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Keep your car, but not your body.
Aug. 1st, 2005 04:43 pmIt is the most common belief to say you shouldn't go running naked in a dangerous neighbourhood because you might get raped. Like the opportunity makes the thief, it is commonly thought the opportunity makes the rapist: she shouldn't have dressed that way, she shouldn't have been drinking, she shouldn't have flirted like that. It is a false belief that partly blames the victim of the most degrading crimes she could ever be made to endure. As Ross Lincoln points out in the aforelinked post women's bodies aren't something you can own like a car. How much do you harm someone with stealing the car you want but can't have? If this person has insurance not much. I remember having my laptop stolen from my student room a couple of years ago. I wasn't really mad with the sad bastard that stole the computer, but so much more with my landlord who didn't provide a decent lock in the first place. But with whom can the rape victim be angry? Who can she blame? The clothing manufacturer? The television? Herself? That's where the analogy with the stealing of a car brings us unfortunately: women will think it was they who did something wrong, that if they behaved differently all of this wouldn't have happened.
An article in yesterday's Observer showed again how all is not well with the way we adress rape. It features two stories of women that didn't get raped by a random bloke in the bushes but by an acquaintance who seemed very nice and charming and funny in the first place. And yes they had a few drinks and were a bit drunk, but this doesn't justify "taking what you want", does it? I find it creepy to read how one girl went for a drink with a couple of blokes from her work and afterwards they both rape her on the last train home. Who has't gone out drinking with some guys from work? I have, and I don't have any doubts or second thoughts when a male colleague invites me in. I was asking for sex when I accepted such an invitation? Sure, as if men and women can't have nice chats with each other. We have them all the time, you know. We trust each other to behave properly. And we trust society to step in when something goes wrong.
Society works because of the trust we have for each other. Hearing stories like these unfortunately makes us distrust one another. It is behaviour of a sociopath, someone who lives solely for his or her own gain and reaches this by misusing the trust of the others. A sociopath who can't get sex will take the sex violently. Rape has so much to do with being in control. The attacker wants to be in control of the situation and uses violence to reach this goal. It might even be he doesn't get arroused unless there is some sort of violence. It's what gets him turned on: a whimpering victim.
The way I describe it, rapists are easily identifiable monsters. But they aren't. A sociopath isn't different from other people and doesn't attract much attention. He thinks himself clever and chooses the girls that won't give him a hard time in court: the ones he calls sluts and slags, the shortskirted ones that might fancy a drink and a party that isn't what the girl expected.
Maybe even in the rapist's mind these girls were asking for it, but he forgets or doesn't know that there are usually other ways to go around asking for sex. I feel tempted to call it social ineptness, like these guys that start chatting you up in the supermarket and ask three or four times for your phone number. Or that bloke that asked for directions and almost put his tongue your mouth (as a thank you, for god's sake!) before you quickly pushed him off and ran for it. But I feel there's a distinction between them and the rapist that's described in the Observer article. On the other hand what they have in common is that they both display behaviour that shows an underlieing opinion of women being on display all the time and their's for the taking.
All links thanks to Bitch Ph.D.
An article in yesterday's Observer showed again how all is not well with the way we adress rape. It features two stories of women that didn't get raped by a random bloke in the bushes but by an acquaintance who seemed very nice and charming and funny in the first place. And yes they had a few drinks and were a bit drunk, but this doesn't justify "taking what you want", does it? I find it creepy to read how one girl went for a drink with a couple of blokes from her work and afterwards they both rape her on the last train home. Who has't gone out drinking with some guys from work? I have, and I don't have any doubts or second thoughts when a male colleague invites me in. I was asking for sex when I accepted such an invitation? Sure, as if men and women can't have nice chats with each other. We have them all the time, you know. We trust each other to behave properly. And we trust society to step in when something goes wrong.
Society works because of the trust we have for each other. Hearing stories like these unfortunately makes us distrust one another. It is behaviour of a sociopath, someone who lives solely for his or her own gain and reaches this by misusing the trust of the others. A sociopath who can't get sex will take the sex violently. Rape has so much to do with being in control. The attacker wants to be in control of the situation and uses violence to reach this goal. It might even be he doesn't get arroused unless there is some sort of violence. It's what gets him turned on: a whimpering victim.
The way I describe it, rapists are easily identifiable monsters. But they aren't. A sociopath isn't different from other people and doesn't attract much attention. He thinks himself clever and chooses the girls that won't give him a hard time in court: the ones he calls sluts and slags, the shortskirted ones that might fancy a drink and a party that isn't what the girl expected.
Maybe even in the rapist's mind these girls were asking for it, but he forgets or doesn't know that there are usually other ways to go around asking for sex. I feel tempted to call it social ineptness, like these guys that start chatting you up in the supermarket and ask three or four times for your phone number. Or that bloke that asked for directions and almost put his tongue your mouth (as a thank you, for god's sake!) before you quickly pushed him off and ran for it. But I feel there's a distinction between them and the rapist that's described in the Observer article. On the other hand what they have in common is that they both display behaviour that shows an underlieing opinion of women being on display all the time and their's for the taking.
All links thanks to Bitch Ph.D.
