4 ms·
It's a slightly different situation. A mugger probably has the advantage of a weapon. Even if you have one as well, their weapon is already prepped for use, so
by noxToken 10y ago
It's a slightly different situation. A mugger probably has the advantage of a weapon. Even if you have one as well, their weapon is already prepped for use, so trying to defend yourself against an already brandished weapon is not advisable.
Children in schools likely do not have weapons. It's hand-to-hand fighting with only weapons of opportunity (e.g. heavy books) available, and the provoking child likely isn't ready to use a weapon of opportunity.
Granted I'm not inherently saying that a victim should always deck a bully in the face. If that were the case, however, I'd say that child v bully has the advantage over the mugger v victim.
- mikeash 10y agoThat's an excellent point. When people tell you that you should comply with a mugger, that's because there's a serious threat of being killed, and compliance offers the best chance of surviving the encounter.
- rabboRubble 10y agoYes for mugging, but not if you are dealing with a would be rapist. Don't fight back, have your account of the event questioned and doubted... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/06/23/why-many-rape-victims-dont-fight-or-yell/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/06/2...
- vkou 10y agoFight back against a rapist, maybe get seriously injured or killed. It's damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't.
- rabboRubble 10y agoYeah, there was a news article in the last couple of weeks about that very thing. Apparently the Baltimore PD have been marking rape reports as unsubstantiated because, at least in one case, the woman didn't fight back under verbal threat. There is something funky with the law either in MD or in Baltimore (don't remember which) that requires the rapist to actually do violence (apparently the unwanted penis isn't enough) for the rape to be counted as a certain type of sexual assault. So all the would be rapist has to say "if you fight back, I'll kill you", the victim believes the rapist and doesn't fight back, and bingo-bango under the law, the rape is unsubstantiated. In at least one case, a serial rapist rapist walked free because he had no prior history of sexual crimes. Because prior reports were unsubstantiated since the prior victims didn't fight back. Tried to find this article without joy. One of the bajillion I come across via RSS.
- mikeash 10y agoMy understanding is that this sort of thing is pretty common. Traditionally, "rape" required the victim to resist "to the utmost." Our idea of what constitutes rape has broadened considerably, but the law is sometimes slow to catch up. According to this, five US states still have such requirements in their laws: http://www.womenslawproject.org/resources/Rape%20and%20Sexual%20Assault%20in%20the%20Legal%20System%20FINAL.pdf http://www.womenslawproject.org/resources/Rape%20and%20Sexua... Many others make no mention either way, and I suspect many of them would then fall back to the traditional requirement.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]