sigelphoenix

I have a serious question for people out there.

How many of you think that a woman who wears skimpy clothing, acts flirtatious with men, goes to a party, or gets drunk is partially to blame if she gets raped? (I don't mean in a "That slut deserved what she got" kind of way, which shifts the blame from the rapist to the victim entirely. That morally repulsive viewpoint is, thankfully, only expressed by a few worthless individuals.) I mean the less blatant, yet more insidious, feeling of, "Well, she could have done this or this differently ..." On the other side of the coin, you might see a woman engaging in one of these behaviors and think that she should watch out because she's being risky. In other words, you assume that a woman bears part of the responsibility for being raped or not raped.

I'll be honest: I have. I still do, in some ways; it's something I'm working on, but it's slow going. And, sadly, I'm not alone: Amnesty International published a study this past November that showed that anywhere from a quarter to a third of people in the United Kingdom think that a woman's behavior can make her partially responsible for being raped. These behaviors include anything from flirting to having many sexual partners to "failing to say 'no' clearly." Almost a third of people answered 'yes' to that last one. A third. As if sex is not something that a woman offers, but is by default granted to a man, and it's her responsibility to say 'no' and stop him, not his to make sure she's saying 'yes.'

(Oh, and a certain percentage of respondents said that women who engaged in each of these behaviors was "totally responsible" for being raped, as you'll see if you download the full report. Misogynist pieces of shit. And yes, I'm including any women who answered this way.)



"Common Sense"

It's horrific -- and yet I also know just what it feels like to think that way, to have that gut response to place the woman at blame. And it's hard. It's hard to let go of ingrained attitudes that masquerade as "logic" or "common sense." We all know what "asking for it" means. We all know the ways of dressing, socializing, or partying that are included in that phrase. And I've bought into that mentality myself, as recently as this past June when I wrote a post all about how women can "protect themselves." Looking back now, I'm embarassed at myself. The advice I wrote isn't all worthless (I'll get to that later), but why, when I starting thinking about sexual violence, was my first impulse to say something about what women should do to protect themselves, rather than saying a thing about what the perpetrators -- men -- should do?

Recently there was a meme in which ginmar made a list of "Helpful tips to avoid rape." You can read it, but basically it's a response to all the lists of advice (like mine) that tell women how not to be raped: don't be around any men, don't wear any kinds of clothes, don't go to any kinds of places. No, that's not actually feasible. Yes, that is the point.

This satire does a lot of things. The first is that it points out that these lists of "advice" are useless, because they tell women to avoid doing things that aren't actually "causes" for rape. "Don't walk alone at night" or "don't wear revealing clothing" may sound like practical advice -- but since most rapes are committed by men that the victims know, and not by a stranger attacking women in a dark alley, it's not really helpful. All it does is scare women without actually alleviating the problem. If you actually do try to base your advice at what rape victims wear or do, you end up sounding like the satirical post: "Don't wear skirts -- oh, wait, not jeans, either -- oh, and not sweatsuits ..."

Blaming the Victim

Also, and more importantly, it shifts the focus of our energy from punishing the actual criminals to policing the potential victims. We look at what women do -- which means we pay attention to their behavior -- which means we start to blame them for not acting "correctly." All this while, men -- rapists are overwhelmingly male, and usually attack women -- are not examined or blamed.

And why is this a problem? After all, why does it matter if we "examine" rapists, or even if we blame them, if they'll be subjected to the legal system anyway? Won't they get their rightful punishment?

Bear in mind that rape is a notoriously under-reported crime. Of course, you can't count how many rapes occur if the victims don't come forth, but Amnesty International estimates that only one in five is reported. And AI's study states that only 5.6% of reported rapes actually lead to convictions (that may only be for the UK, though).

But even if we don't include all of that, let's look at the way that this pervasive sense of blaming the victim, of scrutinizing their behavior instead of their rapists, bleeds into the legal system. Consider how rape victims need to "prove" that they were victims -- how even in the courtroom they have to answer to people who ask why they were wearing revealing clothing, why they were drinking, why they weren't virgins. If you think that makes sense, imagine what would happen if other crime victims received the same treatment. Imagine what would happen if, when you were the victim of a crime, you would have to prove -- not that the crime happened, not even that the accused was the one who committed it -- but that you weren't "asking for it."

Fear, Guilt, Shame

Still, we keep saying the same things, passing on the same email forwards, believing the same myths about rape prevention. Why? The best theory I've heard as to why women would perpetuate this pattern of shifting the responsibility to the victim instead of the rapist is this: women are scared. We can't deny the numbers -- take a look at some statistics. One way of easing the fear, though, is imagining we have some sort of control. And if people say that the women who get raped do this or act like that, it's easy to feel reassured. ginmar said it well in her satirical post: "All rape victims share the same characteristics, if we study them we can avoid making their mistakes." You can think, "I'd never be dumb enough to get drunk/flirt with a stranger/have sex with multiple partners." The conclusion? "I'll never be raped."

"There but for the grace of God go I" is cold comfort when you're faced with a worldwide epidemic of rape. But if you can separate yourself from the victims and assure yourself that you would "never" do what they did, you can fool yourself into believing that what happened to them will "never" happen to you.

As for men -- well, I think it's pretty simple to see why men would buy into this bias: guilt. It's not that all men want a free pass to rape, and perpetuate victim-blaming just to get themselves off the hook. To be sure, that's the case for some men, but the majority of men are decent human beings -- are not rapists. But rape does happen, far too often, and nearly all of the time the rapist is a man. It's pretty sobering knowledge to know what your sex is capable of.

Blaming the victim is a way to ease the guilt. It's like straight people who aren't violent against gay people, but will buy into the "gay panic" legal defense that says defendants who were propositioned by gay people were justified in their violent, sometimes homocidal, reactions. (This is less common now, but was attempted by lawyers in the Matthew Shepard case.) It's also similar to white people who criticize anti-racist efforts by trying to point out how people of color are racist (against whites or against other POCs). People who feel guilt about the actions of their group try to alleviate it by focusing criticism on the victims -- thereby making their own group look justified, or at least not as bad in comparison.

But making women responsible for preventing rape, and blaming them when it happens anyway, isn't the way to solve the problem of rape, or the fear of rape, or the guilt over rapists. It just increases all of these things, because it implies that all men are rapists barely being held in check, and women must be the ones to keep them from being unleashed. Remember the guy at The Talent Show, who wisely said "I Am Not My Cock"? And went on to explain that, really, he isn't, most men aren't, and it isn't the victim's fault for being raped.

Thoughts on Rape Culture and Patriarchy

I say "thoughts," because so many people have said so many things about this that I can barely touch on the important parts. (For a good starter, see What Causes Rape? Anatomy of a Rape Culture at Alas, a blog.) But here are a few important points.

The implicit assumption in victim blaming-type messages like the ones mentioned above is that men are helpless victims to their libidos, and women, by being "temptations," push them over the edge.

I say: fuck that.

Ross at The Talent Show says: "... there is a widely held belief amongst even liberal men, that male humans are predators. That they are first and foremost nothing but a cock. After that, balls, then eyes, then rage, and somewhere way down the line, they become capable of speech, thought, and memory."

I mean, really. This is what you're saying when you say men "just can't help themselves." What woman, except for the most cynical and pessimistic, would say that? What self-respecting man would?

From the same post: "I have never died from blue balls." Neither have most men, I would wager. If a woman refuses to have sex with you after a romantic date -- or after a brief conversation at a bar -- you can be disappointed. If a woman flirts heavily with you but still says 'no,' or says 'yes' and changes her mind, or refuses to communicate with you at all, you can even be annoyed. Possibly in pain. But rape? See, that requires the assumption that sex is somehow a man's right, and the woman is obliged to give it to him. She isn't. And most decent human beings understand that fact.

Here's how you know that this myth of the irresistable power of the pussy is, in fact, a myth. I read this once on LJ and can't for the life of me remember where Here we go: "You know, I reckon I could walk down the main shopping street in this town, at 11am on a Saturday, naked expect for the words 'fuck me' written on my skin in lipstick. And not be in the slightest danger of being raped. Comments and stares, oh yes. And no doubt I would soon find myself having a chat with the nice boys and girls in blue (or green, as is the case here.) But what are the odds of any man losing control of himself to the point where he ignores the crowds and police officers and jumps on me then and there, even after a verbal 'no'? Not bloody likely, methinks.

Doing exactly the same thing at 2am when either hardly anyone was around at all, or just groups of male friends, would be an entirely different story. Not because any 'messages' I was sending had changed. And not because any man's self-control levels were suddenly different. No, what's changed here are a man's chances of getting away with it.

Men have got plenty of self-control when they want, otherwise why don't we see them raping (or attempting to) in public the way we see people sneezing."

The moral of the story? Men who "just can't help it" seem to remain perfectly in control when there are witnesses (who will not collaborate) present. Kind of throws a monkey wrench into the whole "unstoppable sexuality" myth. Men, if you've never been so incredibly turned on by a woman that your penis just jumped out of your pants and had sex with her without your will -- then it's likely that most other men haven't had that experience, either.

Rape is a choice. Saying otherwise is just another way of making excuses for rapists.

Besides dehumanizing men, this view also dehumanizes women. As stated on Bitch Ph.D.: "Telling rape victims [...] that they ought not to be flashing the goodies reduces women to, well, to goodies to be flashed. Dude, if I get drunk off my ass and stumble down the street, I'm not flaunting 'goods' to be 'stolen.' I'm getting drunk and stumbling down the street. If you see it as anything else then bingo, baby: that's what we call rape culture."

As you can see, misogyny is a huge part of rape culture and victim blaming. It's clear when women are reduced to sexual temptations rather than human beings with sexual agency. And it's also clear when conversations about rape are derailed due to hysterics about false accusations about rape. I see this a lot on LJ -- in supposedly feminist spaces, no less -- where men whine about how "easy" it is to accuse guys of rape, and even get them convicted.

Yes, false accusations of crime are a problem, and rape is one of the worst crimes to be falsely accused of. But the woman who cries rape falsely is a myth along the same lines as the woman who gets pregnant to "trick" a man into child support payments, or the feminist who hates men. In other words: they're not real. Sure, there are sick and twisted people out there, and some of them are female, and some of them -- maybe one or two in a million -- might pull this stuff. But the spread of a "crisis" of false rape accusations is a perfect way to keep people skeptical towards real victims, and let real rapists avoid punishment. And while being the target of a false accusation would be terrible -- I don't discount that -- we have to be clear that it's relatively less common, and far less traumatic, than actual rape. It's not a reason to make rape more difficult to report or prosecute. Anyone who complains about the efforts toward prosecuting rape because it risks the reputations of a small number of men (or -- and I've seen people say this -- it makes men afraid to have sex) makes it very clear that they consider men more valuable than women.

And what's the purpose of a rape culture? Primarily to keep women in line, especially in terms of their sexuality. See this post from Alas, a blog: "That women are sexual beyond the ways men wish them to be disturbs a certain kind of man. The fears that once kept female sexuality in check are gradually being eroded by social change and medical advances: fear of ostracism, fear of disease, fear of unwanted pregnancy. But fear of rape remains, and it can be a powerful weapon."

Rape is a form of punishment. It's not always obvious, as when a Pakistani village ordered rapes as punishments for girls who resisted being forced to marry. It can also mean the implicit threat that women who are sexually active are "at risk" for being raped. Like I said above, most of the "advice" for preventing rape is inaccurate, and doesn't actually apply to real-life rapes. It scares women uselessly -- and keeps them from doing everything from going to a party or walking without a bodyguard, to making free sexual choices. In addition, it just burdens women with unnecessary paranoia whenever they're in a parking lot or go to a bar.

If you're inclined to dismiss the importance of this "anti-rape advice" because it's inaccurate, think again: the inaccuracy itself is dangerous. I don't criticize these advice lists because I want to free women from all responsibility in regards to their safety or something like that. I criticize them because if rape is a danger, and we're told that these things prevent that danger, then we effectively keep ourselves in line as "good girls" for those who want to limit female sexuality, and do nothing towards actually keeping ourselves safe.

I can't imagine a parallel situation occurring, in which society perpetuated a myth that controlled men's sexuality, and there wasn't a huge outcry over its falsehood.

As for what I said about some of my earlier advice being valuable, here's a way to tell if the advice you hear is actually useful: is it empowering? In my post, I suggested things like looking people in the eye and acting assertive, or trusting your instincts. If rape, as the above link on rape culture suggests, is facilitated by a quest for power, then making yourself powerful can prevent it. Those are things that will actually help you, and won't put shackles on you during your daily life.

Of course, the most important thing for men and women is to attack rape itself. Scrutinize, blame, and punish the rapists, not the victims. Not the victims.



This post brought to you by avoiding my homework, reading a lot of smart people who say smart things, and being sick and damn tired of seeing victims blamed for the crimes committed against them.

Edit: I found the person who made the eloquent example about men's "uncontrollable urges." Read the original entry for an awesome deconstruction of the myth of "pussy power."