Speaking of police (see Jesse Saffron’s post below), the police department at the University of Wisconsin at Madison had to apologize for this:

  • Be a hard target – a victim looks like a victim! If you move from one destination to another, and the only thing you recall about the trip is the last text message you received, then there’s a problem. The military calls it “keeping your head on a swivel” and it’s probably the most important thing you can do to ensure your safety. If you present yourself as easy prey, then expect to attract some wolves. If you make yourself a hard target, one who is aware of their surroundings, you take away two elements of a crime: desirability and opportunity.

Apparently only women can be prey, and especially prey to wolves, so this is discrimination–blaming the female victim.

The article at Inside Higher Ed also show how convoluted the sexual assault issue has become. One of the criticisms of the police message was that it didn’t acknowledge that most sexual assaults on campus are made by acquaintances of the victims. A spokesman for the American Association of University Women says: “One of the things we also want to avoid is perpetuating damaging myths that don’t really acknowledge the fact that for many survivors of sexual violence, the perpetrator is someone they know.”

In other words, campuses aren’t all that dangerous and a lot of sexual assault really is “acquaintance rape” that could be reduced by better behavior on the part of the victim? Could she be saying that?