Joanna Lumley says don't go out and get drunk...

Yes, he's to blame.

You can be to blame for things you do.

You cannot be to blame for not consenting to sex and being raped.

Yes, Kim, he is, just as if he gets drunk and punches someone or if he gets drunk and gets in a car or gets drunk and breaks a window.

I agree that women should make themselves safe. My DD is only 4yo, but if she was a teenager and going out, I would advise her not to drink too much so that she is aware of what is going on and to ensure that she always puts money to one side for a taxi

Nobody asks to be raped by what they are wearing or what they are doing, but it IS only common sense to not get so drunk that you don't know what you are doing and that applies to men and women.

Ubik yes it is hard to rationalise the fear when the messages are so strong.

Well, we all should 'take responsibility' for ourselves in the sense of not trying to walk across a busy motorway, or go for a naked swim in the Arctic Ocean.

But in what sense is it a woman's 'responsibility' for being raped?

OMC -no, you're not reading the wrong papers. In fact, I wish I could read the ones you do.

Google Akin, if you want to know more about how some people think about rape. I don't recommend it, though.

cat - that is so true. Not thought of that.

doctrine - I don't know if it would be? I mean, there's nothing wrong with explaining rape and to argue against it might sound like going back to the old 'ssh, don't talk about the shame' thing. I think 'apologist' works because it is an explanation directed to one side of the issue.

My sister was sexually assaulted. She was in a taxi at the time, in school uniform, and the perpretator was also a school pupil. She was also assualted by a friend's DD - they were no older than 6 at the time.

I was sexually assualted, during school, in the playground and during PE lessons.

A classmate was raped. She was merely walking down the main road, at 6pm, in the winter. She was thirteen and stone cold sober. DSis and I were approached by the same man, in the garden - we weren't drunk.

A friend was raped. She was sober and was raped by her father's friend.

My mum was raped. She was sober and had gone home with a chap after a party for a cup of tea.

My aunty was raped. She was sober.

I've worked with teenager girls who were raped and/or assualted. Most of the time it's a boyfriend who's forced them into having sex, a family friend or relation, a peer, or a date rape. It's unusual from experience for it to be a man attacking a drunk woman; it's vulnerability that's the factor I think but in order to not be vulnerable one would have to avoid a lot of situations not just going out drinking etc.

I think it's an issue that's easy to get caught out on - we know the point - that rape is not the fault of the victim...

...and yet if one of my daughters phoned from a street in the middle of town at 3am in january with no money to get home having spent it all on booze then i would be furious. And one of the reasons i would be furious is because she may be attacked, god forbid raped, because she is vulnerable and i want to do everything in my power to protect her from that. i know it's contradictory, i know it is illogical, if it did happen, all my anger would focus on the attacker - but those protective strong feelings, that she shouldn't make herself vulnerable are there

I guess we cannot totally separate ourselves from the messages given out by society about women and their vulnerability/sexual availability

I wonder if we changed the phrase from rape apologist to rape explainer, it would be clearer what it meant?

I have been drunk and in a nightie sharing a bed with someone I'd just met at a friend's party. I've had dinner, wine and gone to bed with someone I was on a blind date with. I've shared a bed with a male friend who I used to have a FWB relationship with. In none of those situations did penetration occur and only on the blind date did anything physical happen, which was with my happy consent.

In all of these situations I was much more potentially vulnerable than a woman who is out for the evening, dressed up and pissed. I wasn't raped because none of those three men were rapists.

Surely, the issue is OneMoreChap that if the focus is constantly on how to keep yourself safe rather than how to stop the perpetrator committing the crime then the blame begins to shift.

So you get raped and it is your fault for not being vigilant enough or for dressing in a certain way etc etc. As if the rapist (or robber in your example) couldn't have been expected to just not actually commit the crime.

The problem when people write articles like this aimed at young women, is that it's not just young women who are reading them.

Recommending that women not go out and get so shitfaced that they end up alone and unable to look after themselves, in skimpy clothes and unpractical shoes, because it can make them more vulnerable to attack, is pretty sound advice. However, men are also perfectly capable of picking up a newspaper or magazine or switching on the television, seeing these warnings, and potentially internalising the message that it is okay to attack a woman who is vulnerable in such a way.

LRD no, and far fewer people ever pollute the press than used to.

and when did police/courts/media last say the equivalent of
well, you really must have intended to give them your stuff! I bet you enjoyed it. In fact, I'm not even sure you didn't deliberately walk down that alley in the hope of being robbed for rape. I must read the wrong papers/know the wrong busies.

You don't ask people to take resonsibility for being robbed. You ask them to lessen their risk.

OMC, when you get robbed, and you go to the police, do people routinely say 'well, you really must have intended to give them your stuff! I bet you enjoyed it. In fact, I'm not even sure you didn't deliberately walk down that alley in the hope of being robbed.

What, you say it's your ex-partner who did it? Well then, that doesn't even count as robbery. It's well known men lie about being robbed all the time.'

The point I am trying to make is, this all happens within a context. You don't mind the idea of someone telling you to 'take responsibility' for being robbed because to be honest, no-one ever seriously implies that people secretly want to be robbed, or that robbers are not really criminals to blame for what they do.

TheJoyfulPuddlejumper Fri 25-Jan-13 12:06:36

But OMC the only way to avoid being raped is to not encounter a rapist.

Truism. How is that different from 'the only way not to get robbed is not to encounter a robber'.

As I said "Robbers rob; but you do what you can to lessen the likelihood"... Everyone stepping out of an alley behind me is a potential robber.

The fact I'm not walking where I can easily be grabbed, look aware and am to some extent coded up makes the chance of that potential robber becoming my actual robber somewhat less.

Yep, they'll rob someone else.

Take responsibility for what, though?

It just seems to me that, well, sex without consent is rape. You can't 'take responsibility' for being raped.

I do think it is different from, say, taking responsibility because you got very drunk and walked over a railway line, or stepped into the path of a car. Those things, even if you are very, very drunk, aren't anyone else's fault. They're your responsibility.

victim blaming - in the context of rape it is not the victim's fault, it is the perpetrator.

but i do think people should take responsibility for themselves far more than they do

when you drink to excess so that your judgement is skewed you have to accept some responsibility - that goes for men and women.

When i was a teen, hanging around in some rather unsavoury parts of london always wore shoes i could run in, i was always warm enough and had enough money to get home. this was in the days before mobile phones, it's taking responsibility for your safety, using your common sense.

I can see both sides of the issue, but Joanna Lumley was making a fair point, I think and calling her a 'rape apologist' is rather extreme.

floaty - I get that you see this as irrelevant word-policing. I see the fact that you're typing 'rape' when it relates to girls and 'take advantage' when it relates to sons. I know you think this is word-policing and trivial.

I'm sorry it spoils conversations for you.

But ... I'm not saying it for kicks, you know, so you might do me the courtesy of recognizing that.

LRD 'And you need to be especially careful, Bill, you've got to take responsibility for your vulernability to racist insults, because you're black.'
I would have no compunction advising my DDs friends against going to certain areas because they're black. And my black colleagues often state that their teenage sons are much more likely to get stopped and searched than my kids.
Lumley's advice is crap though- rapists rape- it's not some alchemy whisked up by a combination of dress, time of day and inebriation