Post #1774439

2026-03-10 17:29 UTC

What pragmatically can anyone do? Am I suppose to stalk my female friends 24/7 like a vigilante to prevent them from being assaulted? Maybe put a webcam in their bedroom and watch every sexual encounter they have to make sure they aren't assaulted? At that point I am the sex criminal. The very premise that other people are responsible for someone else's crimes is totally absurd. We don't do this with say... bank robberies. Most bank robberies are done by men, and yet I don't hear how it's every man's job to stop bank robberies from every happening. The people who are supposed to stop that are security guards and police. Are we supposed to have some sort of anti-SA police force that goes around policing every social interaction men and women have in public? There are countries that do have that very thing...

Replies (2)

@MasterBlaster@lemmy.world 2026-03-11 15:20

Yes there are. Perhaps the "between the lines" of all this is that to protect women, they should be confined to the home and when out (with permission and escort of course) they should be covered head to toe in garments that hide everything but the eyes! Oh, wait.....

Open ##1774440
@starman2112@sh.itjust.works 2026-03-10 18:36

It's a more complicated situation than any one person can have an answer to. That said, I think a large part of the problem is that we live in a society that normalizes sexual assault to an extent. Everyone knows that rape is bad, just like everyone knows that robbing banks is bad. The difference is that most bank robbers don't delude themselves into thinking that they're somehow innocent of any wrongdoing. They might offer personal circumstances as some sort of *justification* for having robbed a bank, but by and large when someone robs a bank, they know they've robbed a bank. Contrast that with sexual assault, where by and large people who commit sexual assault rationalize their crimes to the point where they believe themselves to be fully innocent. Most people believe themselves to be "good people." Since I'm a good person and good people don't rape, that means the sex I had wasn't rape. *She was into it when we started. She never* said *no. Did you see what she was wearing? She was asleep, it was a victimless crime. I just couldn't control myself. He's 14, but he wasn't complaining. He's bigger and stronger than me, if he doesn't want it he can stop me any time.* All bank robbers know that they are bank robbers, but most rapists don't know that they are rapists. And you're right to ask what anyone can do, because that's a very hard question to answer. My friends don't tell me when they have sex, and they certainly don't tell me about the circumstances of the sex they have. If they're doing sexual assaults, there's literally no way for me to know. That's why I think it has to be an enormous cultural shift. We have to instill in the minds of *everyone* that if a person can't and/or doesn't enthusiastically agree to sexual contact, then sexual contact is sexual assault. We also have to instill in everyone's minds that there is no such thing as a "good" or "bad" person, there's just people. Everyone is capable of doing good or bad things.

Open ##1774441