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Does Provocative Dress Ever Cause Rape?
Some friends were discussing the “Slut Walks” that keep popping up, and someone asked whether provocative clothing ever plays a role in rape. Interesting that “provocative” is used to describe a style of dress, suggesting that clothes actually provoke something. Attention? Desire? Rape?
Women don’t cause rape by what they wear. Asking about correlation between clothing and rape is tricky, though.
To make clear, sexual assault is never the victim’s fault. Someone has to act to commit rape. No one forces that choice. If seeing an enticing woman led men to conclude, “I’ve got to rape her,” all men would be rapists. Yet few are.
And plenty of assaulted women are not dressed sexily, including women draped in head-to-toe burqas. Interestingly, veiled women are blamed, too: “He must have seen a bit of her ankle, wrist, hair, neck… Who could resist!?”
Strippers are the most sexually “provocative” of all, yet patrons manage to contain themselves. Yes, bouncers provide security, but they aren’t stationed with blinders blocking their sight. And who’s watching them? Male customers aren’t physically restrained. The men are actually controlling themselves.
Sociologists who have interviewed rapists, read their accounts and looked at the circumstances of their crimes have learned that they have a variety of motives. Here are a few:
Some rape to feel powerful, others gang rape to demonstrate their “manhood” (defined as powerful, dominant, violent, virile, and not gay) to each other and fraternally bond, some become aroused by sadistically bringing sex and violence together, others seek to harm an entire race, community or nation by using sexual assault as a political weapon, still others seek revenge against someone other than the rape victim. And some misread cues.
Let’s take a look at these mistaken cue readers. Here’s where it gets tricky because a correlation between clothing and rape is not the same thing as sexy clothing causing assault.
Rapists who misread cues believe the following: men are naturally assertive and women are naturally passive. There are “good girls” and “bad girls.” Bad girls secretly want sex but can’t admit it, so they trick men into forcing sex. How do these “bad girls” send cues (in these men’s minds)? By doing things like smiling at them, or making eye contact, or by showing a little leg or cleavage. So these men may see a low-cut blouse as a “rape me” signal. But while they also see a smile or eye contact as a sexual come-on, women are only blamed for the dress. Have you ever heard anyone say, “Never look at a man,” or “Never smile at a man, he may rape you!”
Women, if you think dressing modestly will protect you, it won’t. Most rapists don’t care about “cues,” and just in case you run into those who do, you better not look at, or smile at, any man either. Just to be safe.
Should you really have to live that way? Or should men choose not to rape? As most do?
The number of assaults will not go down if women make sure to cover up. The cue-reading rapist has decided to attack someone, and is seeking justification. He will rape and he will find something to blame other than himself.
By placing women in charge of his sexuality he abdicates responsibility (it’s her fault). How convenient for him!
And while different rapists have different ways of thinking, they are all sexist. At the least, they believe they have more right to a woman’s body than a woman does, herself.
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School District Allegedly Expelled 7th-Grader for Reporting Her Rape
by Christie Thompson @ The Ms Magazine Blog
The Republic School District in Springfield, MO, is facing a lawsuit for allegedly ignoring a young victim’s multiple rapes and then expelling her for reporting her attacker. The story is yet another awful example of the victim-blaming culture surrounding rape in schools. Like the recent story of the young cheerleader in Texas–who was kicked off the squad for refusing to cheer on her rapist–it seems that schools too often victimize the very students they should be protecting.
According to the lawsuit [PDF], a 7th-grade special-needs student had been repeatedly harassed and assaulted by a male classmate, which escalated into him raping her on their middle school campus. When the victim reported it, school officials allegedly told the girl during their first meeting that they did not believe her. They allegedly failed to refer her to a counselor or sexual assault forensic examiner or to report her rapist to county authorities, as Missouri state law would mandate.
Instead, the lawsuit says, she was coerced into taking back her allegations, as well as made to write and hand-deliver an apology letter to her attacker. School officials allegedly expelled her from school for the rest of the year and referred her to juvenile authorities for filing a false report.
She was allowed to return to school the next fall only, she says, to face once again verbal and physical harassment from her attacker, which she kept silent about for fear of being further punished. Then, the lawsuit reports:
On or about February 16, 2010 … not being subject to any surveillance or monitoring, [the attacker] was able to hunt her down, drag her to the back of the school library, and again forcibly rape her.
When she finally came forward about the incident, the school allegedly again expressed skepticism and failed to take action. Her mother took the girl to complete a rape kit, which confirmed sexual assault, and the DNA results matched the accused. He pleaded guilty to the charges and is serving time in juvenile detention.
Even then, the lawsuit days, the school board inexplicably still suspended the the victim for “disrespectful conduct” and “public display of affection.”
While the lawsuit, filed July 29, has yet to be decided, here is what we do know: The victim was raped at least once by the young man she identified as her attacker. The school district continues to deny this and accuse the victim of lying about it.
It’s hard to see motivate a young girl to fabricate multiple rapes, given the secondary trauma she went through in reporting them. It’s easier to imagine why a school district might be reluctant to admit a rape had occurred on supposedly supervised school grounds.
Most upsetting is the way the school district has attempted to trivialize the victim’s claims, going so far as to blame the special-needs seventh-grader for not better protecting herself from being raped at school. It has dismissed the victim’s accusations of truly egregious misconduct as “frivolous,” saying that the student “failed and neglected to use reasonable means to protect her self.” Take a moment to ponder what “reasonable means” 7th-graders are supposed to be taking to protect themselves from rape on school grounds. Karate lessons?
When will school authorities stop persecuting and start protecting young victims of sexual assault? Join Broadblogs, Ms. and Change.org in supporting the victim and holding the Republic School District accountable. Click here.
This piece originally appeared on the Ms. Magazine Blog
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Dad Imprisons, Rapes Daughters, Mere Sex Objects
Two Austrian sisters say their father locked them up and both sexually and physically abused them for over 40 years. Now 45 and 53 years old, they lived under this tyranny nearly their entire lives, as reported by The Guardian.
The father, identified as Gottfried W. (Austrians don’t fully identify suspects) threatened his daughters with a pitchfork, a stick, and firearms, repeatedly threatening to kill them if they resisted. The sisters also have mental deficiencies, which the violence may have caused or worsened, further enabling the abuse. Gottfried also forbade contact with the outside world. All of this left the women withdrawn and dependent.
Yet last May the older sister fought an attempted rape, knocking down her now 80-year-old father. Both sisters fled. Days later a social worker discovered Gottfried on the floor. The sisters have been taken in by social services and are receiving psychiatric treatment.
The case only became public last week.
It is all so reminiscent of another Austrian, Josef Fritzl, who imprisoned and raped his daughter in a dark, windowless cellar, where he forced her to live for 24 years.
Makes you wonder what’s up with Austria. Yet in a country of over eight million these cases are the only two of this kind. You might actually expect the opposite in this country. Men who commit incest tend toward authoritarianism (unlike Austrians generally, who came in dead last on a scale measuring autocratic leadership styles) and believe children should obey parents at all times.
But the two men who so savagely raped their daughters fit the profile well. Gottfried
continually bossed and threatened his entire family, while Josef’s children described him as a “dominating tyrant” who frequently beat them.
In incestuous families, there is usually little affection and the mother’s role is often reduced, often due to physical or mental illness. Again, true of these two families.
As a repeatedly abused victim herself, Gottfried’s wife was unable to help her daughters. Josef’s wife was unaware of the cell her husband had built to hold their daughter, and so was unable to intervene. Even as babies were born, Josef simply told his wife that their long lost daughter had left the babies at their doorstep.
Men who commit incest believe that men are entitled to fulfill whatever sexual desires they might have. And they see children as sex objects.
When I first heard complaints about sexual objectification I didn’t get it. I didn’t know what a sex object was. I thought feminists were complaining about grown women and men just being sexy. And the world seemed a bit dull to me without a little sexiness, which I define more broadly than the narrow notions that tie women in knots.
Later I came to understand that when a person is seen as a sex object she (usually) is seen as an OBJECT. A thing. An object thing that is all about sex, and little else. A sex object is not seen as having feelings, a life, dreams, human potential. A sex object exists to satisfy someone else’s purposes. In these fathers’ behaviors we find the more brutal outcomes of this way of seeing.
No, the problem isn’t Austria. The problem isn’t men. The problem is patriarchy, manifested in male dominance over women and girls and less powerful men and boys, sexual objectification and the disempowerment of women.
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12-Year-Olds Wanted Rape, Judge Says
Six British soccer players confessed to gang-raping two 12-year-old girls last March. But an Appeals Court recently freed the men because, “The girls wanted to have sex,” explained Lord Justice Moses.
They wanted sex? Even Moses admitted, “They had pretty miserable, fleeting sex in a
freezing cold park.” Now that sounds like what girls want.
Apparently one of the 12-year-olds had been texting the players, and she and her friend agreed to meet them in a park. There, five of the men gang raped one girl while a sixth assaulted the other. When they didn’t return home, one of their mothers called the police, who found them wandering alone in the early morning hours.
At the least this looks like statutory rape. The girls were only twelve after all. They claimed to be sixteen, but shouldn’t adults use some judgment?
Most importantly, the men admitted to rape.
Yet those “frank confessions” convinced the judges of the soccer players’ “positive good character,” suggesting they had been duped into sex.
Huh?
Colin Horgan, a regular contributor to The Guardian, looks to Men’s Studies professor, Michael Kimmel to consider why men sometimes side with rapists over victims.
In some men’s eyes a girl is seen as offering herself for a sexual encounter just by “being there.” The men feel entitled to sex because, deep down, they all “know” that’s what she wants. So gang rapes end up being seen as something the victim actively did or encouraged, and not something done to her.
Horgan says porn plays a role, not as an instruction manual but as a projection of the fantasies and validation of the feelings of men who consume it. Some studies do suggest that certain types of porn promote the myth that women secretly want to be raped.
Meanwhile, Stephanie Hallett, over at Ms., observes that rapists are continually let off the hook because, “The girls were dressed provocatively, the women were drinking, women lie about rape, there was “sex in the air,” yet:
Research has shown that most rapists are serial rapists–and those serial rapists commit 90 to 95 percent of all rapes. What’s more likely–that these repeat perpetrators just happen to get “tricked” by underage women or receive “mixed messages” from unconsenting women, again and again–or that the overwhelming majority of rapes aren’t really committed “by accident”?
She makes a good point.
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Rape and Acting Offensively are Natural Male Urges?
Dilbert creator, Scott Adams, musing on natural male urges?
Natural male urges like raping, cheating, tweeting crotch shots and general offensiveness are made shameful and criminal by society, says Dilbert creator, Scott Adams. Yet the natural urges of women are mostly legal and accepted, the cartoonist gripes in a blog post called “Pegs and Holes.”
Adams can’t imagine why rape and general offensiveness are not approved of? Women just made up the rules, willy-nilly? Like they’re the ones who’ve been in charge all these years?
Actually, none of the above is naturally male.
Men sometimes ask me why some men rape, because they don’t get it.
And rape is not found in every culture. The more that equality and respect marks a society, the less women are assaulted. Before contact with Europeans, rape was virtually unknown in egalitarian American Indian cultures like the Cherokee and Iroquois.
Since Adams is a hetero male, he likely has few worries of being attacked, although men sometimes are. If his chances shot up as high as women’s, I wonder if he’d feel differently.
Rape survivors typically become anxious and depressed. They lose interest in sex. Many develop eating disorders that threaten their health and lives. Some undergo post traumatic stress disorder. Some attempt suicide.
The damage doesn’t matter? On balance, Adams thinks men unabashedly raping is preferable?
On the topic of cheating, evolutionary psychology says men are more promiscuous in order to more widely spread their genes. But mathematicians can’t figure out how men can have more sex partners than women. Evolutionary psychology could be wrong.
Other research suggests that fidelity is actually good for us, with long-term romantic relationships yielding greater happiness, life satisfaction and longer, healthier lives.
Meanwhile, do men really feel sexually repressed because society disapproves flashers and tweeted crotch shots? As noted earlier, some evolutionary psychologists believe flashing is natural male behavior, since male apes routinely display erect penises to females. But then, it actually works for female apes while women just get turned off, leaving the behavior unlikely to “spread men’s seed.”
And do men really enjoy being personally offended any more than women do? Doubt it.
Adams doesn’t think much of men, does he?
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Female Activist Says Legalize Sex-Slavery
A female political activist and former parliamentary candidate prescribes sex-slavery as a means of protecting Kuwaiti men from committing adultery, according to the Kuwait Times and the Arabic news website, Al Arabiya.
In an online video the activist, Salwa Al-Mutairi, insists that Kuwaiti men could avoid moral corruption by purchasing non-Muslim women from an “enslaved maid” sex agency, if such a service were legally available. Otherwise, pious men may continue to be tempted by attractive household servants (who may go so far as to cast sensual spells).
Huh?
Sex-slavery would protect the chastity of both men and women, she claims.
Since she sees non-Muslims as something less than human, Islamic men can’t commit adultery by having sex with them. Al-Mutairi reasons thusly: “The rules regulating sex-slaves differ from those for free women [i.e., Muslim women].” She explains, “The latter’s body must be covered entirely, except for her face and hands, whereas the sex-slave is kept naked from the bellybutton on up — she is different from the free woman; the free woman has to be married properly to her husband, but the sex-slave — he just buys her and that’s that.”
Meanwhile, pious women would be protected from sex-crazed men.
While not scripturally based, she insists the practice is not religiously forbidden. After all, several sheikhs and muftis in Mecca assured her that sex-slavery was perfectly legal under Sharia.
I see the problem here not as religion, but the mindset. Every Muslim I know would be completely appalled by a call for sex-slavery. Or by Al-Mutairi’s view that non-Muslims are something less that human.
Religion and religious advisors can say all sorts of crazy things. The Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament (scriptures Jews and Christians share) recommend that disobedient children, Sabbath breakers, homosexuals and adulteresses all be killed. And God either approves or orders the destruction of several cities and communities. It’s just that today no one pays attention to these extreme passages.
Of course, it’s not just religion. Similarly strange notions can come out of culture, too. New York Times columnist, Nick Kristof, tells a story in Half the Sky that is eerily similar to Al-Mutairi’s proposal. When Kristof asked Indian border guards why they didn’t stop young Pakistani girls from being brought into the country to be trafficked in the sex trade, the guards felt that since there will always be prostitution, it’s better to bring in girls from a lower class (and presumably lower morals) to save the Indian girls’ virtue as future wives of the same men who will frequent the prostitutes.
What of the ethics of Al-Mutairi’s proposal? Is morality grounded in religion? Doesn’t seem like it, given the religiously stained horror of nearly everything written above.
Additionally, must we accept that all cultural practices and perspectives are equally worthy? In most cases I agree with the tenants of cultural relativity: don’t judge a society’s practices if you live outside of it. But I’m not a moral relativist.
I ground my ethics in reason and human rights with this question in mind: Is anyone being harmed? If someone is being killed or crippled, physically, spiritually, emotionally, or intellectually, the behavior is wrong, regardless of culture.
Clearly, slavery wounds. So would the ongoing rape that this setup would entail.
When powerful groups profit by exploiting the powerless among them, I call that immoral. Certainly, sheikhs and muftis who declare sex-slavery acceptable under Sharia would personally benefit from satiated libidos, but at great cost to enslaved women. Regardless of what they claim their religion allows.
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Women Should Get Rape Insurance?
When women are raped the emotional fallout can be great. My brother had a girlfriend who had been date raped. On occasion she would suddenly begin crying because of this. Sexual dysfunction is common, with sex drive evaporating. One man I know of said a woman went numb when he initiated sex after weeks of dating. When he talked to her about it, she said she had been raped, and now leaves her body, mentally and emotionally, whenever sexual encounters arise. Many become anxious or depressed. Some experience posttraumatic stress disorder.
No wonder rape is the crime women most fear, other than murder. We plan our days and activities around it, we avoid going out alone at night, we consider the safest route, we get a friend to join us, we avoid strange men. The list goes on.
Now Kansas state Rep., Peter DeGraaf expects us to add one more thing to our list: purchase what, for many, would be essentially rape insurance.
DeGraaf wants to ban insurance companies from offering abortion coverage as part of their general health plans, even if the pregnancy results from rape. Instead, women should buy separate, “abortion-only policies,” he says. And at an extra cost.
When challenged that this expectation was heartless for rape victims who have already endured enough, DeGraaf simply explained that everyone needs to plan ahead in life. “I have a spare tire on my car,” he offered. “I also have life insurance,” he added.
Spare tire. Abortion insurance, just in case you’re raped. Yeah, the two are equivalent.
Sexual assault is too often trivialized in our culture. Some think women secretly want it or ask for it. Many think it’s not that traumatic. We see this when a 16-year-old cheerleader is ordered to cheer her rapist or get kicked off the squad. She took her case to court and lost and is now expected to pay her rapist’s court fees (he pled guilty to a lesser charge).
Most of those who govern rape victims are powerful men, whether legislators, school superintendents, or the courts. They rarely worry about becoming victims of sexual assault, themselves, and too often see the attacks as trivial.
Hard to believe DeGraaf is also an associate pastor. I wonder what sort of empathetic counseling he hands out.
Georgia Platts
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Rape: As If Female Sexuality Were Male Sexuality
“It’s just he said, she said,” opined one of the ladies of The View, discussing IMF Managing Director, Dominique Strauss-Khan’s alleged rape of a hotel maid.
That is true. We don’t know for sure whether Strauss-Khan committed the crime. But sometimes it seems that talk of rape allegations sees female sexuality as if it were male sexuality.
Strauss-Khan admits to having sex with the housekeeper but insists it was consensual. Yet the scenario he asserts hardly matches female sexuality, as it is typically manifested in the Western world.
Just to note a few recent studies, which I have written about in greater detail in other posts:
Women are rarely interested in having sex with a stranger. Men are much more likely to accept a stranger’s proposal. For women, it doesn’t matter whether the offer comes from someone they know and trust or from someone they don’t. Most times they just aren’t interested. Unless the offer comes from Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp. Maybe it’s just me, but Dominique Strauss-Khan seems a bit lacking in Depp/Pitt appeal.
Women and men typically watch different types of porn, too. Men like the sort that matches Strauss-Khan’s version of events. Something to the effect of: “She saw me naked when I came out from the shower and we had amazing sex.” Yet women who watch porn usually like a story line with a little character development.
Women are much more likely to read romantic erotica than to watch porn, anyway. Even more story and character development! Sex is not for its own sake, and not with impersonal strangers. And this matches most women’s interest in the real world, where they unconsciously scrutinize all evidence about their lovers, with sexual arousal igniting only when everything is in place.
Even when they go to bed with a man, women are likely focused on how they, themselves, look – “So hot!” if they are proud of their appearance, or “Does my butt look too big?” if they aren’t – than great sex.
Why the difference? For one, women don’t learn to objectify men in our culture, leaving us less likely to get hot at the mere sight of a naked male. In fact, one study found women getting more aroused by a nude woman than a nude man, when measuring blood flow to the vagina. Perhaps due to lopsided objectification?
Meanwhile, women’s sexuality is more repressed. Women are more likely to be labeled sluts for enjoying sex, or seen as “giving it up” while men seem to be gaining something, like status. Products that aid women’s sexual enjoyment are less likely to be advertised, as with Viagra versus vibrators.
Not surprisingly, women report less sexual interest and enjoyment, on average.
Plus, women need foreplay.
All said I find Strauss-Khan’s version of events unlikely. Of course, not all women are the same. Some enjoy sex with strangers and seek the kind of porn that men enjoy.
But most don’t.
I’m not saying this proves that the hotel maid was raped. But when people think it is just as likely that she made wild love to this unfamiliar man, it feels like male sexuality is being projected onto women.
Georgia Platts
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If She Was Drunk, Did She Rape Herself?
It’s almost universal that gang rape victims are intoxicated, and for some reason when alcohol gets involved, a drunk woman did it to herself.
That’s what Mary Koss, a professor specializing in sexual violence at the University of Arizona’s College of Public Health, declared in a May 26, 2007 Mercury News interview.
Koss was explaining why so few women report rape, amidst discussion of the 2007 rape of a teen by members of the De Anza College baseball team.
When this case went to trial last month, the defense implied that the victim had brought the rape on herself, asking, “People told you you were flirtatious when you drink alcohol? People told you that you were touchy-feely when you drink alcohol? You knew the risks of drinking?”
Interestingly, no one asked the accused men why they invited a teen who was known to flirt outrageously when she drank. Perhaps so they could blame her for the rape? It’s jarring to hear innuendo go the other direction.
More typically, alcohol doesn’t bring on flirtatious behavior so much as weaken judgment and ability to respond. And for this, the victim is blamed. “She should have known better than to drink,” it’s so often said.
At the same time, drinking gets men off the hook: “Well he was drunk, so he didn’t know what he was doing. That’s not a crime,” the storyline goes. No one blames men for not realizing that alcohol can lead to a loss in their judgment.
And it’s not uncommon to purposely get women drunk with the intent of facilitating rape. Yet young men can balk at the accusation when they get young women intoxicated to get sex.
A few months ago the Dallas Police Chief was criticized for focusing on what potential victims could do to prevent rape – keep watch on each other when the drinking begins – and not on what potential perpetrators could do to keep from raping.
Why do we so often focus on women’s drinking instead of rapists’ raping? Blaming the victim instead of blaming the perpetrator. And so it goes on…
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Did Women Create Burqa Culture?
In honor of implementation of the French “burqa ban,” and the brouhaha it is causing from Bill Maher to the New York Times, I repost the following:
The French “burqa ban” has got me thinking. Did women have equal power to create the burqa? And who benefits from this garment?
Some charge that rejecting the burqa comes from fear of the other, or ethnocentrism. I’m in sync with cultural relativism, so long as no one is being hurt. But buqas and “burqa cultures” don’t give women equal power. And women certainly did not have equal sway in creating the customs of these societies.
Think about the laws that exist in places where women are required to cover up in burqas, abayas, niqabs (facemasks) or various other veilings.
Is it likely that women decided that men could easily demand a divorce, but women could get one only with difficulty?
Is it likely that women created the notion that sharing a husband with other women might be fun?
Did women create the idea that an adulterous man be punished by burial up to his waist before being stoned, while a woman must be buried to her breasts – and one who escapes, escapes the stoning?
In these cultures, when a woman is raped it is her fault. She obviously let some hair fall from her covering, or she allowed an ankle to show. Everyone knows that no man could resist such things. Did women decide that women, and not men, are responsible for men’s sexuality?
Did women originate the notion that after rape, the victim must be killed to restore family honor?
Did women clamor for a burqa that limits their power and autonomy – keeping them from driving in Saudi Arabia and getting jobs that are far from home? Did women design this garment that prevents small pleasures like seeing clearly or feeling the sun and the wind?
And who benefits?
Men benefit from easily obtaining a divorce, but not allowing their wives the same privilege. Men benefit from the sexual variety of having many wives, while women are left to share one man. Men benefit by more easily escaping a stoning. And men can rape with impunity since women fear reporting sexual assault, lest their families kill them. Men gain power when women are incapable of getting jobs and income. How much easier is it to beat women for the infraction of straying outside the home, or letting a wrist show, when they are black or blue blobs, and not human beings?
It is common to make accusations of ethnocentrism when one culture rejects the practices of another. Often the fears are valid.
But if a powerful group creates a culture that benefits themselves to the detriment of others, the critique is not about ethnocentrism. It is about human rights.
Georgia Platts
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