Joanna Lumley says don't go out and get drunk...

[JustAHolyFool]

...to avoid being raped.

Daily Mail link, but it's all over twitter too.

link

Don't read the comments unless you fancy some RAAAAAGE.

Wooden - I've just read your latest post. Yes, the panic will be huge - you need to find someone you really trust, who you're confident won't judge your actions, to support you in real life if you can. (I remember sleeping on my friend's floor after her attack so she'd have someone there when she woke up with nightmares). And post here if you think it will help, or PM some of us if you want to discuss anything out of the main thread.

^ What lurcio said.

She is speaking good sense - please hear what she's saying.

and the other thing that is awful is that after the event the victims can be stigmatised by the ignorant; this rape-shaming means that people are misled iinto believing they have culpability for this.

They don't.

The only people to blame for this - ever - is the rapist.

Also, it's occurred to me that the guilt you're feeling might well be there even if you hadn't been drinking. My student friend was a virgin, a committed Christian who was waiting till marriage who was raped by a stranger (don't get me wrong, it would be every bit as horrible if she'd been like me, a cheerful atheist shagging my boyfriend with great enthusiasm) - and she still felt guilty. Why? Because our culture is imbued with sexist shit about women as gatekeepers to sex, women who've had sex being "soiled" and other such total crap. We're subjected to a constant barrage of madonna/whore dichotomy, slut shaming, endless crap like this. When actually sex with consent when both partners want to is fine, it's sexual violence without consent which is the shameful thing, which the perpetrators should feel guilt about.

I will take a while, process and return. I fear the tears are coming. lurcio I will, thank you.

Thank you. All of you.

If my DH saw a woman drunk and puking in the gutter at night he would help her or call the police to help because he is not a rapist. A rapist may rape her. Just like a rapist may rape his wife or girlfriend or the woman he is working late with in the office or the babysitter.

The difference, for me at least, is society is so quick to seize on what the woman should have done differently and it is so easy to zoom in on the alcohol and the being alone at night in a way that couldn't be done for a woman working alone etc.

Agreed Lurcio. My mum is from a different country and culture. When she found out id lost my virginity at 18 she told me i was "ruined for all other men" and that id "spoiled myself"
My upbringing has really left its mark.
Im really disappointed in JL for this.
I can imagine my mum watching it on the news or seeing it in the paper and nodding sagely.
It makes me feel sick.

Yes, don't go out and get so drunk that you are puking in a gutter. I think that's pretty sage advice for anyone.

What it has to do with rape, I have no idea.

Sending you hugs, Woodentop x

Oh Wooden ive only just read your post. Sending you hugs and support. xx

Don't get too drunk to find your taxi and get home safely.

Don't get so drunk that you say yes when in the morning you realise you mean no.

Perfectly good advice.

Getting pissed does make you vulnerable to all types of no good.

We do our DDs no favours in not pointing this out to them.

We can be as PC as we like about exactly how we phrase it,
But don't get drunk past the point your common sense goes out the window is still something our DCs of both sexes need to understand.

No a woman being drunk does not excuse a rapist his crime is just the same. The final choice to commit rape is his and his alone however drunk she may be.
But many rapes are opportunist crimes, they are not strongly premeditated. Don't leave your handbag on the seat of the car, your wallet in your back pocket or your brain in a bottle of vodka. All make sense to me.

"Charlizee, are you comparing being robbed of 300 pounds to being sexually violated? "

I think you took my post the wrong way. I copied it from the commetns as an example of what people tend to think. I didn't say I agreed with it.

Like every other kind of criminal, the police and criminologists have profiled the different kinds of rapists so that they can find them. It isn't as if society doesn't know what the characteristics of rapists are. Obviously in the vast majority of rapes the victim and rapist interact prior to the rape. So the responsible thing for everyone to do would be to familiarise themselves with pre-rape behaviour of rapists so that we can intervene when we see people who are in danger by challenging the person exhibiting pre-rape behaviour.

As for making up ludicrous arguments based on no evidence that what you wear makes you more vulnerable to rape, it is certainly the case that certain kinds of rapists will target women who are viewed as more dispensable and less important by bystanders. So if we all target women in certain kinds of clothing for criticism, be they women in a hijab or women in short skirts, so will sex offenders.

And I will continue to binge drink whilst scantily clad. Fortunately my friends don't believe in rape myths, and won't act like bystanders because of what I'm wearing or how much I've had to drink, and neither will I.

Charlizee, if you copy a quote from somewhere else, that quote is inflammatory and you then give no clue as to your own opinion, then how do you expect people to take it?

In fact, as all you have posted further is that you "didn't say you agreed with it", you have not as yet said whether you agreed or disagreed with it, so I am no further forward as to knowing your actual opinion.

Wooden, FWIW I used to get disgracefully drunk all the time when I was studying abroad. One night I was so drunk that I fell asleep on the loo and when I woke up, the door had moved to the floor - I realised this was an optical illusion due to having drunk so much, so managed to make it swish round to the right way up. I tell you that to illustrate just how out of it I was.

My two male friends part-dragged, part-carried me home and dumped me in one of the beds in their flat. They then went off to their own beds to sleep.

They didn't rape me because they're not rapists. You had the terrible luck to meet two rapists. If they hadn't been, they would have either left you to it, or got you into a taxi and saw you safely home without raping you. They chose to rape you, just as my friends chose not to rape me. Our behaviour was not the deciding factor in whether we were raped or not - that of the men we were with, was. It was not your fault you were raped - it was their's, because they chose to do that when they could have made a different choice. You might find a call to the rape crisis helpline helpful. 0808 802 9999

Oh and this: "men are also perfectly capable of picking up a newspaper or magazine or switching on the television, seeing these warnings, and potentially internalising the message that it is okay to attack a woman who is vulnerable in such a way."

That point is brilliant and should be hammered home again and again - of course, when these warnings are repeated over and over again, boys and men are learning that it's somehow acceptable to rape girls and women who are really drunk or dressed in a certain way. Of course that's a thing, how come I've never heard that voiced before? Thank you for pointing that out, it is a really important reason why this focus on women not getting drunk or "dressing like hookers" or whatever the latest "cause" of rape is, is so harmful.

I agree with Fastidia. I think it contributes to the idea of certain type of woman being less worthy of respect.

Going out and getting drunk can be part of growing up. I once got so drunk I ended up throwing up in the gutter when I was a teen. It certainly taught me a lesson - that getting so blind drunk was not worth the hangover the day after.

Girls need room to be able to make their own mistakes and learn from them without fear of being raped.

Yes, that's true Puddle, but I think the problem is that lots of men and boys do lean towards that idea.

I think it's absolutely normalised and of course, one of the reasons is that it's being hammered home over and over again, every time one of these messages goes out.

Not saying that some men will become rapists because of it - but they will have less empathy with a rape victim, they will not see it as quite such a problem if friends of their's have raped in those circumstances and if they sit on juries, they will acquit rapists. Basically, those messages support and maintain rape culture, don't they? They are an essential part of "othering" rape victims and ensuring that most people identify more with a man accused of rape and believe that he must have been falsely accused (even though there's a 94% chance of the allegation being true), than they do with a woman who says she's been raped because if she was behaving in the way that they are constantly being bombarded with messages that women shouldn't behave, there is a logic going on there which says that at some level, it's her own fault for behaving "like a rape victim".

I think the Ched Evans case, with his astonishingly stupid rape-apologist supporters, is a classic case-study of that tbh.

That quote from catladycourtney1 that Fastidia just required is brilliant and a bit of a lightbulb moment for me. Of course if women are internalizing these messages then so will men. This is part of how they achieve the sense of entitlement required to rape women. Hey presto the creation of a rape culture.

not required, requoted

Yep, lightbulb moment for me as well AA.

MN still has its moments. [bwink]

Thank you so much catladycourtney1.

Yes Fastidia it is a continuum. If these views get supported by family, friends people they meet in authority then the man is more likely to internalise, he is more likely to lack empathy, he is more likely to have that sense of entitlement.