Rebuttal to Emily Yoffee: Cockblocking Rapists Is A Moral Obligation; or, How To Stop Rape Right Now

[KitSileya]

Cockblocking Rapists Is A Moral Obligation; or, How To Stop Rape Right Now
OCTOBER 20, 2013
by Thomas
http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2013/10/20/cockblocking-rapists-is-a-moral-obligation-or-how-to-stop-rape-right-now/

The paradigmatic repeat rapist uses a set of tactics that work, and they go like this: push alcohol, test boundaries, physically isolate the target, and narrow the target’s options. Look for that, and break it up. In the rapes of juveniles now being reported in Missouri, what did the older boys do? The girls were already smashed, but they pushed more alcohol, they put them in separate rooms, isolated from each other and with no friendly faces around. The person looking to get the drunk drunker, and then alone, is not to be trusted.

What the rapists do is target selection. They are looking for someone whose boundaries they can violate, and who won’t or can’t stand up for themselves. The best targets, the ones who offer the rapists the best chance of getting away with it, are those who won’t report — or who will never even admit to themselves that what happened was rape. The way the rapist finds those people is to cross their boundaries again and again, progressively testing and looking for resistance.

What To Do Tomorrow: Make Sure Everyone Knows

The thing is, rapists absolutely need one thing to operate. They need people to believe they are not rapists. Stranger rapists do that by trying to hide that they are the person who committed the rape. Acquaintance rapists do that by picking targets who won’t say anything about what happened, or by using tactics that, if the survivor does speak up, people will decide don’t really count as rape. If you want to do something about rapists, make sure people know they are rapists.

It Can’t All Be On The Survivors

I’ve seen the following two things happen:
(1) someone gets sexually assaulted, whether raped or violated in another way, and people say to the survivor, “you have to do something! If you don’t do something, who will protect the next victim?”
(2) someone gets sexually assaulted, whether raped or violated in another way, and the survivor yells and shouts for people to deal with it, and the people who are friendly with both the survivor and the violator shrug their shoulders and try to stay “neutral.”
What these two things have in common is that in each case, the people around the situation place all the responsibility on the person who most needs help and can least be expected to go it alone.

This is a much better and more efficient way of hindering rapes than telling women not to "knock back shots of rum" - most women already know the risks of drinking to excess, and know that no woman is ever free of risk, whether they be a girl in a diaper or a 98-year old. What is necessary is that bystanders actually do something - if they want to end rape, they stop giving potential rapists opportunities. They challenges boundary crossing - when a potential rapist press drinks on someone, when they put their hands on them and you think the touchee seems uncomfortable - you speak up. When you hear stories about someone in your social circle, you say something - don't treat them as a missing stair that you just tell people to jump over. "Don't risk being alone with handsy Bob when he's drunk." "Bob, if you keep on being handsy while drunk, you cannot be drunk with us," is what should be the obvious answer. And believe survivors when they do tell you what has happened to them - don't stay neutral. If you try to stay neutral, you've laready taken the side of the rapist.