15 February, 2010

Idiot's Guide to Blaming Rape Victims

Below is a handy cut-out-and-keep list of all the situations in which it is acceptable and right to blame the victim of a sex attack for their own misfortune:

1.


Now, you may notice a lack of actual situations presented. And the reason for this is quite simple. It's never acceptable. A recent survey suggests that 71% of women think a victim who dresses provocatively, goes back to the attacker's house for a drink or gets into bed with their attacker ought to take some blame for what happens. This is, of course, horseshit.

I don't get the cult of victim blaming in rape cases. When a man is mugged, do we question whether or not he was 'asking' for it? Maybe he was dressed too smartly, made himself look like rich pickings. How stupid of him to wear expensive clothes! He was practically asking to be targeted. Particularly if he was walking around late at night, all by himself.
Maybe he'd given money away in the past, quite willingly. A man with a history of giving money away surely can't be surprised when the police don't believe the money was taken from him forcefully.
We don't make these assertions because they are utterly ridiculous; the blame lies squarely with the person BREAKING THE LAW, the perpetrator. In no other crime is the victim so harshly scrutinised, so quickly judged.

Listen. It's very simple. If I go out at 11pm at night, by myself, and I'm wearing lipstick and a short skirt, and Cod forbid, I am raped, it is not my fault. If I meet a guy at a bar and agree to come back to his for a drink and he decides to take things further against my will, it is not my fault. It is the fault of the man who decides that these factors make me fair game. He should have the presence of mind, the self control and the decency to realise that I am a human being, not a disposable fuck rag, and treat me as such. Unless I specifically state that yes, I would like sex with him at that time, he has no right - NO right - to force that upon me. My clothes, my company, and even my presence in his home are not qualifiers. They do not render me his possession, therefore there is no reason to assume the light is now green. To suggest these are valid reasons is to simplify rape, to dehumanise the victim - the rapist is no less in the wrong if the victim is butt naked than if she is wearing a full suit of body armour. The crime is exactly the same.

Men are not incapable of self control. They are perfectly reasonable, intelligent human beings capable of knowing right from wrong. Painting them as helpless brutes enslaved by their hormones and primal instincts, clubbing women about the head and dragging them back to their caves because they just can't help themselves, not with all that temptation, is massively disrespectful to men on the whole and does a disservice to them. Men know that to force sex upon women against their will is an act of violation. It's not like there's any ambiguity about this, not when you actually use your brain.

It's very simple. Unless she clearly consents, you are raping her. A short skirt is not consent. A cup of coffee or a glass of wine in your living room is not consent. If you make the logistical leap from "a woman has agreed to come to my house" to "a woman has agreed to have sex with me" then the blame lies squarely and clearly with you. So when Rich, UK makes the following post on a BBC message board, I can't help but think he's a) an insensitive dick and b) completely misguided on what constitutes the conduct of a decent human being around a highly vulnerable woman:

Sadly, the main reason my marriage ended was because my then wife couldn't take any responsibility for her attack. Rape is wrong. But if a woman on medication for bi-polar disorder that specifically says not to drink alcohol, decides to go out on her own and drink herself into a stupor, cavort with various men in a sexual manner and agree to leave a nightclub with a man, then gets attacked, some blame must surely be attributed to her as she ultimately put herself at risk.

The philosophy behind victim blaming is not particularly complex. It's known a the 'Just World Theory' (or sometimes the 'Just World Fallacy') - People to want to believe that the world is just and fair. This is their personal comfort zone, and when they are thrown out of their comfort zone by witnessing something which is inexplicably unjust - such as rape - they will attempt to rationalise it by finding reasons to blame the victim for their own misfortune. They can maintain their belief in a just world, but only by blaming the victim for something that was not, objectively, their fault. Their comfort zone remains undisturbed. They feel safer; they know that such an injustice won't happen to them because they won't invite it upon themselves like the rape victim did. As a form of defence, it's equivalent to sticking your fingers in your ears and pretending that not hearing something means it didn't happen.

A 1999 study by social psychologist Linda Carli shows victim blame in action. From Wikipedia: Female and male subjects were told two versions of a story about an interaction between a woman and a man. Both variations were exactly the same, except at the very end the man raped the woman in one and in the other he proposed marriage. In both conditions, both female and male subjects viewed the woman's (identical) actions as inevitably leading to the (very different) results.

Victim blame is not new. It's not shocking. But it is tiresome, and it is about time we exposed it for the pile of steaming, rancid illogic that it is.



(Quick edit: It seems I misinterpreted the BBC report. The 71% refer specifically to the number of women who believe getting into bed with a person means they should accept responsibility for the consequences. The actual report itself is a real shocker, particularly when you read that 15% of women believe that just accepting a drink and engaging in conversation provides grounds for victim blame. The report, in it's entirety, can be found here. Thanks for the heads up CMaster!)

35 comments:

  1. Don't know if you're anywhere near London, but if so you might have seen the TfL adverts (bloody everywhere!) essentially saying that if you take an illegal minicab you're responsible (your apparently inevitable) rape.

    Doubly galling given that the Met Police allegedly *laughed* at one of (licenced cab driver) John Worboys' victims when she reported that he raped her.

    Not only that - the cinema advert is a fucking great trigger-fest. Nice to know you have our welfare at heart - fuck you "Cabwise"

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  2. Great post! I'm just writing about this for BitchBuzz, hope it's ok if I link this? :)

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  3. Exactly what I've been trying to say for so long - yes, women can "protect" themselves, not put themselves in dangerous situations etc etc all they like. But it is NEVER the victim's fault - the fault lies with the rapist who decided to attack them.

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  4. Hannah - go for it.

    Auntie Em - I fucking *hate* those adverts. I'm not a rape survivor, and I find them triggering, so fuck knows what they must do to survivors. I find them even more galling when they're put in close proximity to the "we need to talk about rape" ones (teenage girl, tshirt with "I was raped" on it) - basically it says to me "we can talk about rape all you like as long as you understand it was *your* fault".

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  5. I completely agree with everything you're saying. It's so frustrating when you hear friends and colleagues making those same 'oh well if she wasn't so drunk, so slutty, so whatever then that wouldn't have happened.

    Just today the columnist Carol Malone was on This Morning spouting all of these myths about how drunk women are to blame if they are raped. The presenter and an expert were trying to explain to her that she was simplifying rape completely by just thinking about drink and the victims morals but she wasn't having it.

    I guess some people just can't get away from there own disgusting views.

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  6. Never is the only word that matters - No situation-creation can possibly ever excuse or justify the time-line of 'no', 'OK I will force you'.

    I was listening in utter horror to Radio Five on Sunday night when they started to quote the 'study' or 'findings'. I expect it in The Mail - but the researcher at the beeb probably thought, ah, this will make for a good debate eh!

    Never, ever, ever. Simple. The only study they need.

    In fact your above list should be forwarded to every media outlet in the country and we can debate from that starting point.

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  7. thanks for this, an excellent article. as you say, victim blaming is nothing new. but it should be over by now, it isn't fair to endlessly be reiterating the same points.

    maybe that man's marriage broke down because he is such an insensitive shit.

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  8. Just quickly - I'm not sure your analogy with blaming-the-victim in a mugging case entirely works.

    "When a man is mugged, do we question whether or not he was 'asking' for it? Maybe he was dressed too smartly, made himself look like rich pickings."

    Well, actually, sometimes yeah. Have you seen those other TfL ads, where there's a guy with a backpack with the zip open and the headphones hanging out, and a label saying 'Please Take These' or something like that? - the point being, you are in a sense 'asking for it' if you make it really easy for someone to steal from you. Just as if, say, you're asking for it if you insult a gangster's mother and then he beats you up. Should the gangster get a more lenient sentence in court because the victim should have known better? Is he less morally culpable himself? No, of course not. But then you still might get a visitor in hospital saying 'why the hell did you insult his mother? what did you think was going to happen?'

    What I mean is, 'blame' kind of has two senses here. Moral blame always falls on the perpetrator, regardless of what the victim was doing. The victim's actions are irrelevant as far as that goes. But at the same time, one might blame the victim for exposing themselves to risk - 'you left your bike unlocked for a week! of course it was going to get stolen!' Does this make sense?

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  9. "I don't get the cult of victim blaming in rape cases. When a man is mugged, do we question whether or not he was 'asking' for it? Maybe he was dressed too smartly, made himself look like rich pickings. How stupid of him to wear expensive clothes! He was practically asking to be targeted. Particularly if he was walking around late at night, all by himself."
    I think this is a bad analogy as we sort of would blame him a bit for getting mugged, and for all those reasons. I've actually seen a fair few rape-apologists make the same analogy going the other way: if you leave your car unlocked in a dodgy area, you're pretty much asking to get it broken into, then they come over all smug and ask you why is rape any different.

    And of course rape is different because, if you leave your car unlocked, nobody will try and claim you actually gave your stereo to the robber. What's objectionable about blaming the victim is that people count bad decisions and consent and will try and excuse the perpetrator based on it.

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  10. Just got linked here from a friend - while the basic point that you are making wouldn't be changed, your numbers are slightly wrong.

    Only about half (56%) of the people surveyed thought that rape victims could be partly responsible. Of that 56%, then 71% of the women in that group thought that getting in to bed with another person was cause to be partly to blame.

    Read the actual report (rather than the BBC's slightly confusing way of presenting the numbers) from The Havens (apparently I can't post links)

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  11. A couple of years ago a friend of a friend (a guy) got blind drunk, he stubled into a taxi and threw up in the back and the taxi driver chucked him out. He ended up stumbling onto some train tracks and died. It's a very sad story but he had some responsibility to not get himself so off his face drunk he couldn't take care of himself.

    There have been a lot of adverts lately pointing out what you shouldn't do if you want to avoid being mugged or burgled. Ever since I can remember my mum has hammered into my head that I shouldn't leave my belongings on the front seat of the car incase someone smashes the window and takes them, I once forgot this piece of advice and it resulted in my car window being smashed and losing my belongings.

    I am not a rape apologist and I think what Carole Malone said on This Morning was disgusting. I do, however, think that there is an element of personal responsibility for your own safety, whether you are a man or a woman.

    Men and women should be aware of the dangers in the world and that if you do get out of control drunk without a sober friend with you that you are putting yourself in danger. That could be the danger of being mugged or being sexually assaulted. It would be nice if we lived in a society where you could wander the streets drunk at 3am with the knowledge that no one will take advantage of you but we don't.

    I am not saying someone who gets drunk and then is raped is anyway responsible, or should take responsibility but if they had drunk less or had a sober friend with them they could have avoided being raped at all. If I saw a green man and just crossed the road without looking to my right or left and got run over, I would be in the right but who cares? I still would have a broken bone or two (or even worse, be dead!)

    I really love your blog and am a regular reader but I don't 100% agree with your latest posting.

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  12. When I was a student I got attacked by a gang of thugs in the street (town gown relations were not great), as these things go I got off lightly with a split lip, black eye and the discovery of exactly how fast I could run when I was scared (answer, very!).

    Anyway, the fact was I could have made myself less vulnerable by not being pissed at the time and not walking home through a rough area without my house mates.

    However nobody, and quite rightly, suggested that it was anyway my fault. It was, and still is (they never caught the bastards)the fault of the little chavs that decided to jump me. They chose to do it, it's down to them. If anything, the fact that I was less able to defend myself than if I had been with my house mates and sober makes it even worse.

    So why is it that when a woman gets raped, and further more is more vulnerable than other wise by perhaps being in the rapists house or is drunk, or is in a skirt that she gets blamed?

    I'm a man and I simply don't get the attitude of many of my own sex.

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  13. As someone wise once said to me, women shouldn't have to protect themselves from rapists. Rapists shouldn't rape in the first place.

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  14. Alex and Sam - by the same extent, there is no blame attached to someone who gets mugged. It is a poor analogy, but it's so often the one that is touted out ("leaving the goods on display" etc) - and so to some degree it makes sense to use it. Blame implies responsibility - and a woman is never to blame for being raped. Someone is never to blame for being mugged. Yes, there are things people can do to protect themselves - but as around 80% of rapes are committed by people the victim knows, then the "don't get drunk/wear a short skirt/walk alone in the dark" is, to be honest - complete bollocks. To further stretch the (bad) analogy - you don't expect your friend to nick off with your wallet if you put it on the dashboard, so you?

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  15. Alex and Sam - I don't think anyone would blame a mugging victim for his own attack based on the clothes he was wearing. Maybe for having his wallet hanging out, but even then we would accept that the blame lies with the mugger. Rape is fundamentally different in that it's not an inanimate object waiting to be stolen, it's not a car in a dodgy side street with the radio sticking out, it's not a twenty pound note sticking out of someone's pocket. There's no entreaty to steal because when a woman is raped, nothing of commercial value is taken.

    The point is that nobody questions a person who was mugged in the way we do when a woman is raped. We actively search for reasons why the rape was her fault. If a man walks through a dodgy neighbourhood at night, we blame the neighbourhood, the gang culture, knife crime, lack of police presence. Unless the person actively provoked the violence (the 'your mum' scenario) we accept that the mugger is a bad person who has acted unacceptably. Temptation or no, the mugger has to be a bad person from the off to even consider his actions.

    When a woman is raped, we look for reasons to blame her. What she was wearing, whether she was drunk. It's as if we believe that rape only happens if it's triggered, as if a rapist simply wouldn't rape unless the woman tempted him somehow. Which is an absolute fallacy.

    Women shouldn't have to treat their bodies like cars to be secured, or wallets to be hidden, or bikes to be chained. Simply put, we are not objects - we are humans, we think and feel and react. I think there's something hugely amiss when rape campaigns centre around what a woman should or shouldn't do to stay safe. NO. It is the rapist, always the rapist, who is in the wrong 100%. A man who rapes a drunk woman is a horrible human being taking advantage of a vulnerable woman. What about women on crutches, such as myself? Should I not go out after dark because I'm more vulnerable than most women? It makes no difference; the perpetrator is in the wrong.

    The motivation for rape is not personal gain, as in robbery or mugging in which money or items are taken, or theft. It's power and dominance. If we stop wearing short skirts, don't get drunk, follow all the rules rape will still happen because there are still rapists. Following these guidelines doesn't make them go away. If we stop wearing short skirts and heels, they'll just go for women wearing something else. Sober women are raped as well as drunk women. Nothing is solved by simply saying 'don't do this, be careful' because rapists don't care how careful you are. Given that the majority of rapes are perpetrated by someone known to the victim, how can we defend ourselves against it other than by assuming all men might rape us? What a sad state of affairs.

    You know what will stop rape? Blaming the rapists. Sentencing them appropriately. Because a culture that protects the right to blame the victim for the horrible crime someone else had NO RIGHT to force upon her simply helps rape flourish because rapists know they have a good chance of getting away with it. That's the real problem here.

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  16. Blame does imply responsibility, but not necessarily moral responsibility. Someone is never morally to blame for being mugged, but you still might blame them in another sense, because they failed to take proper precautions - hey, if you didn't want to be mugged you shouldn't have walked into that dangerous neighbourhood wearing that diamond-encrusted tiara and carrying that Rembrandt.

    The second point you make, about 80% of rapes being committed by someone the victim knows, is another thing entirely. I was just commenting that the analogy in the article does not really serve the purpose the author uses it for in the argument.

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  17. As for the analogy, it's not so much that the crimes are directly comparable, but the treatment of the victims certainly is. A victim is a victim - why do we treat a rape victim in such a different way?

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  18. The mugging analagy is a piss poor one and we'd all do better to not give it the time of day. We're not comparing like with like - wallets, car keys, diamond necklaces, whatever are OBJECTS. You prattle on all you like about "leaving the goods on display", but a woman's legs, cleavage, hair (in some cultures) are not inanimate objects, they are not goods, they are part of a living, breathing, thinking PERSON. A living, breathing, thinking person who would tell you, if only you cared to ask, that she's wearing a short skirt because she likes the way it looks, not because she'd like to have sex with you.

    When wallets and car keys and diamond necklaces develop an independent intelligence and start saying "please don't steal me" to would-be thieves we can do the mugging analogy. Until then shut the fuck up and stop implying that wonen's bodies are transferrable property.

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  19. "The point is that nobody questions a person who was mugged in the way we do when a woman is raped. We actively search for reasons why the rape was her fault."

    If in court or in society, a rapist is judged less harshly because of the behaviour of the victim, then this is a problem, because some moral blame has been assigned to the woman. Obviously this is ridiculous. The victim's behaviour is morally irrelevant to the crime committed by the rapist - on this we agree, it seems basically self-evident to me. Am I right in thinking this is your central point?

    I do not quite follow some of the other stuff you say.

    "Nothing is solved by simply saying 'don't do this, be careful' because rapists don't care how careful you are."

    Surely, if taking an unlicensed minicab often results in rape, avoiding the cab would avoid rape? Is this not sound advice? If less women took unlicensed minicabs, presumably less women would be raped.

    "I think there's something hugely amiss when rape campaigns centre around what a woman should or shouldn't do to stay safe."

    I can't think how else to approach a rape campaign. Are you implying that the campaigning should focus on discouraging the rapists themselves? It's hard to imagine how this could be effective, any more so than a campaign directly targeting murderers or paedophiles. These campaigns are about protecting potential victims.

    If a culture exists in which it is worse to rape a sober woman wearing jogging gear than it is to rape a drunk woman who is 'dressed provocatively', then we of course have a problem. On this we agree entirely, and I hope that it would be difficult to find someone who would take issue with that point.

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  20. Victoria:

    "shut the fuck up and stop implying that wonen's bodies are transferrable property."

    No-one did any such thing. The analogy, when made, works like this: there is a victim and a perpetrator in both cases. Someone can influence the likelihood that he or she will become a victim. Therefore someone else might blame the victim for not taking more precautions. That's the analogy.

    "When wallets and car keys and diamond necklaces develop an independent intelligence and start saying "please don't steal me" to would-be thieves we can do the mugging analogy" - you've missed the point. Whether the wallets are alive or not makes no difference whatsoever to the analogy. It works or does not work in just the same way.

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  21. This story takes on a sort of resonance for myself because I remember transcribing sentencing remarks for a guy who had indecently assaulted a lady in her 70s (what would be more like assault by penetration under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 - I don't really want to go into the details, I found it that disturbing). I can't remember what sentence he got, but it didn't feel like it was long enough. I do remember the saddest part was reading about how the lady concerned had been blamed by her husband for being the victim, and that she had attempted to hang herself.
    So when I read the papers and how a woman has to cover up to keep herself safe, I'm left even colder than before. It's all well and good to go on about victims and precautions, but wouldn't it be better to actually target the criminals themselves and stop their criminality, or at least put a sizeable dent in it?
    A society where victims feel bad about a perceived inability to prevent a crime happening to them, as opposed to placing that blame on the criminals, is a failed one.

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  22. Sam - yes, we *do* have a society where it is a worse crime to rape a woman out for a run than a woman in a miniskirt who has been out for the evening. And yes, the actions of the victim are considered key to the outcome of a rape trial - so much so that it's a key factor in whether or not women report rape at all.

    And, actually, yes, educating men is just as important as educating women. It won't stop rape, because rape isn't about sex - but it might reduce rape by men who somehow see women's behaviour (but not an outright "yes") as a come-on, or help reduce the "she was doing whatever" blame mentality. Have you seen http://www.mencanstoprape.org ?

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  23. "Alex and Sam - I don't think anyone would blame a mugging victim for his own attack based on the clothes he was wearing. Maybe for having his wallet hanging out, but even then we would accept that the blame lies with the mugger."
    I think there are a fair few people who would blame a victim of mugging for showing off their wealth in a dodgy area. Some people will blame the victim and some people find it abhorrent, if not ridiculous, which is why you get the same theft analogies used by both sides.

    Plus I'm hesitant to "blame" the perpetrator at all. 'Blame' for me implies an something preventable and unwanted. "Hold responsible", yes, but "Blame the criminal" sounds a bit stupid to me, as if the poor little rapist did it by accident.

    "Rape is fundamentally different in that it's not an inanimate object waiting to be stolen...nothing of commercial value is taken."
    I'm not sure how relevant that actually is. It means the risks are different, and it's an entirely different moral issue, but in a practical sense, it's still risking crime and falling victim to it. The problem with blaming rape victims is not that it's treated the same as other crimes, but that the victims are treated so differently.

    "The point is that nobody questions a person who was mugged in the way we do when a woman is raped. We actively search for reasons why the rape was her fault...When a woman is raped, we look for reasons to blame her."
    Exactly exactly yes yes YES! But not just reasons to blame her. Reasons to extrapolate that, because it's her fault, she sort of wanted it, because she wanted it consent isn't really an issue and because consent isn't really an issue, we can morally excuse the actual criminal, the ghastly lying bitch.

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  24. Thanks for the reply Mornington.

    BTW - the T-Shirts on the ad that you mentioned actually say "Wake Up To Rape" (rather than "I was raped") which has to be *the* most tone deaf advertising slogan I have eaver read.

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  25. I think the mugging analogy has been taken out of context somewhat here. I wasn't comparing the crimes at all, but pointing out that the victim in each case is treated differently. We don't ask these questions of a mugging victim because they are considered irrelevant, beside the point. Just as you say Alex, it's astonishing the lengths people will go to in bypassing the issue of consent in order to secure a reason as to why, in actuality, it was the victim's fault.

    "because it's her fault, she sort of wanted it"

    That's another frightening undertone to all of this, and one a BNP councillor once used as a defence; rape isn't all that bad because women enjoy sex. A woman who has enjoyed sex in the past, particularly one who dared to have casual sex with semi-strangers, surely cannot really be a victim in rape given her sexual history....nevermind that she actually CONSENTED to those other sexual encounters.


    On the subject of rape campaigns - if unlicensed minicabs are heavily associated with rape, surely they ought to be cracked down upon? Of course you can't rid the world of rapists, that's terribly naive. But you can re-educate. You can give tougher sentences. You can give more credibility to the victims. You can remove the blame culture in our society which allows rapists to get away with their crimes because the woman was dressed inappropriately/inebriated/insert excuse here. If we accept that there is no situation in which it is excusable for a man to commit rape, then by extension we can create a culture in which rape is taken as seriously as any other crime, in which it is treated the same way in a court of law. It won't stop rape, absolutely not. But there is a blame mentality that exists in our society that needs to be tackled before any sort of rape campaign can be truly effective.

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  26. "I wasn't comparing the crimes at all, but pointing out that the victim in each case is treated differently"
    That's what I find quite odd about the whole thing. Feminists will say "You wouldn't blame victims of a mugging, why blame rape victims?" and then angry idiots with ex-wife issues will say "Well, we blame victims of mugging, what's wrong with blaming rape victims. The bitches. Stupid fucking women, I hate them, GAH!". I'm paraphrasing of course, but the fact that the exact same analogy is getting used both ways makes me think blame is maybe a red herring.

    "But there is a blame mentality that exists in our society that needs to be tackled before any sort of rape campaign can be truly effective. "
    Again, I'm not sure blame is the issue. Rape is quite an unusual crime in that there's so much focus on the victim, what they did, said, implied, thought and was reputed to do. The actual criminal is almost forgotten sometimes, and 'consent' gets confused with 'what the victim wanted', when they're actually entirely different things.

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  27. "Women shouldn't have to treat their bodies like cars to be secured, or wallets to be hidden, or bikes to be chained. Simply put, we are not objects."

    That is a great statement. I've never thought about it in that way before but it's true. I dress how I want to dress and I do it for me.

    It's been really interesting reading everyones comments here and I honestly don't think that anyone is a rape apologist.

    My male friend had consensual sex with a girl after a date, the girl regretted it the next day and called the police. My friend was interogated by the police but he was eventually let go and no charges were given. The girl's father was extremely religious (I think he may have been a priest) and she'd felt guilty about having sex. She later apologised to my friend.

    I think that story is really sad because obviously my friend went through hell and it has really affected him but I also feel for the girl involved because she felt so guilty for having sex with a boy she was attractived to.

    I'm digressing but the point I'm trying to make is that that situation above wasn't rape and this is an incredibly complicated subject.

    I hate that we live in a society with an undercurrent of misogyny and that the victim often gets blamed in rape, however, during the trial the victim is going to go through a tough time because the onus is on the victim to prove that there was a crime. This is due to the fact that there are false claims made (as my story above illustrates) and sometimes there is no evidence just one person's word against another. Once someone is convicted though I think that the sentences should be tougher than they currently are, I also think they should get rid of that "just cause law" that basically says that if a woman winds up a man enough he can brutally beat and/or kill her because he just can't help himself (I know of a real case where a guy got 100 hours of community service for killing his wife because she cheated on him and he lost it and stabbed her multiple times).

    I don't think that it is possible to have a social marketing campaign that tackles potential rapists through marketing communications, I think it has to be a grassroots campaign tackling the problem of women being seen as objects rather than nuanced human beings and that men are capable of self control, I am wary of treating all men like potential rapists though because there are a lots of lovely guys out there.

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  28. One can be modestly dressed and still get raped, because i strongly believe that rape isn't about sex but about power.

    And the reason of all the victim blaming is that generally people still believe that it's about the sex. Hence;
    "You shouldn't have worned that."...Blah, blah...

    So sad and frustrating.

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  29. Alex - I use 'blame' because, although I agree that it's nonsensical to impose 'blame' in these situations, that is what happenes - the language of rape apology suggests that the victim is actually at fault for the rape, that she somehow invited it upon herself, that her actions led directly to her being raped. The 'consent' issue is interlinked but certainly an issue of it's own - does accepting a drink from a man imply consent? Does a woman wearing "slutty" clothes give off a message of implied consent? Apparently, and depressingly, there are those who seem to think so. From this perspective the woman in a miniskirt who accepts a drink at the bar will ultimately be blamed for what happens to her, either because she was, as rape apologists like to say, 'asking for it', or because she should have known better than to give off these mythical signs of consent and is hopelessly naive - either way, the responsibility of the situation lies with her, and not with the person who attacked her (who was doubtless confused by the 'messages' she was 'sending'. Or driven mad by temptation. Or [insert excuse here]'. Conveniently, 'no means no' is somehow forgotten in this situation.

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  30. I can't think how else to approach a rape campaign. Are you implying that the campaigning should focus on discouraging the rapists themselves? It's hard to imagine how this could be effective, any more so than a campaign directly targeting murderers or paedophiles. These campaigns are about protecting potential victims.

    No, they're not. They're about warning potential victims. Potential victims are by definition vulnerable. Rapists don't rape women who are drunk or alone or wearing revealing clothing because they find these things sexy, but because they know that this makes the women less credible (due to our victim blaming culture) and so more rapeable with impunity. Even if we eliminate all the potentially "risky" behaviours currently trumpeted about, we won't reduce rape because the rape culture will shift, new excuses will be invented and the rapists will move on to target women who fit the new rapeable demographic.

    I think they campaigns should be targetd at people - men as women, but with an emphasis on men because they've been allowed to be disproportionately left out of the conversation so far - emphasising their role as bistanders, witnesses, and friends. Of the rapist. Friends don't let friends drink and rape, that sort of thing. See your pal going upstairs with a swaying, incoherent woman at a party? Stop him! He is in danger of becoming a rapist. Just think about the pain and suffering you could prevent: the police interview, the trial, the whispering campaign, the job loss, the criminal record. Be a true friend and don't let your friends be rapists.

    To me this approach achieves 2 things: it undermines the victim blaming culture, and it acknowledges that not all men are rapists, but are, on the whole, a pretty decent bunch of human beings who can be expected to act like grown ups and help prevent crime in their community.

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  31. "Rapists don't rape women who are drunk or alone or wearing revealing clothing because they find these things sexy, but because they know that this makes the women less credible (due to our victim blaming culture) and so more rapeable with impunity."
    I don't think that kind of generalisation helps. Not all rapists set out to rape women. Some set out to get laid and don't give enough thought to if their partner wants to. Some read short skirts and flirting as signs of availability, and then don't bother to distinguish between wanting sex in general and wanting sex then, there and with them. And some are just hopeless at reading female behaviour and err on the side of rape.

    You're absolutely right about the campaign idea though.

    "The 'consent' issue is interlinked but certainly an issue of it's own - does accepting a drink from a man imply consent? Does a woman wearing "slutty" clothes give off a message of implied consent?"
    Fuck implied consent. There's no such thing as implied consent. If it's not explicit, unambiguous consent then it's not consent. If the best you've got is that she implied she might want it, you request some kind of verbal confirmation. You don't go ahead and sleep with her anyway, just to be on the safe side. Having sex with a woman without knowing whether she wants to is rape just as much as if you know she doesn't.

    "Conveniently, 'no means no' is somehow forgotten in this situation."
    Well, that's because it isn't really true. No should mean no, and should be assumed to mean no, but in practice, it's also a social formality. We expect women to say no first, so you get more manly conquest points when you romance them into changing their fickle little minds and saying yes.

    Also, rape is about consent, not refusal, so unless the sex has actually started, nobody cares if a woman says 'no' or not. The important thing is that she didn't say 'yes'. It's all very well taking no to mean no, but it's more important that, unless otherwise stated, 'maybe', 'if you're lucky', undressing, getting into bed and being a notorious slut all mean no as well.

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  32. I don't think that kind of generalisation helps. Not all rapists set out to rape women. Some set out to get laid and don't give enough thought to if their partner wants to. Some read short skirts and flirting as signs of availability, and then don't bother to distinguish between wanting sex in general and wanting sex then, there and with them. And some are just hopeless at reading female behaviour and err on the side of rape.

    What are you basing this theory on, other than "common sense", though? The words of rapists up in the dock are unreliable; the ommon sense of the common rape culture is unreliable. If you follow the link through to my blog, there's a whole discussion there of what makes a rapist, with some citations of research that's been done int he area. I'm not aware of any research that demonstrates an inability of the majority of men to realise when somebody doesn't want to have sex with them.

    I mean, you seem like a decent enough, and intelligent, bloke: can you really not tell when a girl is just not that into you? What about if she's not having a good time in bed? Would you just not notice? I'm sure you would, and so would most men (who are, regardless of what rape culture postulates, not mindless animals but human beings with empathy and perception), and rapists sure would too. They're the ones who get off ont eh fact that no, she's not liking it, and no, she doesn't want to be there.

    This whole "oh, the guy was just drunk and made a mistake, it was a failure to comminucate" thing is a myth, and it's one that's based on a narrow understanding of sex and a narrow understanding of rape. The usual scenarios is "they flirted they got drunk then they kissed a bit or she went home with him or she took of her top and then wham, next thing you know it's intercourse - concensual or no". But sex is not like that, and rape is not like that. What if a man decides to flip his girlfriend on her front and anally rape her, a la Marlon Brando (butter or no)? She will have sent him the "message" that she's willing to have sex with him a ton of times before. Does that mean he didn't know, couldn't tell, that she was crying, or that she was in pain, or that she said "no" multiple times? What is the mechanism for that kind of shut-down in perception?

    What if a woman goes home with a man fully intending to have sex with him, but he decides not to use a condom, and also decides that her objections are invalid? At what point does her flirting or even kissing/blowing him become so overpowering to him that it drowns out the message "I want to practice safe sex, this is not safe, please stop I don't want to get pregnant/HIV"? What if she manages to convince him to use a condom, but then after she falls asleep he chooses to penetrate her unsafely while she can't resist? Where's the "misunderstanding", "error" etc. there?

    Rape doesn't work like that, and sex doesn't work like that, and men don't work like that - to say they do is to reduce them to the level of dumb animals, and that's even less helpful than victim blaming.

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  33. Some men "err on the side of rape"? I literally can't think of anything to say to that comment other than WOW.

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  34. "I mean, you seem like a decent enough, and intelligent, bloke: can you really not tell when a girl is just not that into you?"
    Bad example as I've always been totally and utterly hopeless at telling if girls are into me or not. But I see what you're getting at.

    "What about if she's not having a good time in bed? Would you just not notice? I'm sure you would, and so would most men and rapists sure would too. They're the ones who get off ont eh fact that no, she's not liking it, and no, she doesn't want to be there."
    You're absolutely right, most men probably do notice if their partner is not enjoying it, scared stiff, desperate for them to stop or just unconscious. But I doubt that the ones who carry on regardless all do so because they actively like it. I'm sure a lot of them simply don't care, which is just as bad.

    "Some men "err on the side of rape"? I literally can't think of anything to say to that comment other than WOW."
    I'm guessing by 'WOW' you mean you disagree. To clarify I don't think erring on the side of rape is ever any justification, or mitigation, or anything short of rape, plain and simple. As I said, going ahead when you're unsure of consent isn't really any better as going ahead without it.

    I'm sure the mentality of a lot of rapists does involve putting bitches in their place and all that. But I'm willing to bet that with a lot, especially the ones who later give the "accidental rape" defence or other similar bollocks, their mentality is more that "a man's right to have sex when he wants to is more important than a woman's right not to have sex when she doesn't want".

    That's what I mean by erring on the side of rape, I mean deciding that when in doubt it's more important that you get laid than if the victim has consented. In no way does that ever excuse rape. Rape is rape.

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  35. Great to see that the Welsh Assembly Government has today launched a campaign that tries to do something about the whole victim blame culture- visit their new campaign web site www.stopblame.org
    Fantastic work Wales!

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