rape blaming Archives | Stop Street Harassment

With funding from the Scottish Government, Rape Crisis Scotland has launched a television advertisement and online campaign called Not Ever, focused on ending the prevalent attitude that rape victims are to blame for their perpetrator’s crime because of what they were wearing.

In the ad, men at a pub look at a woman’s skirt and decide that she is “asking for it.” The ad then shows earlier in the day when the woman in shopping for the skirt and says she is looking for one that will make men want to rape her. Then she turns to the camera and says, “As if.”

From the campaign page:

“No woman asks to be raped – ever. It’s a simple as that. Women should not be held responsible for the behaviour of rapists or expected to base their decisions on dress around the possibility that these might lead to an attack.” …

The prevalence of these ideas and the prejudicial attitudes they underpin seriously damage the chances of women who have been raped of receiving justice. With the conviction rate in Scotland in 2010 having fallen to 3% – its lowest ever, the need to change attitudes which blame women is more urgent than ever.

We need to stop victim-blaming and assign responsibility to those whose decisions do lead to rape – perpetrators and the apologists whose woman-blaming views have assigned rape its current status as a low-risk crime. For as long the notion that women can “ask for it” or invite attack through their dress or behaviour are allowed to persist, rapists will continue to act with impunity, confident in the knowledge that their actions will receive far less scrutiny than those of the women they assault.”

I applaud the Scottish government and Rape Crisis Scotland for tackling this issue. The television ads are running during the World Cup, so they are definitely being seen by men (too often women are the focus of campaigns around gender violence when we men to be targeted, too). The website contains resources for survivors, information on the current rape law, quiz questions, and discussion threads.

A few weeks ago the government of Wales launched a television and online ad campaign called One Step Too Far showing how slippery the slope is between sexist and harassing behavior and sexual assault. Their television ads also are airing during the World Cup.

I applaud both governments for actually taking this issue seriously. Victim blaming in cases of gender violence is pervasive, from Egypt to Australia to India to Brazil to the UK and the US. Imagine if every government invested resources in combating these attitudes, thereby helping to prevent harassment and assault and making it easier for victims to come forward and charge the perpetrators! This is how change happens.

The Internet is a-buzz over the findings that a majority of men and women in a survey of 1000 people in London believe some rape victims should take responsibility for “what happened” (ie, an illegal, traumatic, horrible action).

First of all, I am not surprised. Unlike most other crimes, people tend to blame those who are victims of rape, sexual harassment, and street harassment instead of, you know, the people who do those things.

In my forthcoming book on street harassment, I explore how street harassment – and rape – take place in the context of gender inequality and a rape culture and how victim-blaming seems to be one outcome of that horrible mix. I look at how the victim blaming of women who are street harassed is inappropriate and wrong, as some simple research and logic can attest.

For example, men in countries where women are completely veiled and otherwise wear “conservative” clothing harass women, too. The problem is not women’s clothing or how much or how little skin they are showing; it is the ignorance, disrespect, and arrogance of harassing men.

Also, not all men rape or harass, nor do most women, so it is not innate human behavior. It is learned behavior and it is behavior that thrives because people focus the blame on the victims, not the perpetrators.

Second, the other question is why are there so many women blaming other women for “being” rape (and I’ve heard women blame other women for experiencing street harassment)? Cara Kulwicki gives a great response to that question in a Guardian article:

“Women are given further incentive to blame victims of sexual assault through the myth that if they follow ‘the rules’ – don’t go out alone at night, don’t get too drunk, don’t wear anything too revealing, don’t flirt too much – they themselves are safe from becoming victims.

Most women are told how to avoid sexual assault from the time they start going through puberty (if not sooner), in ways that men are not. We’re careful about how we dress, we monitor our drinks, we make sure to have our keys out and ready before we reach the car, we use the buddy system. The idea that we do all of these things because we were taught to, and yet are only provided minimal protection by them (the vast majority of rapes being committed not by strangers but by people victims know and already trust on some level) is both humiliating and infuriating. The fact that women who do all of these things are still raped can also be downright terrifying.

So many women reason, albeit probably unconsciously, that if rape victims have done something ‘wrong’ which makes them responsible, they themselves are protected. If rape victims are viewed as stupid and irresponsible, every woman who thinks of herself as smart and level-headed is reassured that she won’t become one of them.

Reasons why women might be more likely to blame rape victims aside, all of this talk on the subject has a sinister result. When headlines blare that ‘more than half of women’ blame rape victims, we overlook that almost as many men responded the same way. When we say that women are less ‘forgiving’ of rape victims, we ignore that being raped is not something for which one needs to be forgiven. And while being blamed for your own rape is an incredibly traumatising experience, we forget in this discussion that there would be no victim to blame if there wasn’t a rapist committing assault first.

Here, we draw ourselves back to where the high rates of victim-blaming begin: the idea that when it comes to rape, women’s behaviour is more interesting and important than that of male rapists. In the process, we forego the more worthwhile conversation about why there are so many rape victims whose behaviour we can discuss.”

Exactly. The focus should be on answering why people rape, sexually harass and street harass others. The scary reality that many people do not want to face is that no matter how hard women try to “avoid” being raped or harassed, we are never guaranteed safety or peace. Safety and peace only will be achieved once we live in a world where no one is a rapist or a harasser, or at least once we live in a world where those crimes are taken seriously and the blame is placed appropriately.

Asking for it? As if

Stop the victim-blaming