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Rape: the sinister blame game

Cara

A new UK study shows that most people still blame rape victims at least some of the time — and women are even more likely to victim-blame than men. I offer my analysis on these findings in my first ever piece for the Guardian.

A new survey by the Havens service for rape victims shows that most respondents blamed rape victims for their assailants’ assaults at least some of the time. In particular, well over half said that victims should take responsibility if they climbed into bed with someone who went on to rape them. While the widespread notion that getting into bed with another person equals consent to any and all sexual activities is certainly worthy of discussion and dismantling, the headlines are focusing on a different matter altogether – that more women than men held victims responsible.

This news will likely come as a shock to most. Some will inevitably use it to claim that if women blame victims in such large numbers – even though women constitute the vast majority of victims – victim-blaming can’t be too off-base after all. Others will use it to hold women primarily culpable for societal attitudes regarding sexual violence, and in doing so shift the focus off men. As far as revelations go, this one is disappointing – but it shouldn’t be considered particularly surprising.

Check out the full piece here.

43 thoughts on Rape: the sinister blame game

  1. A point of information:

    The statistics for who believed x was a reason to blame the victim were out of the 56% who said that there were some circumstances where the victim was partially responsible. So 73% of 56% said that “performing another sexual act” counted as a reason a victim was responsible; that’s about 40% of the total population.

    For “getting into bed with a person” you quoted 71% as the figure for all people, but that’s the figure for women, while the general population was 66% (and again, these were a proportion of the 56% percent who said there was sometimes a responsibility on the part of the victim – so 66% becomes 37% of the general population)

    This doesn’t lessen the problem in any way – as I explained on my own blog post about the issue, even the 18% of people who think that “most claims of rape are probably false” gives a 37% chance that a 12-person jury will contain 3 or more people who believe that. In the UK you need 10 jurors to agree on a verdict for a majority verdict to be accepted. And if 56% of people think that there are some circumstances where the victim is responsible, then there’s a 73% chance that 6 or more of a jury of 12 will believe that. Which is how it comes to be that getting a rape conviction is so hard.

    1. For “getting into bed with a person” you quoted 71% as the figure for all people, but that’s the figure for women, while the general population was 66% (and again, these were a proportion of the 56% percent who said there was sometimes a responsibility on the part of the victim – so 66% becomes 37% of the general population)

      Where’s that? My article says:

      When 71% of female respondents think that a person who is raped after willingly getting into bed with an assailant is responsible for the attack …

      But if there is actually an error with my reporting of the data, I would like to know so that I can have it corrected! 🙂

  2. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Excellent article. Somehow rape always revolves around women and what women do. I think the findings are interesting, although by no means shocking – it just goes back to the persistent (false) dilemma of being in control vs. out of/beyond control. There’s a tendency to unrealistically dichotomize those two circumstances and it sets us up to try choosing one over the other, usually with shitty results. Either someone’s agency is denied and discarded, or it is overgeneralized to the point of ultimate culpability.

  3. Cara, do you know if there are any studies that have been done on what mass victim-blaming does to assault victims? I ask because while I’m pretty sure that going to sleep alone in my own bed while a friend of a roommate slept on our couch wasn’t an invitation for sex, I seem to have lost contact with a lot of family members over it. And what bothers me is that I’m doing fine because of whatever other circumstances, but they, as circumstances, clearly don’t exist for most survivors. I guess it’s just baffling to me that people think that it’s appropriate for an individual who got drunk with people he or she trusted to get raped and to lose some corresponding amount of family and friends over it, but I don’t remember what I was like before it happened to me, you know?

    Also, do you know if other studies have been performed interculturally? I ask because I’m curious about how this varies with laws and social stigmas.

    1. PrettyAmiable, I’m not aware of any such studies, but I hope that some have been done — and if they have, I’d really love to have access to them. If anyone else knows of one, please drop the information here in the comments.

  4. I have seen reporting of a British survey cited in several places only to, as a good social scientist in training, follow up with the actual numbers to see how a lede that states, “A majority of women believe some rape victims should take responsibility for what happened, a survey suggests.” will really treat the data.

    Once I tracked down the original source, I realized that all reporting had been done off of a press release/pseudo-article (at least, I couldn’t readily find a real report that could potentially be published in a peer-reviewed journal).

    The problem with this report is two-fold: the research it is based on does not provide enough information to confirm that its results should be trusted, and the reporting is, like most media reporting of social science research, ridiculously inaccurate.

    First off, I really couldn’t find any of the juicy methodological details other than a content-less defense of the use of an online survey. Now, the use of an online survey can mean a lot of things, but I am going to be automatically wary of a report that doesn’t give a review of the sampling methods when conducting an online survey. These are notoriously unpredictable, as evidenced in all of the ridiculous online polls news organizations feature on their sites and then report as factual polling data.

    The research summary report states:

    Women are less forgiving than men. They are more likely to think that a person should accept responsibility when:

    Performing another sexual act on them
    Getting into bed with a person
    Going back to theirs for a drink
    Dressing provocatively
    Dancing in a sexy way with a man at a night club or bar
    Accepting a drink and engaging in a conversation at a bar

    Now, there is no way to tell that these results are statistically significant. Additionally, this is turned around and reported as simply, “The study found that women were less forgiving of the victim than men.” under the section headline, “Less Forgiving”. This of course, ignores the fact that according to these results they are not less forgiving than men when it comes to:

    Drinking to excess/blackout
    Acting flirtatiously
    Kissing them

    Given the data presented, there is no way to ascertain whether a statement that implies women are less forgiving on the whole would be accurate.

    Now, I am quite certain that many women do “blame” survivors of sexual violence in some cases. That is not the issue. The issue is whether the assertions made in this article really stand up to methodological standards. You can’t draw conclusions from faulty data.

  5. PrettyAmiable, I have access to a number of research publications and have looked for some relevant research pertaining to your comment. There’s not an overwhelming amount, but one researcher, Sarah Ullman (http://www.uic.edu/depts/cjus/faculty/ullman.html), a social psychologist, has done some work on social reactions to rape victims and their effects on victim recovery (a general finding seems to be that positive social reactions have a negligible or inconsistent effect on recovery and negative reactions have a negative impact).

    Unfortunately most research publications require paid subscriptions for access (pet peeve of mine – science and research should be as accessible as possible). If there’s a specific article someone would like, I could arrange to download it and pass it along, but it’s hard to link something without knowing whether it’s general access or if I can see it just because I’m logged in at work (I work at a university).

    Here’s an abstract from one of Ullman’s studies: Social Reactions to Sexual Assault Victims from Various Support Sources. Filipas, Henrietta H.; Ullman, Sarah E. Violence and Victims, vol. 16, no. 6, pp. 673-692, Dec 2001

    This study examined positive & negative social reactions received by 323 victims disclosing sexual assaults to informal & formal support providers. Analyses of both quantitative & qualitative data indicated that both positive & negative reactions are commonly received by victims disclosing their assaults to others, but that victims seeking help from formal support sources are more commonly faced with negative reactions of victim blame, stigmatizing responses, & controlling reactions from others. Qualitative analysis of written responses provided by respondents also revealed other less common but unhelpful reactions of assault disclosure such as rape myths, violations of the victim’s confidential disclosures, & revictimization. Preliminary analyses of the effects of specific reactions on adjustment from different types of support providers suggested that reactions of friends are particularly important for recovery. Positive reactions from friends appear to be more helpful, whereas negative reactions appear to be harmful from both informal & formal support sources. Implications for research & treatment of sexual assault victims are discussed.

    There are also a handful of studies comparing acceptance of rape myths across different countries (generally the US and one other place; a couple of researchers have done more than one study comparing US and Japanese college-aged men, but Israel, Scotland, Australia, India, Singapore and various other areas in Asia have been looked at in the last 20 years – very old research though, mainly from the 80s and 90s).

  6. People other than cis men and cis women are raped. We do a fine job of blaming ourselves for it, too. Or at least I do. We live in the rape culture and absorb a variety of messages. A lot of them are much the same for what our gender presentation is at the time but some are specific to us. I won’t go into detail.

    It’s just. We don’t exist in these surveys. We aren’t victims or perpetrators or respondents; we aren’t anything. How can we be part of the conversation–and we need to be part of the conversation because rape is a big part of violence against us–when the official work fails to notice we’re here?

    1. kaninchenzero, thanks for your comment. I don’t have anything to add to what you said, but you’re absolutely right, of course.

      Snowdrops, I now understand the point that you were attempting to get across — neither I or the Guardian’s fact-checkers caught it. I’m working on getting a correction over at the article.

  7. Kaninchenzero,
    I’m not sure whether this is meaningful to you, but lately I’ve been thinking about rape in terms of a continuum of violence against marginalized people that operates within structures of hierarchies. I’ve ran against the same problem in that I’ve been specifically trained that rape is primarily committed by _men_ against _women_ with some variation where _men_ are also victims. But this does nothing to address those of us not belonging specifically to one or the other in our lovely constructed gender binary as well as the ways in which violence and sexual violence are also committed against those of us who are disabled or cross-cultural violence/sexual violence in war. This is why I’ve been thinking and writing about rape in terms of hierarchies rather than gender because it is much more inclusive and widely applicable. I really think we ought to change our discussions of rape to these terms, while making sure to name regularly which marginalized groups are most often targeted so that people are not erased in this larger, more inclusive framework. (While naming oppressed groups does suggest a false stability to the categories, there is a history of erasing groups such as lesbians in discussions of homosexuality, women in discussions of human rights, a range of racial identities outside black/white, and transgendered people in pretty much every context.)

  8. I’ve never understood the victim blamefest, personally. Probably because number one, I was raped when I was fifteen, and two, I was raised to believe people should take responsibility for one’s actions. I did not force myself down. I did not force my own legs apart. I did not screw myself, nor did I beat myself until I was covered in bruises. I did not do ANY of that. Responsibility for those actions completely is in the hands of the jackass who did those things.

    So when people would blame me for it, it would send me into either an incoherent rage or a complete pit of despair. It’s incredibly damaging to have to deal with… losing friends who determined that I was a slut because I was raped. Dealing with teachers and other students at school furious with me for reporting the jackass (he was a fellow student at my school and the rumor mill went fucking insane). Dealing with my family telling me that they were “disappointed” in me.

    And people wonder why I’m sensitive, why I have trust issues, and whatnot.

  9. Where’s that? My article says:

    When 71% of female respondents think that a person who is raped after willingly getting into bed with an assailant is responsible for the attack …

    But if there is actually an error with my reporting of the data, I would like to know so that I can have it corrected! 🙂

    Sorry, that was a mistake in my scan-reading the article – I misread the comment that you have quoted above. By now, you’d think I’d know better to double-check what I’m writing when I’m making a nitpicking comment!

    I’m glad the maths point got through anyway, though.

  10. @ e:

    The survey was conducted by an opinion polls company, not by a research establishment – it’s not intended for peer-reviewed publication, it’s intended to be a poll run by standard statistical methods, the same as MORI, Gallup etc might use. As you’ll have noticed from reading the summary report, the polling company is properly accredited with the appropriate bodies for market and social research.

    So I think it’s something of a red herring to question the methodology.

  11. The survey was conducted by an opinion polls company, not by a research establishment – it’s not intended for peer-reviewed publication, it’s intended to be a poll run by standard statistical methods, the same as MORI, Gallup etc might use. As you’ll have noticed from reading the summary report, the polling company is properly accredited with the appropriate bodies for market and social research.

    So I think it’s something of a red herring to question the methodology.

    I disagree. A big part of the problem with studies like this is that they muddy the waters. Just because they happen to have been conducted in accordance with industry standards doesn’t vindicate them if the industry standards are themselves too lax for the data to be worthwhile.

    Why is it important? Because studies like this will not always be on our side. I’d be willing to bet my home on the general findings in this study being correct (people blame victims when they shouldn’t) but, from either a policy or scientific point of view, that doesn’t matter at all. If we afford weight to meaningless research we make it the equivalent of meaningful research in the eyes of the general public who reads headlines and has never had a Stats class. If we don’t demand high-quality data with good methodology and transparency then we contribute to the use of data as propaganda. More importantly, we make properly collected statistical data easier to ignore and deny by introducing so much noise into the discussion. I’m sure you could design a study that would have similar results with good methodology, a study with statistical significance, a study which actually means something. But even if you did, the existence of so many bad studies designed to make a point would make it suspect in the eyes of many people.

    Today the meaningless numbers are on our side, but tomorrow they may well be against us. The awareness that such numbers can raise can just as easily be turned to silence or marginalize if the producers of the press release have a different goal in mind.

  12. Isn’t there a huge semantic question what you mean by “responsibility”. It is not necessarily the same as blame. While victim-blaming is a problem, I do not think the questions, as phrased in this poll, make a good job of measuring them.

    For example: If I take a walk at night through a bad neighbourhood and get mugged, some people might consider that I at least partially “have myself to blame”. Depending on exactly what you mean with this, it is not necessarily unreasonable IMHO.

    Isn’t the critical question whether you would say that the actions of the victim in any way excuses or mitigates the actions of the offender? (This is what I would consider “true” victim-blaming)

    1. Matlun,

      When you’re the victim being asked “Why were you there in the first place?” it doesn’t really mean very much to you if the phrase is backed up with “not that it excuses anything ….” If it didn’t excuse the actions of the offender, no one would ask the question. And either way, it sure as fucking hell feels like you’re being blamed, which is all that matters.

  13. … particularly when “Why were you there in the first place?” becomes the ONLY response you ever get from anyone.

  14. @matlun:
    “For example: If I take a walk at night through a bad neighbourhood and get mugged, some people might consider that I at least partially “have myself to blame”. Depending on exactly what you mean with this, it is not necessarily unreasonable IMHO.”

    To me, it is unreasonable. The person who commits a crime is the person responsible for the crime. If you get mugged, no matter where it is, it is the fault of the criminal, not the victim. If you have a crime committed against you, you are not the one at fault.

  15. When you’re the victim being asked “Why were you there in the first place?” it doesn’t really mean very much to you if the phrase is backed up with “not that it excuses anything ….” If it didn’t excuse the actions of the offender, no one would ask the question. And either way, it sure as fucking hell feels like you’re being blamed, which is all that matters.

    Besides, we live in a world where cops will “unfound” your case (basically, declare that no crime occurred) because they don’t think you act enough like a victim or they don’t think your story is plausible, and juries will acquit men for *any* reason that can be interpreted as “she might have wanted it.” Including cases like the one where a man grabbed a passing biker on her way to the train station, assaulted her, claimed in his defense that she voluntarily went into the bushes to have sex with him, a total stranger… and HE GOT ACQUITTED.

    If I am walking down the street late at night and I get mugged, cops might tell me to be more careful, but they won’t declare that the mugging didn’t *happen* or that I must have wanted to give my stuff to the mugger. Only with rape are women actually held accountable for what they “should have” done to protect themselves to the point where if they didn’t do enough things to protect themselves, no one treats it as a *crime.*

    Also, to be quite honest, there is a pernicious side effect of all these rape warnings toward women and the lack of any similar warnings toward men (either of the “don’t rape” variety or of the “watch your back” variety). Women live in a state of fear. We are *constantly* second-guessing ourselves, trying to minimize the danger we are in just by living our lives. Yet, in fact, when you exclude rape (possibly if you *include* stranger rape and just exclude acquaintance rape), men suffer vastly more violence at the hands of strangers than women do. My husband has been jumped and beaten up while walking around at night four times in his life. I never have… in part, because the fear of being raped that’s been inculcated into me makes me too afraid to put myself into the kind of dangerous situations he has voluntarily entered. But no one talks about the night being dangerous for men, or how violence affects male victims, or how men should be careful where they go and what they do at night because 80% of all murder victims are male and over 50% of them were killed by strangers… because rape is perceived as the only real danger, and it’s perceived that it only affects women, in part because women are constantly being admonished to avoid rape.

    So women live in terror… and men get beaten up, and aren’t taught anything more than how to physically fight back if it happens (which is about as helpful to a 115-lb teenage boy as it is to a 115-lb adult woman, namely, not real damn helpful). And people, in general, have the luxury of believing that only psychopaths rape, because the lack of admonishments to men to not commit rape tells all of us that rapists’ behavior can’t be changed… after all, if men could be convinced not to rape, wouldn’t we be telling them not to do it? But rapists aren’t men, they’re monsters. So my pal Joe can’t possibly be a rapist! The woman who says he is must be a lying bitch, because Joe is no monster, and if rapists were ordinary men, wouldn’t we be holding them accountable for their actions?

  16. “For example: If I take a walk at night through a bad neighbourhood and get mugged, some people might consider that I at least partially “have myself to blame”. Depending on exactly what you mean with this, it is not necessarily unreasonable IMHO.”

    Matlun,

    No one is ever in any way responsible for having a crime committed against them. It doesn’t matter what you were or were not doing at the time the crime occurred, the criminal is always the one responsible for the crime.

    And one of the major problems with the idea that there are certain things that women can do to keep themselves from getting raped is that women are raped under virtually any and every circumstance. Women are raped by their fathers, brothers, husbands, dates, lovers, sons, strangers…pretty much any man a woman comes in contact with could potentially wind up raping her. Women have no idea which man will or will not rape her. Men rape women while we’re drunk, sober, awake, sleeping, young, old, or even bloody dead in some circumstances.

    This is part of the reason that it’s so particularly disturbing for women to get blamed for getting raped. Because there are no sure-fire ways to avoid getting raped. About the only thing a woman can do to avoid getting raped by a man is to not come in contact with men ever.

    (Note: No, I am not saying that every single man on the planet is a rapist. I am dropping the dreaded “all men are potential rapists” bomb, however. There is also nothing that anyone can say that will change my opinion about that. We all possess within us the potential to be violent criminals. Even every woman (at least every able-bodied woman) has the potential to become a rapist. It just doesn’t make any sense to talk about women as rapists in most circumstances because a) most rape is committed by men against women which means b) most rapists are men.)

  18. I was at home in my own bedroom and I was assaulted by my then-lover. And for fifteen years I was not even able to call what was done to me rape–I didn’t like it and it felt real wrong but it wasn’t rape because I didn’t say no I didn’t make it stop and I should have if it was rape. I am still making excuses for the person who did it; they aren’t a bad person; they wouldn’t think of what they did as rape. (I know because I didn’t, see?) I have lots of reasons why it’s my fault and not theirs. I should know better and I do when it’s anyone but me. It’s just I was there for mine and I know what happened and it’s my fault. This is a seriously powerful narrative. (Also I’m a victim of parental abuse and I don’t actually believe I deserve better which doesn’t help much of anything. I’m working on that. Speaking of powerful narratives.)

    Responsibility/blame/fault: the words are interchangeable and I have used them all against myself. It comes down to I’m the person who could have made it not happen and I didn’t. That other person who was there? They couldn’t have changed anything. It was all on me.

    —

    I get real bitter when I read/hear the demand that victims use violence–especially firearms–against their assailants. I was in love with the person who assaulted me. Even if I could have moved at all (which at the time wasn’t happening) I wouldn’t have hit that person. Shooting that person to death would have been enormously traumatic. And I would have been arrested. Probably I would have pled guilty to some version of criminal homicide. I feel guilty now. If I’d used violence I don’t know what I’d have to deal with.

  19. I find it rather interesting to see more women blame victims for rape, because a Dutch study I read about a few years ago (I don’t remember the source, sorry) found that men are more likely to take signals from a woman as meaning she really wants sex than women do. For example, I seem to remember abotu 54% of men and 31% of women thought that if the woman first said yes and then said no after all, she really does want sex. So if women are more likely to recognize ambiguous signals as meaning the woman doesn’t want sex, it is rather weird that they are however more likely to blame the victim if she gets raped, because a lot of the time, whether the woman did give consent for sex is the major issue in rape cases.

  20. The blame game is one of the most insidious and sinister things going. Even my own Father participates in it – he would ask ‘what was she doing? what was she wearing’ instead of ‘why the fuck did he rape her?’ (and he is a good man! The point is that good people are participating in this) . It needs to erradicated and addressed whenever people make excuses for it, because it does matter and it does effect things. And if women are becoming a larger part of this, then we need to pull each other up!

    The other night at the pub I had to grab a man around the throat and push him off me, because he was trying to kiss me and it wasn’t welcome (he had been verbally harrassing me all night). I couldn’t possibly imagine what it would be like if people tried to blame me for something even as small as that, let alone being raped.

  21. There is something here that has to be straight up discussed and dealt with. Maybe feminist sites could start an annual day to discuss it. The thing is: “complaining women are okay.”

    I’ve seen it even among women. Maybe they all work in the same place and one complains about sexism. There is a persistent belief that women can manage all relationships. If she “wasn’t so…” She wouldn’t get bad treatment. If she “wasn’t complaining… if she would just be cool with it….and also if she wasn’t so sexual, attention-seeking, non-attention seeking, ugly, old, fat….” My favorite is “with me it would’ve been different…” That is the go-to thought of all non-feminist thinking.

  22. @ Astrid “So if women are more likely to recognize ambiguous signals as meaning the woman doesn’t want sex, it is rather weird that they are however more likely to blame the victim if she gets raped, because a lot of the time, whether the woman did give consent for sex is the major issue in rape cases.”

    hmm… I think it’s a variety of you-knew-they’d-think-no-meant-yes-therefore-you-knew-you-were-communicating-yes-therefore-why-did-you-put-yourself-in-a-situation-where-there-could-be-any-ambiguity? mental gymnastics: that victim-blaming women aren’t necessarily denying that rape victims didn’t want sex, or that they failed to communicate it at all – but that it was “partially” (effectively “mostly” or “entirely”) their fault because we are all supposed to know that say, 54% of men can’t read signals properly (i.e. hear the word no – they’re just slaves to pussy! they can’t help themselves! men are just unbearably horny all the time!), and what separates Us from the Raped Them is that the Raped failed to take the Proper Steps to avoid Any Ambiguity in Company, Dress, or Conduct. Like, if you knew there was a 54% chance of rain, wouldn’t you have brought an umbrella? You’re partially at fault for getting wet in a downpour (the rest of the fault is on the weather, but what’s the point of faulting the weather?)!

    I have read the responses to this article on several blogs today which claim to be blogs for skeptical, rational people, and all have massively involved a bunch of men who think they’re really nice, intelligent, rational guys, arguing that there is no harm in assigning partial responsibility, while the women tear their hair out explaining that WHEN YOU SAY THAT YOU ENABLE THE SOCIETY THAT SAYS I DESERVED IT. The men just can’t understand why we won’t be Objective and Rational and Calm and cerebrally debate the semantics of this Very Fascinating Social Phenomenon. Like we’re just choosing to take it personally, but we really don’t have to – why don’t we just reclaim the word “responsible” or something?

  23. This shouldn’t come as any surprise. For decades, defense attorneys have tried to pack juries with women in rape cases knowing that they are far less likely to convict. That’s just the way things go.

  24. To all the people that disagreed with me above:
    Fair enough, you may be right (and I may be wrong) – I will have to think about this a bit more.

    The point I was trying to make is that real ugliness is when the reasoning is along the lines “she led him on, so you can not really blame him if he couldn’t control himself”. But I would certainly hope that most people assigning “responsibility” to the victim are not thinking along these lines (even implicitly/indirectly).

  25. But I would certainly hope that most people assigning “responsibility” to the victim are not thinking along these lines (even implicitly/indirectly).

    I think this discussion is especially difficult precisely because so many people do think along those lines both implicitly and explicitly. People want to believe that rapists are drooling psychopaths and rape victims are whores who were asking for it because that lends a sense of security. If you imagine all rapists to be raving lunatics with semen crusted overcoats you imagine a world in which you have the power to avoid or control rape. Blaming the victim works in a similar way. If you can find a way to make it her fault then you can imagine that yourself and your loved ones are safe. All too often any question of responsibility has that reasoning at it’s roots and, in my opinion, that pair of comforting lies are the reason rape culture has been able to persist in our society.

    The question of responsibility (a better word would be involvement) can be asked in ways that don’t blame the victim, but it is very difficult and I don’t think thats where most people are going. For example, its pretty well-known that people who have been raped once are more likely to be raped a second time than people who have not (theres a similar trend for other kinds of abusive/traumatic interpersonal relationships). When you’re a therapist and you’re doing case conceptualizations or group supervision this comes up a lot because it tends to be significant. There is almost always something about the person which leads to these things happen, human beings have a tendency to replicate the past. Something that you see a lot with less sophisticated students is confusing the role a person had to play in their own victimization with responsibility for their own victimization. They almost never mean “she deserved it,” but if you were sitting in therapy with that person I doubt the nuance would mean anything at all to you. Its a failure of basic human empathy and, in my experience, it always stems from the person who has decided to assign blame trying to banish their own anxiety.

  26. Marissa @10, a little late, but:
    I remember a big uproar in the German radical scene years and years ago, when an imprisoned member of the Red Army Fraction (google it if you’re unfamiliar with their story) got sexually assaulted by the prison guards.

    She issued a public statement about the assault, in which she just unquestioningly identified her assailants as “lesbian prison guards.”
    The discussion went along similar lines as you brought up here: while there may have been the odd closet lesbian among the rather large group that committed the assault, most of them were clearly straight.
    This, then, as the old truism goes, was clearly about power and not about sex. Prison guards who already are in a power position violate a prisoner who, on top of the already steep hierarchy, they probably think of as a terrorist (again, google it, that’s a whole different discussion).
    The point is, not only is it not about sex, rape can surpass even the sexual orientation of the rapist themself. Likewise, as far as I know (from very vague sources, don’t quote me on it) men who are raped by men are often perceived to be gay – and therefor lower in the hierarchy – while the rapist will think of himself as straight, or even as particularly manly for subduing another man.

    Am I making sense?

  27. And re: kaninchenzero then: in this theory, sexual violence against trans people would be so frequent because a) trans people are perceived as inferior and b) they upset an assumed “natural order” of gender (and sexual orintation etc.) hierarchy.

    You’re right of course when you say that this gets completely blanked out in most discussions of rape.
    Maybe the model Marissa posted can bridge the gap there seems to be between anti rape discussions and discussions of violence against trans people (which is usually treated as a whole separate subject, right?)

  28. “There is almost always something about the person which leads to these things happen, human beings have a tendency to replicate the past.”

    There isn’t anything about the victim that leads them to get raped repeatedly. There is something about -rapists- that cause them rape. And, yes, predators do tend to be able to recognize women that are likely to be easier victims due to a past history, but still, the fact remains that the rape would never occur regardless of the victim’s behavior if the rapist didn’t decide to commit an act of rape.

  29. The point I was trying to make is that real ugliness is when the reasoning is along the lines “she led him on, so you can not really blame him if he couldn’t control himself”. But I would certainly hope that most people assigning “responsibility” to the victim are not thinking along these lines (even implicitly/indirectly).

    @matlun, this is very explicitly what I said to myself. Using exactly those words. Not that I led my rapist on but I didn’t act to stop it happening so I was responsible. I was at fault and my rapist was not. Because it was my fault I couldn’t even identify it as rape. And I am not new to social justice work. I know that assigning responsibility to the victim does this. I know it’s wrong. I did it to myself anyway.

    @UnFit: Yeah, pretty much. There’s often a ‘corrective’ motivation to sexual violence against trans* folk–we’ve left the roles imposed upon us and some take it upon themselves to show us the error of our ways. (This happens to cis queer people also which leads to some bizarre shit like straight men raping a man percieved as gay with the intent of turning him straight. I DO NOT GET IT.)

    Even those of us whose identities fit into a binary gender construction get people all confused. Is a cis man who finds a binary trans* woman attractive gay? (No: being attracted to a trans* woman is still being attracted to a woman, and her surgical status is irrelevant.) Where do people whose identities fall outside a binary gender construction fit? What does it make binary people who find them attractive? (Why do we have to fit into y’all’s boxes anyway?) So there’s much frustration. Anger, as we see often. A need to define things more clearly when humans fit very poorly into clearly defined categories. Often people want to know–feel entitled to know–what are we really: Have you had The Surgery? (Tell me about your genitals.) What’s your real name? (Your identity isn’t real.) How do you… you know… do it? (Perform for me, freak!)

    Some people react very badly to category violations. They need to reassert that they have power, that they are in control. Some people write books; some get violent.

    And considering our extremely low standing in most societies crimes committed against us tend to have a pretty low risk of carrying serious consequences. (In some places that is finally starting to change.) Most trans* folk are poor. Many, especially those who are more femme/female, do sex work. Many use substances which I personally find entirely rational but I’m weird about these things I guess. Predators are good at target selection. Too many of us make tempting targets. Some of these predators may not have any animosity against trans* folk specifically; they’re just doing a risk/benefit calculation.

  30. What kills me is that with a lot of victim blaming topics (you know, what was she wearing, how much did he drink, did she walk home alone at night, etc), you get shit for going to the other extreme too.

    She doesn’t have friends because she dresses in awkward, baggy clothing and wears no make up and is in a general state of dishevelment.

    He’s so weird because he goes out to to bars and parties and networking events and family dinners and abstains from alcohol. I bet he’s an alcoholic.

    She doesn’t go out at night and we all work during the day. Of course she doesn’t have friends.

    I’ve found that there’s nothing you can do once you’ve been assaulted to win. There’s the fundamental attribution error which explains some of it in the west at least – I don’t know how it translates across all cultures though. It sucks.

  32. “(This happens to cis queer people also which leads to some bizarre shit like straight men raping a man percieved as gay with the intent of turning him straight. I DO NOT GET IT.)”

    Yea, by now this is probably a See Above: I have a comment in moderation musing about just that.

  33. William: of course, getting good information on how any statistic was obtained is often a pain. For example, “23% of UK women (compared with 3% of men) are said to be sexually assaulted as adults” from the Guardian article, which turns out to be from the 2004-5 BCS survey via a Government report. Then there’s the question of what definitions and questions are being used.

    That’s the fun bit. After much digging the report from which the figure originates is actually “Finney, A. (2006) Domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking: findings from the 2004/05 British Crime Survey. Home Office Online Report 12/06”. And, reading that… nothing. No details whatsoever. Same with the technical report.

    The 2008/9 survey (3% of men and 20% of women sexually assaulted since age 16) has more information – there “less serious” is defined as unwanted touching, indecent exposure and threats. “More serious” is split into rape (penetration of the victim’s vagina, anus or mouth with a penis without consent), assault by penetration (penetration of the victim’s vagina or anus with objects without consent), and attempts at both of these.

    So, after all that, it turns out the most recent survey – and probably the 2004/5 one too – has an issue with counting rape victims with genitals of the sort normally gendered as male. Unless they were either sexually penetrated or perceived the act as “unwanted” (which many male victims probably won’t), they’re not counted as having been sexually assaulted. Tricky to figure out, though. Also, just how good it is at counting victims with another popular genital configuration depends on exact details that aren’t available, but it’s certainly better.

    At a glance, this doesn’t appear to exclude trans men in the same way as the US NVCS survey, but I wouldn’t put money on it. Seriously, finding rape statistics that reliably include victims who aren’t cis women is difficult.

  34. There isn’t anything about the victim that leads them to get raped repeatedly. There is something about -rapists- that cause them rape. And, yes, predators do tend to be able to recognize women that are likely to be easier victims due to a past history, but still, the fact remains that the rape would never occur regardless of the victim’s behavior if the rapist didn’t decide to commit an act of rape.

    I couldn’t agree more. The point that I was, perhaps poorly, trying to make was that we tend to confuse involvement with responsibility in order to convince ourselves that the world is safer. Those things which the rapist picks up on are perceived by others, and I think that that is the means by which victim blaming is rationalized. If you’re doing therapy its useful to figure out what these signals and vulnerabilities are for obvious reasons. Part of what I was saying was that even in that setting, with people trained to think about these kinds of factors with more nuance and who really ought to know better, you see the same kinds of victim blaming happen that you see from everyone else.

  35. There isn’t anything about the victim that leads them to get raped repeatedly. There is something about -rapists- that cause them rape. And, yes, predators do tend to be able to recognize women that are likely to be easier victims due to a past history, but still, the fact remains that the rape would never occur regardless of the victim’s behavior if the rapist didn’t decide to commit an act of rape.

    I couldn’t agree more. The point that I was, perhaps poorly, trying to make was that we tend to confuse involvement with responsibility in order to convince ourselves that the world is safer. Those things which the rapist picks up on are perceived by others, and I think that that is the means by which victim blaming is rationalized. If you’re doing therapy its useful to figure out what these signals and vulnerabilities are for obvious reasons. Part of what I was saying was that even in that setting, with people trained to think about these kinds of factors with more nuance and who really ought to know better, you see the same kinds of victim blaming happen that you see from everyone else.

  36. When I was thirteen, I reported the man (a family friend) who had raped me when I was four years old. (I knew that he couldn’t be prosecuted for this so many years later; I had just wanted the police report to go on his record, to support any accusations that came later and did have usable evidence.)

    When I was interviewed by the sexual assault specialist officer, he asked me if I had, at age four, led my rapist on in any way. He called me a liar when I said I hadn’t; he insisted I’d provoked it.

  37. When I was interviewed by the sexual assault specialist officer, he asked me if I had, at age four, led my rapist on in any way. He called me a liar when I said I hadn’t; he insisted I’d provoked it.

    Not only does that man need to not be a sexual assault specialist officer, but he should be charged with pedophilia himself. No one who believes that children are capable of “provoking” sexual assault from an adult belongs being free in society; that’s a person who has either molested children and gotten away with it, or is working up the nerve to molest children in the future.

    Or, if female, has probably been molested herself, but if she has beliefs like that she still doesn’t belong anywhere near children, or sexual assault victims.

  38. Or, if female, has probably been molested herself, but if she has beliefs like that she still doesn’t belong anywhere near children, or sexual assault victims.

    Thats not idiosyncratic to female survivors of sexual molestation.

  39. Thats not idiosyncratic to female survivors of sexual molestation.

    Well, no one who has beliefs like that belongs anywhere near sexual assault victims, or children of any kind. But victims of child molestation may come by their belief in a more understandable way — the whole locus of control thing (“it was under my control, I made a mistake and that’s why it happened, now that I know better I can keep it from happening again” — as opposed to the more frightening “I had no control whatsoever and there was nothing I could have done to prevent it.”) Perpetrators are much more likely to believe that children provoke their own molestation because it lets them be free of guilt.

    Both men and women can be victims, and can believe such things because it gives them a feeling of control. But the molesters are overwhelmingly male (I do believe that female sexual assault of children is under-reported, but I also think it doesn’t begin to approach the rates of male sexual assault of children), so if you hear a person with such an attitude, I would consider them more dangerous, more likely to believe it because they are a molester than because they are a victim, if they are male (or they might be both a molester *and* a victim.)

    Under any circumstances they should not be a sexual assault specialist for the police, though.

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