http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8515592.stm
This is not going to be a long or nuanced post. Some things are just absolute truths:
There are no circumstances in which a rape victim should take responsibility for the attack.
Monday, February 15, 2010
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5 comments:
Yeah :/ Depressing, eh?
*gets on hobby horse*
Sadly, this doesn't surprise me at all (well, I've also seen it before). Women want very much to believe that there are things that they can do to prevent themselves from being raped - and that kind of cycles back into 'therefore, the women who have been raped did not do these things, therefore it's their fault, at least some of the time'.
At my (girl's only) school I was certainly taught over and over that you shouldn't do XYZ (dress provocatively, flirt, etc) because you might get raped. It's not really that difficult to leap from there to thinking 'well, what did she expect, should really have known better, etc' when you hear about someone who did do XYZ and did get raped.
There is a ginormous issue with the whole how much should women be expected to prevent rape thing. Are 'how to avoid rape' tips genuinely good at keeping people safe, or are they just helpful to rapists in shifting the responsibility on to the victim for preventing their own assault? It goes round in circles of making rape victims completely helpless vs making them responsible for something that they really are not.
Bah :(
I think the way I see it is like this. There are clearly things that women may do which increase the probability of being raped. At the extreme end, leaving the house, ever, is one. Excessive drinking is probably another, in that it reduces instincts of self-preservation. There may well be others.
However, this is not a lottery. It's not that this higher probability is in a random draw. Someone else still needs to take an action - that's where the blame and responsibility lies. We may want to encourage women to act in different ways to reduce the amount of rape as a second-best solution to the fact we can't lock-up all rapists and would-be rapists.
As far as I can tell, its the only crime where it is even suggested that someone who does something which naturually increases the probability of being a victim of that crime is considered responsible. Kidnapped tourists in Mexico don't get blamed for being kidnapped just because they went to Mexico over, say, Cornwall.
Mm, I completely agree with that last bit. It's nuts. And yep, I think 'someone else still needs to take an action - that's where the blame and responsibility lies' is pretty much the truth of the whole thing.
Re the 'second best' solutions - you might be interested in the stats that show that most rapes occur in the victim's home, or the home of someone they know, and that the majority of rapes are committed by people known to the victim. Which is another reason why 'how not to get raped' tips such as the ones you mention are, at the very least, problematic. Even when the advice is entirely sensible, it doesn't apply to the majority of rapes that happen today, so putting any emphasis on them at all can be misleading and counterproductive (in that it puts the responsibility of avoiding rape on the victim's shoulders).
There is also an Option C in terms of preventative action that doesn't rely on either locking up rapists or making women responsible, i.e. addressing the culture within which rapes happen.
I think I may have inadvertely used first best solution in the economics sense - the full information outcome where an omnipotent and benevolent social planner can directly decide all outcomes. Second best is the best you can achieve when you know given constraints on knowledge. I need to stop thinking like this.
I didn't know those statistics, they certainly are interesting, and render 'how to avoid rape' tips almost as distractions from real solutions. I'm not sure about the culture point. Where do you start?
Good to know about the economist use of those terms, makes sense to me. I like the sound of first best solutions. 'In my police state...' :P
Yeah, it's complicated. It's not that basic safety tips are bad advice, considered in isolation. I have no doubt that if people were more inclined to walk down deserted alleyways at night they'd get raped in that context more often. No one would dream of arguing that doing that is safer than staying at home - it's just that saying 'don't do this or you might get raped' is in many ways counter productive, particularly if that is most or all you are ever taught about sexual assault. It reinforces a whole set of misconceptions about rape and rape prevention. It's a pretty straighforward and logical step from those kinds of lessons to the victim blaming you see in the BBC article.
Where to start in improving things: I'd put my money on 'education, education, education' :P The whole idea that a 'real' rape is when a stranger physically forces himself on you in a dark alleyway, while any other circumstances are more 'ambiguous' etc etc needs to die. People need to be made more aware of the nature of most actual rapes, and get more clued up to spot iffy situations in everyday life, rather than assuming it's something that happens to other people in other places. Here's an example.
And of course The Media need to stop doing all the stupid crap they do that reinforces all these incorrect stereotypes. But how to begin changing that I haven't the faintest.
Personally I'd recommend these two blog posts as a starting point:
http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/meet-the-predators/
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/10/rape-culture-101.html
Other interesting things:
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2010/02/well-this-is-hugely-depressing.html A response from that second blog about the BBC article.
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2010/02/04/the-worst-sexual-assault-prevention-tips-ever/ Everything that is 'problematic' about most well meaning advice is OBVIOUSLY SCREAMINGLY HORRIBLE here.
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2009/09/15/sexual-assault-prevention-tips-guaranteed-to-work/
And the many link trails those posts can start you on.
Apparently I am still on the horse :) Sorry about the wordiness, hope you find it interesting.
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