Being drink does not mean you deserve it.

[OhNoMyFanjo]

I have been reading some comments on tge DM site re an interview with a women who was raped. Her rapist has just been convicted. She has had many terrible things said about her in her community due to the rapist being a pillar of tge community.

I wanted to share this comment that someone has made as it sums up what should be obvious to everyone but unfortunately there are some people who don't get it.

You don't get raped because you are drunk - you vomit because you are drunk. You get raped because the rapist standing next to you made the decision to rape you and acted on it. The rapist is the only one accountable for going on to rape a person. End.

Or would be less likely to do...

Well, I've been to Rio, Venezuela, Jordan etc and nothing happened to me. By myself too.

What does that prove?

@LemarchandsBox... that's not an argument either. We all spend our lives assessing personal risk and weighing up options on a constant basis. There are people who never step out of the front door and we call them 'paranoid'. There are others that walk down Oxford Street with handbag unzipped and a purse on display and we call them 'foolish'. The rest of us are inbetween trying to steer a course between living a full and interesting life and not putting ourselves in harm's way.

I agree that we are not responsible for keeping safe.

We take certain risks, which should be calculated, but they are still risks. It's up to us how much risk we accept.

If every woman stopped drinking today it would not change the rate of rapes.

I don't think anyone is being hostile, we are challenging rape myths and if debate is taken as hostilty it means that people who believe this particular myth are blindly hoping that it will protect them from rape.

What we are trying to say is that it won't and we want you to be as safe as possible and that includes not believing dangerous myths.

Rapists are not the typical Bad Man hiding behind a wall waiting to jump out on someone who has made the wrong assessment on a night out, in the majority of cases.

Majority is the word.:)

But that's why I do open the door to salesmen, but not ex. :(
(he didn't rape, btw, just to be clear)

Getting drunk is not putting yourself in the way of rapists ffs. Rapists aren't like potholes in the road. It would be handy if you could sue the council for not marking rapists clearly, mind you.

What on earth makes people think you're more likely to be raped if drunk?

If it was like that, they wouldn't bother to spike victims' drinks would they. They could just wait until she got pissed, then do their raping.

What if you had a bottle of wine at home and then a bad man broke in a raped you?
Where does the personal resposibilty come in there?

Would he be less likely to rape you if you had gone to bed with a mug of cocoa?

How is not believing this "myth" will keep me safe, specifically?

The myth btw is about fault and responsibility and we all agree on that.

The myth deals more with reporting and dealing with the aftermath.

Not with prevention.

Check the rape threads and most people were in a vulnerable position. Drunk, asleep, drugged or too young.

Not sure stating what would happen IF all women stopped drinking classes as fact or even an argument. How do you prove or disprove it?

FFS! Every woman has the right to go out and get absolutely blathered without a man putting his penis in her. How many of us have been drunk and NOT raped? Not because we're better at being sensible while drunk than other women, but because THERE WASN'T A RAPIST THERE TO RAPE US!

I'm really not seeing the logic here. If there is a rapist hanging around waiting for his victim who is he more likely to pick - the sober women walking home in a group or the woman staggering home drunk by herself? Are some of you really saying that everyone is at equal risk in those situations?

It's not as simplistic as drunk = unsafe and sober = safe. I don't believe intelligent person seriously thinks that.

In most cases though the rapist isn't hanging around waiting to pounce on the most drunk woman!

But if a rapist can choose between a drunk potential victim and a sober one, which do you think he'll choose?

I'll take my chances as sober next to a drunk woman, thank you very much.

Lots of crimes are crimes of opportunity.
It's very difficult to avoid the decided criminals, but basic precautions should put the opportunists at bay.

I found the whole article really hard to read, the woman who it had happened to keeps apologizing all the way through for drinking so much and pretty much says if she hadn't got so drunk it wouldn't have happened.

You can practically hear the guilt dripping out of her

It made me so angry, she should have every right to get as hammered as she wishes, there is no blame on her for being pissed, ALL the blame is on the twat with a cock.

I am still fuming, it makes me want to cry.

I was walking away from this thread, but thought I may need to make an obvious point after all.

Rape is not an opportunistic crime.

Rapists don't come over all "phwoar" at the sight of a drunk in a short skirt, then find they can't help themselves. Perhaps that's where the misconceptions repeated by (mercifully few) posters above come from.

Rapists pick their victim. Then they do whatever is needed to enact the fantasy in which they've given her a role.

Sometimes there's a fantasy in which the victim is pissed and "gagging for it". But he will still have selected one victim from all the other drunk women on hand. It's not because she's drunk, it's because she's a certain drunk at a certain place & moment. He is the only reason she didn't get to stagger home safe that night, while others did. Not her outfit, where she was, or what she was singing.

I couldn't read it, GK, I'm all worn out with victim-blaming :( Self-blaming by victims is even more painful.

WMM, we agree with that.

All rapists should be punished, regardless of victim status!

But I'll certainly tell my son to avoid getting drunk to lower his chances of assault and other harm, as I would a daughter. Rape is only one of the bad things that can happen more easily when drunk.

It would be nice to think we can control sociopaths' actions by amending our own.
We can't, they don't care about anyone else's actions. That's why they're sociopaths.

Well it's the same argument as the pedophile on every corner isn't it.