SlutWalk Toronto
Mar. 31st, 2011 04:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
james_davis_nicoll
When we first heard about the Toronto Police officer labeling women and people most at risk of sexual assault as “sluts”, we thought about making noise and demanding for more than an apology. We have a constitutional right to a freedom of expression and a freedom of assembly so we’re using it. Putting that into action, we wanted to go right to Toronto Police Service’s front door at 40 College St. with impassioned numbers uniting against these damaging stereotypes. Thus SlutWalk Toronto was born. We are taking our frustration to the streets – literally. Join us for our walk.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
forensic linguistics
Date: 2011-03-31 08:01 pm (UTC)Well, if what he said was "women can avoid assault by not dressing as sluts", that does sound like he meant "the people *I* think are most at risk for assault are the ones I think are dressed as sluts". It's not that he's trying to malign the people who are most at risk in real life, it's that he's wrong about who they are and is trying to malign a different group entirely.
Re: forensic linguistics
Date: 2011-03-31 09:28 pm (UTC)Re: forensic linguistics
Date: 2011-04-01 02:37 am (UTC)Re: forensic linguistics
Date: 2011-04-01 12:40 pm (UTC)It comes down to this -- can a woman do ANYTHING to minimize her risk of being raped? Not "avoid assault" completely (obviously impossible), but to minimize the risk? Either rape is completely random and nothing woman does increases or decreases her chances of becoming a victim, or it is not. In the latter case, why is it such a terrible idea to identify risk factors and make them known? And by "identify", I mean scientific study of actual cases, not "dress respectably" folk wisdom.
BTW, my ex-wife "minimized her risks" by carrying a long thin dagger whenever she went ANYWHERE alone. She did have to use it once.
Re: forensic linguistics
Date: 2011-04-01 12:49 pm (UTC)Re: forensic linguistics
Date: 2011-04-01 12:50 pm (UTC)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victimology
Re: forensic linguistics
Date: 2011-04-01 01:30 pm (UTC)Re: forensic linguistics
Date: 2011-04-01 01:24 pm (UTC)Sorry, I don't see that. Is it on the same page, or a link off it?
Re: forensic linguistics
Date: 2011-04-01 03:00 pm (UTC)"One of the most controversial sub-topics within the broader topic is victim proneness. The concept of victim proneness is a "highly moralistic way of assigning guilt" to the victim of a crime, also known as victim blaming.[3] One theory, the environmental theory, posits that the location and context of the crime gets the victim of the crime and the perpetrator of that crime together."
"Victim facilitation, another controversial sub-topic, but a more accepted theory than victim blaming, finds its roots in the writings of criminologists Marvin Wolfgang. The choice to use victim facilitation as opposed to “victim blaming” or some other term is that victim facilitation is not blaming the victim, but rather the interactions of the victim that make he/she vulnerable to a crime."
Neither chapter talks about rape explicitely, but rape is one crime where both victim blaming and accusations of victim blaming are most prevalent. Which makes applying victimology to rape controversial in and of itself.
Re: forensic linguistics
Date: 2011-04-01 01:18 pm (UTC)You & I disagree on whether clothes make a difference, but neither of us have evidence. But we're just talking in a comment thread. He was actively giving advice as an authority. Did he have anything to back that up besides a hand-me-down opinion?
Re: forensic linguistics
Date: 2011-04-01 01:24 pm (UTC)Re: forensic linguistics
Date: 2011-04-01 01:55 pm (UTC)http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16617170
So, if we could come up with a list of indicators of increased risk of raping, we could create a simple questionnaire for women to ask every new man they met. I can't see any problems coming out of that :-)
Re: forensic linguistics
Date: 2011-04-01 03:03 pm (UTC)Someone needed a study to demonstrate a correlation between aggressive sports and aggressive behavior in general?
Can I have a big grant to study a correlation between hunger and energetic chewing?
Re: forensic linguistics
Date: 2011-04-01 07:29 pm (UTC)Isn't that the point of your putative hunger study? I'm guessing occasional bouts of very energetic chewing reduce overall hunger, so an experimenter that prevented subjects from having occasional bouts of very energetic chewing would see subjects experiencing increases overall hunger.
-- NPH
(Alternate humor explanation: self-selection into sports that involve a great deal of sweaty close physical contact with other males may correlate with men that are less sexually aggressive towards women. If You Know What I Mean.)
Re: forensic linguistics
Date: 2011-04-04 03:38 am (UTC)Re: forensic linguistics
Date: 2011-03-31 09:47 pm (UTC)Re: forensic linguistics
Date: 2011-04-01 12:35 pm (UTC)