Well, he does have a point. If you go to a bad area, don't have any means of self defense (or both) you're more likely to get raped. Putting yourself in an avoidable situation.
Hell, according to one study (Zoucha-Jensen and Coyne, 1993), women who used non-forceful verbal strategies, such as crying or pleading with the assailant, were raped about 96% of the time. In the same study, women who did nothing to protect themselves were raped about 93% of the time.
On the other hand, forceful verbal resistance, including yelling and loud screaming, was more effective than non-forceful verbal resistance. These strategies were associated with completion of rape from 44% - 50% of the time (Quinsey and Upfold, 1985). This study is particularly interesting because the data were collected from rapists in maximum security psychiatric hospitals, showing that forceful verbal strategies can be effective even against the violently insane.
Running worked even better than verbal resistance. Although researchers who relied on rape crisis center records and police records (Zoucha-Jensen and Coyne, 1993) report a 55% rape completion rate against those who attempted to flee, broader studies such as Bart and O'Brien (1985) indicate that only 15% of women who attempted to flee were raped. Running was also associated with a lower rate of injury (Kleck and Sayles, 1990; Siegel et al., 1989; Ullman and Knight, 1991).
Women are more often taught that you shouldn't do anything to provoke an attacker, to avoid injury, but these strategies obviously don't work- looking at valid advice that can potentially save you from being raped, like "fight back, try and run, don't put yourself in dangerous situations to begin with" as mysogynist, "rape apologist"? What the hell?
