Prudie - // Surely if it's the lack of training and discipline as children that causes these rapes and murders it would imply that many babies, mainly male babies, are born as potential rapists and murderers and need this educating out of them. I would hope most of us think that's a ludicrous assumption. //
It is a ludicrous assumption, which is why I have not put it forward as a valid argument.
My point is not that 'all men are beasts' as they saying goes.
My point is that society has arrived at a situation where women are expected to 'be careful' alone at night as a matter of course, and the fact that this situation continues is, in my view, a dreadful indightment of modern society.
My point about education, is that if boys are taught growing up that girls and wormen should be treated with equal respect and courtesy, then the need to be 'streetwise' as it is put, would be removed.
To be clear, I am not for one minute suggesting that anyone, male or female, should not have their wits about them alone at night, for obvious reasons.
Where my point arises is from the OP - remember that - where a Police Commisioner has the utter insensitivity to infer that a woman raped and murdered should have been more aware of the law in terms of her rights on being arrested.
Once again it speaks to the notion that women should 'protect themselves', and that comes from a wider and deeper perception that still lives on - that women out alone at night are 'asking for trouble' in a way that is never ever applied to men in the same situation.