Comments on: The great British public

By: Ken

Ken — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 20:31:35 +0000

I’m not trying to start an argument here, but I am interested in opinions…

If consent is one word - “yes” - is that consent still given if someone is drunk?

By: Antonia

Antonia — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 10:34:59 +0000

Chris - as far as I’m concerned, consent is one word: “yes”. No answer means no.

By: chris

chris — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 10:24:26 +0000

In an actual case of rape I would never say “she was asking for it” though I might question if some behaviour misled the man into believing the woman consented. The recent case where a woman “couldn’t remember” if she gave consent could have been a Rape. But it could also have been regret after the fact. Human relationships can be very complicated.

This is the sort of case which leads to the views people express when asked hypothetical questions for a survey.

But I’m with Antonio in general on this one.

By: Chris Brooke

Chris Brooke — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 20:00:02 +0000

Hmm. Maybe you didn’t say that twice. But you said it once, and that’s what matters.

By: Chris Brooke

Chris Brooke — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 19:58:56 +0000

If you think its important to analyze what the survey actually says — and you suggest that it is, twice — then look at what the survey actually reports, don’t just go around saying things that it does not, in fact, say (for example, that “it says that… women are partly to blame for it happening”, which is says nowhere at all, not even a little bit).

Eight per cent — so almost one in ten — of those surveyed thought that a woman was “totally responsible” for being raped — “totally responsible” — if it was “known that she had had many sexual partners”.

If you think that this survey is about “encouraging women to be aware of their own safety”, do you think we should be concluding that Amnesty is recommending that some women have fewer sexual partners than they do now, or, that if they have slept with a number of people, that they try to conceal it from people around them, lest this fact become “known”? Or what?

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 15:40:41 +0000

But the survey doesn’t say that women are ‘asking for it’. It says that under certain situations, which would seem to correlate well with the public’s perception of higher risk factors for rape (being drunk, being alone in a dangerous place, etc…), women are partly to blame for it happening, presumably because they have taken those risks. That obviously doesn’t excuse the act of rape, nor lessen its impact in any way, nor make it less wrong. It just seems a statement of the obvious - ‘be safe’ is an important message to remember in a non-perfect world.

It is obviously hard to comment on this, because it is such an emotive issue, but I think it makes sense to examine what the survey actually says, rather than recasting it into emotionally powerful language - ‘asking for it’ being a prime example.

If anything, the relatively low number of people saying that women were completely to blame is a positive thing, not that there isn’t work to be done in getting that number down to zero, but there is also work to be done in encouraging women to be aware of their own safety, as we don’t live in a perfect world where rape doesn’t happen. That’s the message I took from the survey, at least. I expect you’ll disagree. It certainly isn’t a good issue to be discussing the misuse of statistics on, or bad opinion polling, which is what this is.

By: Lucy

Lucy — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 11:28:08 +0000

Unbelievably depressing. How can it be that despite massive advances in women’s rights over the past 50 years, 25% of the population still believe a woman is ‘asking’ to be raped if she wears a f***ing miniskirt?

This is why we still need feminism, and why I’m proud to call myself a feminist.