Just yuck. Jillian's attitude is really offensive to me. Did she totally miss the whole SlutWalk movement? If there were a rape-proof way to live we'd have this one in the bag. Unfortunately morons like Jillian Michaels insist on telling women that they can avoid rape if they behave correctly. A sad & dangerous fallacy.
shareWhat was this about?
Did she say avoid it entirely or help avoid it? Any type of perpetrator knows how to pick a "good" victim so there are things we can do to help us not be that good victim of any type of violence or fraud. But that just improves our odds and doesn't mean it will rule it out entirely, no matter what it is.
- Sally
The perfect human being is uninteresting. - Joseph Campbell
I get what you're saying about improving your odds but I don't think it works that way. Michaels said that women "invite danger" by dressing provocatively. If rape were about poor impulse control (the guy couldn't control himself because she just looked so sexy!) we'd have the whole assault problem in the bag. If eliminating mini skirts eliminated rape, then why is there still plenty of rape in mid east countries where burquas are worn? Rape is about power and control. Perpetrators do look for "good" victims, but the criteria has nothing to do with clothing. They look for victims that are accessible, not credible, and vulnerable. People who are in all 3 categories: children, drunk women, the elderly, and those with mental/physical disabilities. The people I just listed have a much higher abuse rate than the general population.
shareI know. (Of the people I know who have been raped, one was a child, one was an elderly person, and one was a young woman leaving her job as a teacher in the early afternoon.) Given that she's a professional fitness trainer I thought she was referring to aspects like projecting confidence, which can improve odds. I didn't know she talked about clothing. I didn't see the show. It can be difficult to quantify how that type of behavior might improve ones odds because we have no information from rapists stating that they were going to rape a particular person, but didn't because of the person's behavior. They simply don't view them as a potenential victim in the first place.
It's a shame so many people see this issue in black and white, as if discussing anything like self defense means blaming women. By that logic we should tell our girls to go right ahead and go to that frat boy's room alone while drunk because if anything happens it's entirely his fault. Sure it is, but going to a frat boy's room alone while drunk can put a girl at more risk of sexual assualt.
We see this all the time now, like when we ask "Why was that girl out alone at night?" when it's an 11-year-old. That has nothing to do with why the boys and men chose to rape her, other than she was a good victim, which means it is valid to ask why an 11-year-old is running around alone. It's not blaming the victim, nor blaming the parents. We don't think it's blaming the vicitim to remind people to wear their seatbelts after someone is killed by a drunk driver and wearing their seatbelt would have improved the victim's odds of living.
It's this false dichotomy that's implicitly telling our young women that it's okay to go to spring break and flash their breasts to cameras and get drunk because they have the "right" to do so. Sure they do, but it's still a bad idea. There's a lot of acquaintance rape going on in situations like that, which isn't even being counted because the girls feel guilty. And a lot of that is NOT about power, but IS about sex. Sex that wouldn't have happened if she hadn't been drunk and flashing her breasts and laughing about it. These girls seem to have no sense about how males view them when they do that. They don't think it's just cute. They want to f-ck them, and if they're drunk enough they will even if they didn't intend to go out and have sex with anyone. The boys do intend to and are looking for good victims. In those cases it isn't young, elderly, disabled; it's drunk party girls.
I'll be teaching my son it's wrong to have sex with someone in situations like that, but if I had a girl I certainly wouldn't be telling her it's okay because it's her "right." And there will still be plenty of males who won't think it's wrong, but will think that the girl's behavior IS an indication that she wants to have sex. Men who raped women who began showing their ankles or not wearing a veil were probably doing it for power against "those" types of women, to put them in their place. Boys who rape drunk party girls on spring break are doing it because they found someone they perceive as willing because she's drunk.
- Sally
The perfect human being is uninteresting. - Joseph Campbell