Female Victims Matter More

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month – so all of you who have been unaware of sexual assault – become aware, okay? At least for the rest of the month. Ashley Herzog wrote a column about the culmination of the month, "Take Back the Night", and rightly calls out someone for saying that men don't have to "take back the night" because "they already have it".

Crime statistics show that men certainly don't "own the night." In reality, they are three times more likely to be victims of assault by a stranger, and far more likely to be robbed, shot, or mugged. Men are carjacked twice as often. Men are 79% of all murder victims, and about three times as likely as women to be killed by a stranger. And while no one wants to blame the victim, we don’t hesitate to judge male crime victim’s choices. We don't tell them, "Yes, go to the ATM on that isolated corner by yourself at three in the morning. If you get held up at gunpoint, it's a societal problem!"

In the interest of fairness, I don't think most Take Back the Night participants would say it is being taken back from men in general - rather, criminals. Also in the interest of fairness... who is perpetrating the vast majority of these crimes?

That's because we know that robberies, muggings, and random assaults are crimes of opportunity - and certain behaviors make you an easy target.

But when it comes to stranger rape, feminists demand that we abandon all common sense. They went into hysterics when Bill O'Reilly aired a segment about Jennifer Moore, a young woman who was raped and murdered by a stranger. Apparently, O’Reilly was a “rape apologist” for noting that Moore was drunk and wandering the streets of New York by herself at 2 AM. The feminist line is that women are raped simply because they’re “in the presence of a rapist.” That’s true, but it begs the question: what kind of choices make you more likely to be in the presence of a rapist?

Right. As I mentioned in my previous entry, there are behaviors that make someone more likely to be raped, but rape is never okay.

What do feminists hope to accomplish by demanding that women “take back the night”? For the rate of violent crimes against women to go up? For the murder rate to be 50/50? “Taking back the night” is one of those feminist ideas that sounds good on paper, but makes no sense when you start looking at the details.

Perhaps they want crimes against everyone to go down? But Herzog's point is that feminists should not discourage people from being cautious.

Interestingly, women tell researchers they worry more about violent crime. Since we’re victimized less often, we’re probably better than men at assessing risk. What feminists call “living in fear,” I call being appropriately cautious.

Maybe, instead of demanding that women be able to walk alone at night, feminists should promote common sense—and encourage men to use it, too.

Women are mistaken if they think that men don't also have something to fear while walking alone at night. The focus on protecting women who are out at night, when it ignores the fact that men are far more likely to be victims, is sexism in one of its worse forms. The focus should be on general crime prevention.