by Ayse Gursoy
While I have no problem with the intent behind the Rape Aggression Defense classes offered every semester (and currently advertised around campus), I question the framework in which they operate.
Through books, movies, news, and even awareness programs, we have an image of rape as “a spontaneous violent attack” (PSafe RAD site). When I hear a news story about rape, it usually involves a dark alley, a stranger, and violence. Not all rapes conform to this image, especially in college. A Department of Justice pamphlet reveals that “ninety percent of college women who are victims of rape or attempted rape know their assailant” (Sampson 3). Acquaintance rape is significantly more common, and, even if it involves violence, is usually not a straightforward physical assault. Alcohol or psychological manipulation may play a large role. Also, the issue of consent is much more convoluted in acquaintance rape–lack of refusal may be taken as consent, as though not saying “no” means “yes”. In stranger rape, consent is clearly not given, and the question is ignored altogether. In this context, aggressive retaliation may allow you to escape and get help, and situational awareness may lead you to avoid sketchy locations. But in the context of acquaintance rape, self-defense methods cannot help you if you are physically unable to say “no”.
Some may say that one should never place themselves in a situation where they are not in control over their body. These people would say that it is a woman’s responsibility not to get too drunk, in case someone attempts to have sex with her, and she cannot refuse. These people ignore the fact that it is not a woman’s responsibility to control the actions of others. Rape culture allows people to act in a way that harms others, and say “they were asking for it”, in return. Rape is not a consequence of poor decision-making on the part of the victim, it is a consequence of poor decision-making on the part of the rapist. These classes, targeted towards women, flirt with the assumption that it is your responsibility to protect yourself from all the rapists out there, but it is not the legal system’s responsibility to enforce the laws, not society’s responsibility to neutralize rape culture, not the rapist’s responsibility not to rape someone. Sure, vigilante justice exists, but it is not nearly as pervasive in other cases as it is in the case of rape, stranger or acquaintance.
photo from KayVee.INC‘s flickr
t that. as the recent prince article about plan b emergency contraception also blatantly fails to address: it takes two to consent. the fact that the women in that article suggested in their quotes that they had non-consensual sex should be a topic of discussion, and offering a class on self-defense instead of offering comprehensive programs on what constitutes consent contributes to assigning blame to victims who should “be prepared” and creating the myth that the only rape that ever happens is stranger rape. why is consent not the norm or the standard? yeah, it’s really easy to blame those vicious men from out of town when much of the problem that needs to be addressed is actually within the community.
I have often thought that many attempts to “raise awareness” about rape actually end up demeaning rape victims, and that this is the result of a too-expansive definition of rape. It is uncontroversial that a person has been raped if he or she has been a) violently coerced, despite b)having made reasonable efforts to remain safe. Something is “reasonable” in this sense so long as it is not reckless or negligent, a pretty low standard.
But some people sympathetic to rape victims promulgate a looser definition of rape (I will not speculate as to whether this is in an attempt to muster more shocking, if less true, statistics to put on posters). This definition, which I take you to have accepted, includes cases where neither (a) or (b) holds. I will focus on (b) because it seems to be the main point of divergence.
When a person gets lung cancer, he or she become the object of our concern, our sympathy. This sympathy vanishes pretty quickly if we learn that the person so afflicted smoked cigarettes for 40 years. He or she knew the risks of smoking, and nevertheless elected, as a rational agent, to smoke. It is tragic that smoking causes cancer and that one cannot savor delicious nicotine without damaging one’s health; we can certainly imagine a better world where smoking does not cause cancer, but we have to acknowledge that this is not such a world. No one’s “right to smoke without consequences” has been violated. About the smoker we say, “Sad, but what did he expect?” Respect for the smoker as an autonomous agent requires that he be held responsible for the risky actions he undertook.
By analogy, respect for the autonomy of persons who knowingly and intentionally put themselves in a situation where they have an elevated risk of being raped requires that they be held responsible for the risky actions they undertook. An attractive, let us say sexually liberated woman who goes out to the proverbial TI dance floor, blackout drunk and with risque attire, knew or ought to have known that this is a situation where the risk of rape is elevated. She nevertheless considered the costs and benefits and decided to go. If respect for persons requires that they be held responsible for their risky behavior, then this woman should be held responsible for the outcome, unless someone will deny that she is a rational and autonomous agent.
The obvious difference between the smoking case and the second case there is another autonomous agent involved, namely the “rapist” (in quotes because whether not this is rape is what is under dispute). So people would say that this person is to be held responsible for his actions, and I don’t disagree. My point is that the fact that the “rapist” may himself be culpable in part does not mean that the “victim” is not culpable in part. Furthermore, my argument is that a “victim” who is culpable in this way is less of a victim than a victim who is not (say, in the uncontroversial “violent stranger rape” case). There is a big enough difference between one case and the other, and between one “victim” and the other, to make the use of the same term for both inaccurate and misleading.
As for how terminology can demean or harm a classification of people, consider the case of vegetarians, vegans, and so on–the writers of the blog are no doubt much better versed in that infinite taxonomy of conspicuous non-consumption than I. I imagine that the taxonomy is so complex because people who don’t ask for eggs at Bodo’s don’t want to be grouped with people who think that eating eggs is ok but asking for bacon is too much. Eliding the difference between the groups cheapens the greater sacrifice–and thus, of course, the greater nobility–of the vegans as compared to the mere vegetarians. I would point out that the same thing is going on with with conservative side in same-sex marriage debates, but I fear that this is the wrong blog for that comparison.
So, in conclusion, I believe that those who respect rape victims should take care to straighten out their terminology and their thoughts.
oh my my my. in an attempt to remain somewhat civil i’ll just approach this logically.
you compare a smoker getting cancer to a cute drunk girl on the ti dance floor being raped. each, in your view, certainly experienced something unpleasant–but each also had it coming. consider, though, the physical act of smoking. every single time a person smokes a cigarette, they inhale smoke and toxins that physically damage their body. this occurs without question, and the smoker knows that. there is no “elevated risk” of the physical damage to their lungs- it is an inevitable fact. a girl who chooses to drink and wear risque clothes (seriously?) does so with no presumption that harm (in the form of sexual assault) is physically inevitable. when it comes down to it, your analogy fails because of something even you admit; rape involves the other autonomous agent– the rapist.
say that there were a group of people walking around that could choose to inject smokers with cancer. they could only inject the people who smoke, but the only way smokers could get cancer would be as a result of this injection. are the cancer-injectors any less culpable for choosing to give someone cancer? after all, they gave cancer to a person who would otherwise not have had cancer–just like rapists assault women (or men) who would otherwise not have been assaulted.
should i stop driving my car on new year’s eve because i’m asking to be hit by a drunk driver? am i less of a victim if i do get hit because i chose to drive that night?
I’m not sure it’s true that smoking inevitably causes cancer, but let’s say that it is. You correctly point out that there is a difference between doing something that will cause harm to oneself with p=1 and doing something that will cause harm to oneself with p<1. The first one is not a risk because the harm is certain, the second one is because the harm is uncertain. But I don't think this is an important difference, because in both cases it impacts the expected value of your actions (the goodness or badness of an outcome times the probability of that outcome coming to pass). To put it in the crudest terms, increasing the probability of a harm valued at -100 by 1% is equivalent to causing a harm valued at -1 with 100% probability. It seems plausible that marginal harm to oneself of smoking an additional cigarette, though certain, might be less than the marginal harm to oneself of going out to the TI dance floor under the conditions I described, even though the harm in that case is uncertain. So the "physical inevitability" of a bad outcome is not the crucial feature of it.
Both this feature and the issue of dual culpability can be illustrated by the following example. Suppose you go to a certain part of Baltimore and leave your Lexus unlocked with the keys in the ignition and, as if that were not enough, literally leave a sign that says "Please steal my car." I imagine you would say it is not, strictly speaking, inevitable that your car will be stolen, but you can't claim to be too surprised if it is. Through your negligence you have drastically increased the probability of a bad outcome. This doesn't make the car thief's actions less of a crime or less of an immoral act. But it does make you less sympathetic a victim than someone who at the very least locked his or her car. While it would not be true that you have only yourself to blame, it is fair to say that you deserve some of the blame.
In my view driving your car on New Year's Eve is perhaps unwise, but not negligent. (It also raises an interesting question as to the accountability of the drunk driver, which as you can imagine has implications with respect to rape.) So you are not significantly less of a victim if you are hit.
My goal is to show that in some cases one can reasonably "blame the victim"–meaning not that the culprit is off the hook, or even less responsible, but that the "victim" is not without responsibility of her own. To my knowledge girls don't wear signs that say, "Please rape me," but some do arguably act negligently by consistently putting themselves in high risk situations–and yes, clothing, drinking, and behavior send messages. These women are different from those who are raped despite having made reasonable efforts to reduce their risk.
Finally, I just want to point out that the furthest thing from what I am saying is that anyone "had it coming" in the sense that she somehow deserved to be raped or to get cancer. An important distinction.
I think I’m going to let the law speak for itself on this one. Sexual abuse occurs if someone “engages in a sexual act with another person if that other person is— (A) incapable of appraising the nature of the conduct; or
(B) physically incapable of declining participation in, or communicating unwillingness to engage in, that sexual act”
Notice how there is no part (C) that says “unless the victim acted in a way that maximized personal risk, in which case the victim should present himself or herself for self-defense training”.
You bring up the issue of sympathy, and I can’t tell you that you should be sympathetic to someone if you don’t want to be. But blame and culpability are strong, legally-loaded words that have been used worldwide in trials to let rapists off the hook.
As quoted here: “Trials often hinge not on the behavior of the defendant, but rather on whether the woman did enough to protect herself from his advances.”
Law is one thing, morality another. Really I’m not talking about either here, just the difference between the definition of rape that most people have and the very different definition that some benighted activists spread around. But be that as it may, I don’t think relying on the law is going to do you a lot of good. Because if “blame and culpability are strong, legally-loaded words” that when applied in rape trials have resulted in the acquittal of the defendant, then it must be the case that blame and culpability on the accuser’s part actually do, in the law’s eyes, distinguish “rape” (in the loose sense) from rape. You beg the question when you call this “letting the rapist off the hook”, and do so in the face of the plain fact that the law says the accused is not a rapist.
But as I said, I’m not primarily interested in what the law says. Nor, as I have maintained consistently, do I want to show here that a “rapist” is less morally or legally blamable because of the “victim’s” actions (although that is another argument I am willing to have). My focus is on the “victim’s” behavior, so talking about the “rapist” is not really to the point.
And what I’ve been saying is that one should not focus on a victim in a rape case, because it is not and never their fault. So perhaps we’re talking around each other here.
I don’t think it is right that a jury selected to have no experience with sexual assault or abuse can turn a rape trial into a trial of the victim, even while the rapist is arrested after each acquittal and finally sentenced by a judge because the law is clear (see the quoted story in my previous comment). Or that only some 20 percent of rape victims report their rape to the authorities because they know how common rape culture is.
1) This is a bit of a white flag, since you’re just stating your conclusion without even attempting to prove it. Why, exactly, is it “not and never their fault”?
2) Your articles lament that often judges will allow evidence about the accuser’s character to be introduced. So a judge, someone who is presumably an expert on the law, judges this material to be relevant to determining whether a rape has transpired. Setting aside the question of whether this shows that the legal definition of rape is stricter than yours, it does at least show that the strict definition of rape is prevalent–which fact is further proved by the behavior of juries. Perhaps to your regret, but no less certainly for that, ordinary citizens acquit people who are rapists according to your definition but not rapists according to their definition and, apparently, to the law’s definition too.
3) I hardly need to point out the irrelevance (at best) of such statistics as your 20%, not to mention the baseless causal explanations attached to them.
I want to reiterate my main point here, though, which no one has really addressed. I don’t think it is deniable that there are two different definitions of rape. And there is enough difference between these two definitions that require two different words and shouldn’t be grouped under the same term “rape”. To do so would be misleading and demeaning to those who are raped in the sense of violent assault.
To address your main point (because I addressed the others in my first post), I honestly believe the term “rape” itself is problematic, because in contemporary American culture, “rape” refers specifically to forced penetration (even in the context of land, sometimes). This obviously excludes people who have been violated in a non-p.i.v. way. But drawing a distinction between “rape-rape” and “not-rape” is just as problematic, if not more, because it is “misleading and demeaning” to those who are assaulted sexually, just not in the way that we have come to expect when we hear the term “rape”.
If you’d like a more recent example of how this distinction is harmful, see the ongoing discussion surrounding the Roman Polanski rape trial.
In point two, you mention that the law’s definition coincides with the “ordinary citizen’s” definition, and is more strict than mine. In the articles, however, the legally-informed definition is shown to be much stricter than the culturally-informed definition.
On some level, it should be obvious that you can place yourself in situations where rape becomes more or less likely. Drinking at a party is more risky than sitting on your couch reading a book.
That said, we use discretion in choosing whether to blame the victim in other contexts. If someone’s spouse murders them, do we say they had it coming because they should’ve married someone nicer? In general, no. If someone is driving around and gets hit by another driver, do we blame them for the accident because they placed themselves in a situation where accidents are more likely to occur? Of course not.
There are two particularly odious aspects to blaming a rape victim. One is that such a line of thought risks increasing the incidence of rape, which everyone agrees is terrible, by making it easier for potential rapists to dampen their consciences (“she asked for it”) and by making it less likely that victims will come forward.
The other issue is that, psychologically, rape is about trust and a loss of control, and I think blaming the victim only amplifies the psychological damage from the event; it suggests that the victim can’t even trust himself or herself.
So I don’t see why it’s logically imperative to blame the victim, nor do I see why it’s productive. Rape victims are first and foremost victims, and the situations they place themselves in are typically situations which millions of people have been in without problem because the people around them acted with basic decency. It’s not asking very much to have other people keep their genitals to themselves, and to pretend that anything else is the crux of the problem is silly and counterproductive.
Jeff,
I’ve already addressed the criterion of negligence/excessive risk-taking above, including a lovely car crash example, so I won’t repeat myself here. That should take care of your first two paragraphs.
Both of your arguments for not “blaming the rape victim” are consequentialist ones and a fortiori moral ones. They are not arguments that the distinction I have drawn is in fact ill-founded. That’s fine if you want to say that even if there is a distinction between blamable “rape victims” and non-blamable rape victims we should ignore it as a matter of policy. But it doesn’t address my substantive claim that there is such a distinction.
In addition to your two good but misdirected arguments you made an interesting claim: that what I call “rape victims”, i.e. blamable victims, are assaulted in a setting in which millions of people and indeed they themselves typically are not assaulted. Presumably you think that this makes them less blamable. I think something similar goes on with drunk drivers–most of the time you can get away with it, and you think you’re in control, so you expect that you’ll never run into trouble. Most people probably don’t. But when you are in trouble, let’s say you’re caught by the police, you are punished harshly for what seemed to be a relatively minor offense–that particular five-mile drive after a night out. This seeming disproportionality falls away when you consider that you are being punished not for that one instance where you we caught, but for all the other instances where you weren’t caught. Similarly with the risk of an accident: each particular time the risk is fairly low, but over time the risk is significantly higher.
With rape you could say a party girl is being “punished” for habitual risky behavior. NOTE THAT “PUNISHED” IS NOT USED IN THE MORAL SENSE NOR DOES IT IMPLY THAT THE ASSAULTED PERSON DESERVED IT. What it means is the same as in the drunk driving case: repeated exposure to excessive and needless risks increases the chances of a bad event even if on each particular occasion the risk is relatively low (though still greater than that of the prudent person).
I’m not sure if this caveat merits all caps, but you should note that I’m not claiming that drunk driving and rape are morally equivalent or something like that, I’m just claiming that the sort of risk involved in both is similar (over against a one-time hang-gliding attempt).
As I understand it, your position is that the word “rape” is not appropriate when the victim was in a setting/situation in which rape often happens and thus “should have known better.”
The type of example you’ve given of settings in which rape is likely has so far been that of drunken partying. But what about the proverbial dark alleyways in which rape may also often occur? Does a woman walking through a not-perfectly-safe city late at night hold responsibility for getting raped because she dared to walk there? I think not, because everybody should have the right to walk whereever they want whenever they want without being assaulted. In that case, however, what makes it different from the aforementioned parties?
Perhaps it is more likely that someone will rape a woman who is drinking/dancing at a party than one who is somewhere else. From your perspective, that’s just the way things are, and women should know that before they put themselves in this situation. From my perspective, that *should not be* the way things are. If it’s more likely that a drinking/dancing/skimpily-dressed woman at a party will get sexually assaulted than one who isn’t all of the above, it’s because her behavior makes someone think they have the right to her body, when they absolutely do not. You acknowledge that the rapist is wrong to rape even in this case, so presumably you agree that the woman’s behavior does not give anyone any right to touch her. If people nevertheless think that it does (which is why rape may become more likely), that is a problem that needs to be addressed. Other people’s actions are *not* the woman’s responsibility.
Yes, it may be pragmatically safer for a woman not to do the kind of thing that puts her in danger. But it’s not a law of the universe that such things will put her in danger; it is *others’ behavior*. Completely unacceptable behavior.
Also, you cite courts acquitting defendants in rape cases you think are fuzzy/invalid as evidence that the law too hews to your definition of rape. This makes the big, big mistake of assuming that all court decisions are correct and just. (As just one very high-profile example, consider Plessy v. Ferguson (later overturned by Brown v. Board of Education), or even the trial in “To Kill A Mockingbird,” the latter of which is only a representative example of US justice of its time period (not that it’s magically perfect now).) Moreover, the legal definition of rape presented by Ayse above (it’s rape unless there was explicit consent) is our definition, not yours, and if courts went against that, that in itself is evidence of them being wrong.
Z, for all the rambling you did, I will still never stop telling my daughter, if I ever have one, to watch what she wears and how much she drinks. You know why? Cause rape happens and I don’t want her to get raped. All your ideological bullshit isn’t going to take away the fact that she got raped. Likewise, I’ll tell my daughter (or son, for that matter) to refrain from wearing rings and bracelets in certain parts of Mexico City because her arm might get lopped off (and before you pull the racist card, cause you or someone else would jump at it immediately I’m sure, I am Mexican and know this shit happens f’real). I’ll also tell my son not to rape (obviously?), and most likely will not bother with watch how much you drink because you might get raped because it is STATISTICALLY not as likely to happen.
Roscoe,
Acknowledging that rape happens, and certain actions on the part of women may make it more likely, and telling women this so they know it and can use it to *attempt* to protect themselves (attempt because it would often not be very effective), is different from saying that if a woman did whatever she wanted and got raped, then it’s in part her fault.
I don’t think it’s a problem to inform a woman of the risk of rape.
But it should be made clear that, while the ways of the world may ultimately make her de facto responsible for protecting herself, in moral terms it is *not* her responsibility. It’s only a survival strategy in an imperfect world. (Just like being careful in dangerous parts of cities.)
So, if you have a son, you say you will not bother telling him not to drink because he may get raped. What about telling him not to drink because he may rape someone?
I think spending more time telling women about rape than men just makes it their responsibility again, when it shouldn’t be because it’s not their action.
1. You give normative answers to factual questions, which is effectively the same as giving no answers at all. Of course it would be nice if you could walk through a dark alley without ever being jumped, but as a factual matter, it’s just not true. Same for partying. Same for unwanted touching. I fully agree that other people’s actions are not the woman’s responsibility–but that her actions are. A rapist can be condemned for immorality; a certain kind of rape victim can be condemned for imprudence. In terms of prudence, it is irrelevant whether the potential harm is natural or man-made (as if there is a big difference between these). What is relevant is the risk, the “victim’s” knowledge of the risk, and her behavior in response to that knowledge.
2. I would say that the woman walking through the dark alley has the same sort of responsibility as the party-girl: she’s not responsible for the rapist’s actions, but she is responsible for recklessly exposing herself to danger. The drunken party-girl is more blamable because not only has she put herself in a risky situation, she has made it so that she cannot consent, even if she explicitly consents. This is equivalent to a woman in the alley seeking out a potential mugger, urging him to please take all her money, then, in the morning, calling the police to say that she was robbed.
3. I didn’t claim that courts were anything close to 100% accurate in their decisions; it’s painfully obvious they’re not. My (somewhat sophistical) point was that if, as people were saying, there is a widespread problem of judges/juries incorrectly exonerating people accused of rape, perhaps that is an indication that the operative definition of rape is not precisely your definition. This would raise the question of whose job it is to interpret the statute (hint: black robes). Also, the more frequent these “unjust” acquittals, the lower the accuracy of the courts, in your view, and the more pervasive the “wrong” definition of rape. So either you have to say that these cases are not that frequent, or you have to admit that the operative definition of rape is different from what you claim.
Okay, the drunken partying girl may not be the best example of prudence. The problem arises, though, when people try to say that, because of that, she’s not really a victim, she wasn’t really raped. And then use that against her, thus ultimately acquitting her rapist, which just contributes to the idea that it’s *okay* to assault women in this situation. In which case it’ll just keep happening.
“Also, the more frequent these “unjust” acquittals, the lower the accuracy of the courts, in your view, and the more pervasive the “wrong” definition of rape.” <– Well, unfortunately, yes. In a country supposedly built on rule of law, though, do you think actual written law or history of decisions *ignoring* said law should take precedence?