A sexual assault and another attempted one near the University of Minnesota campus have officials increasing security — but some female students say it’s their responsibility to avoid getting raped.
In the Fox News video below, young women offer the following tips for avoiding rape: mix your own drinks, “choose your friends wisely,” watch how much you drink, be more careful if you’re with people you don’t know very well, go home with the same person you went out with, and “avoid the fraternity scene entirely.”
Some of this is reasonable advice, but the sheer variety of the tips the women give illustrates one of the major problems with holding women responsible for avoiding rape. This approach requires women to modify and limit their behavior in all sorts of complicated and sometimes contradictory ways, and even if a woman manages to play by all the “rules,” she could still be sexually assaulted. Rather than giving women a whole bunch of advice about where not to go and who not to hang out with and what not to wear and how not to be, let’s all live by this one very simple rape prevention tip: don’t rape.
College Students On Edge After Rash Of Sexual Assaults [Fox News]