Bad Advice

When it comes to domestic violence, most of us don't know the signs, yet we love to blame women for not noticing them and not getting out of the relationship fast enough. Case in point, a man writes to Cary Tennis, an advice columnist, and his letter is peppered with red flags. On Feministe, where we first saw this advice, Jill breaks them down:

I mean, we have some Classic Signs of A Controlling Man here.

1. Isolates her from her friends and family.


2. Criticizes her.


3. THREATENS SUICIDE when she tries to leave him.


4. Lies, or at least can’t keep his story straight, when he’s appealing for sympathy (see “we ended up having a screaming incident in front of our apartment” followed up with “I never threatened her or even raised my voice”).

The advice columnist, who by the way is paid to be an expert on relationships, has this to say:

It’s sad. I wish you two could patch it up.

This is the advice women are given. We are told to compromise so we won't end up alone, and then people are surprised when the violence escalates and we don't realize something is wrong until we are in too deep. To this advice columnist, the victim is the villain.

How hard would it be to tell women not to compromise, but only to commit to other people who treat them as equals and with respect? How hard would it have been for this advice columnist to tell this perfect stranger that his behavior is alarming and that his girlfriend is right to stay away? Domestic violence will not end if we tell women to put up with it and it certainly won't end until we are able to point out to men when their behavior is controlling or threatening. We need to stop ignoring the warning signs and start treating domestic and dating violence for what it is: a problem that needs to be addressed and can't be explained away.

Benevolent Sexism

Readers, have you ever gotten a "compliment" that seemed intended to genuinely be a compliment that nonetheless didn't feel quite so good? Scientific American actually recently examined that topic in a great article on benevolent sexism.

In 1996, Peter Glick and Susan Fiske wrote a paper on the concept of ambivalent sexism, noting that despite common beliefs, there are actually two different kinds of sexist attitudes and behavior. Hostile sexism is what most people think of when they picture “sexism” – angry, explicitly negative attitudes towards women. However, the authors note, there is also something called benevolent sexism:

We define benevolent sexism as a set of interrelated attitudes toward women that are sexist in terms of viewing women stereotypically and in restricted roles but that are subjectively positive in feeling tone (for the perceiver) and also tend to elicit behaviors typically categorized as prosocial (e.g., helping) or intimacy-seeking (e.g., self-disclosure) (Glick & Fiske, 1996, p. 491).

[Benevolent sexism is] a subjectively positive orientation of protection, idealization, and affection directed toward women that, like hostile sexism, serves to justify women’s subordinate status to men (Glick et al., 2000, p. 763).

Essentially, there’s now a formal name for all of those comments and stereotypes that can somehow feel both nice and wrong at the same time, such as the belief that women are “delicate flowers” that need to be protected by men, or the notion that women have the special gift of being “more kind and caring” than their male counterparts. And yes, it might sound complimentary, but it still counts as sexism.

Benevolent sexism also still counts as a problem and still contributes to society treating women as second-class citizens. Check out the full article here for all of the ways how.

Rape Culture Refresher Course

If you've read our blog for any length of time, you are familiar with the term "rape culture". If you don't know the term, or need a refresher, the blog Racialicious has a great breakdown that starts as a conversation about "Don't' get raped" vs. "Don't rape" as prevention strategies, goes through "Not saying no does not equal yes" and ends with violence in movies, books, and music in a full illustration of the permeation of rape into our culture. It is well worth a read.

Taylor Armstrong Blames Self for Abuse

Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Taylor Armstrong gave an interview about the domestic violence she experienced last night, and she said that she "ended up in this situation because of [her] own flaws and [her] own insecurities." We want to say to Taylor, her viewers, and the rest of the world, that this is patently false.

No one deserves to have violence used against them and there is literally nothing in the world I can do to cause you to hit me. We each have individual responsibility to control our anger and to control our bodies, and each time we get angry, we have a choice to make. We can choose to hit another person, to scream, to walk away, to dig a hole, or to do whatever we need to do to channel our emotions and our adrenaline. However, it is our choice, and ours alone.

Whether a person is weak or strong, it doesn't make it their fault if they are hit. If a person is well-educated or not, it doesn't make it their fault if they are hit. If a person is confident or self-conscious, rich or poor, gay or straight, well, you get the picture.

Many women blame themselves for the violence used against them. It's not surprising. As a society, we blame her, too. We just couldn't believe that boy-next-door Chris Brown would possibly hit Rihanna. She must have done something to cause it. And even when her bloodied, broken face was plastered throughout the media, some people still blamed her while others acknowledged that the crime was committed, but pressed us to hurry up and forgive.

Isn't this tragic? We blame survivors so much that they internalize the blame and put it on themselves. Not only that, they go on national television and spread that blame to all women who have been victimized. There is a poison in our culture that allows this to happen, and it is going to take all of us standing up to this type of victim-blaming to find a cure.

Check out this follow-up article: 5 Domestic Violence Myths I Learned Still Exist From Watching ‘Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’

5 Things a Survivor Wants You To Know

Last week, we spotted this amazing post from The Good Men Project, written by a domestic violence survivor. She challenges 5 myths about domestic violence, using her own story to set the record straight:

I’m not weak.

I , legitimately, walk the planet on a daily basis knowing that there is someone out there that wants to physically harm me. I live knowing that, at any minute, Scott could return. And I’m only able to do this because on a hot July afternoon I picked up my broken body from the concrete floor and limped out of the door, without looking backward. Nobody else did that for me. Nobody was there to protect me from the madness, nor did they hold me by the arm while I walked on a strained ankle and battered knee. I was in so much pain that I wanted to crawl. But I didn’t, knowing that if I took even a second longer than necessary he might kill me. Weakness wasn’t an option. Strength is what allowed me to survive. And it kept me alive every day before and every day after.

It wasn’t easy to come home to a house that didn’t have electricity or running water. It was heartbreaking to have my car repossessed two days after I made the decision to leave. Trying to find a job, without a car, was embarrassing and difficult. But I did it. And I lived in a home for the next several months knowing that, at any moment, he could walk back into my life (and my house) because he knew where I was and he knew that my back window was broken out (because he shattered it with his left fist).

Survivors of domestic abuse are strong.

This excerpt is just one highlight from an article that you really should read in its entirety.

Is the US Failing Rape Victims?

Alternet asks this question today in what is, frankly, an emotionally exhausting article. That exhaustion, mixed with anger and horror, comes from their coverage of so many recent instances of sexual violence after which victims are being told again and again that their rights don't matter and that their voices won't be heard.

Let's start with two examples from the winter and spring which are in fact on the opposite ends of what the media sees as a "rape spectrum."

First, you have Julian Assange, a powerful man accused of "acquaintance rape," based on two women's accounts. One involved a forcible sexual encounter that began as a consensual one, and another involved penetrating a woman while she was asleep. Both women were sophisticated professionals who knew Assange, and both were alone with him when the alleged assaults took place.

Both women were blamed, smeared and their identities revealed online, accused of being part of a supposed worldwide conspiracy to bring Assange down (just as the press has insinuated that DSK's accuser, Nafissatou Diallo, was an unlikely pawn of a conspiracy to silence Strauss-Kahn).

Second, we have the Texas gang-rape case, in which a large group of boys and men were caught on video brutally and repeatedly gang-raping a young girl. In this case, there was physical corroborating evidence, the victim was too young to legally consent, and the accused were relatively powerless men in a poor community.

The cases couldn't have been more different, and yet in this case also, the young woman was smeared when prominent newspaper stories fixated on her appearance, her dress, and her behavior rather than the demeanor and histories of the men involved.

So the lesson is clear: if you report an unexciting rape that happened in your home while you were alone with the perpetrator, you get blamed. If you are recorded on video being repeatedly raped by a massive number of people, you also get blamed. If you're a grown woman: blamed. If you're a child: blamed. If it's your word: blamed. If there's physical evidence: blamed.

It's clear, then, that the answer is yes, we are failing victims. And we will be until we create a system in which they feel safe to report, because they aren't afraid of being blamed. We will be failing victims until our society understands that lack of consent means rape, period. We will be failing victims until we acknowledge that tricking women into having sex, getting them drunk to lower their inhibitions, or making them feel that saying no isn't an option are all means of raping. And, we will be failing victims until our idea of rape prevention is to teach men not to rape rather than teaching victims to avoid getting victimized. We have a lot of work to do.

Cosmo's 10 Tips for Preventing Sexual Assault

Cosmo, the women's magazine, has a handy list of 10 tips to help women not get raped. The problem with these lists is the assumption that a woman can do anything at all to prevent herself from being raped, the flip side of which is that a woman who doesn't do these things is at least a little bit at fault when she is raped. Wrong!

Melissa at Shakesville has a much better list of tips for sexual assault prevention, in handy visual form:



See the difference? The focus here is on a group of people who actually can prevent rape: rapists. Since raping someone is a choice, only rapists can make the choice to not rape. If a rapists rapes, only he is to blame.

Nicki Minaj and Fighting Back

Last week, singer Nicki Minaj was involved in an incident of domestic violence during which, according to the police report, her companion hit her with a suitcase. Minaj chose not to press charges and then denied the account to the media. Taking to Twitter, she said (paraphrasing due to the adult language in the original tweet) people are stupid to believe that a man would hit her and not leave on a stretcher.

We hear a lot of women say that. Some think that domestic violence victims are weak. Others just think that their own self-esteem (or temper) is too high to "put up with" violence used against them. Zerlina Maxwell at TheLoop21 addresses this somewhat (clicking this link takes you to Minaj's original tweet, which contains adult language):

Being the victim of violence doesn’t make you weak. It makes the perpetrator of that violence look weak. Furthermore, Minaj’s insistence that she would have retaliated against the man if she had really been hit is wholly unacceptable.

We need to have a mature conversation around gender violence. It’s not appropriate for anyone to be hit or leave in a stretcher. The automatic response from Minaj should not be one that coincides with her stage image, she is a human being after all. Even if she didn’t want to admit to being hit, a more empowering response could have been “I was not the victim of domestic abuse but if you find yourself in that situation call the police or tell a friend. Get Help!”

Of course, these kinds of comments are dangerous for more reasons than just that violence should not be met with more violence. I talked to a woman literally as I was typing this post who was struggling to admit that her partner was abusive, that it was really all that bad, despite the fact that he has choked her in front of their child and is threatening to kill her. She said that it's hard to believe that it is real because she isn't the "meek" kind of woman that she thought "usually ended up in these situations". We are stereotyping domestic violence victims so much that they now cannot recognize themselves enough to seek help!

There's another reason why this reaction isn't helpful. WRC offers two free classes every month that the local judicial districts call "anger management". Women are mandated by the courts to attend these classes because they have been arrested for family violence. Some of the women in the class genuinely have anger management issues, but most are victims of domestic violence who were arrested for fighting back. Our classes are 1/3 DV support group, 1/3 anger management, and 1/3 instructions for how to avoid future arrests and how to get this one expunged from your record.

In the class, we often show a video about the Framingham 8, a group of 8 women in Framingham, Massachusetts who were imprisoned for killing a spouse or partner after years of domestic violence. Several of those women have since won their freedom by using Battered Women's Syndrome as a defense. We had a woman in class recently, who you will recall was there because she had been arrested for fighting back, who was assaulted again by her partner a few days after the class. She called to tell us that she thinks that video might have saved her life. Instead of fighting back and possibly escalating the violence, getting arrested again, or killing her partner, she just took the abuse. For her, that was her best-case scenario.

It's not a pretty picture, but here we are. How disheartening is it that we are asked to teach classes for victims that instruct them not to fight back or they might go to jail? The unfortunate truth is that many victims of domestic violence do go to jail for fighting back, or for killing their partners, and the effects of that often last longer than the effects of the physical violence. Once you are arrested, it is harder to find a job. While you are in jail, your children might be taken from you (and sometimes even given to your batterer). You are labeled the "aggressor" by the legal system, a label which follows you throughout your interactions with the courts as you later try to press charges or file a protective order. That label also prevents you from receiving services from the court victim advocates and even some domestic violence programs (though certainly not ours). To help women have the best chance of rebuilding their lives after domestic violence, while they are in it, we are encouraged to tell them just to take it.

How can we get to the hard work of ending domestic violence when we have to tell 80ish women per month just to take it?

We are thankful to be able to offer these classes, for free, because instead victims who are arrested would have to pay a more traditional anger management program to treat them like a criminal. We are lucky to have this means of introducing our agency to women who might otherwise never attend a DV support group or hear about our services. We are also disgusted that so many women who don't belong there end up in these classes at all, and we work hard for the day when our community no longer punishes women for the crimes committed against them.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn Follow-up

Since our last post, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the famous and influential French economist who was accused of sexual assault and attempted rape by a New York hotel maid, was released from house arrest after prosecutors decided that the woman's past would make prosecution of Strauss-Kahn difficult.

According to a letter filed by prosecutors in court on Friday, the housekeeper from Guinea lied about her actions right after the alleged attack, as well as on her tax returns and in an application for asylum.

So women who lie on their tax returns can't be raped?

Certainly an accuser's credibility will be in question in a crime with no witnesses, but rape cases in particular often take on the feel of a well-organized character assassination against victims. The New York Post ran a front-page story alleging the victim in this case was a "hooker". Others have called her a liar, criminal, or gold-digger. Still others have said she shouldn't be believed because she is just a hotel maid.

A poster at the Crunk Feminist Collective lays it out well:

So what’s the takeaway from this? What are we to understand about violence against women in the US?

It seems that in cases of violence against women, the burden of proof falls squarely on the shoulders of the woman who brings the case to court. And then we wonder why only 16% of rapes are reported. As noted in that same report, when survivors of sexual assault DO disclose what happened to them, they often face skepticism, blame, and further humiliation from professionals, families, and friends, amounting to what many survivors consider a “second victimization.”

Here’s why I think this:

First, as the DSK case demonstrates, in order for these cases to be taken seriously, the accusers must not have any credibility issues.

Next, people who are poor, immigrant, women, differently-abled, LGBTQ, etc. will never be able to conform to the standards of credibility – because their very identities mark them as “outsiders” or “deviants” – from the jump.

So, then, if decide to brave the inevitable challenges and try avail themselves of our criminal “justice” their “character” is attacked, cases are dismissed, an/or forgotten.

Listen up, fellow crunk feminists, it’s a legal-socio-political set-up!

Dramatics aside, this belies not just a problem in this case, but also in the way that we think about violence against women. Fundamentally, it is problem in the way that we deploy a system of justice that is, at it’s core, sexist. For this reason, it is clearly not set up to deal with the problem of violence against women. In fact, seems to consistently diminish the ability of women to find justice in cases of sexual assault.

Those accused of a crime are innocent until proven guilty. Can't we extend the same courtesy toward victims? Instead of smearing them in the media and attacking their characters, can't we assume that it is possible for any woman to be raped. Trust us, there isn't much to gain from falsely accusing someone, especially someone famous and well-connected, of rape. This case illustrates that pretty well. Instead, can we assume that a possible victim has a good reason to make the report, and allow the courts to do their job in trying the case? Is it so impossible to believe that women who lie on their taxes, women who have friends in jail, women who have prostituted themselves, women who drink a lot or have lots of sex, or women who otherwise don't look like "perfect" victims can still be raped? In fact, those women are probably more vulnerable to sexual assault because they are less likely to be believed by law enforcement and judges. If only 6% of rapists ever see a day in jail, leaving 94% available to rape again, we would be better served taking women's claims seriously and making it a less traumatizing process to prosecute those who use violence against women. We may never know if DSK is actually guilty of this crime, because it may never make it to trial. For women everywhere who have experienced sexual assault, how is that justice?

Why Pastors Struggle with DV

It seems like all we have been doing lately is sharing other people's work, which is great, because that means all sorts of people in the media are paying attention to issues including and surrounding violence against women.

The article we want to share today looks at reasons why many pastors struggle when trying to address domestic violence among their congregants. The author comes up with six:

1. Domestic violence is fundamentally unbelievable (that a person would be capable of hurting someone they love).
   
2. Wife abusers are masterful manipulators.
3. Pastors think spousal abuse only happens in certain kinds of families.
4. Pastors haven't thought enough about the gray area between "submit" and abuse.
5. Pastors believe what they preach.
6. Pastors simply aren't trained about domestic violence.

The only fault in this article is that it, unless it is meant to be implicit within the last point, the author offers no solutions for pastors who want to become better at helping both abuser and survivors address the abuse going on in their relationship. That's where we come in. If you are reading this post and belong to a church, synagogue, or other faith-based institution and you would like to help your religious leader increase his or her skills in addressing domestic violence without causing more harm, please call us at (404) 370-7670. We would love to provide the training needed to make our community's faith leaders part of the solution.

Rape Myths Part II, Part III

This is the post that just keeps going. We had intended to write about some other rape myths, and still will, but the universe keeps providing evidence of ways that believing that women lie about being raped can be incredibly damaging to rape victims (as if it weren't already obvious).

Earlier this week, Ms. Magazine told the story of a woman who reported a sexual assault and was deemed by police to be a liar. They went so far as to charge her with false reporting and fine her $500. Turns out, she wasn't lying.

Three years later, Marc O’Leary was arrested in Colorado for charges of sexual assault, kidnapping, burglary and felony menacing. He is being held on $5 million bail. When the police raided O’Leary’s home earlier this month, they found photos of his victims.

The 18-year-old woman from Washington [whom police accused of false reporting] was in those photographs.

Police have reopened her case, reimbursed her $500 and are working on getting her record expunged, but they can't undo the trauma they caused. This young woman was made to look like a liar to her entire community, she was given a criminal record, and she was retraumatized by police and the courts by making her relive her assault and then not believing her. The police also allowed O'Leary to assault two other women, women to whom he would never have had access if he had been behind bars because the police took the original report seriously.

By believing that women commonly lie about rape, we are helping rapists. We help men like O'Leary escape punishment for using violence against women, freeing them to do it again. Remember that the next time you are tempted to be skeptical.

Rape Myths Part II, Part II

Somehow, in writing our last, we missed a great post from Ms. Magazine examining the same myth - that women frequently lie about being sexually assaulted. It is a must-read! Here is an excerpt:

Take the case of Ben Roethlisberger. Back in 2009, the star Steelers quarterback was accused of rape by a Lake Tahoe casino hostess. She filed a civil suit for assault, sexual assault and battery, false imprisonment, false pretenses, fraud and intentional infliction of emotional distress. She did not press criminal charges, though, which Roethlisberger’s lawyers claimed was evidence that the accusations were false.

However, even judges have said that rape survivors are sometimes better off not reporting to police because the stress of a criminal trial can add even more trauma after a sexual assault. And her hesitation is certainly understandable in this case: When she reported the crime to a casino security guard, he scoffed, “Most girls would feel lucky to get to have sex with someone like Ben Roethlisberger.” Is it possible that a judge and jury might say the same thing?

Almost immediately following reports of the suit, TMZ released alleged photos of the survivor without text. The photos, predictably, were met with comments like this one: “This is a bunch of trumped up bullshit from a gold digging @#$?”

Then, just a few days after the photos were released, the gossip rags dug into the survivor’s mental health history, reporting on her post-assault depression, insomnia and anxiety–and calling her “nutty” rather than recognizing the possible signs of sexual trauma. On blogs and news sites, almost without variation, fans defended their football hero and reporters danced gingerly around the issue.

The assumption hung heavily in the air: She had to be lying. Why would a rich (or, in other cases, married/famous/charitable/kind) man rape a so-called “nobody”?

And here is another interesting follow-up touched on in the Ms. article. The FBI reports that between 2-8% of sexual assaults are unfounded. You'll notice that is higher than the 1.6% that we quoted in our last post and in our HLN interview. That's because the FBI number looks at sexual assault reports that are unfounded, not false. According to the Forensic Examiner, that 2-8% figure is pretty much meaningless.

According to the FBI, a report should only be considered unfounded when investigation revealed that the elements of the crime were not met or the report was "false" (which is not defined) (FBI, 2007).

This statistic is almost meaningless, as many of the jurisdictions from which the FBI collects data on crime use different definitions of, or criteria for, "unfounded." That is, a report of rape might be classified as unfounded (rather than as forcible rape) if the alleged victim did not try to fight off the suspect, if the alleged perpetrator did not use physical force or a weapon of some sort, if the alleged victim did not sustain any physical injuries, or if the alleged victim and the accused had a prior sexual relationship. Similarly, a report might be deemed unfounded if there is no physical evidence or too many inconsistencies between the accuser's statement and what evidence does exist. As such, although some unfounded cases of rape may be false or fabricated, not all unfounded cases are false.

The police department mentioned in the Ms. article (who had an unfounded rate of 54%) went even further and injected a whole host of their own biases in determinations of whether or not a woman reporting a sexual assault was lying. Of course their numbers were inflated if they told the FBI that they believe some women falsely report rape to “obtain revenge” on a man who has “done her wrong,” or to make her partner “feel guilty” after a “lover’s quarrel”! The point is, these numbers are highly subjective and, since we live in a culture that assumes that women lie about being raped, our stats about women lying about rape are going to be inflated. It's a vicious cycle, and one that does not contribute to justice for rape victims.

Rape Myths part 1

Last week, a member of our staff was invited to come on CNN Headline News to discuss rape myths during their coverage of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. You can watch the video of Richelle Carey interviewing our Director of Development Amber Harris here.

Because these interviews are so short, there are always points we wish we had made once the interview is done. Also, a complicated issue like sexual assault, and the way our culture views and discusses it, is something that warrants a more thorough discussion than you can fit into a few minutes. That is why we'll be exploring the rape myths discussed in the segment in more detail. The first myth discussed was the idea that victims are sometimes to blame for some or all of their sexual assault.

We as a culture are desperate to blame rape victims for some or all of what happened to them. If she had been drinking, the rape was at least partially her fault. If she was dressed suggestively, it was her fault. If she invited a man into her home, it was her fault. If she has had sex before, especially with him, it was her fault. If she is married to him, she has given up forever her right to say no.

All of these ways of thinking are, of course, false. It is not illegal for a woman above the legal drinking age to have a drink. It is not illegal for women to wear low-cut tops or short skirts, or heels. It is not illegal for women to invite men into their homes. It is not illegal for women to have sex and also to withdraw their consent for sex at any time during or afterward. It is up to the other person to stop when that consent is withdrawn, or if it is never given. If you don't stop, that is rape, and rape is illegal.

Think of it this way. Thousands of women go to bars every weekend dressed in club-wear and no one assaults them. Thousands of women end relationships with men with whom they've had sex every week and those men do not assault them. And yet, every 2 minutes in the US, someone is sexually assaulted. Many of those women and men were not drunk, dressed suggestively, etc. The difference for them is that they were in the presence of a rapist.

So why are we so determined to blame victims for their assaults? As Amber suggested in her interview, it may be, at least partly, at least for women, a self-protection mechanism. When we hear that 1 in 6 women* in the US will be sexually assaulted in their lifetimes, we need to believe something that will help us deny that it will happen to us. We need to believe that women did something wrong or something stupid that compromised their safety. If we admit that women who are sexually assaulted did nothing at all to cause that assault, then we as women live in constant fear.

Even though it is an understandable self-protection mechanism, blaming the victim is not OK. Why? Because when blaming the victim, you are helping the rapist.

Let that sink in. When you blame a victim for her own assault, you are helping the rapist.

Most courtroom rape defenses rely on the exact victim blaming rhetoric that we lay out above to keep rapists from going to jail. And women who don't want to suffer through that victim blaming often don't press charges in the first place. That's why 61% of rapes are never reported to police and only 6% of rapists ever see a day in jail. When you participate in victim blaming, you are causing women who have been assaulted to relive their trauma and possibly also blame themselves. You are also helping the real criminal, the rapist, walk free.

It's also a lot easier to blame the victim than it is to blame the rapist. After all, the solutions are so much easier if we concentrate on the victim. Take a self-defense class. Don't drink. Always be aware of your surroundings. However, 1 in 20 college-age men will admit to raping someone in anonymous surveys, as long as the word "rape" isn't used in the description of the act.** It's a lot harder to change the beliefs and the power structure that feeds men the idea that it is OK to take sex from a women without her consent, as if she is not a real person and her feelings don't matter. Teaching men who don't already think so that women matter is incredibly difficult. If we believe that women aren't to blame for their assaults, and yet we do nothing about it, we are yet again helping the rapist.

Don't help the rapist; help us. When your friends, family members, or colleagues are blaming the victim, stop them and explain why victim blaming is harmful. Stop people when they make rape jokes in your presence. Volunteer for a local organization, like ours, that works to end violence against women. Then you don't have to be as afraid, you don't have to harm victims, and you are doing something to end violence against women. And you aren't helping a rapist.

*The really frightening thing about that 1 in 6 number is that it doesn't take into account that many of those women will be assaulted more than once.

**We'll explore this stat in a future post.

Building a Story

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More in Victim Blaming

A Fox News reporter wonders if a woman beaten into a coma over a parking space deserved it?

Short answer: no.

Large answer: see every other blog post we have written.

Victim Blaming is Alive and Well

By now, everyone has probably heard of Laura Logan, whether you were previously aware of her career as a journalist or not. Unfortunately, if you've heard her name recently, it was probably connected to the fact that she was sexually assaulted while covering the revolution in Egypt. You would expect those mentions to be offers of support or condolences for the violence that she experienced. However, way too many people have used this tragedy as a platform to victim-blame.

Journalist Nir Rosen used this as an occasion to complain that Logan will somehow be basking in the attention – as if there's a human alive who wants to be remembered for crime that is basically about humiliating, if not destroying, the victim. (Following an outcry about his remarks, Rosen has resigned his post as a fellow at the New York University centre for law and security.) But another blogger, theblogprof, objectified Logan in an attempt to blame CBS for allowing pretty female journalists to take the important assignments. The Gateway Pundit went the same route, suggesting that the response to sexual assault should be to institute formal discrimination against female journalists, keeping them at home and restricting their possibilities for raises and promotion.

In other words, men use sexual violence to put women in their place, and then a chorus of voices rises to blame women who get attacked for not knowing their place. Sadly, it wasn't just rightwing channels that used this as an opportunity to call for more limits on women's freedoms and opportunity. Simone Wilson of LA Weekly pounced to cast aspersions on Logan's professionalism and to imply she asked for it by taking tough assignments.

As feminists have forever said, sexual violence is a crime of power, committed to control and intimidate women. When people react to sexual assault and rape by suggesting women brought it on themselves, they finish the job the attacker started. It's sad to say that the assault on Lara Logan didn't end when she was rescued in Egypt, and to note that it's now being expanded as an assault on all women who have ambitions, or who are willing to be out in public while looking attractive.

One site is running an opinion poll that asks the question outright: Is Laura Logan to blame for her sexual assault? Over 500 people like it on Facebook.

Even if they are not victim blaming, many others are using this assault to attack Muslims or Egyptians, as if sexual assault isn't perpetrated by those professing to be Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or of another faith in the US.

In her otherwise good response to this tragedy, the Washington Post's Alexandra Petri does regrettably also give the "us v them" narrative some juice, arguing that in the United States, unlike Egypt, women can walk the streets "unmolested". But the very website she uses correctly to identify the problem of street harassment in Egypt also has studies that show up to 100% of American women suffer street harassment, as well. It's not uncommon in the US for groups of men to take jubilatory occasions and crowds as permission to sexually assault and rape women, either. Such attacks occur at college parties, high school dances and rock concerts, usually with a crowd of onlookers who don't intervene, as happened with Logan until the army and a group of women saved her.

What we should be doing, besides supporting Laura Logan and perhaps making a contribution in her name to a group that fights violence against women, is blaming those who perpetrate sexual assault and other forms of gender-based violence and the cultures that spawn them. Those people, and cultures, can be found right here in our own neighborhoods.

Your [Female] Body Belongs to Us

In 2004, a young Missouri woman went into a bar. Also at that bar was a film crew for the popular pornographic series Girls Gone Wild. During their time at the bar, the film crew encouraged the women present to remove clothing. Women who chose to could do so and be filmed. The young woman in question, we'll call her Jane, chose not to remove her clothing. She said, "No." Audibly. Despite that fact, the woman next to her pulled down Jane's top and exposed her breasts to the cameras.

Four years go by, during which time Jane marries and has children. Then, a friend of her husband recognizes her from a Girls Gone Wild video and tells her husband. She is, understandably, mortified. Jane never signed a release giving Girls Gone Wild permission to use her image and, in fact, was the victim of a sexual assault because she never gave the other women permission to expose her breasts. She sued.

She lost.

A jury on Thursday rejected a young woman's claim that the producers of a "Girls Gone Wild" video damaged her reputation by showing her tank top being pulled down by another person in a Laclede's Landing bar.

A St. Louis Circuit Court jury deliberated 90 minutes before ruling against the woman, 26, on the third day of the trial. Lawyers on both sides argued the key issue was consent, with her side saying she absolutely refused to give it and the defense claiming she silently approved by taking part in the party.

The woman, identified in court files as Jane Doe, was 20 when she went to the former Rum Jungle bar in May 2004 and was filmed by a "Girls Gone Wild" video photographer. Now married, the mother of two girls and living in the St. Charles area, Doe sued in 2008 after a friend of her husband's reported that she was in one of the videos.

"I am stunned that this company can get away with this," Doe said after the verdict. "Justice has not been served. I just don't understand. I gave no consent."

But Patrick O'Brien, the jury foreman, told a reporter later that an 11-member majority decided that Doe had in effect consented by being in the bar and dancing for the photographer. In a trial such as this one, agreement by nine of 12 jurors is enough for a verdict.

"Through her actions, she gave implied consent," O'Brien said. "She was really playing to the camera. She knew what she was doing."

Stephen Evans of St. Louis, her lawyer, argued Thursday that Doe never gave consent — and even could be heard in original footage saying "no" when asked to show her breasts shortly before another woman suddenly pulled Doe's top down. Evans said the company usually gets women to sign consent forms or give verbal consent with cameras rolling.

"Other girls said it was OK. Not one other one said, 'No, no,'" Evans said. "She is entitled to go out with friends and have a good time and not have her top pulled down and get that in a video."

Told of that reasoning, the tearful woman said, "I was having fun until my top was pulled off. And now this thing is out there for the world to see forever."

This is the same victim-blaming rhetoric that we hear for all sorts of violence against women. If she wears a revealing top, she's implying consent to sex, even when she says "no". If she remains with an abusive partner, she's implying consent to be hit. If she leaves her home in a skirt, she's implying consent for people to look up her skirt, even if she is just a 16-year-old in Target. If our bodies continue to be interpreted by the law as public property, it will never be safe for us to walk outside. And, if our husbands or partners view us as their property, it isn't safe for women at home, either.

Bad News from Britain

Two studies from Britain last week revealed some bad news for those of us hoping we'd put an end to blaming women for the violence used against them.

From the BBC: A majority of women believe some rape victims should take responsibility for what happened, a survey suggests.

Almost three quarters of the women who believed this said if a victim got into bed with the assailant before an attack they should accept some responsibility.

One-third blamed victims who had dressed provocatively or gone back to the attacker's house for a drink.

The survey of more than 1,000 people in London marked the 10th anniversary of the Haven service for rape victims.

More than half of those of both sexes questioned said there were some circumstances when a rape victim should accept responsibility for an attack.

The study found that women were less forgiving of the victim than men.

Of the women who believed some victims should take responsibility, 71% thought a person should accept responsibility when getting into bed with someone, compared with 57% of men.

Elizabeth Harrison from Haven said there was never an excuse for forcing a woman to do something she did not want to.

"Clearly, women are in a position where they need to take responsibility for themselves - but whatever you wear and whatever you do does not give somebody else the right to rape you.

Most of us don't want to face the possibility that we will be raped, or that our sister or mother or daughter will be raped, so we want to assume that rape victims did something wrong that allowed them to get raped: they wore a short skirt, they got drunk, they walked alone in the dark. If we admit that women are raped in their own homes, in cars, in family members' homes or in nursing homes while wearing sweat pants or long dresses or hospital gowns while sober or after being drugged then we have to admit that sexual assault can happen to us. And even women who supposedly did something wrong don't deserve to be raped.

This message is anti-male as well. The underlying message is that men cannot be trusted. All men are just rapists under the surface, and all it takes is a drunk girl in a short skirt to bring it out.

There are thousands of women who are raped across the world every day. Some are raped as a tactic of war. Some are raped by husbands who think they own their wife's (or wives') body. Some are raped by family members, by doctors, by johns, by friends. And a small percentage are raped by strangers. These are very different women with very different experiences. The one thing they share in common is that they were vulnerable in the presence of a rapist.

But because we are so quick to make excuses for rapists instead of facing our fear of being raped, it is a surprise that our children do the same?

Also from the BBC: A study of schoolchildren in Scotland has found that most of those questioned thought violence towards women was acceptable if there was a reason behind it.

The majority of the pupils said it was justified if the woman had an affair, or if she was late in making the tea.

The study by a researcher from Edinburgh Napier University also suggested that girls expect to curtail ambitions once they are married.

The research involved 89 primary seven children at five Glasgow primaries.

The 11 and 12-year-olds were questioned in depth about their attitudes and aspirations towards gender roles and behaviour.

They were asked to consider whether or not a man was justified in punching his partner when he found out she had had an affair.

Nearly all of the children thought that the woman deserved to be hit.

In another scenario, about 80% of the children said a man had cause to slap his partner because she did not have the dinner ready on time.

Researcher Nancy Lombard described the findings as "worrying" because the youngsters had naturalised and normalised violent behaviour.

She said: "The children didn't agree with violence, but gave reasons to try to justify it if the woman had done something 'wrong'. [emphasis ours]

How It Should Be Done

Recently we posted about the baffling (to us) phenomenon of targeting all prevention of violence against women toward women instead those who are the primary perpetrators of that violence (men). Several groups in New Zealand agree with us, and have come up with a wonderfully logical response to sexual assault prevention:

Rape educators want to train New Zealand's bar staff to intervene when they see "predatory males" plying women with drinks during the Rugby World Cup.

Rape Prevention Education (formerly Rape Crisis) has teamed up with the police, Accident Compensation Corporation and the hospitality industry to train 130 bar staff in Auckland and Wellington in a pilot programme this year.

Director Kim McGregor said she hoped the other agencies would help to extend the programme nationally in the lead-up to the World Cup, which kicks off in September 2011.

"We need to do much more on prevention and social attitudes, for example around the [Cup]," she said.

"For us it's an opportunity. We have two years to prepare for it."

The programme targets bars because three-quarters of sexual offenders and half of all "date rape" victims were drinking or taking drugs before offences occurred.

A fifth of sexual violence happens in or around licensed premises.

Bars already have "host responsibilities" under the Sale of Liquor Act, which imposes fines of up to $10,000 on managers who allow anyone to become intoxicated on their premises or supply liquor to anyone who is already drunk.

Dr McGregor said staff also needed to be aware of the sexual risks for heavy drinkers.

"We are teaching bar staff how to keep patrons safe - identifying predatory males, and being aware of the consent laws," she said.

"They don't understand that it's rape if you have sex with someone who is so stupefied by alcohol or drugs that they can't give consent.

"For some bar staff there's an attitude that if a woman goes home with a guy drunk, she deserves all she gets. But they can stop giving people drinks when they're drunk, and they can be offering free water in between drinks and putting [out] nibbles and snacks."

Programme co-ordinator Kylie Tippett said the workshops trained bar staff to watch out for "red flags" such as patrons being sexually harassed, being plied with double or triple drinks or drugs without their knowledge, simply getting drunk very quickly, or leaving the bar with no way to get to their next destination safely.

She said security staff could approach offenders and say, "We have noticed your inappropriate sexual behaviour towards women or men this evening. We don't tolerate harassment on these premises - either stop or you'll be asked to leave."

Or: "We notice that you are buying large quantities of alcohol for another person. It's our policy that we check that the person is not intoxicated and is aware of what they're drinking."

She said one of the biggest problems raised in the workshops was what to do with people leaving the bar drunk and unable to get home safely.

"They may tell people where the nearest taxi stand is, or some bars know taxi companies and use those, and some felt quite comfortable calling police and said they had a great response in those situations," she said.

She plans to talk to taxi companies and other agencies about a possible voucher scheme for people at risk who did not have any money for a taxi.

"There would need to be all sorts of training required. We'd have to check that they were not being misused."

Some bars wanted posters stating policies such as: "We do not tolerate sexual harassment or aggression. If you are concerned with any patrons, do come to us and we'll deal with it."

"We've been asked to develop some posters," Ms Tippett said.

Hospitality Association operations manager Scott Necklen said the pilot programmes were successful and the industry would support further workshops. "We are supportive of initiatives that give hospitality staff practical strategies to ensure patrons' safety and ensure patrons have a happy and enjoyable night out."

This is the way prevention should look.

The Importance of Prevention

A writer on Law Blog discovers what those of us in this field have known all along, that sometimes women do every single thing they're "supposed" to do and they still experience further violence. What the writer gets wrong, however, is this sentence:

Sometimes, there is no way to prevent the real dangers of domestic violence.

The sentiment is spot on, but the writer is still making society's tired old mistake, that prevention is something for which a victim of violence must take responsibility.

She must leave the relationship to prevent future violence. Well, as we hope we've made very clear on this blog, immediately after leaving is one of the most dangerous times in an abusive relationship.

She must take out a protective order for her safety. Well, to a man who has been to jail and for whom threats of imprisonment are not threatening at all, a protective order is just a piece of paper.

She must leave the relationship, get a divorce, stay in a safehouse, leave the state, change her name, protect her address, etc. etc. etc.

As an attorney, the Law Blog writer does wonder if he did everything he could to ensure her safety. To him, that means he wonders if he helped her gain all of the possible legal protections available. See "she must take out a protective order" above.

He sums up with this:

Did the system fail? Could this brutal second attack have been prevented? Was there something else I could have done? I don't know. However, I have a few suggestions for those who have been the victims of domestic violence and who still maintain contact with the perpetrator because of child custody issues.

More advice for women. I hope our regular readers see where we're going with this. Not once does the writer wonder what could have been done to prevent the batterer from learning to batter.

Sometimes, there is no way to prevent the real dangers of domestic violence.

Sometimes, it is too late to prevent the real dangers of domestic violence for the woman/women on whom one batterer preys. But it is never too late to teach our sons not to batter. That's the best and only real way to prevent the real dangers of domestic violence.

Update: Shakesville posted today on a public transit sign, meant to reduce sexual harassment on trains and buses, that reads:

Sexual Harassment is a crime in the subway, too--a crowded train is no excuse for an improper touch. Don't stand for it or be ashamed, or be afraid to speak up. Report it to an MTA employee or police officer.

Note the advice. Sexual harassment is a crime . . . report it. Not sexual harassment is a crime . . . don't do it.