Worth reposting

[kisekileia]

This was originally a reply by someone named Keith Ellis to a post on feministing.com about an obscenely misogynistic shirt produced by a company called David and Goliath. The post was linked from neko_indi's journal. I thought it was a great post dealing with a really important and difficult issue

Comments

[failstoexist]

interesting...I think the problem is that some people DO get so caught up in "we must never blame the victim" that they refuse to acknowledge that there are things that do make you more or less likely to be a target in general, nor will they teach those to people to keep them safe.

Yeah, no one SHOULD rape anyone else. obviously. but no one SHOULD speed and there's still cops out to give tickets, and no one SHOULD commit a lot of other crimes-that's why they're crimes.

But this shirt, to me, evokes images of two drunk people making a bad decision-not someone being raped. Because honestly, people make horrible decisions when they've been drinking too much-but if the other person has been drinking a lot too, they aren't necessarily able to gauge how drunk you are and decide if you really mean what you're doing. Not that I think it's a good shirt-it's kind of disgusting. I also can't imagine anyone wanting to wear it.

I just don't think it's realistic to sit around and stick your head in the sand and say "no one should ever rape anyone else and therefore these factors shouldn't matter"...face reality. face the fact that sure, walking alone in dark alleys at night was maybe a bad idea. it's not that they CAUSED it. but it's a situation to learn from, to make sure you don't do it again. ignoring the fact that it makes something more likely to occur is ridiculous.