To say that the UK is not a Rape Culture?

[PatriarchyPersonified]

So I have had an argument with a lady I work with today that has ended with her calling me the "Patriarchy Personified", hence the name.

She claimed that the UK was a Rape Culture. I completely disagree and it feels like this is more creeping 'third wave' bullshit.

If you look at the definition of Rape Culture which is:

a society or environment whose prevailing social attitudes have the effect of normalizing or trivializing sexual assault and abuse.

Then it's clear that she is wrong. I don't disagree that there are elements of UK society that I would argue probably are characterised in this way, but you can not describe the whole UK in those terms.

She was extremely unhappy to be challenged, I work with her on a weekly basis and I've got a feeling I'm not going to have heard the last of this!

Rather:::::"Ever had a close call"

I’m only giving my opinion here as an individual whose job is to retrieve digital evidence and who is frequently exposed to cases/individuals who have perpetrated the very crimes we discuss. I’m not presenting it as fact.

When I say ‘hysteria’ I don’t mean on here, I mean within society in general.

However, it is interesting that RAINN seem to support my personal belief that it is a small, divergent section of society that perpetrate these crimes. They certainly have credibility in this area and are perhaps the biggest organisation of their type in the world.

Looking at the statistics on RAINN’s website it seems that over half of rape perpetrators already have at least one criminal conviction. This to me doesn’t point to them being ‘ordinary men who’ve gone too far’ at all.

You're focussing on men who have been prosecuted for rape. What percentage of rapists does that represent, given what we know about rates of reporting?

The vast majority of rapists are somebody's boyfriend who probably doesn't even realise that what he just did was rape. The survivor of the rape probably doesn't realise it want to believe it either, so the whole thing gets swept under the carpet and either doesn't happen again or happens again 3 times a week for years depending on how much of a knob the perpetrator is. These guys are 'normal' everyday blokes.

Sorry, the punchline to that was that nobody involved is thinking of this as rape so it never gets near the statistics. And that, folks, is how rape culture works.

But if all these rapes are unreported how can you know with such certainty that there are so many?

I could state that the majority of rapes are committed by women but that men are too ashamed to report them. I don’t believe that for a second but it’s a similar argument. We can only use facts if we are going to have a logical debate.

It depends what you mean by 'reported'. Women tell all sorts of things to health professionals that they wouldn't dream of reporting to the police. They 'report' to their friends and to rape survivors' support groups and anonymously on the mumsnet relationships board and via the #metoo hashtag. Many of us also know it happens because it's happened to us.

I do honestly hate to feel like I’m diminishing something here which is such a horrible crime and has undoubtedly ruined so many lives. It’s truly not my intention.

However, when we have a minority group representing less than 10% of women repeatedly throwing around anecdotal evidence which not only casts men in an extremely bad light but is also in stark contrast to the views expressed by possibly the world’s largest rape charity (and my own personal experiences as somebody who is involved in such cases)....well, I can’t just accept it without scrutiny.

I hope I’m wrong but I can certainly believe that some feminists would have an incentive for pushing an argument which presents them with a good reason to tell men to hang their heads and check their privileges.

BCS for a start.

And because women talk Stig. They add up all the women they know who've been raped and compare it to the number who reported it. In my case 4/0. And they talk to other women with comparable experiences and they find that their and their friends experiences are representative of many many other women. And they find that sexual violence charities report the same thing.

And they realise that broadly most women don't report rape or sexual abuse or sexual harassment and when they do it's often minimised or disbelieved.

So then you get situations like Harvey Weinstein which seem to have shocked men but women not so much. And situations like my school which is currently undergoing investigation for harassment and abuse that no-one reported at the time. We all knew it went on though. We just thought that's how the world was.

I abhor rapists but I am genuinely convinced that they are a small and deviant subset of the male species. RAINN agrees with me and has been very vocal about it.

However, when we have a minority group representing less than 10% of women

Hmmm.. You invented entirely bogus stats on 'feminists' and witter about 'facts'.

Newsflash: all western women are feminists unless they want to hand back their right to education, to work, to vote, to equal pay.

We do not speak as feminists we speak as women. Women who do not self identify as feminists, despite being so nonetheless, still report the same phenomena wrt sexual violence.

Tbh men who talk about feminists in this way are generally ime not very well educated.

I can actually believe that it’s under reported like many crimes. I’ve seen friends of mine get beaten up and fail to report it, putting it down to ‘too much booze’ or whatever.

I can imagine that it’s the same for sexual assault. However, I still don’t believe that it’s ‘ordinary men who slip up’. That’s something of an insult to the ordinary man who would never dream of doing such a thing.

Most men are extremely quick to react when they see somebody acting violently to a women - ironically, the guys who are most likely to wolf whistle at a woman are IME also the ones who are most likely to clump you one for seeing you hit a woman.

From the Rape Crisis website

• Approximately 85,000 women and 12,000 men are raped in England and Wales alone every year; that's roughly 11 rapes (of adults alone) every hour. These figures include assaults by penetration and attempts.

Nearly half a million adults are sexually assaulted in England and Wales each year

• 1 in 5 women aged 16 - 59 has experienced some form of sexual violence since the age of 16

• Only around 15% of those who experience sexual violence choose to report to the police

• Approximately 90% of those who are raped know the perpetrator prior to the offence

These figures come from An Overview of Sexual Offending in England and Wales, the first ever joint official statistics bulletin on sexual violence released by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), Office for National Statistics (ONS) and Home Office in January 2013.

As well as this:

• 31% of young women aged 18-24 report having experienced sexual abuse in childhood (NSPCC, 2011)

• In 2012-13, 22,654 sexual offences against under-18s were reported to police in England and Wales with four out of five cases involving girls (NSPCC, 2014)

• Most women in the UK do not have access to a Rape Crisis Centre (Map of Gaps, 2007)

• A third of people believe women who flirt are partially responsible for being raped (Amnesty, 2005)

• Conviction rates for rape are far lower than other crimes, with only 5.7% of reported rape cases ending in a conviction for the perpetrator. (Kelly, Lovett and Regan, A gap or a chasm? Attrition in reported rape cases, 2005)

I’m not making things up. The below thread has the relevant links and also includes many women voicing the opinion that they really dislike it when ‘feminists’ speak on their behalf and say “well, you ARE a feminist even if you don’t think you are.”

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2806959--to-feel-depressed-that-only-7-of-UK-identify-as-Feminist

Ad hominem attacks are also a sign of uneducated debaters. Rather than argue with me, why don’t you attempt to explain why RAINN also share my view.

How many women in that report agreed with feminist principles, whilst not calling themselves a feminist?

But, all feminists are man haters, eh? Never heard that before.

Those statistics are depressing and indicative of a genuine problem.

However, ‘sexual assault’ isn’t the same as rape necessarily and we are talking about unreported rapes, not what could be a pinched bum or or a grabbed breast (horrible but not in the same league).

Also, there is nothing in those states that refutes my belief that the perpetrators do not represent the average man, or the ordinary man who has gone a little too far.

A rape culture is a culture in which men argue that a conservatively-estimated 97000 rapes (of adults alone) per year are being committed by a small number of 'deviants'

And in which it's de rigueur for men to dismiss and disbelieve the lived experience of women wrt rape and sexual assault.

Who said “all feminist are man haters”? I didn’t hear that either.

You can’t expect men to just accept what is basically slander against their gender without any challenging of the facts, especially when one of (if not the biggest) sexual assault charities in the world also refuted the claim.

Better tell that to RAINN then, Genghis.

They’ve dealt with over 2.5 million cases so should really know this by now...

"Slander against their gender" oh bless, it must be terribly upsetting for you. How awful, to think that women might say something unkind about men.

Anyway, I don’t think this is going anywhere so I’m out.

I’ve said my piece and I respect (if not agree with) your views.

You said 7% of women were feminists, whereas what you actually meant was 7% of women self indentify as feminists but are feminists all the same. I'm guessing you don't know many women...

RAINN stats refer to rape perpetrators referred to prosecutors - in other words cases that have a reasonable chance of conviction.

Prior history of convictions are admissable in UK courts in a number of ways - bad character application for example. Depending on what the conviction is for it may help the case - if it was a prior sex offence or physically assaulting a woman.

Petty criminals are potentially more likely to get caught as they're coming into contact with police for other reasons. Quite a few cold cases have been solved that way.

RAINN, don't share your view btw, and if you read more of the website you'd soon see that.

Because you don't understand anything about rape as a crime you're misinterpreting the stats.

What does it say on the front page: "Don't question survivors don't question our experience".