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This is not an invitation to rape me ads
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
http://www.thisisnotaninvitationtorapeme.co.uk/
Apparently posters with some of the slides from the above website are going up over scotland. What do you think of this? I think on the one hand, it's the right message, but on the other hand it's a bit patronising to assume that the target audience of large posters i.e. the general population are going to be people who weren't quite sure what is rape and isn't rape.
I mean, I've never met a rapist, but I've never met someone who thinks wearing little clothing is an invitation to rape either. I've spoke to people and probably am one myself that in certain situations the victim might be putting themselves in a more compromising / dangerous situation, but that's a different thing altogether really.
I guess it gets people talking about it, which is a good thing. But I just can't iamgine one single person who sees one of those posters and thinks 'oh, in that case I won't rape...'. I CAN see ordinary people who are driving to work who might feel a bit patronised by them (like some feel patronised with the religious bus posters in london).
Didn't the government cut £50k from the rape crisis charity a few years ago? Surely they'd be better giving the money to that than sticking up posters saying 'dont rape plzkthx', because my (possibly innaccurate) perception of a rapist is someone who probably wont care what any amount of posters say.
Apparently posters with some of the slides from the above website are going up over scotland. What do you think of this? I think on the one hand, it's the right message, but on the other hand it's a bit patronising to assume that the target audience of large posters i.e. the general population are going to be people who weren't quite sure what is rape and isn't rape.
I mean, I've never met a rapist, but I've never met someone who thinks wearing little clothing is an invitation to rape either. I've spoke to people and probably am one myself that in certain situations the victim might be putting themselves in a more compromising / dangerous situation, but that's a different thing altogether really.
I guess it gets people talking about it, which is a good thing. But I just can't iamgine one single person who sees one of those posters and thinks 'oh, in that case I won't rape...'. I CAN see ordinary people who are driving to work who might feel a bit patronised by them (like some feel patronised with the religious bus posters in london).
Didn't the government cut £50k from the rape crisis charity a few years ago? Surely they'd be better giving the money to that than sticking up posters saying 'dont rape plzkthx', because my (possibly innaccurate) perception of a rapist is someone who probably wont care what any amount of posters say.
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Not trying to be obtuse, but can you really know that? Out of a handful of girlfriends I can think of who have been raped or sexually assaulted, the person who did it was known to them. The people who have done this aren't mysteriously hanging out somewhere on the periphery of our society, the harsh fact is that they're people who walk among us, probably stood together in a lunch queue, and very uncomfortable to think about - but there's always the potential to be someone we know. So in a way, while it wasn't the primary intention of the posters, it's done a good job of highlighting that potentially a rapist could be the husband of someone you know, or someone in the workplace etc.
If the worst thing is that someone is patronised, then at least they're not stupid enough to think that being married is a ticket to do anything they want to a partner etc.
Might be worth looking at some of those comments though. Trollish or not, I find it quite easy to believe that some people think like that.
That's a good point you raise. Although I've had two female friends talking to me about sexual assault, when they later changed their mind about it (although it very much upset the people who were accused), so just in that way my experience has painted a different picture of the reality to yours, so it's no doubt we have different perceptions of the reality.
I sometimes worry about whether there is an implicit message of 'men need to be taught not to rape' as we shouldn't be headed down that path, although I appreciate the need for big campaigns to target the root causes of rape. But I was reading through the comments, and I could feel the hurt and anger some of the men there felt. Whether that was right or wrong, it's easy to see where it's coming from. If there were posters saying 'dont kill your children' aimed at women I think there would be equal hurt and upset, because logically who the fuck kills their kids except psychos? The assumption that ordinary people do it (as you rightly put these people are in the general population), and then the logical step that 'hey, I'm an ordinary person' is enough to make someone feel (in my opinion) that they've been put in a group of 'potential perpetrators'.
And who wouldn't be upset in our beautiful non-rational human mind in being labelled a 'potential rapist' or a 'potential child killer' or whatever you like. I can also see where the 'so what' argument comes from i.e. 'for the greater good - if we stop 10 rapes then it doesn't matter if we upset 100 or 1000 men really' but at the same time I think issues as emotive as this needs to be taken sensitively especially with the way they might make people feel - the polls on the website for example are all loaded in that the 'true' answers are all the 'worst' ones of the options available. Making a bad picture of general ignorance (and in particular if we assume men are the main perpetrators; men's ignorance) look worse.
As I said in the first post though, it's good at provoking discussion!
It's quite scary to think that someone could be acquitted because the jury thought she was asking for it because she was wearing a skirt. But the rational part of my mind just screams at me that's not right and we need a double take on what situation could happen where someone is acquitted, but there isn't anybody else offering up a counter argument. So either I accept as god's own truth that we are a nation of fucking idiots, or that (as horrible as it is to say this), in campaigning against rape there is some spin on the facts to make the reality appear worse than it is - to make the problem appear more grave - and to make people act quicker and with greater conviction.
I think the questioner got the response that they wanted, which is why they said 'wholely or partially responsible' - on the question of drunkeness it doesnt surprise me in the least that lots of people think that excessive drinking makes people 'partially responsible', if you were completely insensible from drink and were mugged you would be seen to have partly brought it on yourself. Which is (before people get all heated up) not to say that anyone who is mugged or raped deserves it at all, but just that you do have some personal responsiblity to keep yourself safe.
http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=16618
Talking of public opinions - bear in mind 25% of people polled by the Observer want homosexuality to be illegal (not homosexual marriage).
Of course if you don't think something it seems strange that other people do, especially when it's often so outlandish - but that doesn't mean those views are made up.
The problem is lawyers like this. According to a report in the Daily Mail a few weeks ago: "A barrister has caused outrage by suggesting a rape victim could not have been upset by her ordeal because there were photos of her on Facebook looking happy. The woman was attacked in 2001 when she was 19 and has since tried to kill herself. Her attacker, Anthony Francis, was caught seven years later as a result of a DNA sample. His barrister tried to persuade a judge to be lenient by showing pictures posted on the social networking site of the woman laughing and smiling at a fancy dress party in the years since the rape."
Why no outrage from these boards about such despicable comments?
Yea, that's what I said earlier... is that not the commonly held belief that people should take responsibility for their own safety? It brings the validity of all these statistics into question really when it's difficult to get a clear answer on whether 27% of people in scotland believe that if a woman is raped and was wearing a skirt, she DESERVED to be raped because she brought it on herself. Or, whether 27% of people in scotland believe that if a woman is raped and was wearing a skirt, she is in not to blame and definately doesn't deserve it, but wasn't acting responsibly.
And if you bring drink into it -
does that mean like I said that a woman should be responsible for her own safety (but is not to blame if she is the victim), or that she actually brought it upon herself / deserved it. If it's the first, then do 72% of people think that women aren't responsible for their own safety? I mean, that's even more ridiculous! 3/4 of the population believe a woman should just throw caution to the wind because it's everyone elses responsibility (I guess?) to keep her safe? What if she gets drunk and falls into a river?
I think because of these blurred lines with regards to what the survey is actually telling us, it's impossible to really hold the statistics up to test. If there were maybe 5 categories the respondents voted in that would be different, but if I was voting in a survey I might say I thought a woman was responsible for her own safety - then it's put up on this website as saying I think basically she deserved to get raped. *shrug*
It's because a lot of lawyers have no soul. Today I was trying to get people to go to a careers fair for careers in law and as soon as people saw 'law' (the t-shirt just said careers, the flyer said law) they ran a mile. Slightly off topic, but in some senses if you imagine a rape case, the defending lawyer doesn't care about the emotional impact on either side, he just wants to get his/her client off. Say she's making it up, say she consented, say whatever you like.
"pressuring a woman to take part in sex" (I don't know what wave 9 / 10 are though so ill take an average)
Totally unacceptable - 80%
unacceptable - 15%
neither / nor - 2%
acceptable - 0%
totally acceptable - 3%
Paints a completely different picture, but it's not as sexy on the posters. It doesn't define what it means by 'partly responsible' in the study. Although interestingly, older people seem to judge more harshly. The gender divide is there but fairly narrow, with 25% of women holding women partly responsible and 30% of men holding women partly responsible. I think if I was filling in the survey I would have put 'unsure' because I'm not 100% sure what it's saying. I think a woman should be responsible for her own safety as I've said about 10 times lol but I don't think she is responsible or guilty in some part if she is a victim of crime. The survey doesn't seem to make the distinction.
This isn't really answering your point, but I thought I'd throw in my $0.02.
If I invited a workmate to dinner, was wearing a figure hugging wrap around dress, opened a bottle of wine - and was subsequently raped or assaulted, the problem with this 'keeping yourself safe' forgets that if you invite someone to dinner, you're not going to expect them to come into your house and rape you. But then the type of people who need to change their attitudes would think, "Well, you invited him into your home." "You were wearing something that suggested you wanted sex," "You were drinking alcohol."
In the end, you're presented with so many variables and steps on how you could have done something to make the night progress differently; the only rational step would appear to be to lock yourself in the house and never leave.
There's a good post out in the blogosphere which explains this more eloquently than I have done, I will try to dig it up.
No one REALLY believes anything of those things are a reason to rape anyone. However, they may state them after the fact to try and paint themselves in a better light. I think people tend to take these things into account when deciding whether a case constitutes rape or not. It is very easy for women to throw accusations of rape around and mere accusation can destroy a mans life even if he is not found guilty.
If we were to take every example there and apply it to an accusation of rape:
'A scantily clad and noticably drunk women is seen getting intimate with her partner and they go home together'
The next day there's an accusation of rape. Understandably a jury may be skeptical as to the validity of such a claim but I highly doubt they would be claiming that is WHY she was supposedly raped.
Like with for example crimes against children, you would tell your kid to be home at 5pm or before its dark or to let them know where they are etc. and you would say its their responsibility to follow their parents rules. But if something did happen and they got abducted or something - it would never ever be the kids fault. On top of this, most crimes against kids happen in the home as well and so that's just a different tangent.
I believe they're obviously all linked together but they are discrete and seperate issues, and the questioning can lump them together. The fact that 95% believed it wasn't acceptable to coerce a woman to have sex under any situation is incongruous with the statistic in the same survey that 50% of people think its ok to rape if you're married.
Only one of those stats is on the website though.
And people wonder why the rape conviction rate in the UK is criminally low?!
They're an important part of the justice system - you may not like people being entitled to a defence, but if you're falsely accused you may change your tune (I'm not a lawyer or a law student btw)
Well me saying they have no soul was tongue in cheek
I think even if a man admitted rape in that case he'd get the lowest sentence possible, because she was drunk.
I think it's the low conviction rate that causes a man's life to be ruined even if he's found not guilty. There are so many people who are guilty of rape but there's not enough evidence that all men accused of rape are seen as guilty unless they can prove they didn't do it. I'm not saying that's acceptable because it isn't, and anyone who says someone's raped them when they haven't is as bad a rapist. I don't think it's easy for women to say they've been raped, even if they have, for many possible reasons. I know I can't speak for everyone but I couldn't say I'd been raped when I hadn't. That would be the most evil thing I can think of, no one would ever deserve that.
In my experience people only care about the fact that it's rape if they decide the victim deserves their sympathy. If they were very drunk or thought to be encouraging them people assume they deserve at least some of the blame.
Definitely, as the phrase goes 'even the devil deserves a good defence'. It is for the judge to make sure that they do not step over the mark and prejudice the jury.
But both of those beliefs are the same. You’re not acting responsibly if you’re raped and were wearing a skirt? Think about the insanity of that for a second. So people who wear more revealing clothing than a burqa are not acting responsibly? It makes no sense and is simply a variation on “they deserved it”. Such nonsense is widespread, make no mistake.
though it is true that lawyers / solicitors if working under the assumption of innocence will do everything including badmouthing the accuser and bringing up her sexual habits / history as that's what they're paid to do. I wouldnt have it any other way, mind, because like you say if you were accused of something and then were found guilty because your solicitor didn't want to hurt anyones feelings... well you've spared someones emotions but that doesn't help the guy whose in prison for a few years.
Sorry if I came across as nasty to those in the legal profession
There is a difference! Very much so. I don't think it's unsafe to wear a skirt and think that's a bit of a daft one but the alcohol one, making yourself more vulnerable etc. and then getting seperated from friends or what have you.
What you are doing, is nullifying one argument by grouping it with another completely invalid one. It means there is no middle ground. Either - in your books - a woman is to blame for rape or a woman should never take responsibility for her own safety.
So which is it? Are we to treat women like children who can't be trusted to get themselves home at night? Maybe we should just lock them inside - because the world is a scary dangerous place.
There are a lot of risk factors involved in rape, and go_away was right in saying that in most cases none of them really matter because it will be at home where the woman may be too afraid to run or even to tell the police. I have no idea how you cure that, and at least 95% of the respondents in that survey thought that kind of thing was wrong. So why the incongruency? Because the survey isn't clear, and probably because a lot of people misinterpreted it as should a woman be responsible for her own safety. Unless you have a better idea?
It's too easy to just throw flippant remarks about and make gross assumptions based on what seems to me to be a flawed question because there are actually two questions.
I may be the only one but to me it just feels like another way of suggesting that if a girl gets drunk or goes someplace on her own 'she had it coming'.
Does it mean girls shouldn't drink? Does me drinking equal that I'm not being responsible and might get me raped?
But if in a questionnaire I read a question that seems to ask whether a girl should be responsible for making sure she is safe - well of course she should. Who else are you going to leave that responsibility to? That's why I think potentially some people might have answered the questionnaire wrong because it doesn't tally with common sense and it doesn't tally with even the rest of the survey with the exact same respondents.
It 'feels' like another way of suggestion she had it coming if you want to look at it like that, but that's not what I said or implied at any point. In fact I've reiterated in just about every post that a woman is not to blame, but nevermind.