Oh for the love of god. Can we please, please, please dispense with the belief that sexual assault victim = foolish hussy wandering around all tarted up in a poorly lit slum? Besides the widely agreed-upon evidence that rape is a crime of power, not passion…I have yet to EVER hear of a woman who was raped because she looked like she was “asking for it”. Women are raped while jogging on recreation paths in the middle of the day, when walking to their cars after work, when they have an abusive lover who gets angry at them, when some sick individual decides to drug them at a club, when they are 65 years old and just walking around the block…etc, etc, etc. And yes, sometimes women get assaulted if they happen to find themselves walking in the wrong part of town; however I highly doubt any rape has ever been prevented because a woman got lost in Crackton but luckily she was wearing jeans instead of a skirt that day, so none of the would-be rapists thought she looked sexy enough to be worth assaulting.
Of course women need to be smart and avoid high-risk situations, but this paternalistic blame-the-victim mentality is not helping anyone. Should the woman in the article have been hitchhiking? Probably not, but I’m going to assume she had reason to feel this was her only option and there is more to the story than we know. And no, a desperate woman hitching a ride on the side of a dangerous highway is NOT the same thing as “them feminists getting riled up because they keep getting harassed when they hang out down at the docks wearing hot pants”. A person clearly in need of help should have a reasonable expectation that she could possibly find a ride to the next town without getting picked up and held against her will by some sick bastard in a van. Who the hell are these men driving our highways masquerading as normal people and then taking advantage of the first vulnerable person they find?[/quote]
Thats a nice rant and a good job of selective quotations. Should she have a reasonable expectation that she could get a ride to the next town without being held against her will? well I am going to say, no, no she shouldnt because obviously she couldnt. You might have fun living in la la land or “should” land but here in the real world when you do potentially dangerous or stupid things like hitch hiking or running around half naked, alone or just alone late at night you should expect bad things might happen and maybe plan accordingly to avoid said bad things.
Who are these people? I don’t know but id wager theres a lot more of them out there than we’d feel comfortable with so maybe we should assume the worst and hope for the best rather than talk about how things should be.