to wonder about the definition of rape

[Justforlaughs]

Partly inspired by the thread about rape being common, I was wondering what people class as rape. Two examples, that I would be interested in your views on. Would either/ both of these class as rape or not.

1. Girl goes to stay at friends house, gets drunk. Friend goes to bed. Girl goes to bathroom, friends DP comes in and wants to have sex. Girl doesn't want to but being very drunk doesn't want to wake her friend up so doesn't scream or fight, just says no repeatedly. She does mean, no, but they have sex anyway.

2)Girl goes to a house party, gets drunk. Goes to bed with her boyfriend and passes out. Wakes up in the same bed, no sign of boyfriend but there are 3 other boys/ men in the bed with her. They say that they all had sex with her when she was out cold. She doesn't remember anything, but they say that she didn't protest.

So what does the mumsnet jury think?

I'm interested too flatpack.

WM I totally agree. You are entitled not to get murdered but someone might take that entitlement away from you on their own whim. How can you mitigate against someone's whim?

I'll help Flatpack out. Here are some simple steps you can take to avoid rape:

If your mate has fallen asleep on the sofa after having had a drink, don't rape her.

If you break in to an old woman's house to steal her money and you find her in bed, don't rape her.

If you have a daughter or stepdaughter, don't rape her.

If you having a rowdy party with your football mates and a woman comes in to the room, don't rape her.

I'm not sure what flat pack needs to produce a pamphlet on all the measures that can mitigate the risk of rape. Surely most people would be able to give their own daughter advice on how to avoid the risk, not just tell them "you may get raped one day, but there are absolutely no measures whatsoever you can take that will reduce the risk".

That's fair, Congo. So what advice would you give a daughter of yours?

What about a woman who is v v pissed-sleeps with a bloke willingly and enthusiastically but has no recollection of it at all. Is that rape?

No Redlocks.

I find it hard to believe you don't know the steps someone can take to reduce rape. You seem to be looking for a fight dana.

Not taking such steps doesn't mean you deserve to be raped. It just means you are more likely to be raped.

How does she know she did so willingly and enthusiastically if she has no recollection at all?

WM I totally agree. You are entitled not to get murdered but someone might take that entitlement away from you on their own whim. How can you mitigate against someone's whim?

• Not walking on my own in Moss Side after dark
• Not going to Yemen
• Not burning copies of the Koran and drawing cartoons of Mohammed
• Not getting into fights with gangsters, yardies or gypsies

Slightly flippant responses, but the point is you can influence the chance of something happening to you and it must be balanced against your wants and needs, etc. It's a balance of risk vs reward.

In a Utopian world, everyone would be nice and nothing bad would ever happen to anyone, no one would do bad things to other people. The reality is much different and we need to accept that reality, or cover ourselves in kevlar-reinforced bubblewrap and never leave the house. "Should" and "ought" don't really come into it.

Some risk avoidance tips from RAINN:

http://www.rainn.org/get-information/sexual-assault-prevention

I'm not looking for a fight Jo. I'm hoping to discuss the idea of mitigating the risk of rape by asking the posters who have mentioned it to explain what they mean. I can't discuss it if I don't know what they're referring to.

I agree with you that the world is a risky place VM but in fact the highest risk of rape for women and children comes from their family and friends. I think you're referring to stranger rape (are you? I'm not sure) which is actually the rarest form of rape. I am of the belief that there's no point in changing your life to mitigate a very small risk but you may disagree.

Could someone point me in the direction of the stats for stranger versus known assailant rape? I used to know the general figures but I can't find them right now and don't want to rely on my baby-brain memory.

The tips given to mitigate risk seem entirely sensible to me. We all have a degree of personal responsibility to take for ourselves. I don't see what possible issue there could be with it.

I particularly agree with the part that says 'sexual assault is a crime of motive and opportunity'.

There is nothing you can do about someone's motive. You can however do your best to limit the 'opportunity'. Which is surely just common sense?

wmmittens who knows where that gem came from but it's definitely something I've heard more than once in idle chatter. Something like leaving a door open is an open invitation or some such. I presume it's a mix of insurance lines, squatters laws and maybe some vampire mythology mixed in - it's certainly not something I ever felt the need to look up.

CailinDana just to reply to your earlier point - it's not the nicest thought in the world to treat our bodies as an extension of our material possessions, but it's a fact that some criminals/perfectly ordinary but entitled people do. My friend was badly beaten as a teenager for a pair of trainers. Again there was no need for him to be walking home from the pub in a not-nice part of town and again it's a decision some people would think madness, still not his fault.

Taking preventative steps doesn't lessen the crime or mean you're accepting the situation for what it is, it just means that you are minimising the chance of being at the receiving end of it. I can lock my door and still be vocal in my dislike of thieves and the causes of their behaviours without been a hypocrite.

If I advise a young girl to ensure she watches her drinks in a nightclub and never leaves a friend to go home alone it doesn't make me complicit in condoning the behaviour of some men, it makes her and her friends a little safer in a realistic situation. There is still a % of a chance that she may experience a sexual assault but it will have decreased that %..

Fair enough. I think, given the context of the thread most people were thinking about rape by people the victim didn't know. I was. I don't agree stranger rape is a very small risk. 1 in 6 women are assaulted, and 1 in 5 rapes are by strangers link, so perhaps 1 in 30 women are assaulted by a stranger.

You're right to ask the question about date rape, as all the relevant research seems to focus on the rapists, not the victims. So perhaps we just don't yet have the answers.

All of these sensible precautions aren't advice to prevent rape. They are advice to prevent assault, mugging and accident. It's exactly the same advice we should be giving our sons and our fathers and our mothers.

As soon as you start implying that rape, specifically, can be mitigated against you cause two dangers. Firstly, that women are some how at fault if they get raped. That their behaviour was risky or that they were asking for it. Secondly, you send the message that rapists are strangers in the dark. The majority of rapists are not.

Our energies shouldn't be about getting a message out to women (and girls and babies) but men.

I have thought about it a lot and I have analysed pretty much everything I've ever said or done and I still cannot find anything I did to increase my chances of being raped. Perhaps it's a symptom of the same stupidity that prevented me from taking proper responsibility for my own safety and allowed myself to be raped.

People say thing like the things said on this thread then express surprise that victims don't talk about why do you think they don't? It's because being raped is humiliating enough without society heaping more on by blaming the victim.

Stranger rape is the rarest form of rape. But we all think that's the way it happens. it doesn't in most cases - it's acquaintance, friends and family members who make up the bulk of it.

So to avoid being raped what should you do?
Take one example
If that mate of a mate guy is walking home your way and says he'll walk with you, should you say no? Statistically its a situation like that which is dodgier than waking home alone and getting dragged into an alley.
So your options are refuse the guys offer and get a taxi (on your own to be on the safe side) - imagine in real life doing that, and how you'd be treated.

Chance it and go with him. 99% of the time that works out fine. If it doesn't, well it's your own fault, you were drinking, you were dressed up, you were chatting flirting all night, you went home with him. It's a grey area, poor guy.
Your other option is not to drink, or dress up, or chat to cancel out the grey areas. Hell - don't go out at all.

I haven't covered nearly everything there of course.

And read the OP again. What should she have done to prevent getting raped. Not gone to a friends house? Really? We should all not go to friend's houses and having a few drinks where men are present? It's not like she knew her friends' DP or pals were the rapey type so should she have just stopped at home on the off chance?

The responsibility is for men not to rape. The fault for a rape happening lies 100% with the rapist. There is not one single thing a woman does that can make a normal, decent non-rapist man rape her. There is nothing a woman should have to do to stop herself being raped, because not being raped or at threat of rape should be the automatic default of every second of her life.

Yes, we all take precautions to avoid dodgy situations, but the responsibility for the crime is never the victim's. However they behave, whatever they do, whatever they wear or don't wear, whatever they say or don't say, wherever they go or don't go - they do not make another adult choose to violate them. It really is that simple.

How are you doing grumpy?

Jothehot and Prettykitty

I usually stay away from threads like these because I find it a particuarly distressing subject, I avoided the other thread that was running.

But I have to say something.

There are reasons that people don't like others talking about minimising risk when it comes to rape.

There are a massive amount of misconceptions surrounding rape. I could see that coming through on the other thread when people were saying that rape isn't that common because noone they knows has been raped. Well excuse me but how the hell would you know? I was raped and also sexually assaulted numerous times by my ex. I also got into difficulty once with another guy. Noone who knows my in rl know this apart from a couple of very close people. People generally don't shout it from the rooftops. In fact many women don't even ever report it to the police.

Regarding minimising risk, of course we should all take care of our personal safety, and most people do anyway, but to even suggest that a woman could have prevented being raped, well it isn't even comparable to being burgled or your car stolen because you left the keys in. It isn't a fucking car it's a womans body. It is one of the most henious crimes, under reported and under convicted, so to even place an ounce of blame on the woman is so, so damaging to the cause.

But think about al of the myths out there. If a woman wears certain clothes she's 'asking for it', a woman who enjoys sex is a 'slag, slapper'. From a young age we're taught to believe that men need sex, that they almost can't control themselves. We have porn shoved in our faces, we're shown that women's bodies are just pieces of meat.

I'm not going to throw in statistics, but lots of people seems to think that rape is about a bad man dragging you up a dark alley at 3am, or because you were so drunk and didn't know what you were doing. Most rapes are carried out by somebody the victim knows and trusts, often in relationships were they may have consented to sex hundreds of times before.

People think that a rape victim would have to be badly injured, that they'd kick and scream, scratch.

You can never, ever understand until you've been in that situation.

I'll tell you what happened to me.

I was in a relationship with a man, I was trying to leave him, and he thought he could 'try it on' with me to stop me leaving. Started kissing and touching me, pushed me on to the bed, I said no, I don't want to, but he thought he knew better. When you've got a 6 foot 3 13 stone man on top of you there's little you can do to even move, I also thought he'd stop as I constantly kept saying 'no, get off, I'm not in the mood for this I just want to go'. But before I even knew it he'd come and that was that. Got up like nothing had happened. Said he 'just got a bit carried away'. I didn't have a mark on me, I didn't scream, fight, I could have I suppose, I could have headbutted him, I could have kneed him in the bollocks. Does that mean it was my fault? Does that mean I could have done more to prevent it? Don't you think I don't ask myself that all the time?

You people just have no clue how awful and damaging what you're saying is.

I hope you are doing ok now 500Days

Copied and pasted from the Rape Crisis website:

Myth Do not go out alone at any time. Women are most likely to be raped outside, in dark alleyways late at night. This is the best way for a woman to protect herself.

Fact The suggestion of avoiding walking alone, especially at night is a common suggestion to avoiding sexual assault. However, only 9% of rapes are committed by 'strangers'. Women are raped in their homes and in their work places where they are less likely to be believed and even less likely to report. This myth can control movements and restricts freedom. This can feel like women are living under a 'curfew' and that it is a woman's responsibility to be either in or out at certain times. Around 90% of rapes are committed by known men.

I hope you know that there is nothing you could have done differently to change what happened 500Days. I know that's not necessarily a positive thing, to feel like you had no control over what happened, but you shouldn't feel any blame or guilt for what that shit of a man did to you.