to be utterly shocked at the attitudes to rape expressed on BBC 2 today?

[WriterofDreams]

Today, Jeremy Vine discussed the "slut walk" protests organised by feminist groups in response to the comment made by a Canadian police officer who told a group of lawyers that women should avoid dressing like sluts to help prevent rape. He spoke to the editor of "The F word" who unfortunately didn't give a very good argument IMO and failed to make the point that blaming the victim of any crime is just plain wrong. What really shocked me though were the views expressed by listeners which for the most part centred around the idea that scantily clad women are asking to be raped. One man actually said it was men's biological urge to have sex and women are exciting that by dressing like "sluts" and so they basically deserve what they get.

Frankly the whole thing made me sick. I was abused as a child so I know how much a victim tends to blame themselves for what happened. To tout this point of view is only to increase the suffering of victims IMO and does nothing to actually help decrease rape seeing as rape is very very rarely the "down a dark alley" scenario so beloved by many but is more often committed by friends, relatives and lovers who couldn't give a toss what their victim is wearing.

AIBU to think focusing on what women is wearing is basically blaming women for rape and in fact totally pointless anyway as there is no proof whatsoever that scantily clad women tend to get raped more often?

[SpeedyGonzalez]

MoreBeta, that sounds terrifying. Bloody hell.

I'm going to say this very ineloquently but here goes:

I have a feeling that the state of emotional arousal brought on when someone is feeling aggressive can have a knock-on effect on the mechanisms of sexual arousal. I suppose this is why in normal couple circumstances a row can lead to passionate lovemaking. If this is true it may help to explain in part why some men use rape as part of a cache of arms, if you like.

[northernrock]

Hmm. I don't know. I think there are different kinds of rapists. I think some are psychos who are intent on hurting rather than sex.
I also think that there are men whose motives are sexual, however warped, in that they get off on dominating or violating women.
I do think the fact that they are using a twisted imitation of the sex act in order to hurt women (and men, cos men get raped too lets not forget) rather than just a punch points to a certain sexual drive behind it.
Not that that has any bearing on the thing about what victims are wearing , obviously.

[HerBeX]

Yes Morebeta I think that's the problem, that too many people still see rape as just sex gone a bit too far, rather than the completely different category it is: violence, which happens to use sex.

[MoreBeta]

northernrock - x-posted with you.

[MoreBeta]

HerBeX - I read both articles and they are indeed thought provoking and the second one was very powerful indeed in hammering home the point that rape is not about sex at all but about power and domination under the overt threat of violence. One phrase in particular stood out for me:

".....if you have to tilt your head back to look into somebody?s face, they are standing too close to you."

It brought back a memory of something that happened to me 20 years ago that I had not been able to properly understand until today. I have never been raped and as a heterosexual man unlikely to ever be raped and i want to emphasise that the event I am going to talk about below does not in any way equate to the terrible experiences other posters have related on this thread. However, I hope if any men are lurking this might provide some insight.

In 1991, I went on a business trip to Texas and a young Texan male college student drove me and a couple of my colleagues around and acted as our guide for 2 days. The college student was in his early 20s, about 18 stone of solid muscle, over 6 foot 6 inches tall, and an extremely fit athlete who played college football. At the end of our trip just as we were leaving the hotel he cornered me on my own and I had no doubt at all he intended to subject me to extreme violence. It came out of nowhere, he didn't say much, except that for some inexplicable reason I had been 'really pi**ng him off for the whole two days'.

I still don't know what I had done to upset him but it was that experience of him standing really close and me having to tilt my head back and looking up into his face that was so threatening. For the first and only time in my adult life I felt afraid of another man, extreme gut gripping fear. There was no way I would be able to fight him off or outrun him. He was in complete control of the situation. He wanted to hurt me for his own warped reasons. It was not my fault he wanted to do that to me.

Luckily another tour party came by and I joined them to escape him but if I had been round the back of the hotel in the car park it would have been a quite different outcome. I am quite sure he would have justified his beating me up as 'he deserved what was coming to him' or 'he provoked me' or 'he needed teaching a lesson'.

Men are much more likely to suffer extreme violence at the hands of another man than to be raped and if men thought of rape as pure violence rather than as something to do with sex they would have a far better, albeit still very very incomplete, understanding of what it actually means.

[northernrock]

Was thinking about this issue last night and remembered an incident when I was 15, walking to a friends house one evening.
A man was walking ahead of me. He glanced around at me, then stopped walking. Then he turned around and walked fast towards me. He grabbed my arms saying "fucking whore fucking bitch" and tried to pull me towards an alley we were standing next to.
This all happened very quickly. As a total reflex I used a Wing Chung method of getting out of a grip that my brother had taught me, and at the same time screamed louder than I knew I could, and ran like fuck until I bumped into some people, who I then got to walk me to my friends house.

A couple of things struck me about this incident I hadn't though about in years:

1.When I screamed not a single person came out of their house.
So please, if you hear screaming like that, at least look out of the window-you never know.

2.I never even reported the incident, which I feel horribly guilty about seeing as this man was clearly on a mission, and God knows how many women and girls he has hurt.

3.I just realised that when my brother kept saying to me things like "right, I'll come up behind you and grab you, so what do you do?" he was trying to protect me, not simply trying to kick my head in!

1. My first thought on being attacked was"he wants to kill me". I really felt that.
   

1. Not everyone feels they can fight an attacker, and if they don't there is no need to have any feelings of responsibility about this-rape is committed by rapists not victims
   

BUT
Actually women can fight men. (Wing Chung is an excellent tool for using men's strength against them)
Also, even if someone is holding a knife to your throat you should never go anywhere with an attacker. Better to get cut in a crowded place than in a deserted place, frankly.
And actually, statistically you are no more likely to be injured if you fight than if you don't, and you are much more likely to escape.
This may be different in the situation of abusive relationships, but it definitly applies to stranger attacks.
Women should not feel powerless because they are simply smaller. But then I am naturally an aggressive bitch!

[aliceliddell]

Xstitch - re-reading this makes me think you got the impression that I believe what I was speculating was the reason why other women might attempt to shift the blame on to rape victims. I'm really sorry if you were hurt by that, it's not what I meant at all. Rapists are responsible for rape, always, with no exceptions.

[SpeedyGonzalez]

HerBex that is a brilliant article. Very thought-provoking. Thank you for posting it.

[xstitch]

I think another reason that rapists try the 'asking for it line' in court is to basically humiliate their victime further. Its an extension of their control of their victim and holding onto some of the power they felt by commititng their act. Unfortunately the system will always support them in this act because their rights will always take presidnce over that of the victim.

Having said that any woman flasely claiming rape should be severely punished.

[HerBeX]

And just for all the lurkers out there, here's another excellent article about force and rape from the same really brilliant blog. www.fugitivus.net/2009/02/06/another-post-about-force/

[HerBeX]

Viz the comments earlier down the thread about how young girls should be taught how to be assertive and say what they want and know it's OK to say no etc., I will as usual post this excellent article which really sums up the problem with that POV. Not that I disagree with that POV, but it is simply impossible to expect women to be assertive in a sexually dangerous situation for them, while we socialise them the way we currently do.

You cannot teach girls and women to suddenly start being assertive in a sexual situation, when you condemn them as being aggressive, unfeminine, mean bitches for being assertive in every other situation in life. Like the article says, you cannot hammer home the message to girls from the day of hteir birth, that asserting what they want straight out is wrong, and then expect them to throw off their lifetime of conditioning at the very moment where they are most vulnerable. It's utterly unreasonable and unrealistic. We need to look at the whole way we raise girls and boys and our attitudes to uppity females and how we are slapped down when we don't conform to gender expectations, because tackling this in a vacuum is doomed to failure.

[SpeedyGonzalez]

Slavewife, if you're still around...? I was listening to the news about poor Milly Dowler today, and they said the man who killed her had 'a thing' about young girls who looked like her. Nobody would say she was responsible for what he did. The same goes for you.

[WriterofDreams]

I totally get the sentiment behind the slutwalk protests but I don't agree with them at all - they're over the top and are unlikely to make the point they're hoping to.

[theinet]

i think that parading around town with the word "slut" painted over your pumped up breasts is likely to attract the wrong sort of attention!

[WriterofDreams]

The analogy of the dollar bills and rolex makes me sick as it implies that there is a direct comparison between expensive goods and a woman's body and that a woman's body can be taken in the same way that goods can be. Stealing someone's watch and money because you're a junky is in no way the same as taking someone's dignity, peace of mind and sense of safety (and also possibly their physical and mental health) and to compare the two, for no matter what reason, is to seriously and falsely diminish the tremendous hurt rape victims experience.

[munkysea]

I've heard the 'walking around Central Park at midnight waving dollar bills and an expensive Rolex' meme a couple of times recently. It's false logic and plain bollocks.

If a lawyer tried to excuse Joe the junkie from robbing Mark the investment banker by insinuating his client wasn't at fault or should receive a lighter sentence due to said circumstances, he would be laughed out of court. And even if a jury member thought privately that to be honest Mark should have been a bit smarter, there's no WAY it would diminish Joe's guilt in their mind or the judge's sentencing.

[wearenotinkansas]

Mummery - agree with comments above. Truly shocking - and genuinely surprising. Intend to quiz DP about this when he gets home - as it seems pretty unlikely to me it's a generally held view.

And WoD - Can't stand Jeremy Vine - as it's always full of half wits spouting vile opinions. I may well listen on iplayer though as I can't quite believe there are people who still think the "she had it coming" rubbish.

[confuddledDOTcom]

mummery reminds me of the Pepsi Max asteroid advert.

[SardineQueen]

mummery that is scary.

Most men don't want to hurt people, surely. Surely?

No of course they don't. IME maybe 0.05% of men are rapey (something like that anyway!). Most men when confronted with an "opportunity" to rape, happily have a cup of tea or another beer or go to sleep or something. Rape is not a normal sexual urge and most men don't do it and wouldn't want to.

[WriterofDreams]

Oops sorry I was looking at mummery's other post. I agree, what he said was really shocking.

[xstitch]

Perhaps you are right alice but imo looking a rape victim in the eye and saying it is your fault, you did really deserve it is pretty low. Or putting it in writing addressed to an individual is bad.

In case anyone was wondering when I was raped I was covered from neck to ankle, my hair needed washed and I had a red nose because I had a stinking cold. I pushed him away said no a few times, progressed to 'bloody well get off me' when he wouldn't listen. I also tried to knee him but it wasn't enough. If I had been significantly physically stronger I would possibly have succeeded so yes I guess it was my fault. Although he was pretty angry so would probably just have knocked me out.

[WriterofDreams]

I don't see anything wrong with mummery's post morebeta, could you explain?

[MoreBeta]

mummery - i'm not sure how to respond to your post as doesn't quite do it justice.

[mathanxiety]

I have a DS and I have always told him if there's even a shadow of a doubt over consent, to stop.

SGM, I agree that the idea that there is a massive grey area of confusion where men and women basically start speaking a whole different language and can't understand each other is baloney and it is basically an enabling device.

Women comfort each other with the idea that only certain women, who behave differently from them, are raped. It gives a false sense of security. It is a very attractive myth. Likewise, the stereotypical rapist in the bushes, the stranger rapist, is given more coverage in the media -- society doesn't want to believe that the rapist is the boy next door. There seems to be a massive amount of resistance to staring the facts about rape in the face.