Uploaded June 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Ask almost anyone what makes a woman more likely to be attacked and the answer is almost always the same. What she was wearing. How much she had drunk. Where she was walking at night.
The research says something completely different. And once you understand what it actually says, the clothing myth does not just fall apart — it inverts entirely.
In this video I want to do two things. First, dismantle one of the most persistent and damaging myths in public discourse around sexual violence. Second — and more importantly — replace it with what the evidence actually shows, because that evidence is actionable in a way the clothing narrative never was.
The landmark Richards, Rollerson and Phillips research is unambiguous. Victims of sexual assault evidence significant passive and submissive personality structures prior to their assaults. Sexual assault offenders look for visual cues of vulnerability when selecting a victim. And crucially — the women statistically more likely to be selected as targets tend to wear more body-concealing clothing, not less. The assumption most people carry is not just unsupported. It points in the wrong direction.
A direct statistical test confirmed it. Pearson correlation analysis between style of dress and victimisation found no correlation of any kind between revealing clothing and any type of sexual victimisation. The percentage of women who wore revealing clothing was practically identical across victim and non-victim groups. A Federal Commission on Crime of Violence study found that only 4.4% of all reported rapes involved any form of provocative behaviour on the part of the victim. And most convicted rapists cannot remember what their victim was wearing. If clothing were a selection factor you would expect the exact opposite.
So what are predators actually looking for?
The answer comes from four decades of peer reviewed research — gait studies, submissiveness studies, offender interviews, and a striking 2024 study that extended the findings into territory nobody had previously examined.
It starts with movement. The Grayson and Stein research identified five specific gait characteristics consistently associated with vulnerability — non-synchronous, uncoordinated walking that lacks whole-body rhythm and fluid lateral weight shift. A walk that signals a lack of physical confidence and coordination is being read and assessed in seconds, largely below the predator's conscious awareness.
Posture compounds it. Contracted, space-minimising body language — head down, shoulders inward, small contained gestures close to the body — signals submission in a way that is evolutionarily ancient and instinctively readable. Dominant individuals claim space. Submissive individuals surrender it. Predators read the difference instantly.
Eye contact is its own signal system. Avoiding eye contact communicates a desire to avoid confrontation and signals that you are unlikely to resist or draw attention to an incident. Making brief, calm eye contact communicates awareness, confidence, and the implicit message that you have seen the person looking at you.
Then there is the voice — and this is where the research becomes genuinely surprising. A 2024 study published in a peer-reviewed journal found that individuals with predatory tendencies and histories of previous perpetration were able to accurately distinguish survivors of prior assault from non-victims using voice alone. Prior victimisation is readable not just in how a person walks and carries themselves — but in how they sound. Hesitancy, softness, deference, and vocal uncertainty are all being processed as vulnerability signals.
And cutting across all of it — distraction. The person walking with their head down, eyes on a phone, earphones in, is simultaneously broadcasting every submissive signal simultaneously while removing all capacity to detect approach. From a predatory selection standpoint it is the most dangerous combination of signals a person can transmit.
The clothing narrative has persisted for decades because it feels intuitive and because it wrongly places the analytical focus on the perpetrator's desire rather than the predator's risk calculation. These are not the same thing. The research consistently shows that predators are not selecting based on desire. They are selecting based on assessed likelihood of success — resistance, attention, credibility, physical capability. The submissive signal system speaks directly to all of those factors. Clothing does not.
This is not about victim blaming. Responsibility for violence lies entirely and without qualification with the perpetrator. But the evidence is clear that vulnerability signals are real, they are readable, and they can be modified. The clothing narrative never gave anyone that. The actual research does.
Share this — it is the conversation that replaces a harmful myth with something genuinely useful.
Ask almost anyone what makes a woman more likely to be attacked and the answer is almost always the same. What she was wearing. How much she had drunk. Where she was walking at night.
The research says something completely different. And once you understand what it actually says, the clothing myth does not just fall apart — it inverts entirely.
In this video I want to do two things. First, dismantle one of the most persistent and damaging myths in public discourse around sexual violence. Second — and more importantly — replace it with what the evidence actually shows, because that evidence is actionable in a way the clothing narrative never was.
The landmark Richards, Rollerson and Phillips research is unambiguous. Victims of sexual assault evidence significant passive and submissive personality structures prior to their assaults. Sexual assault offenders look for visual cues of vulnerability when selecting a victim. And crucially — the women statistically more likely to be selected as targets tend to wear more body-concealing clothing, not less. The assumption most people carry is not just unsupported. It points in the wrong direction.
A direct statistical test confirmed it. Pearson correlation analysis between style of dress and victimisation found no correlation of any kind between revealing clothing and any type of sexual victimisation. The percentage of women who wore revealing clothing was practically identical across victim and non-victim groups. A Federal Commission on Crime of Violence study found that only 4.4% of all reported rapes involved any form of provocative behaviour on the part of the victim. And most convicted rapists cannot remember what their victim was wearing. If clothing were a selection factor you would expect the exact opposite.
So what are predators actually looking for?
The answer comes from four decades of peer reviewed research — gait studies, submissiveness studies, offender interviews, and a striking 2024 study that extended the findings into territory nobody had previously examined.
It starts with movement. The Grayson and Stein research identified five specific gait characteristics consistently associated with vulnerability — non-synchronous, uncoordinated walking that lacks whole-body rhythm and fluid lateral weight shift. A walk that signals a lack of physical confidence and coordination is being read and assessed in seconds, largely below the predator's conscious awareness.
Posture compounds it. Contracted, space-minimising body language — head down, shoulders inward, small contained gestures close to the body — signals submission in a way that is evolutionarily ancient and instinctively readable. Dominant individuals claim space. Submissive individuals surrender it. Predators read the difference instantly.
Eye contact is its own signal system. Avoiding eye contact communicates a desire to avoid confrontation and signals that you are unlikely to resist or draw attention to an incident. Making brief, calm eye contact communicates awareness, confidence, and the implicit message that you have seen the person looking at you.
Then there is the voice — and this is where the research becomes genuinely surprising. A 2024 study published in a peer-reviewed journal found that individuals with predatory tendencies and histories of previous perpetration were able to accurately distinguish survivors of prior assault from non-victims using voice alone. Prior victimisation is readable not just in how a person walks and carries themselves — but in how they sound. Hesitancy, softness, deference, and vocal uncertainty are all being processed as vulnerability signals.
And cutting across all of it — distraction. The person walking with their head down, eyes on a phone, earphones in, is simultaneously broadcasting every submissive signal simultaneously while removing all capacity to detect approach. From a predatory selection standpoint it is the most dangerous combination of signals a person can transmit.
The clothing narrative has persisted for decades because it feels intuitive and because it wrongly places the analytical focus on the perpetrator's desire rather than the predator's risk calculation. These are not the same thing. The research consistently shows that predators are not selecting based on desire. They are selecting based on assessed likelihood of success — resistance, attention, credibility, physical capability. The submissive signal system speaks directly to all of those factors. Clothing does not.
This is not about victim blaming. Responsibility for violence lies entirely and without qualification with the perpetrator. But the evidence is clear that vulnerability signals are real, they are readable, and they can be modified. The clothing narrative never gave anyone that. The actual research does.
Share this — it is the conversation that replaces a harmful myth with something genuinely useful.
