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Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Government encouraging victim blaming

117 replies

Hazynomore · 23/07/2014 22:10

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

OP posts:
OxfordBags · 24/07/2014 16:45

Again, you're making little sense, and again, you're putting words in my (or other people's) mouth, and again, you're insisting that people are blaming, accusing impugning you, etc., just because they don't agree with it. If it helps you cope thinking you added to the risk, then go for it. It's horrible to witness someone doing that to themselves, but I'll give up. And that's not passive-aggression, it's just the truth. It's obviously how you cope.

Nomama · 24/07/2014 16:57

It's horrible to witness someone doing that to themselves, but I'll give up.

Don't you see that this is what I am talking about. You have decided I am feeling / doing something that I am not. And you are persisting in feeling sorry for me because of it - patronising (and utterly infuriating to be honest).

It might be your truth, but it is not mine and all I am asking is that you stop trying (by repeating and insisting) to convince me that you are right and, therefore, my thoughts and behaviour are wrong.

It is not how I cope. I don't have anything to cope with. It happened. I dealt with it when it happened. I have no issues left over from it, it is part of my past and doesn't intrude on me, now.

Or am I supposed to have remained scarred by it forever? Am I supposed to allowed one man's stupidity and selfishness ruin my life? Fortunately for me and mine I didn't!

SiennaBlake · 24/07/2014 17:42

oxfordbags, you are being incredibly patronising and rude to think you can tell someone how they think and to accuse them of doing something they aren't just because you can't understand their way of thinking. It's infuriating to read as someone who hasn't been through this so I can only imagine how annoying it is to go through a rape and then be told the way you've dealt with it isn't good enough. Your desperation to have the last word is outweighing your ability to recognise that it's a person you are talking to, not some case study in how to think.

TeWiSavesTheDay · 24/07/2014 18:08

Signed.

This is up in our GP too. I particularly hate it because I was completely sober when the drunk and stoned friend of a friend assaulted me.

OxfordBags · 24/07/2014 18:25

Could you two please try and discuss things with me without lying that I am telling people how to think. As Iam now insanely bored of repeating, disagreeing with someone is not the same as telling someone how to think.

But using your own logic, then stop telling me what I think, and what I am saying.

I'm not being patronising when I say it makes me sad to see someone believe that something they did added to rape risk. It genuinely upsets me. It doesn't tally with the claim that it hasn't affected her, either.

I do understand what nomama is saying and her reasons for it. I just don't agree withwhat she is saying about risk. I get that that's her truth and I'm not saying she's not entitled for that to be the case. Just that it's not helpful to others to suggest that women add to their own risk of rape. Her truth helps her, but the message it sends out is unhelpful in actuality to other women. The REAL truth is that women do not add increase or decrease their own risk of being raped. Wanting there to be a clarification has got nothing to do with blaming or putting words in someone's mouth.

Please try and understand this, instead of repeatedly telling me what I am saying and trying to express, instead of going on about about what I'm supposedly inferring from you, without any sense of irony about it.

SiennaBlake · 24/07/2014 18:38

Why would I offer you a courtesy that you can't seem to extend to somebody else? You are rude and you are patronising with many of the things you've said to nomama. I'm hiding the thread now because I don't have the energy to deal with the negativity seeping out of you.

SevenZarkSeven · 24/07/2014 18:52

TeWi what is really awful about this is that they are putting them up in places that people can't really avoid.

A lot of people who have been assaulted find this sort of imagery really distressing, and understandably so.

Nomama · 24/07/2014 18:54

The REAL truth is that women do not add increase or decrease their own risk of being raped.

But you don't stop doing it, Oxford. And to be fair, I have only exchanged one post with Sienna. My longest discussion here has been with you, asking you to try to see how much you are upsetting and infuriating me with your absolute certainty that you are right!

I haven't lied or put words in your mouth. You have persistently 'interpreted' my posts in ways I do not understand and find odd and aggressive. I have said that your insistence on being right is repeatedly telling me I am wrong. That post is the first time you have said you understand what I am saying. Previously you had just called my thinking wrong and 'twisted'.

Please try and understand this, instead of repeatedly telling me what I am saying and trying to express, instead of going on about about what I'm supposedly inferring from you, without any sense of irony about it.

The message I have been trying to get you to hear for some time! But I understand that in doing so I have hectored you. Can you say you realise you have done the same to me?

We disagree. Fine. Accept it and move on without telling me I am wrong and somehow damaging myself, and potentially others, with my twisted thinking. As you do here it's not helpful to others to suggest that women add to their own risk of rape.

I find it less than helpful to suggest that women cannot take steps to make themselves safer. That they cannot be expected recognise behaviours that put them at greater risk, and to avoid them, if at all possible.

We are diametrically opposed. It is a good bet that neither of us are 100% right or wrong.

SevenZarkSeven · 24/07/2014 18:57

I think people are upset about this sort of comment nomama "Of course women have to take responsibility for rape avoidance."

Because if it is your responsibility to do something and you don't do it then you are responsible for the consequences. That is what responsibility is.

That sort of comment really upsets people hence the reaction to your posts I think.

Offred · 24/07/2014 19:11

Wow, how genuinely condescending! I have read your posts nomama and it is nothing to do with misinterpretation or not knowing the right terms.

You think this poster is ok because you think, based on your experience, not drinking can help reduce your risk of being raped.

That's a damaging and misguided thing to say IMO.

JustTheRightBullets · 24/07/2014 19:46

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

OxfordBags · 25/07/2014 01:36

In a misogynist society, all women are at risk of rape. There is no behaviour that puts women at risk of rape, because to be a woman in our society is to automatically be at risk of rape.

In countries where women's selves and lives are diminished to the extent that they are barely recognisable to us in the West as living or being, where women have suffered the most extreme form of FGM, have every inch of their bodies covered, even their eyes, consume no alcohol, do not speak or even look at men, do not go anywhere without being escorted by men, women Still. Get. Raped.

The fact is that there isn't anything women can do to stop men raping, except for taking action against it, and that has to start by supporting other women by never, ever spreading the cruel lie that any responsibility lies with women. This does not make women pathetic, or weak, or puny, whatever - precisely because rape is never a woman's fault. All the glame and shame lies always with the rapists.

Believing that women have some say in rape is what allows people to minimise it, and even deny it, and it allows rape victims to feel empowered, in a twisted way, because if they delude themselves that something they did, however trivial, played a part in the rape, then they had some control over it, even if that means blaming themselves to some degree. Believing that someone did something that led to the rape, however small, is not empowering them to not be a passive victim, it is victimising them.

It should be fucking shocking to accept that women get raped purely because they are women. It should be fucking hard to accept. But until enough people choose to face the truth, nothing is actually going to get done about it.

OxfordBags · 25/07/2014 01:36

Glame? Blame.

GarlicJulyKit · 31/07/2014 23:32

Came back to this thread to applaud your post (from the future Confused) at 01:36, Oxford.

Of course it's hard, and painful, to accept that people do bad things for no reason other than they want to. It's unpleasant for everyone to realise they are at risk, regardless of anything they do or don't do. To make this fact of life even more unpalatable, some very nasty things are more likely to happen simply because of what you are: rape if you're a woman under 45; murder if you're a man under 35; robbery if you're over 65; long-term abuse if you're disabled; sexual violence if you're a child in care. These things happen because there are people who enjoy doing harm to others, in sufficiently large numbers and in specific ways, that they pose genuine threats.

It's a ghastly thought. It's completely natural to want to control the risk. But the only way to control it is by controlling the perpetrators. They are not rational people, but they are human individuals. They're responsible for the damage they do. Society needs to stand together, point at them and hand them all their own blame. Not to act as if they're some kind of invisible force, or an accident that could have been averted. They are not. They're selfish, unpleasant, violent individuals. And that's all they are.

GarlicJulyKit · 31/07/2014 23:32

And I rather like "glame"!

Scarletohello · 31/07/2014 23:51

Brilliant post Garlic. But it's so tiresome that we still have to be arguing these points.

bumbleymummy · 01/08/2014 00:14

Nomama, fwiw, I understand the point you are making too. I agree with a lot of what you have said and I think you are being given an unnecessarily hard time by some incredibly patronising posters.

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