Dress provocatively to avoid rape
While I never thought provocative clothing justifies rape or excuses the criminal, I used to think there was a grain of truth in the idea that if you don't want it to happen to you, don't provoke it. This paper , however, turns that idea on its head: While people perceive dress to have an impact on who is assaulted, studies of rapists suggest that victim attire is not a significant factor. Instead, rapists look for signs of passiveness and submissiveness, which, studies suggest, are more likely to coincide with more body-concealing clothing. In a study to test whether males could determine whether women were high or low in passiveness and submissiveness, Richards and her colleagues found that men, using only nonverbal appearance cues, could accurately assess which women were passive and submissive versus those who were dominant and assertive. Clothing was one of the key cues: "Those females high in passivity and submissiveness (i.e., those at greatest risk for victimiza