To Prevent Rape, Don't Rape

A while back, Angono Police released a flyer which stated ways to prevent being a rape victim. A number of my friends and some activists have come out saying this promotes victim blaming as it passes the guilt of the crime to the victim. Someone even fixed the flyer by replacing all of the "tips" to avoid rape with one simple tip, "Don't Rape."

I've been sitting quietly watching all of this go down and one thing I can't understand is that all of the "tips" of the Angono Police were simply common sense expressed in words for basic safety for anyone really. Though I won't claim to know how women feel about being in the position to be possibly raped, I don't see anything wrong in telling women (or anyone for that matter) to be ready in case some people do have malicious intent. In an ideal world, it should be so simple. To prevent rape, don't rape.


As is such the case, we don't live in an ideal world. Self defense is a vital life skill for any person to learn for their own safety. Will it be someone's fault if they didn't learn self defense and they were raped? Is the victim to blame if she got drunk and got raped? I simply do not see that in this flyer. All I can see are general reminders for safety which is really what we're all responsible for.

Take a second and read through everything and this time, replace the word RAPE with THEFT. Address it to everyone and not just women. All you have are general safety guidelines.

What's happening now with the rage about this flyer is our feminist mentality is reading things into the text which simply put, is NOT there. Again, ideally, we should be able to pinpoint possible rapists and address them with the directive, "Don't Rape." or better yet, "Respect women." But we simply cannot tell who is capable of rape. This is a less-than-ideal precaution to a less-than-ideal problem in a less-than-ideal world. And trying to make this flyer say things it simply does not, helps absolutely nobody.