sc@frog.UUCP (STella Calvert) (09/20/86)
In article <121@sri-unix.ARPA> maslak@sri-unix.ARPA (Valerie Maslak) writes: >What infuriates me about discussions like these is that the emphasis >put on women's need for self defense somehow puts the requirement to >do something about this sickening crime epidemic on the women! Valerie, I don't want this to turn into a flame-war. So if you can modulate your infuriation, and I can modulate my annoyance, maybe we can understand each other. Rape is not a women's problem, either in the sense that it affects only women or in the sense that women only can end it. Rape is not a men's problem, either in the sense that only men rape (not true....) or in the sense that only men can solve it. But the problem of _my_ being raped is one that I can largely solve by learning to run, fight or talk my way out of pre-rape situations. And I'm gonna keep on making it _unhealthy_ to rape while I work, wait, and hope for a solution that goes beyond the individual solution which is the best I have to offer right now. Please don't flame me for trying to share the solution I have -- if I had a better fix, I would tell you. > For >heaven's sake, if men were being accosted on the streets, in their >offices, and in their bedrooms, and violated, I don't for a minute >believe the response would be to tell men to go to the gym and pump >iron. No, but Massachusetts gun laws would undergo a quick and laudible change! While everybody was yammering about permanent solutions, guys'd be smuggling iron in from New Hamster, taking lessons (I HOPE!), and opening yuppie-duppie little "holster shoppes". Health spas would become handgun ranges, and lettuce washers would be beaten into ballistic knives. > Does anyone really think this is happening because women are >easy marks and targets because they are perceived as physically >weak? Uh, yeah.... don't you? Rape is a crime of violence inflicted by the self-perceived "weak" on those they consider "safe targets". I can't, in a ten-minute interaction, strengthen a guy's ego so that he doesn't need to get his kicks by dominating women, but I can, in far _less_ time, convince him that _it doesn't work here_! >It's the sexual side of this crime that causes all the wishy- >washy debates. Do the people who advocate self-defense for women >as a cure for the rape epidemic think that shopkeepers who don't own >shotguns are asking to be robbed? No more than I think women who are unwilling to learn to defend themselves are asking to be raped.... But the guy with the shotgun won't be robbed by the same jerk twice! I didn't understand your first sentence -- wanna give me another chance? Here's where I think we differ. You argue that it's unfair to lay the burden of controlling rape on its targets. I agree, but assert that whether it's "fair" or not, as a member of the target sex, the only thing _I_ can do right here and now about not getting raped is refuse to tolerate it and learn to give my refusal long teeth. Did I mangle your meaning _too_ severely? STella Calvert Love is the law, love under will! Guest Account: {cybvax0!decvax}!frog!sc HASA Affiliation: S Division