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Serena Williams On Steubenville: "I'm Not Blaming The Girl But ..."

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MWS Natural said:
The problem with GAF is that people think the world revolves around right and wrong, it doesn't. Should a woman be able to walk around half naked drunk anywhere she wants? Yes. She should have to freedom to do and dress however she wants in an ideal world. But it in the REAL world there are precautions she should take to lessen the chance of something unfortunate happening (ie not wandering around drunk and half naked on a dark street). I am not blaming the victim or condoning rape at all, just try to make smart decisions.

As a black man there are precautions I have to take in my day to day life that people of other races don't. Is it fair? No, but that's the society we live in. Should people just not be racist? Sure but this isn't the perfect ideal world.
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Saying that's just the way it is is worse then giving up.


creationtheory said:
There was a part in that where I said I will put all of the blame on the rapist.
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So why are you blaming this girl for what happened to her?
 
MWS Natural said:
The problem with GAF is that people think the world revolves around right and wrong, it doesn't. Should a woman be able to walk around half naked drunk anywhere she wants? Yes. She should have to freedom to do and dress however she wants in an ideal world. But it in the REAL world there are precautions she should take to lessen the chance of something unfortunate happening (ie not wandering around drunk and half naked on a dark street). I am not blaming the victim or condoning rape at all, just try to make smart decisions.

As a black man there are precautions I have to take in my day to day life that people of other races don't. Is it fair? No, but that's the society we live in. Should people just not be racist? Sure but this isn't the perfect ideal world.
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Good post. Too bad Serena said it in the worse possible way.
 
creationtheory said:
I will tell my daughter about this case. I will tell her she should never be drunk like that.
If at some point in the future she is drunk and is raped I will put all of the blame on the rapist. Does that make me a rape apologist?
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I think this is the right thing to do, but this is not what Serena did. Serena did some of the victim blaming jig and also downplayed the responsibility of the rapists.

No matter what she meant, no matter what she thought or tried to convey, her actual words were wrong.
 
MWS Natural said:
The problem with GAF is that people think the world revolves around right and wrong, it doesn't. Should a woman be able to walk around half naked drunk anywhere she wants? Yes. She should have to freedom to do and dress however she wants in an ideal world. But it in the REAL world there are precautions she should take to lessen the chance of something unfortunate happening (ie not wandering around drunk and half naked on a dark street). I am not blaming the victim or condoning rape at all, just try to make smart decisions.

As a black man there are precautions I have to take in my day to day life that people of other races don't. Is it fair? No, but that's the society we live in. Should people just not be racist? Sure but this isn't the perfect ideal world.
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Well said.
 
entrement said:
Good post. Too bad Serena said it in the worse possible way.
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Natural's post is good, in this context.

It would have been a shitty-ass thing to post in the Trayvon Martin thread, though. That's what seems to have so many people confused. Telling a girl "don't drink with friends" is no less ridiculous than telling a black kid "don't walk while black".
 
MWS Natural said:
The problem with GAF is that people think the world revolves around right and wrong, it doesn't. Should a woman be able to walk around half naked drunk anywhere she wants? Yes. She should have to freedom to do and dress however she wants in an ideal world. But it in the REAL world there are precautions she should take to lessen the chance of something unfortunate happening (ie not wandering around drunk and half naked on a dark street). I am not blaming the victim or condoning rape at all, just try to make smart decisions.

As a black man there are precautions I have to take in my day to day life that people of other races don't. Is it fair? No, but that's the society we live in. Should people just not be racist? Sure but this isn't the perfect ideal world.
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I came to post something similar. Thank you. I'm glad to see an intelligent response.
 
MWS Natural said:
The problem with GAF is that people think the world revolves around right and wrong, it doesn't. Should a woman be able to walk around half naked drunk anywhere she wants? Yes. She should have to freedom to do and dress however she wants in an ideal world. But it in the REAL world there are precautions she should take to lessen the chance of something unfortunate happening (ie not wandering around drunk and half naked on a dark street). I am not blaming the victim or condoning rape at all, just try to make smart decisions.

As a black man there are precautions I have to take in my day to day life that people of other races don't. Is it fair? No, but that's the society we live in. Should people just not be racist? Sure but this isn't the perfect ideal world.
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The problem with the real world is that there is really nothing we can do to prevent rape other than stop raping people. The end. So a girl gets raped when she was drunk. Everyone agrees, well, she shouldn't have been drunk! So the next girl DOESN'T get drunk. She gets raped too. Everyone agrees, well, she shouldn't have been hanging out with strangers. So the next girl doesn't get drunk or hang out with strangers. She gets raped. Everyone agrees, well, she shouldn't have been in that particular establishment. So the next girl....

Do you see where I am going with this? In your analogy, are there instances where you are still given shit no matter what you do? Do people blame you when you are given shit? "Well you should have been less this or that?"

Everyone seems to want to prevent rape in hindsight. That makes them feel better about the world. Everything can be prevented in hindsight.
 
MWS Natural said:
The problem with GAF is that people think the world revolves around right and wrong, it doesn't. Should a woman be able to walk around half naked drunk anywhere she wants? Yes. She should have to freedom to do and dress however she wants in an ideal world. But it in the REAL world there are precautions she should take to lessen the chance of something unfortunate happening (ie not wandering around drunk and half naked on a dark street). I am not blaming the victim or condoning rape at all, just try to make smart decisions.

As a black man there are precautions I have to take in my day to day life that people of other races don't. Is it fair? No, but that's the society we live in. Should people just not be racist? Sure but this isn't the perfect ideal world.
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This. People who walk the streets with "Don't rape" sandwich boards are just as bad as those who ask for "Likes" to cure diseases. Expressing what you wish the world to be doesn't change the fact that the world is how it is.
 
I think people in this thread need to reread her answer again...

Do you think it was fair, what they got? They did something stupid, but I don't know.
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wait, the RAPISTS did something stupid? stupid is not the first word I would've chosen to associate with rape, that's for sure. and to even bring into question whether a rapist deserves a punishment for rape? come the fuck on.

I'm not blaming the girl, but
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but...

if you're a 16-year-old and you're drunk like that, your parents should teach you—don't take drinks from other people. She's 16, why was she that drunk where she doesn't remember?
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this is a fair point. getting that drunk is risky in any context.

It could have been much worse. She's lucky.
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yes, she's lucky that her benevolent rapist was so kind and only raped her.

Obviously I don't know, maybe she wasn't a virgin,
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wait WHAT

but she shouldn't have put herself in that position,
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that's straight up blaming the victim.

unless they slipped her something, then that's different.
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and then moving the goalposts for what "rape" is. rape is rape, whoopi.

--

there are valid points in this thread—I mean, we all do things to minimize the risk of something bad happening to us. does that contribute to a perpetuation of a culture of fear? I'm sure that's up for debate and discussion. but her statement? that's just textbook rape apologist garbage.
 
royalan said:
In my heart of hearts, I really think this is what Serena was trying to convey.

She just went about it in the absolute worst way possible.
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entrement said:
Good post. Too bad Serena said it in the worse possible way.
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To be honest, all we have is a single paragraph [out of an entire interview] that could have been taken out of context. Also, we tend to express ourselves differently in a conversation format than we do when writing.
 
creationtheory said:
I disagree with your logic. That's the same as saying you shouldn't drive defensively. The only way to prevent accidents is to have less drunk drivers. The truth is you should make sound decisions and there should be less rapists.
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Even if you are speeding or driving drunk it doesn't make it legal for someone intentionally ram your car. Yes, there are things women can do to avoid being raped but just because they may fail to do them that doesn't make it their fault in any way. Re-read what Serena said and notice how much of what she is saying is centered around the girl and what she did or didn't do. Almost all of it.

Now imagine a news story about a robbery where a whole family ends up killed. The father forgets to lock the back door and someone comes in to rob the place. The wife goes downstairs for a drink and spots the intruder, things escalate and in the end both parents and their children are killed by gunfire. I'm sure the lock being forgotten will be mentioned in the story but you can be damn sure it won't be highlighted as the reason the family is dead.

This is not true for rape cases. A woman gets raped and many people's thoughts regarding it revolve around what she did that caused it and what other women should do so it won't happen to them. What was she wearing, why was she alone, why was she drinking so much, was she acting slutty, etc.

I agree with the part I bolded in the long run but as it stands now "making sound decisions" gets much more focus than "less rapists". Until that changes we should put the sounds decision discussion on the back burner.
 
DigitalRicket said:
This. People who walk the streets with "Don't rape" sandwich boards are just as bad as those who ask for "Likes" to cure diseases. Expressing what you wish the world to be doesn't change the fact that the world is how it is.
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this is the mother of all false equivalencies. people CHOOSE to rape; rape is NOT an inevitability like disease.
 
Fiction said:
The problem with the real world is that there is really nothing we can do to prevent rape other than stop raping people. .
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Why would rapists stop raping people? Do you think they rape because they are uneducated on the morals of the issue? Or do they just rape because that's what rapists do?
 
Emerson said:
Why would rapists stop raping people?
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Because people don't understand that rapists are not the shadowy evil men that jump out of the shadows and drag women away. They are, for the most part, normal, everyday people that think they are justified in their actions and don't think they did anything wrong. When we have an basically entire thread of 'Well, she was drunk, what did she expect?' do you honestly think that teenage boys wouldn't see raping a drunk woman as a big deal if they were raised on that belief? These boys saw what they were doing as a prank. They bragged about it like they would writing on a drunk persons forehead.
 
Jason Raize '75 - '04 said:
To be honest, all we have is a single paragraph [out of an entire interview] that could have been taken out of context. Also, we tend to express ourselves differently in a conversation format than we do when writing.
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All the context we need is right there in that paragraph, unless she followed it all up with "j/k lol".
 
MWS Natural said:
The problem with GAF is that people think the world revolves around right and wrong, it doesn't. Should a woman be able to walk around half naked drunk anywhere she wants? Yes. She should have to freedom to do and dress however she wants in an ideal world. But it in the REAL world there are precautions she should take to lessen the chance of something unfortunate happening (ie not wandering around drunk and half naked on a dark street). I am not blaming the victim or condoning rape at all, just try to make smart decisions.

As a black man there are precautions I have to take in my day to day life that people of other races don't. Is it fair? No, but that's the society we live in. Should people just not be racist? Sure but this isn't the perfect ideal world.
Click to expand...

Which is why some people are trying to change it. Why is that so hard to understand? If your choice is to just give up and think there's no point to trying to mold and shape the world into a slightly less shitty place for the people in it, well, that's your call, but if everyone thought like you nothing would ever change.

Edit: anyone who applauds the above post is tacitly endorsing defeatism.
 
Fiction said:
Because people don't understand that rapists are not the shadowy evil men that jump out of the shadows and drag women away. They are normal, everyday people that think they are justified in their actions. When we have an basically entire thread of 'Well, she was drunk, what did she expect?' do you honestly think that teenage boys wouldn't see raping a drunk woman as a big deal if they were raised on that belief?
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Everybody here understands that. We were all raised in this "rape culture," but I wager the vast majority of people here do not rape people.
 
freenudemacusers said:
So how do we stop rape then
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education. empathy. don't allow people to become inhuman monsters, even in secret. Don't allow the issues that women have to deal with to remain abstract. Don't let rape remain an invisible elephant. Along with women already doing what they do to protect themselves and make sure they are in control of their actions and surroundings.

But you aren't going to stop rape by just "not raping".
 
creationtheory said:
There will never be a rape free society. That is the reality of human nature.
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It's not an on-off switch of "rape" and "no rape." how about minimizing rape? how about creating a culture where rape victims are seen as victims and rapists are seen as criminals and wholly responsible for a morally reprehensible act?
 
akira28 said:
education. empathy. don't allow people to become inhuman monsters, even in secret. Along with women already doing what they do to protect themselves and make sure they are in control of their actions and surroundings.

But you aren't going to stop rape by just "not raping".
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but rapists aren't this mythical idea of a sex offender that to catch a predator has built up—they're just people. people who have agency, who make conscious decisions and one day, one of those decisions is to rape somebody. they may well have made "a stupid mistake," and regret it the day after—they're not inhuman monsters. that's precisely the problem. the vast majority of rapists are all too human.
 
Emerson said:
Everybody here understands that. We were all raised in this "rape culture," but I wager the vast majority of people here do not rape people.
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And yet we still get posts quite often here that don't believe a woman saying no and twisting away is cause enough to stop trying to have sex with her. Sure, those folks in general get banned, but it's a pervasive belief that women need to be convinced, through force or liquor or drugs, to have sex with you. That saying no is just being shy or playing hard to get. That apparently being completely unconscious is giving everyone in the area free access to their body.

No, not everyone here is a rapist. But this belief that getting a girl drunk is the pathway to sex with her is pervasive in society.
 
Emerson said:
Why would rapists stop raping people? Do you think they rape because they are uneducated on the morals of the issue? Or do they just rape because that's what rapists do?
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There is a lack of education, yes. Some people don't view sex with someone who does not want to as rape. They view rape as having to involve physical force. It also doesn't help there are people saying things like "they [the rapists] did something stupid" as if it's not really rape rape.
 
akira28 said:
education. empathy. don't allow people to become inhuman monsters, even in secret. Along with women already doing what they do to protect themselves and make sure they are in control of their actions and surroundings.
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I guess the latter is what people are getting hung up on. The majority of rapes occur between a victim and someone they are familiar with, so to tell someone to protect themselves, in a majority of instances, isn't very meaningful.
 
The Abominable Snowman said:
Oh god, the faux outrage.

She's not victim blaming but the girl's decisions, if she wasn't slipped something without her knowledge, have factored into it.

You can't always expect people to have YOUR best interests at heart in what THEY do.

That's like me putting the whole entirety of blame on a thief for stealing cash out of my wallet when I've knowingly left it laying around without supervision.
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People aren't getting this.

NOTHING the girl could possibly do would make the rape okay or justified.

She could walk around at the party completely naked and completely wasted and that STILL does not justify the people raping her. Rape is NEVER the victim's fault under ANY circumstances. The responsibility is on the rapists not to rape her. Never ever ever is it on the victim. It isn't fucking "faux outrage".

There is no reason whatsoever to EVER call a rape victim's actions into question because they are not fault for it. Period.
 
wsoxfan1214 said:
People aren't getting this.

NOTHING the girl could possibly do would make the rape okay or justified.

She could walk around at the party completely naked and completely wasted and that STILL does not justify the people raping her. Rape is NEVER the victim's fault under ANY circumstances. The responsibility is on the rapists not to rape her. Never ever ever is it on the victim. It isn't fucking "faux outrage".
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This man is correct.
 
Again, how are we here?

What benefit is to be gained by manufacturing, then exploring, this gray area when it comes to rape?

Is it simply a sense of moral satisfaction in knowing you DON'T act in a manner (you think)that led to your being sexually violated (as if there's a cause/effect relationship here), and you'd like to share that satisfaction, along with whatever knowledge you hold that could teach potential victims how to avoid being raped?

If it's not that, I don't get the point of arguing why the victim of a rape deserved it to varying degrees, or how rape is an inevitability of life so people need to "get used to it."

That's what makes these discussions so baffling sometimes. People aren't even thinking about WHY they're playing Devil's Advocate on this particular issue. They're just doing it.
 
DigitalRicket said:
Murder is worse than rape and that still exists just as prevalent as it always has.
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I'm not going to even touch the whole "which is worse: murder or rape" discussion with a ten foot pole.

Murder is not an inevitability either. People choose to murder. People choose to rape. What exactly is your point. (I'm just going to assume you're dropping the disease comparison though, right?)
 
There's give and take with the blame game here. Is it true that most rapes happen at night? Probably. Is it true a female is more likely to get raped the skimpier her clothes are? Probably. Should the victim be blamed in any way for not heeding the warnings of these statistics? Absolutely not.
 
Emerson said:
Why would rapists stop raping people? Do you think they rape because they are uneducated on the morals of the issue? Or do they just rape because that's what rapists do?
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Yes, I think a lot of people are uneducated on the morals of the issue.

Cba to google it but there are plenty of surveys showing a lot of men don't consider getting a woman blackout drunk and then having sex with her isn't rape.
 
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