In the light of recent discussions on the forum, about the issues of rape and it's relationship to cultural attitudes, I wanted to post this article in it's entirety (in case the link gets broken). I think there are many excellent points in it, in form of a commentary and examples. I hope you find it interesting and thought-provoking as I did.
Thanks for sharing the article. Unfortunately many women do end up blaming themselves, as if they had somehow brought it on themselves ("I dressed too skimpily, I communicated badly, I was drunk and alone, etc.") I wonder if Castro would've enjoyed getting prison-raped. They say a man's g-spot is in their ass.
Funny they didn't mention how he died in the Finnish news, pretending it was all a big mystery or something. Maybe we just lag behind a bit.
Maybe. He was in protective custody and locked down alone so there weren't a whole lot of ways to go, lol. Maybe he couldn't stand his 'addiction' anymore - with no women around.
I think blaming the victim is much more common in cases of rape/sexual assault. You really don't hear the victim being blamed in cases of armed robbery, carjackings, etc. Blaming the victim is not only wrong but it also suggests that the offender isn't fully to blame. Unfortunately, I think a lot of victims of rape/sexual assault blame themselves as well. And yes, Castro is dead. I really hate it when criminals kill themselves to escape punishment. They're a bunch of cowards.
@KaTrian: It's true, it's called prostate. He is a coward, like @thirdwind said, couldn't hack it with the big boys, only brave in front of tortured and imprisoned women and children. Rapists and wife batterers are always pathetic cowards, it is why they do it in the first place.
Society tends to blame all victims on some level. Or nearly all, anyway. Robbery? Should have had a security system, shouldn't have been in THAT part of town, shouldn't have been wearing such TEMPTING jewelry, letting them know you have money. Carjacked? Shouldn't have been in THAT part of town, should have had your doors locked, should have just floored it, shouldn't have left the baby in the car, etc. Everyone wants to believe all the hype about how people did exactly what they should have done, that they couldn't have done everything differently, but rarely do they actually believe it, and there's always something else the victim could have, should have done. Yep, coward. Not much else to say on that.
@Trish: I agree with you, there's a tendency in society to indirectly side with aggressive individuals by reflex-blaming of all victims of violence. It's a defence mechanism built into us to avoid conflict and make sure we aren't the next target. It's a subconscious process which dates back many millennia, and it's integral to the acceptance of hierarchy. Unfortunately, it has a side-effect of human unwillingness to confront violent elements. However, blaming victims of rape is monumentally above and beyond any other victim blaming. That's not to say that any victim blaming is appropriate, just saying that being a survivor of rape automatically puts a person below mentally ill people and petty criminals on a society's discrimination ladder. First questions a survivor of rape is faced with are 1. Is she/he crazy? 2. Is she/he lying? It's a sad fact not many people want to face, so survivors keep silent, don't prosecute and almost never find any justice. Which just perpetuates problems of erroneous perception which goes along the lines of 'if rape was so common, why aren't we hearing more about it'. It's a deeply entrenched and circular argument.
@jazzabel I don't think it puts a rape survivor below mentally ill people and petty criminals, but I agree on the rest. The main issue with the lack of prosecution is that even if you try it's difficult to prove, and the accuser is the one on trial first. In my experience, I was held under a microscope, 7 hours of interrogation to make sure my 'story' didn't change, treated like the criminal instead of the victim, and still didn't manage prosecution because his friend insisted he was with him at the time. It's an incredibly fucked up system.
@Trish: I'm so sorry you had to go through that. I know that many countries are trying, and slowly radically changing, their attitudes towards the prosecution of rape, and it is improving. But such rights are so quick to be revoked with new governments or more misogynist politicians when they come to power, that it's gonna be a long while until we can rely on improved treatment. It's a huge problem, made even bigger by the fact most people are ignoring it, as if it's got nothing to do with them. I didn't actually mean to say anyone is below anyone in reality, I was just referring to people who enjoy judging and discriminating, what kind of understanding they are prepared to offer survivors of rape. Usually none.
Thanks, but no worries. Long time ago. True enough, most people think it has nothing to do with them. I know what you meant. But that hasn't been my experience. In general people react like you just did. I'm so sorry, what a terrible thing to happen to you, etc.
It seems to me that societies that have some level of taboo on sexuality, or seem to fear sexual freedom for women, are more likely to engage in the victim-blaming. The U.S. certainly comes out of a Puritanical tradition in terms of how sexuality is viewed, and I think the traditional viewpoint where sexual activity is admired in men and considered shameful in women still exists at a certain level. People tend to attach that shame to the victim of a rape in a completely nonsensical fashion, and use the crime as evidence that their conservative beliefs regarding how a woman should act or dress are valid. In places where you see even stronger taboo against women's sexuality, the response is even worse - up to and including violence against the rape victim because of the sexual contact that occurred during the rape. It's insane. Even though the U.S. has largely moved past the most Puritanical views of its past, you still see differential treatment of sexual freedom in men and women, and so-called 'slut shaming' is still used among certain groups to try to position women at a lower level than their male counterparts if they try to enjoy equal levels of sexual freedom, or sensuality, &c.
I agree. I prefer to use the term 'misogyny' to describe all of it. It's applicable to non-Puritanical societies as well, because the attitudes you described exist everywhere, world wide. And you are right, strong taboos surrounding female sexuality but also the perfid misogyny in the workplace and in the media, are a really good indication of what a rape survivor can expect.
I order one science magazine (Tieteen Kuvalehti = 'Science Illustrated') and I was reading the latest issue just today. One article was called '10 Myths about Men and Women' and one myth was provocatively titled "Only men are permitted to have casual sex.' According to a study done in 2012 in the US, this would actually hold a grain of truth in it. There were 3000 participants, and the results implied that the women who engaged in casual sex were considered mentally unstable, morally suspect and less intelligent by the participants. The numbers were lower with men, however, implying that it's indeed, socially more acceptable for men to have one-night-stands. Okay, so to editorialize: if we women decided not to have any casual sex / extra-marital sex ever again, including prostitutes, what would the men do? Choke their chicken all by their lonesome? Screw each other? Rape? (I don't think so.) Funny how even your closest male friends and lovers are inclined to tell you at least that 'girl, you're selling yourself short' if your sex life consists mostly of casual sex. Funny how girls tend to downplay the number of partners they've had while men tend to exaggerate. Well, times are a-changing, I hope.
@KaTrian: That's such a lovely picture of you in the new avatar, awww I suppose the double standards you are describing, which are all part of the subtle misogyny that plagues our society even after all this time, are sort of common-sense, common knowledge type things. The mere fact that research has to done about something so obvious is telling in itself. But this is a society that manages barely 3% conviction rate for perpetrators of one of most ubiquitous crimes, so... The thing with misogyny, just as with violence, the victims of it don't really have to do anything to deserve it. So even if women did absolutely nothing, just sat there or cooked, cleaned and washed men's feet, the misogynysts would still call them names, accuse them and denigrate them, as they did in the past, before it was illegal. Misogyny is a direct consequence of male insecurity, and also, those attitudes are learned.
Haha, thanks. I've been meaning to change it ever since the forum update, but didn't have time to look for a black'n white one to match T.Trian's avatar, lol. I'm looking at my guitar which is cherry red in the picture though rest is in black and white. Anyway, I'm inclined to agree with this: I'm surprised how much discussion even the Steubenville incident alone spurred regarding our supposedly tolerant, Western society when it comes to sexual violence & abuse. This Castro case is/was absolutely horrifying, and it frustrates me to no end that the guy managed to kill himself. I wonder how the victims feel about that. But perhaps they'd just want to put it all behind them. On a sidenote, a big trial is going on in Finland right now concerning one murder and alleged sexual assaults on children by a woman, Anneli Auer. It's an extraordinary case in our criminal history.
Yeah, lone female serial killers and sex offenders, especially paedophiles are almost unheard of. Some people in forensics speculate that's because they are much better at not getting caught. Or maybe they are simply vanishingly rare. I don't think there's any way to find out for sure, other than get better at catching them, which has been the Holy Grail of forensic psych. Frustratingly out of reach as well. I know what you mean though, it's the ultimate passive-aggressive act by a psychopath. It's also quite typical in this situation and I am very surprised the prison staff didn't anticipate it better.
This man wasn't a monster, he was just a deranged coward. Monster is too kind. It's not uncommon for perpetrators of crimes to rationalize their actions somehow in their head, usually to bypass their small, but still-functioning conscience. I'm glad he killed himself. I said when he was found guilty that we should only waste the cost of one bullet on him. As for the Steubenville reference, I would play devils advocate and add Duke Lacrosse just for balance. Rape is a unique crime in our culture, in that there are usually only two witnesses and the act can become a crime on the whim of only one of the participants. There is no other crime we have that is perfectly normal unless one person resists. Also, there is usually no evidence except for the testimony of the victim. You can understand why the conviction rate is so low, because the very nature of the crime is difficult to convict in our justice system but as shown in the Duke Lacrosse case, the current society is hyper-sensitive to 'sexual harassment' and they automatically assume guilt by the man. Finding a balance and convicting the ones you can prove is very, very difficult. I don't think it's misogyny, it's just the truth of the situation. Also, when you have people like Rebecca Watson making even the most innocuous male interaction deemed sexual harassment, there's not really much equality anyways.
I completely agree. After hearing him extol how there was "so much harmony" in his house of captured slaves I was repulsed. That was a repugnant thing to hear. Out of a sense of cultural vergüenza ajena, my fellow PRs here on the island have remained remarkably silent on the subject. Not I.
@Wreybies: I know what you mean, although, every single abuser says the same things, it's really quite predictable, like a broken record. Hopefully, the society will start waking up from habitual minimising of effects of abuse, and more people will stop 'minding their own business' when they are faced with something that's clearly not ok. I do hope that guy who rescued the woman is having good things happen in his life now, what a hero. I understand PR though, a lot of communities react in the same way. Hopefully after things settle down and they have time to process it all, they'll start talking about it more.
Personally, I'm disappointed that he killed himself. I would rather people like him rot in prison for the rest of their lives instead of taking the coward's way out. That's just me, though.
It plain disgusts me that people lie about rape. In my home city, 260 rapes were reported between 2000-2009 and 20,1 % of them were deemed false accusations by the police. While there's no way of telling how many of those really were false, some of them probably were. What gives? This Elevatorgate incident is just ridiculous. There's a difference between being cat-called by a bunch of thugs late in the evening and getting an invitation from some guy in an elevator. How does she prefer men (or whichever sex she prefers) to approach her? Write knightly letters of courtship in Middle English?
@KaTrian: I'd be really careful with what police deems false. Police and prosecution service are notorious for dismissing all accusations that are unlikely to result in a conviction. This is a huge problem in UK too, and only this year, for the first time in UK legal history, they successfully prosecuted a case of systematic abuse and rape of several girls, who were desperately trying to get help for 10 years and couldn't get it, because they were judged to be 'unreliable' simply because they were drug addicts and pimped out by their abusers, and had no traditional proof. Police filed them as liars too, and they were very far from it. This is unfortunately typical. By the way, do you know what the backlog is on rape kits? Over 2 years in most places, so how's that for a access to justice for the survivors? Whether someone is lying about rape is dead easy to prove, based on series of interviews and observation. The responses that rape survivors give, the body language, it is really not possible to fake it, not to a psychiatrist or a trained councillor with years of experience anyway. However, the legal system is usually refusing to accept this, and is insisting on DNA evidence in every single case (and perps are much more savvy now in making sure they don't leave any, not to mention late reporting due to fear, threats, being drugged etc) and even then, all the rapist needs to do is claim that the woman 'liked it' or simply claim it was consensual, and suddenly, the victim is on trial. Unless the victim has severe physical damage from the rape, any asshole can just say 'yeah, but what if she is lying' and everyone freezes. However, it has been shown, time and again in numerous studies, that false rape accusations are extremely rare, well below 5% (hovering around 2-3%) of all reports, and if you consider that less then 10% of rapes are ever reported, do the math and see whether that is really a problem, and whether survivors of rape should be denied justice in such a blatant way on the basis of what I just said. However, people who were sexually abused in a repeated fashion, or since childhood, can falsely report in a dynamic of re-enactment of trauma (this is the bulk of what is deemed as a 'false reporting') because they are too scared to report the real perpetrator but are desperate to get help. Able and willing detectives, trained in rape investigation, will take this situation as a clue and develop the case by working with the survivor to bring the real perpetrator to justice. What's left is a very tiny number of false reports that even much lower than false reporting on most other crimes. And still, every survivor is automatically viewed with suspicion and some people would still like to see rape marginalised in the legal system because as far as they are concerned, the survivor's word carries the same weight as the perpetrator, despite psychological and physical evidence. 'Who can prove it wasn't consensual?' they keep asking ad nauseum, ignoring all the methods that are available, as if they are content for the rapists to go unpunished. This is the inherent misogyny in the legal system, which in turn is a reflection of our society's attitudes and it has absolutely nothing to do with justice, it is purely related to the fact that rape used to be legal, and this is the demonstration of unwillingness to deal with the problem of sexual violence. Nothing else.
