Is it the woman’s fault if she is raped?

Apr 15, 2011 Features / Columnists, Stella Says

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I have been asked via email to address a topic that has been in the Toronto news lately, after the Toronto Police Service was invited to participate in a safety information panel at York University in Toronto, and one of two male officers who spoke during the January 24 event at Osgoode Hall Law School prefaced his remarks by saying, “I’ve been told I shouldn’t say this” and then advised female students not to dress “like sluts” if they wanted to stay safe on campus.
In the email request, Milroy Hoosein said, “I grew up in Guyana for the first 40 years of my life and now live in Toronto, and while growing up I frequently heard mothers and other women, including those close to me use those same remarks, and believe me, I never thought that those comments were wrong to make until now.”
Milroy is right in that – just like many other misogynistic tendencies we have all been socialised to deem acceptable – we have long taught our daughters that if they are raped, it was their own fault. They either dressed in a provocative manner, or walked like a slut, or looked at a man in an enticing way or any number of other nonsense justifications to excuse the rapist’s actions instead of holding him accountable.
Blaming the victim and declaring that the rapist could not help himself is a morally bankrupt defence for this heinous crime. It is a longstanding remnant of the patriarchal system that protects the man even when he commits a crime and further denigrates the woman.
I will willingly admit that I have issues with women who dress scantily. However, it is not because I want to protect them from rapists. It is because women do not realise the reason they dress in such a provocative manner is because they are victims to yet another form of sexism that seeks to reduce them to mere sex objects.
Media images of objectified women infiltrate almost every aspect of our lives and brainwash girls from a young age to believe these sexualised images are how they too should appear. Young girls unwittingly buy into these sexist notions and spend more time putting on makeup every day than they do educating themselves.
Having said that, women have the right to dress in any manner they so wish, without the expectation of being raped. The offensive statement made by the police officer to the students at York sent insulted women to the streets in protest and the officer issued an apology.
He said, “I made a comment which was poorly thought out and did not reflect the commitment of the Toronto Police Service to the victims of sexual assaults. Violent crimes such as sexual assaults can have a traumatizing effect on their victims… My comment was hurtful in this respect.”
He also said, “I am embarrassed by the comment I made and it shall not be repeated. I apologize for any ill feelings my comment may have caused.”
According to a February 18 article on thestar.com, “Toronto Police spokeswoman Meaghan Gray said cautioning women on their state of dress is not part of any police training. ‘In fact, this is completely contradictory to what officers are taught,’ she said. ‘They are taught that nothing a woman does contributes to a sexual assault.’”
The truth of the matter is that even if a woman is flirting with a man and even if she is kissing the man, if at any point she says stop or tells the man “no,” that is the end of the story. No means no and the man is morally obliged to respect the woman’s wishes and stop. If at this point the man chooses to go against the wishes of the woman, he is the one who is morally and legally responsible for the crime. The woman is not to blame, regardless of what she is wearing, if she flirted with the man or even if there was physical contact prior to the rape.
Moreover, insisting on blaming a woman for rape is ridiculous on so many levels when one considers the fact that women are socialised to dress provocatively by media that is primarily controlled by men, encouraged by men to behave provocatively, and trained from a young age to concede to men.
We are morally obligated to teach our daughters better. It is time for women to realise they are being duped into performing for the entertainment of men and when they are victimised by those same men, they are then blamed for behaving exactly the way a patriarchal society has taught them to behave.
As women, we need to wise up and take our lives back. Until we shed the patriarchal socialisations that objectify us every minute of every day, we will never be taken seriously in the workplace, in the court system, in the academic world – or anywhere else dominated by men.
We play right into the patriarchal system when we willingly lower ourselves to be merely sex objects. Being educated and a woman who is in control of her life are far sexier than a skimpy outfit and high heels. No, there is nothing wrong with looking good and dressing nice, but there is something wrong when we submit to the media’s sexist definition of how we should dress and behave.

Email:  StellaSays@gmail.com

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