Rape is horrible and the legacy of rape is traumatic and long-lasting. Rape is about the assertion of power and the brutal dismissal of victims' feelings.
May I say straight away that I have never been raped and I never raped anybody. When I was a young man I looked for love and sex was a facet of that search. I wanted women with whom I might find love and if we made it into a bed it was a mutual desire. I recognised that the woman I fancied was a human just like me. I wanted equality, a shared experience - not a power game in which I would be an oppressor. My outlook was not at all unusual. It is how the vast majority of young men view the business of dating and mating.
Once or twice I misread the signs. I thought that the kissing and canoodling was leading to a sexual encounter but when I realised that I was mistaken then I ceased my pursuit and apologised profusely. I never wanted a woman to do something that she did not want to do. Assent was vital.
Rape statistics can be problematic but it seems that in Great Britain 7.5% of adult women have suffered rape or attempted rape. In the USA the figure is surprisingly much higher with almost 20% of all women being the victims of rapists and that figure also includes attempted rape.
With rape, many victims never come forward to report the crime. After all, most rape happens with known perpetrators - boyfriends, family members or male friends. Reporting procedures themselves can be very traumatic and the legal system is famously male-biased. Reporting rapes will involve reliving the horror of it all.
In this country over the last few days, news of two particularly disgusting rapes has surfaced. It seems that three teenage assailants in Hampshire planned and executed the rape of two very young women in separate incidents. They were callous and cruel and they even videoed their attacks, laughing as they encouraged each other.
The judge in their trial focused almost entirely on rehabilitation. He did not wish to "criminalise" the three boys. They have spent very little time in detention and so of course their victims feel cheated. The leniency shown at sentencing did little to help the two girls who were attacked, making them feel that the legal system had deprived them of the natural justice they richly deserved.
Even our Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, weighed into the debate that followed sentencing - pressurising the courts to refer this case to formal judicial review. I have a feeling that the initial leniency will be replaced with significant custodial sentences which are of course wholly merited.
I have met and spoken with rape victims, most have never reported because they feel the system isn't set up to deal with sexual assault effectively. What we have, like my namesake said at the beginning of your post, is a generation of young men and boys who lack good male role models and get their sex education from pornography. What do we do? It's above my paygrade but I will challenge behaviour I see as misogynistic or hateful. Well done on tackling such an important and sensitive subject. πππ
ReplyDeleteMen like us should not stay quiet on this subject. We have to stand up for girls and women if we are to help change to happen.
DeleteRape is never the fault of the victim.
ReplyDeleteWhat you wear does not excuse rape.
How you act does not excuse rape.
Getting drunk does not excuse rape.
It's a crime; it's an assault; it's a power play.
And rather than educate women how NOT to get raped, let's educate men and young men that it is NEVER EVER an option.
"power play" - Isn't that what Epstein and his rich buddies were all about Bob?
DeleteThe balance between rehabilitating offenders with a chance of a normal life to meeting out justice for the victims is a balancing act, but so often it seems the victims don't feel they have seen justice done, especially bad if the offenders reoffend. It is said that you need all the details of the trial to judge, but there are usually some very simple points to focus the mind.
ReplyDeleteThe two girls have spoken anonymously to the media and both feel very let down by the judge. Nobody is saying that the attackers should be locked up for a decade but surely two or three years in custody would be right for the girls and for society as a whole.
DeleteI looked up the statistics about how many convicted rapists re-offend and they vary from 16% upwards. In other words, a significant number of offenders are not sufficiently rehabilitated to prevent them doing the same again. If you add in the unknown number of cases that are not reported there are a lot of men who think it's okay to risk another spell in jail. Getting them off the streets for a long period is well justified and the only way to stop them.
DeleteYOU'RE RIGHT THAT yOU ARE on a touchy topic. It's not handled at all well by the system.
ReplyDeleteHow many Inuit women were raped by Europeans in the early days of what we now know as Canada?
DeleteLet's not forget that all through human history and right down to the present day, rape has been used as a weapon in conflict. Mass rape of girls and women (and sometimes boys and men) means the ultimate victory over a tribe, a nation or any group of people you want to harm. It's humiliating, devastating, breaking up the victims' society because more often than not, the victims are cast out of their families and social structure, and any resulting children have hardly a chance to experience a healthy and loving family life.
ReplyDeleteAn awful reminder.
DeleteYou're a brave man, YP.
ReplyDeletePicking up from Andrew, it seems to me this particular case is as much about punishment for young offenders as it is about rape.
Criminal law is a very blunt instrument to control or change human behaviour.
It seems that some judges have still failed to grasp the full wrongness of rape.
DeleteI found it very odd that those rapists were referred to as children! Not the actions of a child!
ReplyDeleteSadists would have been a more appropriate term.
DeleteA particularly horrible subject which is too often "hushed up" and too often blamed on the women, "short skirts" "walking suggestively" "she asked for it", then the "boys will be boys" excuse. That doesn't fly with me. If boys are raised to respect women (of all ages) they will know rape is wrong and won't go down that path.
ReplyDeleteMy mother taught me that lesson very well indeed.
DeleteAll through history as Meike said.
ReplyDeleteThe Thirty Years War that devastated Germany. Rape and famine.
When Russian troops stormed Germany young women jumped from buildings,
to avoid what was coming. 1944.
Pomerania, on the southern shore of the Baltic, split between Germany and
Poland, was one of the worse places.
A young Canadian women in Glasgow told me her great aunt hid in a chicken
coop in the family farm when Russian troops poured into her village in Poland.
She took her own life at the end of the war.
Vittoria De Sica's film Two Women was screened at The Cosmo Cinema,
Glasgow : I saw it at the age of 18.
Mother and daughter raped : Italy, 1944
From the novel by Moravia, one of the most outspoken anti-Fascists of his time.
Isn't it strange how something so intimate and expressive of loving feelings should be hi-jacked and used as a cruel weapon.
DeleteWar is cruelty weaponised. Relentless. Indiscriminate.
DeleteI don't read about war for escape. I have always avoided war movies.
Rachel Chrastil's recent study of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870
(Bismarck's War as she titles it) foreshadows the First World War.
In framing rape in war settings I am not forgetting that it happens all
the time in civil life. Those three boys who were not punished for their evil.
Freud uncovered sexual abuse of teenage girls in Vienna, then altered
the evidence. These young women were not making up stories.
THE ASSAULT ON TRUTH : WHY FREUD SUPPRESSED THE SEDUCTION
THEORY. YouTube. Self Applied.
Rachel Chrastil is a brilliant young German historian.
Her latest book is on Weimar Germany, a period that terrifies me
because Hitler is biding his time.
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A gremlin got into the works. In more ways than one !!!!
DeleteForgive all that empty space.
Rachel Chrastil is an American historian, author of Bismarck's War.
Katja Hoyer is the German historian.
Weimar - Life on the Edge of Catastrophe is her latest book.
She is active on YouTube. A very acute mind.
I know it is easy to misread signals, but NO should mean NO. As a young girl, my friend and I were offered a lift home from a party which was quite a considerable distance from where we lived. The man dropped my friend off first and then on the way to my home, stopped the car and tried it on with me. I had known him all of 10 minutes. I said NO. He continued to force himself on me. I managed to jump out of the car and run with just a torn dress but my honour intact.
ReplyDeleteEven though the driver did not rape you, I can understand why the memory of that night is seared in your mind Addy. People should recognise that attempted rape or unwanted sexual assault should never be dismissed as good fortune.
DeleteRape has been around as long as there have been men and women I think, except in the past, women were not allowed to say no. It didn't matter what women wanted, they were property, chattel. We live with this legacy, and by we, I mean women.
ReplyDeleteEven today, women are not valued as equal humans, as evidenced by the judge's decision ( a male decision), that did not want to impact the rest of the boys' lives. No mention was made of the impact on the rest of the girl's life.
Boys need to be taught, by our entire society, that no means no, that violence against women is unacceptable. Like that's ever going to happen. It's not all men, but the problem is, it's always men.
A very useful contribution Nurse Pixie. Thank you.
DeleteI think you are trying here but I don't think you are grasping the entire concept of how rape occurs and what rape is and what the ensuing effects of it are.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, I must ask why you felt it necessary to call the victims of rape "innocent" girls? It's rape and it's a horror and a crime even if the victim of a rape is a sex worker. Using the word "innocent" implies that some girls are not innocent and that perhaps their rape might not be as horrifying. And this goes back to the idea that there are virtuous women and there are women who are not virtuous and by definition, the assault of a virtuous woman is worse. Her "virtue" may have been taken from her.
Okay. I'll stop now. I could go on for days. What I'm saying is that what society views as rape and what the law views as rape and what even women themselves view as rape are not always the same thing, even if they are. I doubt there is any other example of how victim shaming is used in so many situations as it is when it comes to rape. Goes right back to the Garden of Eden when Eve was blamed for sin because she seduced Adam with that apple. Not HIS fault!
And with society's views on this, women so frequently victim shame themselves that rape often goes unreported. Of course there are many other reasons for that.
I appreciate the little lecture Mary - giving me good food for thought. I will now amend my blogpost, removing the rather loaded word "innocent". Thank you.
DeleteHear, hear! Thank you, Ms. Moon.
DeleteThank you, Mr. P. I don't think it's possible for most men to grasp the reality of the horror. And by the way- that picture is incredibly triggering and I do not use that term lightly.
DeleteTwo female friends have confided in me, having endured sexual assaults. One still feels it was "her fault" the other reported it to others and was ignore with "but he is such a nice man." The experience impacted both of them for decades, changed them for life.
ReplyDeleteThat is the thing with sexual assault. The repercussions never melt away entirely.
DeleteI read about this case, and though I'm hesitant to criticize the judge because I wasn't there to hear all the evidence, it does seem that he was awfully lenient with them. I've never understood rape from any perspective, but especially from a purely physiological standpoint. I don't know how a man could perform under such violent circumstances, if you know what I mean. I get that it's about power and the violence is part of that, but still...it's unthinkable.
ReplyDeleteFor some men, Steve, the violence and dominance is what turns them on.
Delete