Many women still unsympathetic about rape

A survey of a thousand men and women in London reveals that most women asked believe that the victim of rape is sometimes at least partly to blame.

Almost three-quarters of women said if a rape victim got into bed with the assailant before an attack they should accept some responsibility.

One-third blamed victims who had dressed provocatively or gone back to the attacker’s house for a drink.

More than half of those of both sexes questioned said there were some circumstances when a rape victim should accept responsibility for an attack.

These figures are nothing new. A 2005 survey found similar results, with the attitudes of men and women towards who’s to blame in a rape being similar.

As the Times reported five years ago:

The [2005] survey also found that 26 per cent of adults believed that a women was partially or totally responsible for being raped if she was wearing sexy or revealing clothing. Some 22 per cent held the same view if a woman had had many sexual partners. Similarly, 30 per cent said that a woman was partially or totally responsible for being raped if she was drunk….the findings for men and women were very similar.

Despite a concerted effort over many years to change views on rape, it appears that the views of the general public have barely shifted. The police and judiciary may now have a much better understanding. Politicians would, these days, almost never claim that the victim is to blame in rape. Even the BNP have been forced to accept that such views are unacceptable.

And yet the public view that the victim often shares the blame is remarkably persistent – and must surely have an impact not only on public sympathy but also the chances of securing a conviction at trial.

That suggests there’s some deeper reason behind these views; something that merely repeating a “victims of rape are never to blame” message isn’t going to shift, no matter how loud and clear it’s said.

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13 Comments

  • Malcolm Todd 15th Feb '10 - 10:08am

    I think Alec is right in both his points here, and I wonder whether part of the problem is a confusion about language.

    How many people are answering the question about victims having “some responsibility” in the sense that Alec uses it in the context of pickpocketing, only to see their answers translated (as in the opening sentence of this article) as referring to the rather different issue of culpability?

  • Iain Coleman 15th Feb '10 - 10:37am

    Blaming the victim allows one to say to oneself “As long as I don’t behave like that, I’ll be safe”. Which is a dangerous thought, but a seductive one.

  • Lorna Spenceley 15th Feb '10 - 11:36am

    Malcolm’s comment about the importance of getting language right is a useful one, I think. I notice how in Iain’s article, every single quote uses the word ‘responsibility’, and every single observation from Iain uses the word ‘blame’ instead. That’s not mere chance.

    I can quite understand three quarters of women thinking that if a woman has got into bed with a man, she has significantly increased the likelihood of a sexual act taking place; and more than a third thinking that if a woman has dressed provocatively she is giving out some sort of signal that she is responsible for. Both of those thoughts are very different from “You did that and you got raped – so you’re to blame”.

  • Malcolm Todd 15th Feb '10 - 2:34pm

    “Is believing that a woman is partially responsible for being raped the same as saying she’s partially to blame? I would say it probably is”

    No, it most certainly isn’t. “Blame” involves censure – to blame someone is to say that they have done something bad, with bad consequences. To say that someone is (whether partially or fully) responsible for something reflects only on the consequences – or perhaps only on the predictable consequences – without necessarily attaching any moral stigma. It’s a really important difference.

    “It seems odd to me to say “the woman was responsible for what happened, but the man is to blame”.”

    This is another case of blurring the question to produce an answer that wasn’t really given. It’s only odd because implicit in the paraphrase you offer is that the woman was wholly responsible, and the man is wholly to blame. That would be strange. But to say “the woman was partly responsible for what happened, but the man is to blame” isn’t odd at all. (I wouldn’t say “partly to blame”, because I don’t think that blame is reduced by being shared – another distinction from responsibility.)

  • Andrew Suffield 15th Feb '10 - 3:37pm

    A few observations:

    – A bit over half the rape claims reported to the police are then dropped by the accuser. It’s safe to assume that most of those were false claims. This is not helping.
    – There are some cases which represent an error on the part of the accused, rather than criminal intent. This is usually due to mutual intoxication and poor communication. While the act may technically be rape, these cases need to be handled differently.
    – There’s still a significant number of cases which don’t fall into either of those groups, and are straightforward violent assault.

    Part of the problem is that we muddle all of these cases together and talk about them as a group. People then react based on which subset they were thinking about. People who say the victim was partly or wholly responsible are probably not thinking about the ‘violent assault’ case.

  • Malcolm Todd 15th Feb '10 - 5:42pm

    Iain – I agree, that’s very much the issue. The trouble is, we don’t have the facts – we have two distinct but easily conflated notions getting muddled up together, and as a result no way of properly interpreting the results of this survey.

    Andrew – I wouldn’t claim to know why most rape claims are dropped. But it obviously isn’t “safe to assume that most of those were false claims”. You can’t possibly know that, and it’s not at all safe to assume it. In any case, one thing I think we can be reasonably sure of is that people were asked in this survey about their attitudes to women who are raped, not women who claim to have been, so it’s not a relevant consideration.

  • “the issue here is very much whether many people see the victims of rape as having done something wrong, something bad with bad consequences.”

    Agreed, but I don’t think that’s what the survey results indicate. Malcolm does a good job of outlining the difference between responsibility and blame.

    If someone sets out to sail across the Atlantic, gets caught in a storm and dies, I expect a lot of people would say he or she “should accept some responsibility” for their unfortunate end. But I doubt those people would say the unlucky sailor did anything morally wrong, or deserved to die.

    Of course, the problem is that “dressing provocatively” or “going home / getting into bed with a stranger” does attract the condemnation of a significant number of people in our society. But this survey isn’t very illuminating because we can’t seem to tell (from the way the questions were worded) what proportion of people would blame the victim as opposed to thinking the victim had done nothing wrong but had nevertheless put him/herself at greater risk, while not excusing the rapist for their actions at all.

    What percentage of a survey would agree that leaving your front door open puts you at greater risk of burglary? Probably a large majority. What percentage of the same survey would blame the victim and excuse the burglar because the victim was clearly “asking to have their TV ripped off”? Probably a small minority. How many people – if sitting on a jury – would fail to convict a burglar on these grounds? Hopefully none. These crucial distinctions don’t seem to be made in this survey, rendering it a bit useless to the debate IMHO.

  • Andrew Suffield 16th Feb '10 - 2:22am

    In any case, one thing I think we can be reasonably sure of is that people were asked in this survey about their attitudes to women who are raped, not women who claim to have been

    I expect that this subtlety was lost on most of the respondents, and that the distressingly large amount of false claims plays a significant role in affecting how people think about these things.

  • Kate Horstead 16th Feb '10 - 12:57pm

    Whether or not responsibility is defined as blame or not, the only responsibility that we have towards ourselves as human beings is to make the most of our short lives while protecting ourselves as best we can, particularly against the unpredictability of other people. Under no circumstances can somebody be expected to take responsibility for the bad behaviour of another person, and nor should they. It is reasonable to advise, due to the sad state of society, that we take self-protective measures such as avoiding walking down badly lit streets wherever possible. But to suggest that a woman is even partly responsible for her rape, whether or not she has taken these precautions, is to buy into the view that she should alter her behaviour to deter potentially dangerous or disrespectful men, and therefore compromise her freedom, by dressing modestly, avoiding alcohol, not allowing herself to trust people, or wasting valuable opportunities to get to know potential lovers by avoiding spending time with them alone. This flawed viewpoint goes against the deepest and most important Lib Dem principles of equality and fairness. We can take measures to protect ourselves, within reason, but we cannot always foresee danger and the responsibility of the act lies with the perpetrator alone.

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