Deb from DebWire posts an anonymous list of advice for women on how to discourage and drive away a would-be rapist. The information was supposedly gleaned from convicted rapists in prison. Many of the preventative points look good, and the gist of the advice is that if a woman resists, yells, and fights back the rapist is likely to run away and look for an easier victim. I wonder if that's really true?
All the advice I've heard given to women says that their best bet for staying alive is not to put up a fight, because a hurt and enraged rapist is more likely to kill his victim. Then again, the conventional wisdom on plane hijackings pre-9/11 was also not to resist, and that didn't end up working too well.
The best piece of information in the article was that only 2% of rapists carried a weapon with them, because they knew that getting convicted of carrying a weapon while committing a rape carried a much heavier sentence than unarmed rape. This means that a woman carrying a weapon (such as pepper spray, a knife, or a gun) will probably have an advantage over her attacker.
(Via a comment by Wince and Nod, and a post by James Rummel.)
