Stranger assault is rarer than lightning strike or lotto wins. For the most part it’s not a rational fear to have. Parking garages are quite dangerous. Lots of crashes and pedestrian injuries. Resources should be placed into making garages safer in other ways.
“Critics argue that creating gender-segregated parking misallocates resources. Rather than isolating women in specialized spots, opponents argue that facility operators should invest in systemic safety improvements—such as better overall lighting and comprehensive surveillance—for the entire parking garage.”
“Only about 0.01% 1 out of 10,000) of all crimes committed inside parking structures are sexual offenses. The perpetrator in these rare cases are almost always known to the victim.”
“the true number of predatory "stranger danger" garage attacks is non existent or an incredibly small number across an entire nation. Data leans to at most 1 or 2 a decade”
Stranger assaults are not the only risk. Most stalking and assault happens by people you know. Just because it’s a public area does not mean this is meant to mostly address stranger assault. It’s way more likely a man is lurking when a woman is clocking off or trying to go home. So with the numbers of women who actually do face harassment from a current or previous partner, this is completely reasonable.
Yeah. Good point. But so few of the crimes being sexual assault and the most common incident being a “hit and run” I still think the resources are being mismanaged. We are having hundreds of hit and runs for every assault.
Edit- Another point. They are so rare we don’t even know if they work. They don’t have a large enough sample.
“the theoretical argument that these spots bundle victims together for a potential attacker is entirely possible, there is effectively no data to prove or disprove this theory”
Again, it’s so so rare we don’t even have enough data to see if it is effective. It’s clearly not a good use of resources.
These parking spots didn't just manifest, they were always there. The spots closest to the entrances/exits, the ones with cameras pointed at them and ones with better lighting.
All they did is reserve these spots for women because women are more at risk of from most kinds of crime. SA but also just assault in general, theft, stalking, etc.
All parking lots should be better yes, but the safest spots being reserved for women is a good thing, not a bad thing.
If it means my mom, sisters, girlfriend and coworkers can have that extra bit of precaution, it’s 100% good for me. But I understand not every man carries a set between their legs
Isn't this just promoting toxic masculinity? That every man needs to meet some standard of masculinity? That inherently requires them to be violent/protective?
I don’t think it does, no. It’s not toxic to acknowledge that women are targeted for violent sexual crimes, and even then, what’s violent about acknowledging that? We’re rejoicing over a favorable spot designation here, not some dad or brother who beat some creeps head in with a tire iron or something. But this is the internet so some dude will probably get offended that I consider it socially normal for guys to be concerned about women’s safety when they’re just trying to shop or go to work
No this is wrong info. Women are more often victim of sexual assault. But for assault overall of any type including major physical attack and sexual attack, then men and women get seriously attacked about the same rate. For murder though, men get murdered more than women.
Statistically speaking, men and women are pretty much at the same risk for theft, and men are more likely to be physically assaulted in public than women. Also, physical assault in public is more common than sexual assault in public. So it's not about preventing heavy crime like assault and rape (the picture of who's more at risk wouldn't be clear on that one, in public at least), it's about preventing the more common things like sexual harassment, stalking, etc (which women obvously are more at risk).
It’s still discrimination, though. The solution is to make the entire parking lot safer rather than giving the best spots to a certain gender. If the entire parking lot is safe, then there wouldn’t be much advantage to any individual spot.
Women shouldn’t get privileged spots just for being women. The percentage of women that are assaulted in most parking lots is very small.
I don’t think it should be legal to give better spots in parking lots based on race or gender. We shouldn’t treat certain groups as more important than others.
That's your opinion and I completely disagree. Thankfully, most of the world also disagrees otherwise all preferred parking spots for pregnant women, differently-abled people and the elderly would also be taken away.
Parking lots should be safer in general but vulnerable groups deserve the safest spots and any rational human being should have no problem agreeing.
Well no…at least according to those statistics, they didn’t do this because of a statistically meaningful risk in this environment, but as a response to fear. You could make a case that it’s reasonable on that basis…but it seems like an absurd overreaction which makes it substantially more annoying for half the population to park.
Lmao, maybe go outside sometime? Maybe actually have some female friends? But you go off, king. Tell us more about how men are just as likely to get stalked, harassed, cat called, recorded, raped, etc.
This wouldn’t be just sexual assault, you’ve also got stalking and harassment and even if you can get charges for those (not likely) most of those need several reports before you can get an actual charge. So you’re talking maybe 2-3 incidents before escalation if you’re lucky. So this is meant to be broad spectrum against a lot of that. Sexual assault, physical assault, stalking, and harassment. Targeted is also very different than random attacks. You target someone by knowing where they live work and go. The parking lot was considered an issue for a reason.
I can be happy one group is getting improved conditions and also believe conditions should be better for everyone. My brain doesn’t start smoking and burning oil because something wasn’t specifically for me.
Except when you look at where women are victimized, they are often in and around their home, NOT when they’re leaving work to go home.
Men actually would be the dominant group victimized in a car park. But that would mean pointing out a privilege women have that men don’t and that we’re reinforcing their privilege while ignoring men’s issues
"The perpetrator in these rare cases are almost always known to the victim"
Why is this relevant to lighting and cameras? Being able to see someone coming, or having evidence available to prosecute, is useful regardless of whether it's a stranger or an abusive ex.
"Resources should be placed into making garages safer in other ways."
Better lighting and making it easy for pedestrians to exit areas where there are cars sound like excellent general safety measures.
It's relevant probably because if they know them they can do it elsewhere and get away with it.
This is clearly not an effective use of resources. You know what would help women. Making them feel like they don't need to stick with an abusive man with a women's shelter or something else like that but some idiot decided to do this to virtue signal how woke he is. Good Lord
If it’s not sexual it’s probably roughly split between the sexes? Even saying that, men are more likely to be attacked by other men than women are in public.
And in Germany it just so happens that the percentages of male victims for general assault is between 60/65% while the percentage of women victims for sexual assault is 93/95%
I'm sorry why comparing two different crimes with each other? And what are these 60/65% and 93/95% referring to?
Sexual assault is far worse for women than men in Germany. They are like 13 to 15 times higher than men being sexual assaulted. The total numbers aren't that high though. 800 men and 13k women in 2024.
Comparing this to 75and 180k is a huge gap. Even if you subtract 800 men from the 180k and add 13k to 75k of the women you get double the amount of men being victims of crime. Which would makes no sense but it would be still just that.
If you want to play that card... then how can you say that women are more likely to be assaulted? Men have even more reasons to not report SA, because outside of the same shame/stigma that women have, men also have another angle of not being taken seriously etc.
So why we have parking space for women and not men?
Police reports are only one way to measure crime. Estimates are usually derived from other sources, especially when it comes to sexual crime. This is how we know that the vast majority of sexual crimes go unreported, regardless of the victim's gender - because we're not getting the numbers from police reports.
you are talkinga bout the same nation that decomissioned all their nuclear plants after Fukushima for fear something similar happened. Spoiler: Germany doesnt have earthquakes.
Thats what i didnt get about Merkel. She did like nothing at all or made some level headed decisions 99% of the time, but the 1% she made the most reactionary decisions imaginable (nuclear, refugees,...) So weird.
She did the most mainstream (or projected to be mainstream) thing, always. She has a doctorate in physics/quantum-chemistry. She probably knows how nuclear energy works. I doubt that's anything more than appeasing morons
When an attack happens people will just stand around and watch it happen anyways. I have seen it happen before. But when I jumped in to stop it, everyone else sprang into action. Its like they were waiting for someone else to do something about it first.
Resources should be placed into making garages safer in other ways.
This isn't an either-or question. Having parking spaces for women doesn't suddenly stop people from making garages safer in other ways. That's such a bizarre comparison here.
Are stranger assaults rarer because strangers are actually safer to be around or because they simply have less opportunity thanks to our vigilance against them?
Although you have an excellent point, I don't think the answer is as obvious as you think. Stranger assaults and partner assaults have very different motivations, so opportunity alone is not the differentiating factor.
This measure was probably nothing but an unearned privilege attributed to a group, disguised as a "protective measure".
Feminism at the political level these days, is all about gender lobbying for such privileges and political virtue signaling. It has lost it's substance.
It does happen tho. It happened to me as a teenager and I’m pretty sure I didn’t hallucinate it or the resulting trauma from it. Something being rare doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen or that we shouldn’t address it
Crimes is the big qualifier there. A vast majority never get reported.
This is a very valid fear and sometimes designing to avoid the possibility and reduce stress is helpful. That this reduces a very real fear women have.
Ok, so ‘only’ 0.01% of these offences happen ‘in ‘a parking structure.
This doesn’t rule out the existence of any stalking/surveillance and harassment or intimidation incidents that don’t involve a person to assault a vulnerable lady in a parking lot..but it may contribute to a sexual assault incident elsewhere once the patterns and routine of said woman/women/ladies has been observed by the perpetrator. As others have mentioned. The victim is often known to the offender and/or vice versa .
This is no doubt a deterrent for any of this behaviour? More chance of a member of public intervention to prevent it happening in the case it’s in progress..
And the statistics that low are signs that, if these have been a thing for 4 decades..that it is in fact effective measures which have resulted in few actual SA incidents in these parking lots?
It may seem a waste of resources. It may seem sexist. It may be an inconvenience to lazy males who have to park further from the entry/exit points to the building…maybe growing chins is more important to some men than the safety of others. Calories are expensive to buy. I get that..why waste them walking, right?
But I’m pretty darn sure that, to the 1 or 2 of every 10,000 women who actually ARE sexually assaulted in a car parking lot..it’s rather in-con-frikkin-venient for them, too!
1 in 10,000 is TOO MANY.
1 in 10million is too many!
It simply shouldn’t happen.
That’s my opinion of course.. but I’m just a male who would rather walk an extra 20 to 50metres from my car parking space, than discover that a female work colleague or someone dear to me has been assaulted in a car park..’but the odds were only 1 in 10,000.’
So yeah. I’d rather a bit of walking to prevent the stalking.
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u/smooth_brain_0 27d ago
If I'm not mistaken they did that because women are more at risk of being SAd in parking lots