Do we as a society have a paternalistic attitude towards rape?

Great Debates
1

Inspired by this thread http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=536501

I don’t want to specifically finger Heckity’s son by any means, but the attitude that he shows towards his girlfriend and his girlfriend’s potential attacker are, in my experience, representative of an endemic attitude that Americans have towards the sexual violation of young women, particularly young upper-middle-class college-aged girls. The idea is that any woman who is sexually violated in any way is a victim to be pitied and protected, and has suddenly become extremely fragile and emotionally bruised by her traumatic experience.

This next part is going to be pretty controversial, but Heckity’s elucidation of the gf’s story reminded me of similar stories, and my irritation at most other people’s reactions. The girlfriend drank quite a bit too much, to the point of falling down, and maybe had a male friend try to kiss her, is not quite sure what happens, and reports it to her boyfriend-protector as rape. Then everyone gets all up in arms, the boyfriend gets super defensive of his helpless young thing, and we all vilify the perpretrator and treat the poor little victim with kid gloves.

My question is this: why we do generally assign no responsibility to the victim? Now, I know that “blaming the victim” is the wrong attitude to have, but the fact of the matter is, she went out and drank way too much, and go back to a friend’s house with a guy she barely knew. To me, it’s similar to someone reporting that they had gone for a walk late at night in a bad neighborhood and gotten mugged. We would all say, “wow, that sucks and I’m sorry and let me know if I can help you out at all . . . and next time please be more careful.” In this situation, if we added at the end of our support, “and please next time monitor carefully your drinking around strange men,” we would be chastised for blaming the victim.

And why do girls think it’s okay to tell people they had been raped when they have little recollection or evidence of the event? Why was she willing to tell her boyfriend and not the police? Could it be because she knew that her boyfriend would be summarily outraged/protective, whereas the police and legal system would employ more rational and evidenced-based means to pursue her story?

I think that we do young women a disservice when we treat sexual abuse as such a boogeyman. I’m not denying that rape is very real and the consequences very devastating. However, I think that by treating rape as a crime more heinous than non-sexual battery, we are elevating the sanctity of female sexuality inordinately, and undoing a lot of the work that has been done in the past fifty years or so to demystify female sexuality. Furthermore, I think that when a sexual crime against an adult woman is committed, and we all rush to comfort her and cocoon her from the outside world, we are not allowing her to take control and responsibility for the situation from this point forward, and to deal with the crime as she feels is most appropriate.

Again, not to single out Heckity’s son or his gf, this is an attitude that I have seen many times in response to similar stories.

2

It would seem that in order to correct a social injustice we need a pendulum affect, swing too far in one direction then swing back somewhat less etc. perhaps for a long time.

3

A closer equivalent would be if, upon learning your friend has been mugged, you questioned the validity of their claim, mentioned how often they liked to walk alone in bad areas, implied that perhaps they were just looking for a chance to play victim and brought up how many people lie about being stolen from. The Dope is not the world. People talk about victim blaming as if it is a thing of the past or confined to certain nasty, uneducated social circles and backwards religions. It is not. Go through a rape trial (or the beginnings of an investigation) with one woman and it is clear that those who think the pendulum has truly swung too far in one direction, at least in reality (versus the media), are living in a dream world.

4

Well, there is a general presumption that pretty women are morally good. Don’t ask me why.

The larger point is more complicated. People do have a moral expectation of decency, at least. I do not think this excuses them from using their noggin. I can comfortably deal with the two principles, since they do not interfere. In your example, the man…

OK, well, he probably didn’t do anything morally wrong, except go for premarital sex. But he was probably wasted too and she was doing apprently doing everything short of stripping off his pants. A girl comes home with you. Angling for kisses is not out of line. And if she doesn’t even remember the next day, then she’s not only a fraud but has a serious drinking problem.

Alright, let’s try something more general, like the mugging thing. I think that people have a moral right to live free of crime and violence. I also think that people have a [I moral responsibility* not to do incredibly stupid things, at least if they have a decent alternative. When something bad does happen, my response is likely to be based on which of the two is the larger factor. Was the moral right broken much more or much less than the moral responsibility? Was one not broken at all?

However, people often make judgements based not on that logical weighing of the issue, but on a purely emotional factor of identification or public image.

Let me respond here. Your statement may be true, but ask whether it is desirable or a sop to the weakness of humanity.

5

Well the thing is…I’m as feminist as anyone. But at the same time, I think a lot of aquatance/date rape is “what the HECK were you doing?”
Yes, there are dangerous fucked up predators out there But they are the MINORITY.
It’s not about being “paternalistic” It’s about being ANGRY at a very personal violation. Wouldn’t you feel the same way if someone randomly violently punched and hit you?

6

What?

Want to try that sentence again?

7

Fucking hell, this too? Really?

8

Rape is a tricky thing. I deal with rape victims probably twice a month, and with police that investigate rapes probably about as frequently. Rape is almost never a strange man with a knife threatening to kill you if you don’t do what he says. It’s subtle, and psychological, and more about exploiting weaknesses than brute force. Also, a whole lot of “rape” ends up being just plain bad judgment without any coercion at all. For some reason girls who feel guilty about the nasty drunken sex they had the night before claim rape more often than actual rape victims do. A girl who got caught by her fiance’s sister walking into her hotel room while she was cow-girling a drunk guy she met at the pool claimed rape. These days rape means anything other than two perfectly sober people who sign a consent form with a notary present, it seems.

9

People don’t generally report false muggings out of spite. Rape, on the other hand…

10

Your attitude is purely the attitude the OP talks about and is what must be avoided.

The discussion is more like - you were walking home drunk after a night at the pub, when the next thing you remember you woke up on your doorstep with a cut check and no money? Are you sure you didn’t spend it at the pub and then fall down on the way home?

I go through life wearing rose coloured glasses, but I am also of the opinion that “true”, premeditated, forced sex is rare, and want to believe that very few men would even consider it.

On the other hand, I believe that cases where the man pushed just a little too hard and didn’t realise the effect he was having on the lady are way more common. Does it suck any less for the woman? Probably not, but it does mean a whole different kettle of fish for the man.

And I think that the whole thing of the “sanctity of the victim” in rape cases makes it worse - there is a big difference between unpleasant pressure and outright intimidation and coercian, by making a woman believe it is total violation and intimidation we are retroactively making the experience even worse. (end of my armchair psychologising)

11

What does this have to do with America in particular? While a raped woman is considered damaged goods in some cultures, the idea of wanting to protect a female friend or relative who has been attacked is not unique to the U.S.

We overplay the “this is the worst thing you can do to a person except murder them” angle, no question. That attitude is rather demeaning and there’s too much of it out there. But I do have to ask, have you ever met someone who is dealing with the effects of being raped? There’s endless personal variation, of course, but for a lot of people it is an enormously traumatic experience.

Crazy suggestion, but it might because it’s not their fault.

And yet here you are, proposing it. Leaving the particulars of Heckity’s story for a minute, I am sure there have been rapes that would have been prevented if the victims had made different choices. But even if a person’s actions contribute to a situation, that does not always make the end result that persons fault. In a situation where someone drinks too much at a party and gets raped, the drinking is the responsibility of the drinker, the rape is the fault of the rapist.

Despite what you’re suggesting I think a lot of women get advice about avoiding these kinds of situations, especially when they are going off to college. It’s not like everyone says “go do what you want and take no responsibility for it.”

Most of them don’t think that’s okay. The girl in the story probably did want to avoid responsibility for what she did.

12

This is just it. Several times I have read something to the effect of ‘You know, maybe we should try telling women what to do to protect themselves instead of just getting mad at rapists or creeps when something happens to them’ or ‘Someone should probably question a girl’s story when she claims she’s been raped before they go and help her out.’

As if this isn’t already the case, outside of online discussions.

I was out for drinks with some female acquaintances and my SO got confused when we started joking about yelling ‘Fire! Fire! 9-1-1!’ I had to explain that, though we’d been raised in different places and even different countries, we’d all been taught to yell ‘Fire!’ instead of ‘Rape!’ because no one would want to get involved with the latter.

There are a few rape-related threads going on at the moment, of various degrees of usefulness (and thankfully they all manage to delve into false accusations, in case anyone wasn’t up to speed). The only thing I know to be true with rapistts is that you cannot rape someone in self defense or in self defense (save some wild scenarios), and, with rape victims, is that there is no right way for them to react. It is tricky to both emphasize the seriousness of the crime in an attempt to stop the perpetrator while at the same time not sending the same message to the victim (‘That is the worse thing in the world you can possibly do to someone her life will be ruined (don’t worry, honey, it won’t’).

13

My question is: why is it seemingly the first inclination of so many to assign responsibility to the victim?

Although my username seems to pop up in a lot of rape threads, I don’t consider myself a staunch anti-rape crusader. I simply believe in treating it like any other crime. A lot of people don’t want to do that, and I do feel compelled to argue with them.

If I were to start a thread about a friend who called me last night in tears, claiming that her house had been robbed, these would NOT be the first questions I’d think to ask her:

  1. Did you leave the door unlocked? What about the dead bolt? Are you sure you locked it? Were you drinking when you left the house? Yeah? Then how do you know you locked the door?

  2. Did you leave any valuables sitting out in the open?

  3. Were your curtains open?

  4. Why did you decide to move to that neighborhood again?
    If it was a friend who was calling to ask advice about a friend who claimed to have been robbed by someone they knew, again there are some questions it would never occur of me to ask or say. Like:

  5. Are you sure they were robbed? Maybe they’re just trying to rip out the insurance company. It happens, you know.

  6. How credible is that friend of yours? Maybe they are mistaken about how much was really taken and are just overreacting because the house was a mess.

  7. Consider that maybe your friend is just lying for attention or money.

  8. For all of us know, the person acccused is perfectly innocent. Why the presumption of guilt, man??

It’s not as though any of these questions are wrong to ask, per se. It’s just they seem to be disapprotionately asked with regards to rape. Stories about stealing or murder rarely conjure up the skepticism that a rape claim does.

My opinion on this wouldn’t be so harsh if it only applied to ambiguous claims that are stated as such by the storyteller. But nowadays on this board, it seems as though outright skepticism is the default view for any claim about rape. This does get aggravating to see.

14

One day my Marriage & Family class had a rape counselor from a local social service agency speak to class (we’d been doing a unit on rape/sexual abuse). She was very biased against men. For example even of the woman was saying yes (or propositioning the man) the man should still say no if she was too drunk to really understand what she was saying. The class conversation turned to what happened if it was the man who was too drunk to given informed consent (“if he was that intoxicated he would be unable to maintain an erection” :dubious:), but it was somehow possible for a man to get drunk enough to “force himself” on a woman even if he wouldn’t do that if he was sober. That would still be considered rape because “he was drinking of his own free will”. She seemed offended that someone would even bring the subject of a woman raping a man up. She very matter of factly told us that her agency had never seen of case of that happening, had no guidlines or literature for that scenario, and only male victims they’d seen were raped by other men.

The proffesor (who had a private practice in additon to teaching at the college) was more balanced, but he admitted that there is almost no research on female-on-male sexual abuse. He’d never dealt with a male client raped by a woman, but did have cases of adult women abusing male children. The odd thing about that class was that the women seemed much quicker to assign blame to the victim while us men were very reluctant to do so. Apparently this attitude isn’t uncommon.

15

Is that bias against men? Depending on the situation that could be just good sense and decency.

16

Isn’t this a sensible tip for men hoping to avoid being falsely accused of rape, though, similar to advising women not to drink too much and to keep an eye on their drinks?

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about alcohol removing the ability to consent, there’s no one statement that covers every case, but it does trouble me that it seems like such a common occurrence. Because if there is any question whether your partner was passed out for part of the act, or if they’re slurring and can’t stand up, what kind of sex are you hoping to have, exactly? The worst thing that can happen if you turn down drunken sex is that you don’t get to have sex that night.

17

Rape is a crime like any other crime perpetrated to an individual. One more heinous than most, however, guilt should still have to be established. To establish that guilt, the "victim’ does need to be questioned (during investigation) and possibly cross examined in a trial.

I don’t really see this as “blaming the victim”.

Yes the questions will be direct and likely cause psychological harm in rehashing this particular heinous crime, however it is a necessary evil in the establishment of the crime.
The defense will use any means necessary to try and negate guilt.

Maybe I don’t understand the question but the process cannot be anything less without sacrificing people to false accusations.

Of course, if you have substantive evidence of the rape, the victim likely won’t be cross examined.

18

Wait … she calls you on the phone to in tears … so you start a thread to ask her questions? What’s the phone for? :dubious:

Your inartful phrasing makes a point – there is a difference between what one says to a tearful person in front of you, and what one says to anonymous people on the internet. Anyone who seeks, as their primary source of solace, a bunch of pseudonyms on the internet is an idiot. But for that matter – Heckity was not an allegedly raped person asking for support. It was not her daughter allegedly raped. It was her son’s girlfreind, and she was not asking anyone for support or a group hug, but for practical advice.

IME, people ask the tough questions online because they can’t it in person without being labeled an evil horrible sexist bastard. I knew a woman who claimed to have been a victim of a sexual assualt in the past. A lot of people, including women, were dubious of her claim for multiple reasons, but nobody even thought about saying anything to her face. You just don’t do that sort of thing unless you have some kind of ironclad proof, and of course nobody ever does except maybe the cops, and so the claims go unquestioned. Online anonymity allows people to say something much closer to what they really think. That may or many not be a good thing, but it’s something that anybody who’s been online much at all already knows.

I suspect a lot of it has to do with the fact the taboo noted above does not apply to theft or murder IRL, along with the fact that fabricated rape claims are not all that uncommon.

Academic research has shown that a significant fraction – perhaps as many as 40% – of the people who call police and report a rape are in fact making it up. Mind you, that’s not the accusations that did not get convicted – it’s the number where an intentionally false report was made to the police. It is not a rare event.

If you’re

  1. online
  2. making a major claim
  3. about something that people often lie about
  4. but that they are normally socially prohibited from questioning

… yeah, some are gonna be skeptical. If you can’t deal with it, stay out of the kitchen. It’s why I never post about the fact that I’m dying of a fatal disease.

19

Um…there’s nothing in the other thread to indicate she was interested. She screamed and shoved him off.

Anyway, to put this into context, they were all friends. This wasn’t some strange guy. He probably knew she had a boyfriend and was therefore not going to be into making out. I mean, if I get drunk and my friends go home with me and one of them happens to be male, I’m supposed to expect him to start making out with me? This is a creepy world you’re living in.

20

My inartful phrasing only makes the point that I can communicate inartfully sometimes. But it doesn’t take a genius to get what I’m saying. My point is that claims of rape are subjected to more scrutiny (at least on this message board) than other claims, all other things being equal. Do you dispute this observation? Or do you agree with me, but feel such skepticism is warranted?

This opinion is a poor counterpoint to what I wrote.