I am so frustrated and sad. I wish I could wave a magic wand so those in society and the judicial system who misunderstand this crime could see it from my point of view and CHANGE for the better for EVERYONE.

Rape is an awful crime and one that goes largely unpunished. Men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators and women overwhelmingly the victims. This does not mean though, that just men should be targeted for education as you suggest.

Women suffer discrimination across all aspects of our society and this is down to society’s prejudices as a whole not just men’s prejudices. Why else would there be so few female MPs when over half the electorate are women, for example?

Some of the most vehement ‘anti-feminists’ I have met have been women. Are these women not just as ignorant and bigoted as male chauvinists and in need of education too?

I think that this is really laudable, and I know that I really appreciated the work done by the SRC at my university to do similar good work.

Luckily, we have very few serious physical sexual attacks in Guildford

I don’t believe that for a second! They may not be being reported, but even if we take the BCS figure of one in 20 adult women experiencing rape during their lifetime, then there’s an awful lack of reporting going on in Guildford.

Your suggestions about street safety are good ones, although men are more likely than women to be assaulted in the street. Sexual violence usually happens in the home, or its environs, and its usually perpetrated by someone the victim knows. Women have very little (relatively!) to fear from strangers.

I don’t give a flying toss which sex is committing the crime - the gender doesn’t make it any less wrong. That’s the point I was trying to put across.

You’re right, of course, in one way. To the individual I doubt very much whether it matters which gender the perpetrator is. In fact, as rape by men against women is more common, its probably easier to feel commonality with other survivors if your experience matches that.

The difference is akin (if you’ll pardon the analogy) to the difference between a white man in pre-civil rights Mississippi hanging a black stranger, and a black man in pre-civil rights Mississippi hanging a white stranger. Although both acts would have the same effect on the individual, and both would be objectively reprehensible, one would perpetuate a structural inequality and one would just be a random act of violence.

And in regards to the “power men have over women’s bodies”, what is your explanation for females raping men, if there is such an objective reason as the one you gave for men raping women?

That’s a good question, and one that I don’t have any answer for. Rape perpetrated by women against men is so under-reported and analysed that it’s very difficult to speculate as to its cause(s). It seems likely that this is because it is very rare.

Secondly, I apologise for my example on the “butt groping”, it was meant to highlight a separate point, but I clearly didn’t emphasise it that well. What I was trying to say was that from seeing what happened to the person I know, men who are sexually assaulted (albiet a vicious rape like my friend, or just an arse grab in the union) by a woman tend to get laughed at.

In regards to dealing with rape. I was involved in our date-rape campaign at Surrey when I was head of the student newspaper, and I made it a particular concern of mine to make sure students were safe on campus and had a way of getting home.

Unfortunately, like cutting the amount of murderers, cutting the amount of rapists in this country is a difficult task. Luckily, we have very few serious physical sexual attacks in Guildford, although recently a student was victim of an exposure.

In the situations where you are worried about anonymous attacks simply from walking down the street, there are ways we have always said may help:
1. Carry a personal alarm, most student unions sell them (and if they don’t they should) at quite a cheap price.
2. NEVER walk alone in the dark unless you have to. If this is unavoidable, get a taxi. If not possible, ensure that somebody knows when you are leaving and what time you should get to your destination.

Of course, most of my research was into drink-spiking, so I don’t claim to be an expert.

All I’ll say is that all sexual assault is abhorrable - and to be frank, I don’t give a flying toss which sex is committing the crime - the gender doesn’t make it any less wrong. That’s the point I was trying to put across.

And in regards to the “power men have over women’s bodies”, what is your explanation for females raping men, if there is such an objective reason as the one you gave for men raping women?

And no offense, but I don’t want to have any power over a woman’s body… I’m happy with my lovely man thank you very much

I agree with you, wholeheartedly!

I think that in Scotland we are probably a little bit closer to the model that you’re describing: we have a national network of autonomous centres and are working towards a joint set of policies and practices.

I am jealous of American centres, which seem to be so much better resourced than ours, but I don’t know very much about how they operate.

As well as trans issues, I would also like to see some of the resistance to the idea of women as perpetrators of CSA fade.

Emma

I’ve never worked for an RCC, so anything I say is from an outsider’s perspective. I do work in the women’s sector, though not in service delivery. I bow to no-one in my admiration for the volunteers that deliver the services, and nothing I say is meant to impugn their hard work and dedication.

I think for me, the discussion needs to start from what makes a difference for the victims of rape, not from the perspective of what would make a convenient organisational or ideological structure for those of us who care about the issue.

As I said above, I think it might be time for a more reliable, professionally-delivered (though not necessarily professional) always-on crisis/first response service, backed up by ongoing one-on-one or group-work to support survivors longterm face-to-face, delivered locally by women volunteers and professionals. I’m also anxious to find a solution that means that your postcode doesn’t get you a better service. Finally, I would nver want to lose the sense of defiant community self-defence that the women pioneers of the rape crisis movement brought to it, in a time when services for survivors were non-existent.

I think the crisis line must be delivered by government funding, as voluntary funding (community donations and fundraising) and institutional funding (local authorities, grants and trusts) have demonstrably failed to deliver a sustainable long-term support service. This doesn’t mean that government should deliver the service: the 24 hour DV line is funded by government and Comic Relief but delivered by a partnership of Women’s Aid and Refuge, with a national call centre in Bristol, staffed by professionals and volunteers. I’d follow that model.

Only a national organisation could have the resources and credibility to run the national phoneline, but having that back-up for local areas is crucial in terms of supporting women. Crucially the DV helpline works because it is able to refer to local services (refuges etc) that can provide intensive ongoing support. I’d like to see a network of women-run and community-owned centres that can provide face-to-face and remote support through counselling and groupwork, as well as practical help through the court process where necessary.

To deliver this vision, I’d like to see a national federation of independent local RCCs, autonomous as they are at the moment, but with stable core funding from national or local government. The national federation should set minimum standards and quality-assess local projects, but they should be free to develop to meet local circumstances.

Now, this picture isn’t perfect: I do have some problems with the idea that some local control of centres and helplines would be devolved upwards to a national federation. I don’t think that national voluntary organisations are necessarily responsive enough to local circumstances, I think they tend to impose one-size-fits-all solutions. But the savings in terms of quality control, support for financial and administrative issues (because too many small community organisations are terrible employers) and the national voice, campaigning for women, may be worth making the sacrifice for.

My main worry is that any engagement with national and local government will mean losing the woman-centred-ness of the movement: although the SDA makes exemptions for service delivery to women where the all-women nature of that service contributes to its success, the political pressures about making a grant to women-only organisations would be difficult to manage. No matter how often we made the argument that rape is overwhelmingly a crime against women, the pressure would be on to open the service to men who’d experienced assault, because their numbers are so small that an appropriate national service to meet their needs is a practical impossibility. Unfortunately, that would decrease the effectiveness of the service to women, as it might lose its poliical edge.

Losing some of that politics might be no bad thing, though: I’ve read of crisis lines refusing volunteers because they were trans, and because they’d served in the IDF. Now those are some attitudes I’d be happy to leave behind.

What do you think?

You’re having a laugh aren’t you? Unless you have some kind of utopic students’ union they are as much a hotbed of casual misogyny and unwelcome sexual contact from men to women as the rest of the world. While I’m sure that having your butt groped is deeply unpleasant, one might argue that it takes on a different resonance in a world where 1/4 women experience rape during their lives, and the groper belongs to a group which is not only bigger and stronger than yours, but also has its reality privileged above yours.

Antonia, I think this is spot on. As an ex-RCC volunteer, I was also wondering what you think of the working structure of the RCC movement, and whether you think it needs to professionalise to offer the services that women need?

Many men are raped, Chris (most by other men); the official figure’s 0.2 per cent, but the true figure is probably higher. The SARC centres Antonia mentioned are for anybody; Rape Crisis Centres give men information about support groups; the Rape Crisis Centre’s web page gives further information.
http://www.rapecrisis.org.uk/

and Victim Support will of course help your friend