This is what an anti-rape/rape awareness campaign should look like. This is SO much better than those horrific, triggering, titillating, victim-blaming ads that Tfl have only very recently taken down. Here some of the regressive, sexist ideas that I got from the last Tfl campaign:
a. It is a woman's responsibility not to get raped.
b. If you have been in an illegal minicab, worn revealing clothing, had a drink, flirted, spoken to someone, walked home alone, kissed someone, walked home in the dark, walked home with female friends, been outside with female friends, danced in a club, been inside with your windows open, failed to fight back enough, passed out in your friend or boyfriend's bed, fallen asleep generally, not shouted 'no!' repeatedly, loudly and clearly enough when someone is trying to rape you, AND SO ON AND SO ON AND SO ON you are in some way responsible or to blame for the fact that someone has raped you.
c. There will always be rapists because rape is a natural male urge, therefore anti-rape campaigns should just be damage limitation.
The point is, no matter how many precautions you take, you may still get raped. The point is, men face no such restrictions on their movements. As long as there are still rapists, there will still be rape survivors. As long as advertising solely urges women to take precautions, there will still be a world of ignorance out there, in women and men, about what is and isn't rape. So, you know, maybe the London authorities could allocate just one of their campaigns to raising awareness about what rape actually is? So that when a woman, having taken all other precautions on all the other days of her life HEINOUSLY SLIPS UP AND HAS ONE TOO MANY DRINKS, the person who may otherwise have committed rape, thinks about it and does not do so?
Here are three counterarguments to what I've just said. First, there will always be rapists so it is unrealistic to expect advertising to stop rape. Second, 'women-take-precautions!' adverts do something concrete to help so it is counterproductive to argue against them. Third, we don't campaign against other crimes by asking people not to commit them, i.e. a campaign saying 'don't murder' would be ludicrous.
I find the third the most immediately convincing of these counterarguments, and certainly its the one I've seen most used on internet forums and other places where such issues get discussed by calm, rational people. But the problem with it, as an argument goes, is that it fails to take into account just how much confusion there is surrounding rape. Like, killing is killing. If you kill someone you are a murderer, unless you are in some way legally less responsible, in which case it is manslaughter, which is also a very serious crime. Nobody thinks it is not real killing if you get killed by your partner. The only way you might be in some sense responsible for your own murder is if you have a history of violence against the person that kills you. If you walk home by yourself it's not your fault if you get killed. There might be other issues to discuss, but it is still killing. Rape is a different story. So many people, myself included, are unsure, in some cases, about whether what has happened is rape or isn't rape.
The recent 'Wake Up To Rape' (I think it's an unfortunate title, but hey) survey run by The Havens, based on a random sample of 1061 people in London, found that:
-Close to one in five respondents agree with the statement, "most claims of rape are probably not true" (18%)
-Close to one in five respondents do not know whether in a committed relationship it is rape when a man makes their partner have sex when they don't want to (18%)
-One in ten do not believe it is rape when a man makes their partner have sex when they don't want to (10%)
-20% of people have been made to have sex when they didn't want to.
Even taking into account a possible bias either way from the kinds of people who respond to rape surveys, I think some of these statistics might be related? Here's a feasible argument: if quite a large percentage of people are unsure what is and isn't rape, some people are committing rape through ignorance rather than willful criminality. Isn't it possible that some people may be stopped from raping if they know that what they are doing is a crime?
Let's talk about the second of the counterarguments, that if this kind of advertising stops even one person from being raped, it's doing its job and therefore, to campaign for removal is ridiculous. To some extent, this argument has a point. Of course it is better to have advertising that helps even slightly than nothing at all. But neither is it right to be entirely uncritical about what there is. When what there is could be improved, why not improve it? I do not frankly believe that there could be many women who have not been told repeatedly all their lives not to take endless, onerous security measures. I can't walk home by myself without hearing my mother's 'I don't like you out alone at night, it's not safe. Don't wear that skirt. Be careful not to drink too much.' voice resounding around my head. I don't think there is really a lack of awareness amongst women about staying safe, but there definitely is a lack of awareness among people about what consent is, what consent isn't, and about in what situations sex is rape. I will continue to contend for as long as it takes to anyone who will listen that it is in no way necessary or good to have anti-rape advertising that is so very distressing to both rape survivors and non-rape survivors (I MEAN, WHY ARE WE LOOKING AT THE WOMAN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE RAPIST IF THE AD IS TARGETING POTENTIAL ATTACKEES?! Talk about male gaze!). The same point can be made in a million different, almost invariably better ways. The Tfl campaign was made with little to no collaboration with women's groups who, you know, work on this stuff for a living. The new one, which has just gone up, is a little better if just less graphically traumatising, but still doesn't really hit the mark in the way that 'Don't be that guy' does. If it is felt that a safety based campaign is necessary, why not couple it with one like the Canadian one featured above? Its not like there could be too many.
Last, the first counterargument, that it's unrealistic to expect advertising to stop rape. I've pretty much answered this already anyway. It's hugely patronising to men to suggest that rape on such a large scale is inevitable. We can, at the very least, reduce occurrence of rape to roughly the same occurrence as most other crimes.
Back to the Canadian campaign. Its not just that it places the onus squarely where it belongs, on those who may not know what constitutes rape or who may otherwise feel tempted to rape. It also makes clear that those men who become rapists are not, generally, psychopaths or lurking-behind-bushes-weirdos, rather, rapists are everyday men who for whatever reason (pick some: they don't think its rape, lack of awareness/understanding/empathy, patriarchy, dehumanisation of women, misogyny, participation in culture that blames women for rape, internalisation of raunch culture ideals about female sexuality, fallout from society that demonizes women for saying yes or no or nothing, etc etc etc) choose to exercise unwanted power over a woman, man or queer against their will.
I'll leave you with a really great comment I saw on a facebook group called 'Please please stop victim blaming on the London Underground', from a person called Kay Ri, who I hope won't mind me reproducing it here:
"Incidentally, when a thief is found with his hands full of stolen Christmas gifts, legal professionals tend not to conjecture that the theft was a willing donation.
"But Mr. Smith, you give to charity all the time-are you sure you didn't just make a big donation and then regret it the next morning?"
"You say that they were Christmas presents Mr. Smith; is it not true that Christmas is a time of giving? And yet you *claim* they were stolen...""
And finally finally, here are some other good links on this:
-Sexual Assault Prevention Tips That Work
-But Why Shouldn't She Take Some Responsibility Too For The Rape?
I found that interesting, revealing and worrying. My main cause for concern is the ignorance revealed by the Haven survey:
ReplyDelete"Close to one in five respondents do not know whether in a committed relationship it is rape when a man makes their partner have sex when they don't want to (18%)
One in ten do not believe it is rape when a man makes their partner have sex when they don't want to"
Of course, in the grand scheme of things, my actual main worry was the final point of "20% of people have been made to have sex when they didn't want to. " However, that people are not aware of the basic definition of rape is highly perturbing. You are of course correct is assuming that much of this confusing must surely originate in the fact that sex is not wrong per se, unlike killing another person. One would, however, hope that even being ignorant of the law would be no excuse for such acts. Perhaps I am being too ambitious in anticipating people's moral compass being set askew by such conduct.
I would also be very interested in whether most rapists are "psychopaths or lurking-behind-bushes-weirdos". Based on anecdotal evidence I believe that most rapes tend to be committed by friends or boyfriends - but does this mean they are not very different to most men? I'm sure most rapes are opportunistic but it's hard to justify them as crimes of passion akin to some murders. The man to comes home to her wife sleeping with his best friend and in his fury accidentally kills her lover could genuinely be perpetrated by an otherwise "normal" guy. Although this does not justify his actions, the motive is clear and there can be understanding as to how rage has blocked out their ethical conceptions. I find this much more unlikely with rape. I would believe that most rapes are not committed in blind wrath and so could a "normal" person ever be guilty of it? I suggest that anyone who commits rape is not a "normal" person at all, and that posters dissuading people may well be ineffective.
Of course - such campaigns may still serve to raise awareness and change some of the statistics I re-quoted. The only danger being in scaring young women not to trust any men at all. Just because a man offers to help her home, does not make him a rapist and there is a real prospect that such a belief might be propagated. Compare with the current climate surrounding child safety, where any man who looks at a child is a paedophile.
Anywho - very tricky subject and an interesting piece.
"Wake up to rape" is such a bizarre title for a campaign, nevertheless. I took it quite literally, before I realised what they meant...
ReplyDeletecanyouimagine? - Me too! I wonder how it got through without anybody thinking of that.
ReplyDeleteSigmund - Thanks so much for your comment. I completely agree that the statistics are hugely damning and very, very worrying. I guess the point is that even though most people are aware of the law, insofar as they know that rape is against the law, obviously a large proportion of people don't know what is and isn't rape, so the problem is individual knowledge of the law without a greater cultural appreciation of what the law means. This was brought home to me incredibly strongly in a forum on domestic violence I went to once by a man who works with men and boys in Nottingham against domestic violence. He made a film comprising various interviews with schoolboys, and there was one group who all stated categorically that they would never, ever, rape a woman, but then who went on to joke about the gang rape of a girl at their school, who had 'deserved it' or in some way 'asked for it'. They didn't think it was rape.
Your point about weirdo vs normal is good, too, though I completely disagree with your use of anger-killing as a more justifiable example. I don't think anger can be used as any form of explanation or justification for murder (though through this discussion we're maybe challenging my own point about murder being murder being murder). Not that people don't get angry and do stupid stuff, but rather, 'manhood' and 'masculinity' should not correlate with any acceptance of excessive, violent anger. What I'm saying is that I find the rapist as 'normal' as the angry murderer.
Whether this raping or murdering criminal, then, is a psychopath or a 'normal guy' is a good question and its something I thought about for a while before putting up the original post. I think maybe we are using two senses of normal here, i.e. he is normal insofar people need to be aware that rapes can be committed by boyfriends/friends and so forth, but he is not normal insofar as he is a rapist and rapists are criminals. But then again, the incidence of rape is so high and so socially accepted that I feel reluctant to describe all rapists as psychopaths. Its a difficult one.
Sorry I haven't been following you and have only just found this Ray -
ReplyDeleteI notice that you wrote that you're not sure about all cases where it is unclear whether a rape took place or not. Also, as you write,
"rapists are everyday men who for whatever reason (pick some: they don't think its rape, lack of awareness/understanding/empathy, patriarchy, dehumanisation of women, misogyny...[choose to rape someone]"
The interesting problem is that most people seem to think that alcohol is a legitimate seduction technique. I don't mean in the sense of a bottle of good claret to improve a home-cooked meal, I mean in the sense of thousands of young (and unfortunately often old enough to know better) men going out to night clubs on the weekend to pick girls up - and some girls doing the same. (Although I'd conjecture that, in straight clubs, only a tiny minority of men are going to enjoy dancing with their friends, which is why the majority of women seem to go).
That this seduction technique is acceptable is rammed home in just about every weekly adult sitcom you will watch, including those written by self-proclaimed feminists. Indeed, you may think my choice of example and reference to sitcoms indicates that my language is unreasonably censorious.
So at what level of drunkenness do you think alcohol becomes an unacceptable seduction technique, and we are simply talking about rape?
Moreover, is it possible to raise a generation of men who are collectively capable of making that kind of judgment? What I am trying to get at is that if any use of alcohol is acceptable as a way of getting people to say 'yes', or reciprocate physical affection in a way that indicates consent (because of lost inhibitions), then it makes it much more difficult to create a culture in which men are more aware of the need to seek not just verbal or physical but *informed* physical consent. Even if lots of men have a good idea in their head of 'when she's had too much', for a few/some/many this basically moral, abstract idea can be pushed further and further by the imminent opportunity of sexual relief when confronted with a vulnerable and 'willing' young woman.
I would want to argue is that a woman is well within her rights to accuse someone of rape if they regret the sex the morning after. That is, if she would not have consented if sober, then what does the consent mean if she is drunk? Why is consent valid if she is not staggering but her inhibitions have been lowered to the point where she says 'yes' to someone she would have, when sober, said 'no' to?
I would be interested to hear your thoughts as someone whose prejudices regarding 'nights on the tiles' are probably a lot more liberal/forgiving/patient than mine.