BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


A chain letter about sexual violence

 
 
Peach Pie
18:42 / 21.10.08

Through a Rapist's Eyes (No Joke)

When this was sent to me, I was told to forward it to my lady friends, but I forwarded it to most everyone in my address book. My men friends have female friends and this information is too important to miss someone.

Please pass it along and share it with your children.

A group of rapists and date rapists in prison were interviewed on what they look for in a potential victim and here are some interesting facts:

1) The first thing men look for in a potential victim is hairstyle. They are most likely to go after a woman witha ponytail, bun, braid or other hairstyle that can easily be grabbed . They are also likely to go after a woman with long hair . Women with short hair are not common targets.

2) The second thing men look for is clothing. They will look for women who's clothing is easy to remove quick ly. M any of them carry scissors around specifically to cut clothing.

3) The y also look for women on their cell phone, searching through their purse, or doing other activities while walking because they are off-guard and can be easily overpowered.

4) Men are most likely to attack & rape in the early morning, between 5:00a.m. and 8:30a.m.

5) The number one place women are abducted from/attacked is grocery store parking lots. The number two : office parking lots/garages. Number three : public restrooms.

6) The thing about these men is that they are looking to grab a woman and quickly move her to another location where they don't have to worry about getting caught.

7) Only 2% said they carried weapons because rape carries a 3-5 year sentence but rape with a weapon is 15-20 years.

8 ) If you put up any kind of a fight at all, they get discouraged because it only takes a minute or two for them to realize that going after you isn't worth it because it will be time-consuming.

9) T hese men said they would not pick on women who have umbrellas, or other similar objects that can be used from a distance, in their hands. Keys are NOT a deterrent because you have to get really close to the attacker to use them as a weapon. So, the idea is to convince these guys you're not worth it.

10) Several defense mechanisms he taught us are: If someone is following behind you on a street or in a garage or with you in an elevator or stairwell, look them in the face and ask them a question, like what time is it?, or make general small talk: 'I can't believe it is so cold out here,' 'We're in for a bad winter.' Now you've seen their face and could identify them in a line-up; you lose appeal as a target.

11) If someone is coming toward you, hold out your hands in front of you and yell STOP! or STAY BACK! Most of th e rapists this man talked to sa id they'd leave a woman alone if she yelled or showed that she would not be afraid to fight back. Again, they are looking for an EASY target.

12) If you carry pepper spray (this instructor was a huge advocate of it and carries it with him wherever he goes), yell I HAVE PEPPER SPRAY and holding it out will be a deterrent.

13) If someone grabs you, you can't beat them with strength but you can by outsmarting them. If you are grabbed around the waist from behind, pinch the attacker either under the Arm (between the elbow and armpit) OR in the upper inner thigh VERY VERY HARD. One woman in a class this guy taught told him she used the underarm pinch on a guy who was trying to date rape her and was so upset she broke through the skin and tore out muscle strands - the guy needed stitches. Try pinching yourself in those places as hard as you can stand it - it hurts.

14) After the initial hit, always GO for the GROIN. I know from a p articularly unfortunate experience that if you slap a guy's parts it is extremely painful. You might think that you'll anger the guy and make him want to hurt you more, but the thing these rapists told our instructor is that they want a woman who will not cause a lot of trouble. Start causing trouble and he's out of there.

15) When the guy puts his hands up to you, grab his first two fingers and bend them back as far as possible with as much pressure pushing down on them as possible. The instructor did it to me without using much pressure, and I ended up on my knees and both knuckles cracked audibly.

16) Of course the things we always hear still apply. Always be aware of your surroundings, take someone with you if you can and if you see any odd behavior, don't dismiss it, go with your instincts!!!

You may feel a little silly at the time, but you'd feel much worse if the guy really was trouble.

1. Tip from Tae Kwon Do : Th e elbow is the strongest point on your body. If you are close enough to use it, do!

2. Learned this from a tourist guide in : If a robber asks for your wallet and/or purse, DO NOT HAND IT TO HIM. Toss it away from you....chances are that he is more interested in your wallet and/or purse than you, and he will go for the wallet/purse. RUN LIKE MAD IN THE OTHER DIRECTION!

3. If you are ever thrown into the trunk of a car, kick out the back tail lights and stick your arm out the hole and sta rt waving like crazy. The driver won't see you, but everybody else will. This has saved lives.

4. Women have a tendency to get into their cars after shopping, eating, working, etc, and just sit (doing their checkbook, or making a list, etc.) DON'T DO THIS! The predator will be watching you, and this is the perfect opportunity for him to get in on the passenger side, put a gun to your head, and tell you where to go. AS SOON AS YOU GET INTO YOURCAR, LOCK THE DOORS AND LEAVE.

a. If someone i s in the car with a gun to your head Do not turn the engine OFF, Instead gun the engine and speed into anything, wrecking the car. Your Air Bag will save you. If the person is in the back seat they will get the worst of it. As soon as the car crashes bail out and run. It is better than having them find your body in a remote location.

5 A few notes about getting into your car in a parking lot or parking garage:

A.) Be aware: look around you, look into your car, at the passenger side floor, and in the back seat.

B.) If you are parked next to a big van, enter your car from the passenger door. Most serial killers attack their victims by pulling them into their vans while the women are attempting to get into their cars.

C.) Look at the car parked on the driver's side of your vehicle, and the passenger sid e. If a male is sitting alone in the seat nearest your car, you may want to w alk back into the mall, or work, and get a guard/policeman to walk you back out.

IT IS ALWAYS BETTER TO BE SAFE THAN SORRY. (And better paranoid than dead.)

6. ALWAYS take the elevator instead of th e stairs. (Stairwells are horrible places to be alone and the perfect crime spot. This is especially true at NIGHT!)

7. If the predator has a gun and you are not under his control, ALWAYS RUN! The predator will only hit you (a running target) 4 in 100 times. And even then, it most likely WILL NOT be a vital organ. RUN, preferably in a zigzag pattern!

>8. As women, we are always trying to be sympathetic: STOP! It may get you raped or killed. Ted Bundy, the serial killer, was a good-looking, well-educated man, who ALWAYS played on the sympathies of unsuspecting women. He walked with a cane, or a limp, and often asked 'for help' into his vehicle or with his vehicle, which is when he
abducted his next victim.

9. A nother Safety Point: Someone just told me that her friend heard a crying baby on her porch the night before last, and she called the police because it was late and she thought it was weird. The police told her 'Whatever you do, DO NOT open the door.'

The lady then said that it sounded like the baby had crawled near a window, and she was worried th at it would crawl to the street and get run over. The policeman said, 'We already have a unit on the way, whatever you do, DO NOT open the door.' He told her that they think a serial killer has a baby's cry recorded and uses it to coax women out of their homes thinking that someone dropped off a baby . He said they have not verified it, but have had several calls by women saying that they hear baby's cries outside their doors when they're home alone at night.

I'd like you to forward this to all the women you know. It may save a life. A candle is not dimmed by lighting another candle. I was going to send this to the ladies only , but guys, if you love your mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, etc., you may want to pass it onto them, as well.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
18:56 / 21.10.08
This is questionable and often dangerous advice. Best to apply a degree of salting to the analysis of rapists' mindsets and some of the more dramatic advice.
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
00:07 / 22.10.08
Good eye, Haus
 
 
Quantum
07:45 / 22.10.08
It's a very persistent chainletter email too, I've had that in my inbox several times. It seems designed to breed fear and anxiety;
It is better than having them find your body in a remote location.
 
 
trouble at bill
10:22 / 22.10.08
Food for thought though, even though there's a million things wrong with it. (Go on, run, you've got a 96% chance of not being shot, we've proved it statistically, really we have. Jeeeeesus!)
 
 
Automatic
10:35 / 22.10.08
Utter shite.
 
 
trouble at bill
10:51 / 22.10.08
This may sound really odd but there was a poster from the London police at my workplace recently which strongly advised anyone being grabbed to make like they were going to vomit, for apparently it is almost impossible to hang onto someone who is about to blow their chunks.

Sadly I have no idea whether we can trust the London police on this one, but they were adamant that was what women or indeed men should do during any attempted abduction.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
11:03 / 22.10.08
I wonder if it would be possible to get Google, with its targeted advertising spy stuff, to automatically append the relevant page from Snopes whenever an email that looks dodgy gets sent...
 
 
Evil Scientist
11:26 / 22.10.08
Snopes.com also appears to debunk the "recorded baby cries + serial killer" as an urban legend.
 
 
Ticker
12:35 / 22.10.08
"mock baby cries = wolfen"

Mini rant:

Born and raised in a rape culture I occasionally get a bit overwhelmed with "Ladies here's what you need to do" lists.
How about we as like minded adults who think rape is not a valid sport like undertaking for the human race firmly and utterly stop allowing our entertainment and advertising industries frame it as such?

How about a chain letter, fuck it, how about live conversations with people we have relationships with talking about why so many tv shows, movies, and even video games enshrine rape as a valid erotic sexual power dynamic?

How many times do I have to walk out of a movie that has a brutal rape of a woman in it to justify the vigilante origin story of someone, usually a guy? Why are movies like Deadgirl even being made? Revenge plot justifies rape of a zombie girl...fuck off and take The General's Daughter with you.

How about some actual teaching devices about why rape is not a powerful sexy thing to do to anyone male or female?
Instead the world gets ads blaming girls for drinking and so getting raped. Don't forget kids, if you drink you will be raped. (via Feministing.com)

So kindly take your list of paranoia off of chain letter circulation and consider what you can do to dismantle the rape culture. You're soaking in it.
 
 
Quantum
15:27 / 22.10.08
Hear hear. Ladies, here's what you need to do, dismantle the patriarchy and entrenched misogyny endemic in our society.
 
 
grant
20:48 / 22.10.08
I wonder if it would be possible to get Google, with its targeted advertising spy stuff, to automatically append the relevant page from Snopes whenever an email that looks dodgy gets sent...

I think they've already done that to the chip in my brain. (I suspect to Haus' as well.)

Really, anything that either cites "experts" without naming them or uses "all x think y" as an organizing principle is going to be at best highly fictionalized.

Which is not to say carrying an umbrella is a bad idea....
 
 
Liger Null
23:46 / 22.10.08
I've always been partial to this meme:

A lot has been said about how to prevent rape.

Women should learn self-defence. Women should lock themselves in their houses after dark. Women shouldn't have long hair and women shouldn't wear short skirts. Women shouldn't leave drinks unattended. Fuck, they shouldn't dare to get drunk at all.

Instead of that bullshit, how about:

If a woman is drunk, don't rape her.
If a woman is walking alone at night, don't rape her.
If a women is drugged and unconscious, don't rape her.
If a woman is wearing a short skirt, don't rape her.
If a woman is jogging in a park at 5 am, don't rape her.
If a woman looks like your ex-girlfriend you're still hung up on, don't rape her.
If a woman is asleep in her bed, don't rape her.
If a woman is asleep in your bed, don't rape her.
If a woman is doing her laundry, don't rape her.
If a woman is in a coma, don't rape her.
If a woman changes her mind in the middle of or about a particular activity, don't rape her.
If a woman has repeatedly refused a certain activity, don't rape her.

If a woman is not yet a woman, but a child, don't rape her.
If your girlfriend or wife is not in the mood, don't rape her.
If your step-daughter is watching tv, don't rape her.
If you break into a house and find a woman there, don't rape her.
If your friend thinks it's okay to rape someone, tell him it's not, and that he's not your friend.

If your "friend" tells you he raped someone, report him to the police.
If your frat-brother or another guy at the party tells you there's an unconscious woman upstairs and it's your turn, don't rape her, call the police and tell the guy he's a rapist.

Tell your sons, god-sons, nephews, grandsons, sons of friends it's not okay to rape someone.

Don't [just] tell your women friends how to be safe and avoid rape.
Don't imply that she could have avoided it if she'd only done/not done x.
Don't imply that it's in any way her fault.
Don't let silence imply agreement when someone tells you he "got some" with the drunk girl.
Don't perpetuate a culture that tells you that you have no control over or responsibility for your actions. You can, too, help yourself.


If you agree, repost it. It's that important.
 
 
pony
23:57 / 22.10.08
That's fantastic, Liger. I'm off to the myspace bulletin now.
 
 
Ticker
14:14 / 23.10.08
haha I totally just got that bulletin, palace!

I took it over to feministing.com lets start clocking the viral expansion to see if it lands in our email accounts from relatives.

Seriously though, what the very fuck is up with violence towards women being ok in things like video games?

I'm not saying the makers of the games should stop making them, what I'm saying them is no matter how fucking shiny the toy is don't buy it. I know, I know, self restraint but if I can do it in my pr0n collection you can certainly do it in your video games.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:54 / 23.10.08
I have several concerns with that post and your representation, XK, but I do not think that this thread, which however badly started does primarily concern itself with actual sexual violence against actual women, is an appropriate place to develop this. i will start a thread in games and gameslay (sic) when possessed of a keyboard.
 
 
iamus
22:42 / 23.10.08
In the meantime, feministing itself has a number of articles on GTAIV, this one I read not that long ago. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on in the comments there.

There are places where it's grey, but overall it's a far smarter animal than you're giving it credit for.
 
 
trouble at bill
10:56 / 24.10.08
Which is not to say carrying an umbrella is a bad idea....

it might be another separate thread but i should like to underscore that there surely are sensible self-defense tips, for males and females, which might go some way to reducing one's chances of being targeted and/or injured. Even the OP contains what I would have thought to be sensible advice about not using a mobile or rumaging in a bag while walking along.
 
 
This Sunday
13:04 / 24.10.08
Even the OP contains what I would have thought to be sensible advice about not using a mobile or rumaging in a bag while walking along.

Unless you're of the opinion that someone is less likely to attack you (for whatever reason) when you're on a cell phone, because there'll be a witness/someone who can calll police.

Or that they may thing twice about attacking someone who has their hand in a bag that might contain mace, a pistol, a knife, whatever, as opposed to a completely empty-handed individual.

We had a run of muggings near a college I was affiliated with, a few years ago. People of all descriptions were being held up by a small group of men, no injuries, just cash taken. I left campus at night and alone, a lot, by necessity. I'm fairly short, something of a professional coward, and I almost always carry cash rather than a bank or credit card. Should have been easy pickin's. Not bothered once.

Which is not to imply that a mugger and a rapist are quite the same animal. I just don't see people as being that predictable. Especially the criminal, the violent, or the ostensibly irrational. And if you're going to focus on what the victim can do, it's probably better to focus on the after-the-fact actions than trying to make them less enticing to a possible attacker.
 
 
trouble at bill
13:39 / 24.10.08
Hmmm, what I was thinking of was two things, first that phones get grabbed by muggers and then simply that any distraction like calling or rumaging means that it's easier to be confronted and surprised. But yes, I see what you mean that a phone is a lifeline and it might be seen that way by a would-be assailant.

I don't know, the fascinating thing here is whether these sorts of 'this'll keep me safe' techniques are anything other than modern urban superstitions or whether they do have a genuine deterrant value. I live in a bad area and am very careful wrt the way I dress, walk, scan the street around me etc. I'd hope there's more than randomness at work, at least sometimes, but I suppose certainty is hard to come by. But then, someone must have done proper research on how victims are picked out by the calculating assailant (as opposed to the irrational assailant). Will try and find some if I get a moment...
 
 
Spaniel
14:44 / 24.10.08
The thing that I find deeply offensive about that list, other than it’s inaccuracy, is the ways in which it demands that women don’t do x, y and z, otherwise, you know, rape! I appreciate that there are likely precautions that women can take to avoid sexual assault (or worse), but nevertheless there’s something really nasty about these hogtieing lists of dos and don’ts. Just the other day my wife was commenting on the fact that many women avoid going to pubs alone in order to avoid being hassled by pillocky men, and it struck me that as a man I don’t have lists of what I can and can’t do based on how people will respond to my gender. It’s just bloody ghastly.
 
 
trouble at bill
16:45 / 24.10.08
Local stickering proclaims that there is a Reclaim the Night march wrt this in London next month...
 
 
Ticker
17:54 / 24.10.08
I have several concerns with that post and your representation, XK, but I do not think that this thread, which however badly started does primarily concern itself with actual sexual violence against actual women, is an appropriate place to develop this. i will start a thread in games and gameslay (sic) when possessed of a keyboard.

You are correct Haus, I wandered off inflamed by teh rantage.
I look forward to your thread in its appropriate home.

Also having spun down a bit from my headsick ranting I suspect there is a serious and potentially useful discussion (possibly there is one mothballed already awaiting a bump) about the role of entertainment products and rape culture. It's well trod ground for many people, even utterly boringly by now I suspect. It's probably lurking under a title having to do with the male gaze and porn...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
18:47 / 24.10.08
Actually, I don't think Grand Theft Auto is a part of rape culture. What I intend to talk about is the sort of firing blind in the culture wars that leads to the assumption that it is. I'll get to it ASAP.
 
 
Ticker
17:02 / 27.10.08
I'm looking forward to your post. I have in the time since I posted the ranty off the cuff dumbness been reading up to lessen my ignorance but would very much so like to read your thoughts. Which forum will you be posting it to? I didn't see anything in Games or in Headshop. Is there an older thread kicking around (I can't find any) as it does seem to be an ancient complaint.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
20:47 / 27.10.08
I've been doing some research, also - into Grand Theft Auto 4, in particular, which I have not played. The description of the sex as realistic is pushing it - they appear not to have sorted out the common GTA bug where people move in and out of solid objects in their spacial environment. The way the mechanic works, though, is disconcerting, and it occurs that it could very easily have been gamed out - you could sell it as an emergent property in 3, I guess, but it could have been dealt with by, e.g. a cutscene where the prostitute walks away from the car and disappears from the game map. I can't quite work out whether that would be game-breaking - theoretically, the open-ended quality of the game means that you can interact with anything in consistent ways, but certainly in GTAIII the repetition of missions means that the major characters are effectively unkillable until it is appropriate to the narrative - if they die, you fail the mission and they respawn where the mission begins for the repeat. There is a distinction between the linear and the sandbox elements, where the physics of the world are suspended in certain cases - for example, you can't shoot out tires before street races as a way to cheat, whereas outside the scripted and broadly linear missions you can.

Hmm.
 
  
Add Your Reply