'Sussex Police is taking an innovative approach' to their new Rape awareness campaign

[DuelingFanjo]

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Innovative my arse.
Their Twitter response has been "we are not blaming victins! We can reduce number of victims in many ways. Friends can play a key role"

I would like to know which activities do they consider to be vulnerable and risky? Maybe just being a woman? Going out? Drinking?

Right, ok Dragon. Im in a bar. Im with my friends. There is a rapist in the bar, watching the women. I have 3 drinks, i stay with my friends, we share a taxi home. I dont get raped.

Thats not a rape being prevented. Mainly because "potential rape victim" isnt my default setting, nor should it be anyone elses, and thats what you do when you give out this advice based on rape myths. You tell women to assume that they will be raped unless they take action to avoid it.
But also, if the rapist hasnt raped me because im a good girl and ive stuck to the dont-be-a-victim rules, has he gone home without raping? Or has he stayed in the bar, and raped someone else? Someone who tried to follow the rules, but accidentally got separated from their friends? Someone who he spoke to and who agreed to go home with him? A barmaid as she headed home after closing time? Which victims have to accept responsibility for not taking enough anti-rape precautions?

This shit doesnt prevent rape, it displaces rape AND give people a reason to not sympathise with the victim because good girls follow the rules, good girls dont get raped.

ok - but in another scenario, that rapist goes home alone because he doesnt stumble upon a vulnerable young girl who has been separated from her friends either

what i am trying to say is that SOME cases of rape are avoidable, if less than 10% are by strangers, which is still too much, how many of those are opportunist "walking past and saw someone" we dont know, we dont know how many are planned... and how many are arseholes taking advantage and could have been avoided

from this thread, i guess you cannot avoid a rape by doing anything except leaving your vag at home?

i give up, my world is not as black and white, and i have said my piece. its my fault i cannot explain it as well as i think it.

I don't mean to be rude but, I'm struggling to see which but you are finding so difficult to understand Dragon.

But if hes a rapist, and he doesnt rape someone that day, he will another day. Because expecting no woman to ever go anywhere alone is unrealistic. The rape would still happen. Because the man is s rapist.

You can't explain it because it doesn't make sense Dragon. You can't control another person's actions. A rapist actively chooses to rape. To believe you can somehow prevent someone else's voluntary actions is just plain mad.

and how many are arseholes taking advantage and could have been avoided

so here's the crux isn't it? Because those arseholes, thanks to a campaign by Sussex Police, might think it ISN'T their fault, they were tempted into by those naughty girls who are out on their own after dark instead of walking around in the safety of the herd, avoiding the rapists.

Whereas if the campaign said "Rapists! Don't rape people!" the message might actually get through.

The issue here is with the campaign being run. And coming from the authorities, it is the wrong message. Coming from your mum - maybe good advice.

Rape should never ever be phrased as 'taking advantage'

And actually, no Dragon, leaving your vag at home wont work either, since you are most likely to be raped by someone you know, like a husband or partner who would have access to your home and your unprotected vag, which would obviously break the good-girl-be-vigilant-or-get-raped rules. And because you can be orally raped. And anally raped.

You know what prevents rape? Making women feel like they can report rape. Ensuring police officers investigate properly. Smashing rape myths so juries arent confused by them. Judges handing out harsher sentences. You know how that prevents rape? By removing rapists from society. You cant lock up your vagina, but you can lock up rapists.

You can't lock up your vagina, but you can lock up rapists.

? This.

TheCrow that's it exactly.

YY Dueling, and that "taking advantage" view of rape is the mindset that this campaign promotes.

It's utter bullshit.

Moving slightly off from stranger rape, but still applicable, if you want to get really wild and innovative, you can teach people, starting as young as possible, about consent. What it is, what it isnt. That its not embarressing or weird to ask "is it ok if..." or "do you want me to stop?" Etc. That consent should be enthusiastic, not reluctant. That unconcious people cannot consent. That you cant assume consent, ever, even if you have had sex with a person a billion times before. That consent to one thing is not consent to all things. And that consent can be withdrawn at any time, regardless of how naked you are, or wether you are already having sex. Because actually, these are not lessons that people are having. Some people genuinely dont get it. And the more you teach it, the less we will see these so called "grey area" rapes, where men claim they didnt know she didnt want it. If you are expected to make sure the person you are with actually wants to have sex then that will be no defence at all.

My ex bf had some body issues and disliked being touched, and found sex really challenging. It absolutely did not "kill the mood", or whatever, to ask him "can i touch you?", "is that ok?", "do you want to have sex?". Knowing his own issues, and mine, with regards to being a survivor of rape, he did the same. If either of us sensed reluctance, we stopped. We both knew that every time we had sex that we both really, really wanted to do it. How is knowing that NOT considered sexy?

Great post gin. There was an article on the bbc website about schools starting to teach consent lessons as part of pshe, will see if I can find it and post a link.

[http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/education-32217249]

m.bbc.co.uk/news/education-32217249

Apologies for initial link fail.

no no no " Because those arseholes, thanks to a campaign by Sussex Police, might think it ISN'T their fault," the problem is that you are looking at this campaign in the wrong way, no one is even hinting that this is NOT the rapists fault, what they are saying is there are steps we can take to avoid SOME, not all attacks, rapes or otherwise

take the rape out of the conversation as rape makes everyone have a red haze, and make it a mugging, no one ever blames the victim of the mugging, but we all know that there are areas its not safe to walk alone, and when you hear someone has been mugged because they walked there alone you cannot help but think "why did they walk there alone?"

the problem is that you are looking at this campaign in the wrong way

I have a feeling that we aren't the ones who are looking at the campaign in the wrong way...

you cannot help but think "why did they walk there alone?"

I can honestly say that I have never thought that after hearing someone has been mugged.

But there aren't any campaigns telling people not to walk home alone in fear of being mugged Dragon.

Why is it specifically not safe for women to go home alone? As one of the responses to the poster says: "Are the men in Sussex really that dangerous? What are the police doing about this?"

The same level of blame towards the victim and excusing rapists actions is not applied to victims of mugging and the perpetrators. If it were then there would be threads and threads about it on MN, a bit like this one.

by saying this doesnt lessen the behaviour of the rapist or make it any less horrific, and thats what i feel a lot of people are saying, that if some/any of the 'guilt' is on the victim or their friends, then its less on the attacker. There shouldn't be any level of guilt on the victim. The fact you are attributing that does lessen the guilt of the attacker.

Responsibility for a crime is a finite thing i.e. the total of responsibility will equal 100%. You can't have the perpetrators completely responsible and the victims a little bit responsible. Either the perpetrators are wholly responsible or responsibility is shared somehow between perpetrator and victim (even if that were 90%:10% for example. It still has to add up to 100). So yes saying a victim should feel guilt or be responsible in any way does take away from the responsibility of the attacker.

"take the rape out of the conversation as rape makes everyone have a red haze, and make it a mugging"

why should we take rape out of the conversation when the poster campaign is clearly about stopping women from getting raped and sexually assaulted?

"but we all know that there are areas its not safe to walk alone, and when you hear someone has been mugged because they walked there alone you cannot help but think "why did they walk there alone?""

So putting rape back into the conversation it naturally follws that you think that people, yourself, I (?) would naturally think 'Why did she walk into that rapist alone?' or 'why did she put herself in the position where she got herself raped'... which is victim blaming.

You have just demonstrated why the way you and many others think is wrong.

I don't see how this poster would help, even if you ignore all the victim-blaming. When I used to have a social life, we went out as a mixed group, and we'd walk back from town, sometimes going back to someone's house, other times becoming a smaller group as we passed people's homes and they went in. Sometimes people paired off, or you might end up as the single woman with a couple of men, just because of the geography of where we all lived. But it was okay, because we were all friends and looking out for each other.

And in my case, it was okay, but unfortunately for some women, that's exactly the situation where they're at most risk, because you're more at risk of being raped by someone you know.