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Comment by turc1656 | Hacker News Reader

I think the most disturbing thing about this is that there are even 800 serial rapists in one single county, even if it's over a 30-35 year period. That's around 25 serial rapists a year in that one county, which is kind of extraordinary when you think about it. Serial rapists are supposedly incredibly rare. They say that in nearly every case it's someone that the victim knows. This makes me think twice about that. And these are just the ones they identified! And in just one county! I have a young daughter and information like this kind of terrifies me.

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I have a young daughter and information like this kind of terrifies me.

Teach your child that hugs and kisses require mutual consent. Teach her it is her choice and kissing someone once does not obligate her to future kisses. Tell her if someone disrespects her no to come get a parent. Tell friends and relatives of yours no for her if they try to insist she is obligated to give hugs and kisses.

Being dragged off into a dark alley by a total stranger is the rare exception. Sexual assault almost always begins with boundary violation and disrespect and eventually culminates in rape. A child (or woman) who won't accept disrespect and who feels empowered to have a cow at the rudeness stage is at low risk.

I hear most perpetrators of sexual assault are men, shouldn’t your advice be more effective at prevention/avoidance if directed at sons instead?

I would like to see all children get the message. I certainly raised my two adult sons exactly like that.

The problem with your theory is that it is incredibly disempowering for women. I see this over and over and over. Everyone wants to cure "rape culture" for just one half of the equation. I don't think that works.

I think we should try it? Teaching daughters to be responsible for not getting sexually assaulyed implicitly communicates that men are not responsible. It can easily be interpreted as victim-blaming.

Can you elaborate about how teaching sons not to sexually assault people is disempowering to women? I need help understanding female empowerment.

Teaching daughters to be responsible for not getting sexually assaulted implicitly communicates that men are not responsible. It can easily be interpreted as victim-blaming.

That view grows out of our current mental models. Those mental models are the crux of the problem. Protecting yourself from criminal intent in no way absolves the criminal of guilt.

We don't draw that conclusion about any other crime. We don't tell people that thieves are not guilty of a crime if you failed to lock your house. We still encourage people to lock up to protect themselves from robbers while not thinking this somehow makes it your fault if the house gets broken into.

If you run into a bear in the woods and you run from it, it will incite the bear's chase instinct and get you mauled. Teaching people best practices for how to reduce the odds of getting mauled if they run into a bear is not saying it is their fault. Refusing to teach them how to effectively handle it because girls shouldn't know such things means girls will either not go out into the world or they will routinely get mauled. Both of those outcomes are harmful to the lives of girls. Neither one gives girls full lives end par with the guys.

There will always be predators. You will never achieve a perfect world. Not arming women to cope effectively with that reality essentially dooms them to sooner or later get preyed upon.

It also actively teaches them to be prey. But that's a nuanced discussion you are probably not ready for and I am not super awake either, so not really up for anything that challenging.

I get that you should be reasonably prepared for calamitous events. I don’t get the disempowering part, nor do I feel like it’s ok to just tell daughters (I know you didn’t say that, but likewise you haven’t addressed how prevention be best discussed with sons rather than avoidance with daughters). Perhaps they are related and I’m unaware of the connection.

I don’t need a complete explanation; I’m happy to get myself educated from an appropriate source.

There's this:

http://www.girlscouts.org/en/raising-girls/happy-and-healthy...

You might find it useful to google for enthusiastic consent and sex positive resources as well.

But you are the one coming up with this idea that it should be discussed with one gender or the other. I raised my sons this way. My original remarks were aimed at someone with a daughter, but there is no position here on my side to choose only one gender to educate.

I would like this to be a new cultural standard across the board. If you want to stamp out rape culture, then we need a new culture. This includes everyone, not one gender or the other.

The idea that it should be all on men to make sure sex goes well is rooted in current concepts of gender and heterosexual norms that actively train girls to be reactive, not proactive. It is rooted in a patriarchal framing of the world. This framing is inherently incompatible with female empowerment.

What if I want to ask? What then? How does your concept of focusing on men help there?

The other thing is that putting it on men amounts to assuming guilt. This never goes good places. There is a reason the US legal standard starts with an assumption of innocence. Warning men they need to not be rapey bastards begins with this assumption that there is a very big chance that they will do something terrible if they aren't berated from the get go.

What if we treat both men and women like people who likely need to politely negotiate a mutually acceptable arrangement to get their needs met? That negotiation process requires substantive communication about the matter, but it isn't inherently predatory -- unless we make it so culturally, as we currently tend to do.

> But you are the one coming up with this idea that it should be discussed with one gender or the other.

To be clear: I'm asking you why you're not recommending this be discussed with sons first. I thought it was weird you mentioned educating daughter and didn't mention sons.

> The idea that it should be all on men to make sure sex goes well is rooted in current concepts of gender and heterosexual norms that actively train girls to be reactive, not proactive. It is rooted in a patriarchal framing of the world. This framing is inherently incompatible with female empowerment.

OK, I see. Though I think that you can encourage women to be sexual empowered & and men to avoid sexual assault.

> The other thing is that putting it on men amounts to assuming guilt

I don't understand this in the slightest. It sounds 100% like victim blaming.

> What if we treat both men and women like people who likely need to politely negotiate a mutually acceptable arrangement to get their needs met?

What if I have some advantage over you? Physical, economic, a weapon? There can't be a fair agreement if one side can threaten the other, even if that side is unaware of their advantage.

I thought it was weird you mentioned educating daughter and didn't mention sons.

I was speaking to a specific individual about educating their own child. That child happens to be a daughter. That's it. You are entirely fabricating this idea that I was talking about the need to educate girls, but not boys.

My very first sentence is gender neutral:

Teach your child that hugs and kisses require mutual consent.

I only switched to female pronouns after that because I was addressing a specific person who had specified the gender of their own child. That first sentence stands well on its own for speaking to any parent, regardless of the gender of their child. It was intentionally framed that way because the message is gender neutral on purpose.

There can't be a fair agreement if one side can threaten the other, even if that side is unaware of their advantage.

Therein lies your problem. You fundamentally see men as predators and women as prey.

This is an issue that isn't going to be resolved via some internet conversation. I could talk at you until I am blue in the face, you would continue to not understand, continue to accuse me of victim blaming etc.

Most likely, there is no point in investing more of my time in this discussion. There can be no meeting of the minds here.

> You are entirely fabricating this idea that I was talking about the need to educate girls, but not boys.

I would understand your position better if you said, "I would always recommend that we discuss this with sons first, and teach them how their actions enable sexual assault, even indirectly". I think that's not your position though…

Indeed. I fundamentally think that men and women do not have an equal footing in society & that the balance of power is weighted heavily in favour of men. I feel like you want to avoid calling out this unfairness and loudly recommending that men help redress the imbalance by changing their behaviour & calling out disempowering behaviour in others.

I see you are very comfortable in your position; I am new to mine and it's a learning experience.

No, it is not my position.

Children are born innocent. Hanging societal crap on male children for the crime of being born male only perpetuates societal crap. Male children who don't yet even have a sexuality should not be getting the message right out the gate that "We know you are basically a rapey bastard, hell bent on taking advantage of women. So we feel a strong need to inculcate you with brainwashing to the contrary to try to mitigate your inherently evil nature."

Yes, I am aware that men have a lot of money and power in the world that can constitute an unfair advantage. I am doing what I can to redress that. But, among other things, starting with the assumption that boys will always have an advantage perpetuates the problem.

You may never agree with me. Even if you eventually do, that day is probably not coming any time soon. Investing more time in basically arguing with you probably does neither of us any good at all.

I would appreciate it if you just drop this. I don't think this is productive.

Look at the allegations made against Harvey Weinstein and Louis CK. Many of these women wanted to say no, but didn't feel able to.

Teaching young men to respect the boundaries of women is clearly important, but we also need to give young women the confidence and skills to assert their boundaries.

It would also really help if people who aren't rapey bastards would step forward and open doors for women in terms of career instead of looking the other way, worrying that if they give a woman a leg up professionally there will be talk etc. That would do a lot to reduce the power that men like Harvey Weinstein wield. When that isn't done, women wind up with no one to negotiate with other than men who expect them to pay for their career advancement on their back.

If anyone needs a little insight on the matter, I will suggest reading Salma Hayek's testimony about Harvey Weinstein:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/13/opinion/contr...

With 25 serial rapists a year, how many sons are born each year (assuming all of them are male).

Out of those 25, how many should be seen a clinical sane and would had their behavior changed if they just got the right advice as a child?

Giving advice to "all boys" or "all girls" seems like one of those things that make people feel like they are doing something but which will have zero impact. Rape is one of those crimes which you could double the punishment for and still not see any change in the crime rate, as if it was done by less rational and rather sick minds.

Perpetrators of all crimes are mostly men. Sexual assault perpetrated by men isn't out of proportion with theft or murder perpetrated by men.

I feel like your comment was trying to make a point and ended up stating some trivial facts. Could you elaborate on what your point is?

Perhaps it's too nihilistic a point to make at this juncture but it goes like this:

How are we doing at reducing all instances of crime among men? If we can't get people to stop stealing, what hope do we have to convince them not to harass and assault? I just don't buy the standard argument "teach men not to rape". How do we do that? It's not a simple matter of saying "rape is bad, okay?"

What we're dealing with here are tremendous forces of poverty, social atomization, and alienation. People who feel like they are on the outside looking in often have no problem ignoring the rules which really exist only to protect insiders anyway.

I appreciate the reply, and I agree with your point.

"Serial rapist" means "has more than one victim", not "rapes strangers". It is entirely possible for one person to rape ten people who know and trust them, and not at all surprising that anyone sleazy enough to do this would likely be a repeat offender especially when there's such a high probability of getting away with it.

The numbers are quite staggering though: "A rapist rapes on average seven to 11 times before they're caught. ... Of our set of 817 ... over 50 of them have 10 to 15 hits apiece."

Serial rapists aren't that rare. Here's a Fivethirtyeight article that covers the two major studies about that over the last few years: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-if-most-campus-rap... The crux of the disagreement between the two major studies is that one indicates serial rapists commit most rapes, while the other indicates 10.8% of college men are rapists and many do not do so serially.

Anyhow, gives some stats to pin calculations on.

I'd bet most of the serial rapists are also known to their victims. In other words Tinder not trench coats. (Supposition)

Important to get that data so the media don't start parents panicking.

And that's those caught. From those rapes where women decided to report and get a rape kit done.

>Serial rapists are supposedly incredibly rare. They say that in nearly every case it's someone that the victim knows.

Serial rapists aren't rare, but they do know their victims typically.

It's not any old county. Wayne County is the most populous county in the state. It includes the city of Detroit and much of the surrounding metro area.

I was aware of that when making the comment. I still find it surprising, though. The statistics are just much higher than I expected, even for Detroit.

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