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Some years ago, the Mufti of Australia got into hot water when he likened women who failed to wear the hijab to “uncovered meat”, at risk of being devoured by cats. In other words, if a woman who dressed “immodestly” were to be raped then she should share, if not take all, the blame.
Sadly, despite the outcry that followed, this attitude – that of blaming the victim – is still deeply prevalent. It should be obvious, but it apparently needs stating over and over: the criminal is the offender. That is, in a rape, the rapist is at fault. No argument.
Women, for example, do not just “get raped”. Somebody has to actively perform an unwelcome act. There is no place for blaming a victim for wearing the “wrong” clothes: if you do, you justify the action. Not to mention that there is no evidence that wearing so-called provocative clothing has anything to do with whether or not someone is likely to rape someone else. Neither is being intoxicated an invitation to rape (because cultures where alcohol is banned and women must be covered up don’t have a problem with rape, right?).
It is worth repeating here that the major motive for most rapes is not sexual attraction, but power. And rapes tend not to be spur-of-the-moment: most rapes are pre-meditated, and only about 8% of rapes are perpetrated by strangers.
More than this, if you blame the victim – by saying she is like a plate of uncovered meat, say – you also remove agency from the offender. Saying “She was asking for it” is simply an abdication of responsibility: it makes you into a simpleton with no control over your actions. An animal perhaps – a feral animal who should maybe be treated like one. It’s also pretty bloody insulting to most men to imply that they are helpless animals with no self-control, but that’s by the by.
To follow victim-blaming logic, you would argue that if someone (and it doesn’t have to be necessarily a woman) does anything that is slightly outside a cultural norm then it is their own fault if someone rapes or otherwise abuses them. If that logic doesn’t immediately sound perverse to you, perhaps it would help to think of an example. Shall we consider mental illness?
There is still a stigma against mental illness. It’s a broad term covering many conditions, and it is still majorly misunderstood. You just have to look at other recent events to realise this. People suffering from severe mental illness are often stigmatised, feared even, because of the public misperception of (for example) schizophrenics as violent. But you can’t help suffering from mental illness, and you can’t always be cured of it.
Would we blame a woman who suffered from schizophrenia if someone raped her? Would we attribute the rape to her illness, and say she should have taken steps to prevent it?
Hardly.
A study by researchers at University College and Kings College London, published today in Psychological Medicine, reports that of women with severe mental illness surveyed for the study, 40% had been the victims of rape or attempted rape.* This compares with 7% of the general population (the figures for men are no less remarkable, although lower overall: 12% of men with severe mental illness had been seriously sexually assaulted, versus 0.5% in the general population).
“the reality for patients is that they are at increased risk of being victims of some of the most damaging types of violence.”
– Professor Louise Howard, Kings College London
Somebody seriously sexually abuses nearly one in every two women with severe mental illness. Although this is an association rather than a proof of causation, the study makes it clear that the illnesses being treated could not all be caused by the abuse: all participating patients had been treated for at least a year and 10% had experienced sexual assault within the past year at the time of the survey. So it looks that for at least some (and I’d wager most) of the victims, the assault would not have happened if they had not been suffering from mental illness.
Nearly half of the sexual abuse of women was classified as “domestic”, that is carried out by a partner or other family member. So again, this isn’t opportunistic rape, not a case of seeing someone “asking for it” and acting upon that notion; this is abuse by a (probably trusted) family member who is more than likely aware of the victim’s vulnerability, and who deliberately takes advantage of it.
Would you say that it is the victim’s fault for having schizophrenia that somebody abused them? Would you say that the 12% of men in the survey who were sexually abused should have done something to prevent it? Were they “asking for it”?
No? Why then say women should cover up, or not drink, or stay inside, or not take raunchy photographs of themselves with their partner? Is it simply that people with mental illness don’t have a choice, but that women do have control over their dress and their alcohol intake. If that’s what you think, then take a moment to consider what that says about you. (Hint: it’s nothing complimentary).
So why blame a woman when someone rapes or otherwise treats them like an item of property?
Shall we take the victim-blaming argument to its logical conclusion and simply say, if you don’t want to be raped, don’t be a woman?
The civil thing to do is to say no; the perpetrator of the hack; the viewer of the photographs; or the apologist for the rapist: they are the ones who poison society like a cancer, and who deserve to be publicly shamed.
Richard P Grant is a scientist-turned-writer who can also be found ranting on Twitter
*H Khalifeh et al. Psychological Medicine 2014; doi:10.1017/S0033291714001962
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