Too Quick to Judge?

A Manchester judge, sentencing a rapist to six years in prison, has proved controversial when she said the “disinhibited behaviour” of women puts them at risk.  Judge Lindsey Kushner QC gave a measured plea for young women to protect themselves but was nonetheless accused of “victim blaming” by women’s charities, and one police commissioner said her comments could stop rape victims coming forward.  Radio station LBC conducted a poll on Twitter and found, after 1,242 votes, that 61% of people didn’t consider the judge’s comments to be victim-blaming.

Rape is such an uncomfortable topic.  It’s almost impossible to have any sort of opinion on it at all without causing controversy.  There are so many sex-related issues that are taboo in society which is possibly why people are so quick to place blame – talk about anything else apart from what actually happened.   

I feel it may anger some men that this post makes the assumption that all rapists are men and that all victims are women.  I am not ignorant, I know this is not always the case.  But the statistics show that in England and Wales every year 85,000 women are raped and 12,000 men are – this amounts to 11 every hour.

People who play the alcohol/appearance blame game when it comes to rape usually do it in good faith. It feels like an immediate defensive reaction to say women shouldn’t drink so much or be careful about what they wear to avoid unwanted attention – it’s the kind of things parents say because they worry.  Others will think it is more about common sense: when you’re drunk it makes you vulnerable.

The arguments about what women wear somehow contributing to them being raped or sexually assaulted are ludicrous.  This usually amounts to people having differing opinions about contemporary fashion, that’s it; you can’t seriously suggest women plan their outfits knowing it could lead to rape, or that they should start planning them to prevent it.  The idea that a man can be absolved from rape or sexual assault because a woman was dressed in a certain way that made his lust uncontrollable would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious.  A woman could literally streak through any British city street, day or night, naked as the day she was born, and it wouldn’t give anyone any more right to lay a finger on her than if she had clothes on - and in either case it is always no right.

The point about alcohol is more nuanced because excessive drinking isn’t safe and can lead to dangerous situations.  But there are far too many people who take the view that an extremely drunk girl being raped is an inevitability: often sounding like ‘rape is disgusting BUT…’.  Rape is disgusting.  There are no clauses. 

A wider problem is the imbalance that exists between the perception of drunk men and drunk women.  Images of drunk young men tearing up the streets in the early morning are now considered stereotypical, sometimes comedic; but a woman staggering the pavements or passed out in a doorway is utterly shameful and we are all very embarrassed for her.  Some people (idk like Daily Mail readers, old rich snobs…) don’t like women drinking not because it makes them vulnerable to rape, but because they just don’t like women drinking.  A drunk female is just too much anarchy for those with more traditional views on the role of women.  Britain has a precarious love affair with alcohol in general which has consequences for people of both genders.  

If women finally just gave up and restricted their outfits and social lives to what conservative mind-sets deemed appropriate you might be surprised to see that rape still happened.  This is because when someone is raped the person solely responsible is the rapist, and censoring outfits or moderating what women drink is not the solution because women’s clothes and alcohol consumption are not the problem.

What I think is important to remember is that being drunk is not in itself a crime; someone who wears clothes that some (depending entirely upon their own opinions and fashion ideas) might consider to be ‘inappropriate’ is not a criminal. 

Someone proved guilty of rape is always a criminal. 

I understand that to many, comments like Judge Kushner’s are just good advice.  But doesn’t it do more harm than good when alcohol or someone’s outfit is implicated as being partly responsible for their rape or sexual assault?  You might not necessarily be blaming the victim but you are spinning the narrative that the rapist is not solely responsible for the crime they chose to commit and subsequently passing some of the responsibility on to the victim.   People (generally) are not stupid: they don’t go out at night with the intention of being the victim of a horrendous crime.  Judges offering this kind of advice aimed specifically at women, no matter how well meaning, is not constructive in the effort to reduce this crime.  There is a real risk that if women are perceived to be at least partly responsible for being raped because of their drunkenness then people (mainly men) might not understand the seriousness of this crime; there is a real risk it could empower rapists. 

We seem to be ok with women living in fear: censoring their outfits, moderating what they drink, ensuring they’re never alone when out – it certainly concedes that rape is a problem; yet we also seem to be very unhappy about getting to the bottom of why rape really happens and what can be done about it. 

Whether you buy into the idea of victim-blaming or not I think one of its consequences is that rape is diminished to being a women’s fashion issue, or as a smaller problem part of Britain’s unhealthy alcohol culture.  The consequence is that rape victims won’t come forward and will end up living with mental torment.  When half a million adults are sexually assaulted in England and Wales alone each year the immediate questions are why is this happening and what can be done about it? Not what were they wearing and how drunk were they?