, and I hope you took some precautionary measures.
The combination of weird trolling posts with innocuous stuff makes me wonder if this is another reminder that the single most important security measure you can take with your IT equipment is not to leave it unlocked and unattended where somebody else can access it.
Lkeke:
The number of people who don’t want be seen as racist > the number of people who actually understand what racism is and why it’s a bad thing
Delurking to, um, possibly condesplain, and mods, feel free to shut me the heck out.
Please let me understand this: even if you leave out the absurd fallacy of “it’s not rape if you find the person attractive, it is not traumatic, what the people who agree with this (definitely) troll are saying is women are being stupidly obsessed with their freedom, and should not associate with:
-family;
-genders to whom they don’t find themselves attracted (and since Dr. Laura tells us we can’t have friends of a sex or gender we do find ourselves attracted to, oops, bye friendship);
-Any adult at all before they reach the age of consent/ age one would want to consider having sex with a non-non-teenager;
-More than three human beings over the course of a lifetime, if we are not to be considered someone who has had an unhealthy or indiscriminate number of sexual partners by popular culture.
That’s, um, quite a pill to swallow.
Prediction: “Lauren Collins” will soon come up with the brilliant idea that if women start looking at their rapes more positively and stop getting so darned butthurt about them, they won’t be rapes. Problem solved!
hello, did you read this?
http://theslot.jezebel.com/guess-who-showed-up-for-work-at-the-senate-after-the-bl-1755284783
I think that the fact that ‘when he told his mom he got grounded’ speaks volumes. While nowhere near all youngsters have foul, offensive views such as this, many are completely looks-obsessed and believe that attractiveness is everything (I remember being shocked at age 11 that my parents still had sex and that not all prostitutes are stunningly gorgeous). Some people take longer than others to mature enough to develop rational ideas if they aren’t exposed to them while growing up.
…man FUCK this attitude!
I dont let this get out much (even Dr. Alpine doesn’t know the details, because I dont want him to go to prison), but I was sexually assaulted at a New Year’s party 4 years ago by my (many these years ago) first boyfriend – we dated when i was 16, i was…27 when he assaulted me…and yes, I still considered him attractive, but I was newly dating Dr. Alpine at the time, so I wasn’t looking for any sort of action. I was in the bed the hosts had lent me at the time, fast asleep…the only reason it WASN’T rape is that I squirmed and fought so hard that he…um…finished before he started as it were…with me still clothed, and panicked. I stripped out of the PJs as soon as he passed out, grabbed whatever clothes I could find and drove the 3 hours home….but sure…lets pretend that was fun for me and that I consented because I thought he was my friend and, at times, I had entertained the idea of marrying him.
Kkeke35
Yeah, I’ve been that way. “Black” as a descriptor of people is a bit emotionally and culturally charged for some white folk. For me, I think it was the whole idea of “I don’t see color” bullshit, because of course you do, unless you’re hard of seeing in general! But it gets ingrained.
I have recently been able to let this go because as a fat person, I was working on changing my perception of the word “fat.” I wrote myself a mantra: Fat means large, corpulent, rotund, abundant. Fat does not mean ugly, stupid, unlovable, jolly, undisciplined, or unhealthy. It JUST means fat!
Black is another word that has been unfairly burdened with extra meanings it didn’t start out with, I realized. And voila! It wansn’t so emotionally charged anymore (for me, anyway.)
This is really interesting. The “how dare this 3 raise his voice to an 8” thing is what unlocks the whole puzzle: “Lauren” (14-year-old boy or no) has internalized the whole 10-point attractiveness scale thing as being social class, in the fully realized sense, the sense that hasn’t actually existed in practice since the decline of feudalism.
In that way of thinking, if a 3 is raped by an 8, the 3 has been done a favor. In exactly the same way as when a noble raped a peasant, no crime had been committed. So as long as you’re surrounded by people with whom sexual contact elevates your social status, rape isn’t a problem.
I don’t think this worldview is that uncommon, either; “Lauren” just articulated it. It’s definitely endemic to redpillers, but I think a lot of people not particularly in that orbit implicitly believe in it.
So many unhappy events in this thread :C hugs and sympathy for everyone.
This has become my attitude on a lot of stuff, and with a lot of people, too. It’s not a great attitude to take, at least in my perspective, but it’s the one that preserves my well-being the most. Then again my perspective can be pretty blinkered! Hopefully I will change back once I am in a better overall position.
Shit, if she is including family in this, a maybe I no longer allowed to talk to my dad? Do I have to stop interacting with my sons? I’m not sure I’ll be able to do the school run while not interacting with them.
@Scildfreja
I don’t talk about uncomfortable topics because people don’t like it when I do and they’re usually not very supportive. These are people who are really supportive in general, but if you talk about trauma suddenly they don’t want to be around you. I (a recent widow at the time) was once talking to a friend (going through a rough divorce at the time) at a party and in the rest of the people in the conversation actually walked away because we were talking about some of the harsh realities of our lives.
If I can’t even talk to people about the trauma of being a widow, there’s no way I’m going to talk about sexual assault. And I honestly don’t feel the need to talk about the latter. Sometimes I think I should talk about the fotmer, but it’s awkward so I usually don’t.
I think most people get nervous hearing about personal trauma because they ‘don’t know what to say’. But usually saying things is the last thing. By just listening and hearing someone open up you’re already doing more for that person than the vast majority of people. I always remind myself when hearing another person’s story that as awkward as I feel it is nothing compared to how they feel.
Uh, people don’t actually intervene that often. ._. They act like nothing is happening. There have been public rapes and assaults, and people ignore it or just call the police. Everyone just assumes “Oh, someone else will take care of that, not my problem!” Ever hear of the bystander effect?
I’m asexual. Who am I supposed to hang out with? I just like my friends.
AuthorialAlchemy,
We’re apparently supposed to hang out with no one? I don’t think these folks have a contingency plan for those of us who really don’t wanna with anyone.
I like my friends, too. Just not in that way.
Also, how the heck is anyone supposed to deal with co-workers and the cashiers regularly on duty at the supermarkets and the mailperson and all those other acquaintances that we interact with daily but wouldn’t necessarily call friends?
Plan our trips to the store for only when the ‘pretty’ or ‘handsome’ folks are on staff? Check a box for Fedex saying “Only nice looking delivery people allowed to deliver to this address”? Tell your boss they need to make sure to only hire pretty people?
I work at a Uni, so I see at least 40 people a workday, and there are at least 20 people I’d call regular acquaintances…
The grand total of them who I’d be interested in?
Nada. Zilch. Zero. Zip. None. Not Applicable. Value not found.
I guess we aren’t supposed to have jobs or go grocery shopping either.
First time commenter, but moved to ask who the hell decides these number rankings? I have slightly odd taste so someone who I think is an 8 might be deemed a 3 by the rest of society. Surely attractiveness is a purely subjective quality. Also I have known people who to look at might be a 3 but their personality and charisma transforms them into an 8 and visa versa.
Attractiveness IS purely subjective, just as you mentioned. Remember that song, “Skinny Legs” by Joe Tex? The MRAs seem to think there’s some universal yardstick we all get measured by.