Government encouraging victim blaming

[Hazynomore]

This petition has just popped up on my facebook page - it's about a poster that says ”one in three reported rapes happens when the victim has been drinking” and it's up in hospitals and GP practices. Shocking.

To sign the petition follow this link : Change.org petition

I signed this when it appeared in my Twitter feed. Horrific victim blaming.
Unbelievable.

Can you imagine the uproar if they did actually aim these at men?

1/3 reported rapes happen when a victim has been drinking. Don't rape.

Rapes can happen in dark alleys. Don't rape.

Rapes can happen if people wear clothes. Don't rape.

It's all so fucked.

If 1/3 rapes happen when a victim has been drinking then I'm clearly safer if I get hammered all the time.

Nice one! raises glass

If this poster was directed at male rape victims I don't think it would have the same tone. It only seems to be women who are to blame for their own rapes. If a man is raped then the blame falls on the rapist, who is portrayed as a scary predator. If a woman is raped then the rapist is portrayed as a poor out of control man who couldn't help himself, and she is blamed. It is nasty.

And as someone who was raped, by my husband, when drunk, this poster would give me an anxiety attack and probably make me cry.

And in the meantime, rapists see the poster and reassure themselves that their victims should've been more careful...

This. Exactly.

Just once, I'd like to see a poster that says "Real men don't rape."

Signed.

As always. The no#1 way to prevent rape is not to rape.

Rocket science 'n shit.

Signed and shared. Awful.

I think another problem with these posters is that there is never any possible end to the 'advice' for women, because they are not the source/cause.

If no woman ever drank alcohol again, all women who got raped would be sober (and in fact this advert basically says the majority of women who get raped are sober anyway!).

If women were covered head to toe, didn't drink, and never went out alone, they would still get raped, and demonstrably do in parts of the world where these kinds of restrictions are already placed on women.

It sounds a horribly crude way to describe it, but the best way I can think to say what I mean is that in 'supply and demand' terms, this is a demand-driven problem, (ie. rapists want to rape).

Therefore rape statistics are unlikely ever to change unless the source of that demand can be dealt with. There is no way to reduce the 'supply' because being a woman is all that has to happen for you to fall into that category. Not a drunk woman, or a woman walking alone. Just being a woman.

The irony, as some pp have pointed out, is that the statistics quoted actually disagree with the advice!!

What that poster says is that women who have drunk alcohol and then been raped could have prevented it by not drinking. That is not true and unfairly puts the blame for that rape on those women. By contrast, those who were raped while sober can hold their heads up? I'm sure that's comforting.

Stupid, stupid message. Signed.

Oxford, just to respond, as you have made a lot of incorrect assumptions about me... all of which bear no resemblance to me, my thoughts and my reactions, feelings etc after the rape.

Your 'insights', however gently intended, are simply incorrect. I don't want to argue the relative merits of rape survival methods, but I find the tone of your posts are victim blaming - you are blaming me for feeling and thinking as I do, knowing I am a victim of rape! Though, to be honest, 'victim' is not how I see myself.

Your assumption that I have some issues to attend to is also wide of the mark, though I suspect you will smile fondly and think 'ah yes, denial, all these subsumed feelings'. Happily you will still be wrong about me.

If you think that me, or anyone else, telling you that you being drunk when you were raped makes you bear ZERO responsibility for what happened, or for any other woman in that situation, is victim-blaming, then there's no point discussing anything with you. If you think that saying that victims have no responsibility for being raped is blaming, then your thinking is so skewed as to make real discussion impossible.

Also, disagreeing with somone is not 'blaming'. It's just disagreeing.

There you go again... the way I think and feel is wrong in your opinion, and so you make judgements... you are 'blaming' me for not thinking as you do - so much so that you are insisting, in your perseverance, your repetition, your determination to be right and to show me how wrong I am.

Has it crossed your mind that my thinking is not skewed? That either a) you have misunderstood me b) your perspective has skewed your reading if my post - both of which are normal, regular occurrences n forums or c) you are just plain wrong!

I ask as you seem to be so very determined that I am wrong. You seem to be very determined to read into my posts something I have not typed and do not think - you are interpreting me incorrectly. I know and have said I have never owned any responsibility for what happened to me. But you seem to disregard that and focus on the rest - what I consider to be common sense, had I chosen not to walk home with a man a barely knew, it may not have happened. Hindsight being 20 -20 I learned from that. I didn't say it was the reason I was raped, just that in doing so I increased my personal risk and, in that once instance, that risk came home.

But again, I know you will twist that and make it all about me blaming myself. But please, do accord me the right to assert what I do think without trying to 'correct' me.

Have not said anywhere that you are wrong. I am merely disagreeing with you. Disagreement doesn't involve blame. Disagreement isn't twisting words. And I am not stopping you asserting anything. I am merely not agreeing with you, and pointing out inconsistencies in your rationale, which is part of discussion. Rather than me reading you wrong, I politely suggest that you are reading what I'm writing wrong. I am not telling you that your feelings are incorrect, but I am challenging your opinions on responsibility or risk.

You didn't increase your risk by being drunk, or by anything you did or didn't do. Nothing about you increased the risk. All the risk came from the rapist. It's contradictory to talk about increasing one's risk but the responsibility not being with the person harmed, that's all.

I am baffled by you wishing to argue me out of seeing you holding zero responsibility for rape or risk of rape. Do you actually want people to agree that you somehow facilitated an opportunity to make rape more likely?

There is some research showing that rapists are more likely to have been drinking when they have raped someone.

So I trust the govt will be producing a poster which tells men to not drink in case they end up raping someone?

Would people support that too?

So you are twice as likely to be raped completely sober than after having consumed any alcohol? But 1 in 6 women drink enough alcohol to develop a health condition caused by alcohol and rape victims are being told that consuming any alcohol at all is a risk factor for being raped?!

It is double thinking and victim blaming.

Nomama, your posts are awful as well as misguided.

You didn't increase your risk by being drunk

That is our sticking point - the bit where you call me twisted.

Had I been sober I would not have walked back alone with him. I would have chosen a less risky route home. I would have gone home with friends.

THAT would have reduced my risk. But I was a tad tipsy, I didn't think it through and I put myself in a riskier position that I could have.

Everything else was down to him.

You see, that is our sticking point, it would seem. I don't blame myself for the decision I made. I had made the same decision many times before, made it again afterwards too. BUT it was a factor in my being in the right/wrong place that night, with that man.

It's contradictory to talk about increasing one's risk but the responsibility not being with the person harmed, that's all.

And I wholly disagree with that too. It is not contradictory, unless you wish to assign blame alongside responsibility. Which you seem to. I don't. It is quite possible to take responsibility for choices without being blameworthy for any result. Someone elses choices have an impact, as you have said. In my case his choices were blameworthy. Mine were unfortunate, on that night, with that man.

Does that help?

Alice: And in the meantime, rapists see the poster and reassure themselves that their victims should've been more careful...

This. Exactly.

Just once, I'd like to see a poster that says "Real men don't rape."

There have been campaigns like that. Remember the TV campaign (aimed at young people, I think) where the rapist/abuser was trapped behind a glass screen watching his actions?

And not long ago (last year sometime) I saw a poster in the toilets at a Surestart centre with an image of a group of women drinking (iirc), with something along the lines of 'She may be drunk but she doesn't deserve to be raped'.

Campaigns like that are out there, so it seems like someone is getting the message about targetting the person who is really to blame -- which is why it's so gutting that posters like the one linked are still being made.

One last point: a poster like the one linked will never prevent a single rape. Okay, let's say a women avoids a situation and doesn't get raped? Yay, good for her. Except that then the rapist will rape somebody else.

It's all very well arguing that it's about protecting yourself. It sounds right, it sounds sensible, but it's forgetting the very real fact that there is a nasty undercurrent of belief in our society that a women who is drunk or dressed/behaving in a provocative way deserves everything she fucking gets, and posters like the one linked just add to this.

It's not just the potential rapists that these posters target; it's the women themselves. How many women do you think have failed to report a rape because they felt somehow that they were to blame? Because they were drunk, because they'd been kissing him, because they led him on.

That message needs to change.

Offred, I suspect I am still not using the approved glossary and so am being utterly misunderstood. Lots of things have been impuned to me that I do not think and have not typed.

I would ask that you don't leap to such a conclusion without thinking that there are other 'truths'. My fault, the thing I am blameworthy for in this thread, is sticking to my guns and refusing to believe that I am wrong. My point of view is mine, valid and does not need any realignment... as I am experiencing.

I will continue to do so for as long as I feel I am being misrepresented and patronised.

Or until the PA, gentle thoughts and other attempts at correcting me make me laugh/swear so much I leave.

GirlMeetsKoi there was a heartbreaking thread recently which revealed the countless posters (myself included) who'd experienced rape/sexual assault and didn't report it for exactly those reasons.

I think I get what you're saying, nomama.

You're saying that he didn't rape you because you were drunk. You're saying that being drunk contributed to you make the choice to go that way home.

You could have been drinking and gone that way home with him and not been raped. You could have been drinking and gone that way home with him and been raped. The drink contributed towards you being in the wrong place and the wrong time but it was still him who raped you. So to say the drink contributed to the situation isn't victim blaming because all you're saying is that without the drink you wouldn't have gone home that way. The rape was all him.

I'm not wording it right but I'm trying to say I get what you're saying and I don't think you are victim blaming or that you aren't being honest with yourself.

Why though, CatKisser?

Maybe that's another difference. I did report mine. I told police the whole story (family, DP now DH and some friends too). I went to his place of work with police and pointed at him. I was prepared and present in court ready to give evidence, but he changed his plea (apparently after he saw me waiting to be called).

I was furious with him and had absolutely no feelings of guilt, a bit of shame for a while, but not of guilt. I was just determined he would be named and shamed and, if possible, would never do it again.

Sienna - thank you! That is what I mean.