Women aren’t always entirely blameless in situations leading to rape
It exhibits the sort of politically correct whingeing with which the do-gooder liberal left is commonly lampooned, and it does you no credit whatsoever as a serious newspaper.
The language you use twists the results of a serious survey in order to serve a simplistic, pro-victim-at-any-cost dogma, and it actually damages the victims’ position as a result.
For example, Conor Ryan reports “four out of 10 people agree with the controversial view that women who drink or take drugs are partly or completely at fault if they are raped”.
I wonder if the survey asked that. Did it actually say: “Do you agree with the CONTROVERSIAL view that women who drink and take drugs are partly or completely at fault if they are raped?”
If it had, then it would certainly have influenced the number of positive replies.
If there were no weasel words in the survey question, then there is no reason to introduce weasel words into the reporting of it.
As crude as Conor Ryan’s language tactics are, however, they are head and shoulders above Kathy Foley’s whose self-contradictions are transparent in the extreme. She notes that “self-evidently, a woman shouldn’t walk home alone through a dangerous or deserted area, but if she does so and is raped, is it her fault? No.”
To see through this sort of loaded statement, simply replace the rape scenario with another, even more dangerous scenario. I invite you, for example, to reconsider Ms Foley’s statement as applied to a woman crossing the road:
“Self-evidently, a woman shouldn’t run across a busy motorway dressed in black at midnight, but if she does so and is knocked down, is it her fault? No.”
It is, of course, unfair of me to snipe like this. I understand that the article’s intention is to do good and hopefully to swing things in favour of rape victims and Ms Foley probably had a deadline to work to and a million problems of her own to consider, while I can write this at my leisure.
So I will come to my point. I reject the Irish Examiner’s suggestion that women do not — indeed cannot — contribute to situations where a rape could occur.
Yes they can, and they do, and many of the survey respondents who say this are, in fact, women. To say that a woman cannot contribute to her situation is to disempower her, and that is an insult to her very gender. Please read that sentence again. Obviously women have the right not to be raped — only an idiot would disagree. With rights come responsibilities, as you must surely know, and women must necessarily recognise that the world is populated with potential rapists, just as pedestrians must necessarily recognise that the roads are populated with cars, and act accordingly.
And intelligent readers (for example, women) simply will not take your preachy stance seriously: “It doesn’t matter if she flirts outrageously or wears sexy clothing — it may not be decorous behaviour, but it does not invite rape.” (Kathy Foley again).
That is a little like saying: “It doesn’t matter if Muslims parade in front of the White House with fake bombs tied to their belts and waving placards with ‘KILL BUSH!’ written on them — it may not be decorous behaviour, but it does not invite the attentions of Homeland Security.”
Of course it does. Every action has its consequences.
But not in the black-and-white world of Kathy Foley: “No matter what may have happened between a man and a woman up to that point (ie, when they are about to have sex), when she raises a hand and says ‘no’, he must desist and back off.”
Think, Ms Foley, think: is there anything in your hypothetical situation that the woman could have done to prevent the situation from arising in the first place? Like, thinking with her head instead of with her hormones, as men allegedly and stereotypically do?
In the world that she and the Irish Examiner have painted, men come across as rapist timebombs that are simply waiting to be triggered unless a woman somewhere says the magic codeword ‘no’ which will automatically defuse the timebomb with just three seconds remaining on the digital clock, rather like the final scene in a James Bond film.
Is it any wonder the chief fear of rape victims is that they will not be believed with this sort of simplistic, manipulative reporting going on?
If you do not give women credit for determining their own actions, how are you ever going to convince them that they will be believed when they report a rape? Please, Conor Ryan, Kathy Foley, and the Irish Examiner in general: your readers are adults and we deserve to be treated like adults.
And finally, are you planning to report on male rape victims in your feature, too? They do exist, you know.
Colm Ryan
via Tartini 13
Milano MI 20158
Italy
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