She Was Asking For It

This post might offend you. No, really. It might.

I've been thinking a bunch about this post on the amazing blog feministing.com. Jessica, the smart and saucy head of the site, discusses a British study whose main finding was "one in three people in the UK believe that women who 'behave flirtatiously' are responsible for being raped." OK, that's pretty scary. But then she goes on to quote more of the study. I'm interested in this part:

Similarly, more than a quarter of people (30%) said that a woman was partially or totally responsible for being raped if she was drunk, and more than a third (37%) held the same view if the woman had failed to clearly say “no” to the man. (bold theirs)

They clearly find this abhorrent. I'm not so upset, and it's mostly that "partially responsible" category that's doing it. Let's take another example. Say a rathepetitete woman is driving alone in her cute Porsche convertible and wanders into the South Bronx. She realizes she needs gas and hops out in her fabulous Prada heals and Gucci mini-dress. She goes up to the attendant and pulls out a wad of Benjamins and flips through about five of them before she finds a Grant, which she uses to pay the attendant. She wanders around the corner to use the bathroom and is accosted by a man who easily pins her against the wall, holds a switchblade to her throat and demands her money. Would you really say this woman was not "partially responsible" for the mugging? Of course the mugging was wrong. Nobody should mug somebody else. But when you do stupid shit that makes you substantially more vulnerable, I think most people would say you're "partially responsible" when something like this happens to you.

So how, if at all, is this situation different from rape? I have a couple of ideas, but first I'll chat a bit about what's not different. People can be bad and do bad things. We know this from a very young age, where kids talking behind our back preceded the "don't go anywhere with strangers" lecture. It is your job, as an adult, to do your best to protect yourself against this. I do think someone who doesn't say "no" when they mean "no" is doing something wrong. It is your responsibility to say no to salesmen who would con you into buying. It's even your responsibility to say no to people who come up to your car and start washing your windshield in hopes of getting paid. There are ways of forcefully saying no, and everyone should learn them. If not, people will make you do all sorts of things you don't want to do. Rape may be the worst case scenario, but it's certainly not the only scenario. You should also not get fall-down drunk without friends around. Again, people will mug you, mock you, and, again in the worst case, rape or kidnap you. It is your responsibility to care for yourself and to make sure you have trusted backup. If the woman in the car were with a 6'5", 240 lb. man acting as her escort to the bathroom, she wouldn't have had such problems. She also might not have had problems if she had hid her money well or made sure she was in a safe location before getting out of the car. So, that's how they're the same. If you can take simple steps to prevent harm, and you don't, there's some partial responsibility on your part.

It is important to note, however, that you having more responsibility doesn't make the other person any less responsible. This isn't a 0 sum game. Somebody who rapes someone passed out on the kitchen counter is just as morally abhorrent as someone who rapes a fully conscious, fighting person. "It was stupid of them to do this, so I have a right to" is bullshit logic. I believe that if you're hurting someone, if you're generating negative utility, you're being bad. Eso es todo.

Now for my thoughts on how these are different. The first thing that comes to mind, which I don't really believe to ultimately be the answer, is general vulnerability. Taking advantage of someone naturally weaker than you are or in a compromised state is worse than winning a fair fight. It's even worse than holding a gun to the head of someone in what otherwise would have been a fair fight. While I think this argument has merit in general, it doesn't seem THAT bad for someone to mug a drunk person. And raping someone who's you're own size is still abominable.

The second thing that comes to mind (all right, I guess it's actually the first) is the nature of the crime. But it's clearly not just the severity that's the issue. We can think someone who gets killed by doing something stupid is partially responsible. Is it that it's demeaning? That it's a violation? I mean, I think murder is more of a violation than rape. Here's what I think it is...thought 2.5:

I think a lot of it boils down to that age-old double standard of men-should-screw-like-bunnies-but-women-should-be-pure-and-virginal. Especially, it comes down to how people have historically (and, sadly, currently) reacted to rape. If the families and friends of the victims always reacted to rape that might have been prevented by smarter choices the same way they reacted to these other things—"I'm angry at you for not thinking and suffering the worst consequences, but now that it's happened let me hug you and do everything I can to make sure you're OK"—we might view it in a similar light as we view the other crimes. But when men in the Sudan find out the women in their lives were raped and blame them (completely unjustly in these circumstances: This isn't rape by an irresponsible, thoughtless date; this is usually rape by soldiers at gunpoint) they disown their daughters. They break off their engagements. They shun their sisters. They view the woman as unclean. When men rape in these kind of situations, they're not just giving the women a single traumatic, life-changingly depressing experience, they're also ruining everything they have and toppling their support network.

While, thank God, this doesn't seem to be the case in America, I don't think that frame of mind is totally absent. When people give women partial or total responsibility for being raped, they're not saying "you were thoughtless and could have prevented this," I really think the message between the lines is "you secretly wanted this at the time, and now you're just complaininbecauseue you can." I think that's where the problem is. And it goes a step further...even between those lines lies the message "And you're a slut because you wanted it. You're disgusting." That's very rarely, if ever, said (I believe...I may be totally wrong...In fact, there's a very good chance I'm totally wrong). But I think it's there, and I think women know that it's there. And I think that's why it's so, so offensive to say a woman was partially responsible if she put herself in a very compromising situation. Not because she didn't really forsake her responsibility, which she make have, but because the implication is that she was a willing participant. She wasn't.

Am I just spewing the obvious? Am I spewing crap? Am I spewing legitimate thought? I can't tell anymore...