Last November, I outlined some advice for well-meaning sexists on How Not to Advise Women Not to Get Raped. The post was in response to a guy named Aaron P. Taylor, who, in response to getting shut down by a female in da club, penned a manifesto entitled "Advice 4 Women: How to NOT Get a ‘Deserved Raping.’" The essay warned women against behaviors that indicate that she really "wants it"—even when her actual words (in the case of Taylor's target, "Naaaaaaah!") indicate that she actually does not want to have sex!

These behaviors include:

* flirting

* dancing (repeatedly)

* putting your face close to a man's face

* kissing

* wearing a shirt that "shows just about everything but her nipples, then have a 30-minute conversation with a guy about how voluptuous and sensitive her breasts are, then spend half the night stroking her hand against the outer-lining of said breasts." (It happens).

* anything else that gives a man a boner

Obviously, this argument—that women shouldn't do certain things unless they're down to fuck—is based entirely on a man's expectations, and his own preferred end to every female interaction (sex). In reality, women aren't soley interacting with men in order to eventually cause him to orgasm. And just because a behavior is "sexy" doesn't make it "suggestive." Most of the time, a dance is just a dance. A shirt is just a shirt. Putting your face close to a man's face is just putting your face close to a man's face. And a man getting a boner from any of that is his personal problem. Even if a woman is grinding her ass on your pelvis, all she's suggesting is that—shocker!—she wants to grind her ass on your pelvis. Really, the only way a woman can actually suggest she wants to have sex with you is by saying, "I want to have sex with you!" It's that easy.

One response to Taylor's essay that hasn't been raised, however, is how fucking shitty life would be for everybody if "dancing" really meant "fucking." Taylor's worldview offers one big problem for guys like Taylor: If women flirted, danced, wore revealing clothing, or did anything else that men happened to find arousing only in direct preparation for sex, da club would be a very lonely place. Under this model:

* A woman would never look at a man, lest he expect her to speak to him.

* A woman would never speak to a man, lest he expect her to flirt with him.

* A woman would never flirt with a man, lest he expect her to dance with him.

* A woman would never dance with a man, lest he expect her to kiss him.

* A woman would never kiss a man, lest he expect her to fuck him.

* A woman would never fuck a man, lest he expect the right to fuck her any time he wants, in any way he wants, in any orifice, whether she likes it or not.

In other words, women would never, ever, ever go to da club, lest a man chose to administer her a "deserved raping" for showing up. Don't you see, Aaron P. Taylor? It's a prison of your own design! Taylor is not just advising women how "not to get a deserved raping." He's also advising women how to make Aaron P. Taylor's life a living hell. Which is, actually, the only reason women might want to refrain from doing whatever the fuck they want to do on the dance floor.

Photo by Yoshimai

Ahem. Is this not the perfect comedic corollary to Aaron P. Taylor, the D.C. blogger who instructed a woman how not to lead a man on, causing him to rape her (and to whom I crafted this rebuttal?) I maintain that it is! As Sandberg and Schaffer so deftly illustrate, men can claim to have been "led on" by such tempting displays as close dancing, grapes, strong winds, and Haley Joel Osment.

Others came to Taylor's defense. And they're still coming. Earlier this week, a commenter on this blog, calling him or herself "Rational Reader," posted this response to my Taylor post (relive Rational Reader's other comments on this blog here and here and here):

Being able to emotionally detach one’s self from an issue and look at it analytically is such a wonderful ability. Unfortunately, it also seems to be one that the majority of commentators here do not possess, or at least are unwilling to utilize. . . . Saying that Aaron here advocates for, apologizes for, enables, excuses, condones, or blames the victim for rape is *logically* no different than saying a locksmith giving free advice on the best type of locks is an advocate, apologist, enabler, etc. of burglary. The only difference between the two is *emotional* and hence irrelevant.

I understand that Aaron P. Taylor and his supporters are trying to help women not get raped. Great! But guys: If those same women perceive you to be a condescending rape apologist, they may not be terribly receptive to your advice. Let's look at how you might better communicate your valuable anti-rape tips to the ladies, shall we?

1. Do not advise women on how not to get raped.

2. If you insist, try not to use rapist tactics in your rape advice manual. Let's be real: In giving women advice on avoiding rape, Aaron P. Taylor and Rational Reader aren't attempting to help women. Their goal is to exert a mental power over them in place of a physical one. Taylor wrote his missive after being denied by a woman in a club; Rational Reader pens five-paragraph essays in the comment fields of blogs he disagrees with. Taylor and his supporters don't disturb me because I think they're rapists, or that they support rapists; I don't think those things. They disturb me because they use the very same tactics that rapists use to control women. And that makes me upset because I—like so many other women—know that the most damaging effects of sexual assault are the psychological ones.

I may not know Aaron P. Taylor or Rational Reader, but I've known guys like them. They are smart. You are dumb. They are right. You are wrong. They are rational. You are an emotional. Rapists use these tactics, too, to make you believe that it is your fault. That you should have known better. That you liked it. That you're crazy. That it didn't even happen.

3. Understand the enormity of your task. Giving a woman advice on how to not get raped is not like giving advice on how to best fortify your door from outside intruders. Giving a woman advice on how to not get raped is like saying, "Accidents in the home are a leading cause of death. If I were you, I'd stay out of homes as much as possible." It's like saying, "The majority of murders are committed by someone known to the victim. Have you ever considered severing ties with all other human beings? Move quickly."

In other words, it's not helpful. Women can be raped at any time, for any reason—or for no reason at all. They’re raped by men they’ve known for years and strangers they’ve never spoken to. They’re raped by men they’ve denied sex to, and men with whom they’ve had sex many times before. Telling women how rape can be avoided by not dressing in revealing clothing or not dancing close to a man is not only condescending—it's inadequate to the point of triviality.

4. Educate yourself on rape and its victims. You'd assume that Aaron P. Taylor, Rational Reader, and other rape advisers know a lot about how rapes occur, who the victims are, and how they're reported. Just in case, though, here's some info. One in six women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. It's likely that your mother, sister, daughter, friend, or girlfriend is a victim of rape. In fact, it's likely that many of the very women reading your advice on how not to get raped have already been raped. But these statistics on rape and sexual assault are nothing if not woefully inaccurate, because being assaulted is so embarrassing, so confusing, so damaging, and so shameful, that many women never even talk about it. One reason for the underreporting of rapes is the psychological damage inflicted by the rapist.

So while your goal is merely to assert blog argument dominance, consider that you might also be causing a victim of sexual assault to relive the mental anguish of being violated and then discredited by a man on the subject of her own rape experience. This may render her uninterested in what you have to say. Victims of rape are familiar with having their ideas, experiences, feelings and positions on rape pushed aside or argued away. So when you reduce rape to a game that you must win—a rational argument that seeks to carefully discredit a woman's position on rape—just know that she may have heard those kinds of arguments before. From her rapist.

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is a post on Aaron Taylor's site!
See what course of appeasement now he takes
For women raped, who call his words a blight.

Read the full treatment here.

Last week, after returning from a disappointing dancing session in da club, where Taylor learned some harsh lessons about love, loss, and getting totally shut down by a hot girl, Taylor had a lot to think about. So he sat down at his computer and carefully compiled his thoughts in an entry on his blog, "UnCommoN SENSE with Aaron P. Taylor." The entry, "Advice 4 Women: How to NOT Get a 'Deserved Raping,'" was a quick primer on how girls might avoid doing things that would lead them to be responsible for their own rapes (the riddle of undeserved rapes yet to be deciphered by Aaron P. Taylor).

Women who do not want to get raped should never "dance with a guy over and over again," nor grind "her ass on [Aaron P. Taylor's] penis not once, twice, or three times, but several, SEVERAL times." Nor should she, hypothetically, "go on a date wearing a top that shows just about everything but her nipples, then have a 30-minute conversation with a guy about how voluptuous and sensitive her breasts are, then spend half the night stroking her hand against the outer-lining of said breasts." Believe Aaron P. Taylor: Women do this all the time.

Now, Aaron P. Taylor did not rape the woman who ground her ass on his penis on that fateful night. Still, he is haunted by the possibility of what might have happened had he been the type of guy who would have raped her:

had I been a less-than-understanding guy (i.e., a forceful-type of guy who always “gets what he wants by any means necessary”), I could have just as easily forced a kiss on her, or worse– -waited until after the club let out to follow her to her car, then followed her to her house. And, when she got out her car, I could have been right there ready to pounce on her, saying: “I think you owe me something, lady!!

If you are that type of guy, hey, Aaron P. Taylor understands. And if you're a woman, Aaron P. Taylor understands you, too. Which is why when his initial post drew a barrage of negative comments from the ladies, Aaron P. Taylor was moved to write a second post explaining his position.

Calm down, ladies. Aaron P. Taylor doesn't just think that "teasing" women bring on their own rapes; he also believes that cancer victims are asking for it and that poor people should expect to be murdered.

"Now, in the same way that not every girl who teases guys for fun is going to get raped, not every person who smokes is going to catch lung cancer," writes Taylor. "However, there ARE smokers who catch lung cancer, just like there are women who get raped after purposefully teasing guys over and over, and eventually teasing the WRONG guy."

Aaron P. Taylor continues with a cautionary tale about choosing the right part of Washington, D.C. to settle down in. "had I moved into [a bad] area and got robbed or killed 5 days later . . . [my friends and family] would not have been surprised. Why? Because they would have already known that something like that could happen to me in that part of town. I would have been tempting fate by deciding to live there, and–while not everyone who lives in that part of town gets killed there—the fact that there was a high risk for it would have made living there a stupid decision on my part."

Taylor goes on to write that women who get raped are, themselves, "stupid," and that he is looking for a smart woman (wink) who is less likely to get repeatedly ravaged by strange men. He caps the blog post with a smiley-face emoticon.