Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Higher powers
I was going to write a little something about the pathetic bigot refusing to officiate over gay ceremonies in her role serving society, but Dave's post sums it up, so I thought a comment would suffice. Otherwise, sorry for my absence: I have been entertaining (or at least giving a bed to) Oli and Sarah, with predictable hilarious consequences.
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6 comments:
Thanks for that well put comment. I didn't know the details of why the case went in her favour (unsurprisingly due to the rubbishness of the media and my lack of time to search out the truth).
Oh yeah, and good to have you back.
I now remember what I wanted to say on the Kira Cochrane article you wrote, on the question of the statistic often repeated since its discovery, that a third or something of the UK population believes a woman is partly or wholly responsible for being raped if she wears revealing clothes or is drunk - responsibility and cause and effect are not clearly defined, so it is entirely possible to believe those statements to be true while also believing it to have no relevance for a legal case. Fault of course lies with the rapist, and this is true whether or not the victim has contributed to the statistical likeliness of her being raped in some way. Objective (as opposed to moral) responsibilty is not zero-sum. It would however be quite shocking and revolting to read that people thought a rapist's punishment should be less in those circumstances. (It would be interesting to see a study laying out correlations, though I don't think such data exists - maybe it could be a function integrated into the expanded sexual assault referral centres.)
I have a horrible feeling that you would find that most people who feel a woman is responsible for rape due to her own behaviour do feel that many of the rapists should recieve lesser (or no) sentances.
Not in the much media covered but statistically rare situation of a woman being raped in a dark alley etc... In those situations they would, I reckon, blame the woman but still see the crime as a horrific one from the point of view of the rapist pre-meditating it etc...
But in the case of date rapes, drunken party rapes, etc... it is more likely that people would not blame the rapist for their actions but instead blame the woman.
Since these are, as far as I understand it, the majority of rape cases, this belief is not a handy one.
Also in terms of the stranger rapes. The public are less likely to believe the reliability of a drunk witness, who was wearing revieling clothes and liked to have casual sex. So these cases often fail to get convinctions due to these stupid bias'. Juries are not saying they think that the rape of strangers should be over-looked or result in less punitive sentances, they are rather saying that, taking x and y and z into account they cannot believe that a rape can be proven to have occured, because
a) perhaps she made it up
b) perhaps she had anoymous sex in a dark alley and is now lying about it
c) perhaps it was someone else and she misremembers it.
It's the whole beyond reasonable doubt thing, which pre-supposes the Jury to be made up of reasonable people when in fact the majority or a Jury (or in non jury cases the judge) may hold completely unreasonable predjudices about women.
As for people holding both issues are true. You are right that is possible. I would agree that if a women walks home alone wearing very little in a dangerous and isolated area she is certainly taking a higher risk, but that that shouldn't effect how anyone who harms her is treated. Though I would also argue that in a perfect world she would be able to dress how she likes anywhere she likes and be safe from such harm.
The same applies to men and male rape of course.
That said though I find it unlikely that many people think about the law in the terms you are talking about. A lot of people would bring back the death penalty for example or castrate peadohphiles. So the idea that people will remove their predjudices from consideration when considering the pure logic of law is an unlikely one. If someone things the woman is to blame I think that will cloud their judgement accross the whole case and make them much more likely to impose more lenient sentances on rapists.
There is, sadly, a frequent attitude that men cannot control their lusts when they are aroused and then if women arouse them then they must accept the consequences. Obviously that is bollocks but it is still a frequent way of thinking, either conciously or unconciously, from what I hear and read.
As you say the specifics of peoples attitudes would be interesting to find out, although surveys often suggest a staticness to peoples thinking, a staticness that people don't really have. It is possible for people to think hundreds of contradictory things simultaneously and to change their attutudes daily based on changes in situation, mood and company. Also what someone says they believe on a survey form is their idealised view of what they believe and is not nessesarily what they actually believe or would believe in real circumstances. Often people make themselves sound better than they are, or try and be what they think the survey considers to be a good person. Sometimes people are provocative and challenging for the hell of it.
Statistics have some use of course, but they will never be able to answer the actual questions, I think.
The persistence of anti-female attitudes such as the belief that plaintiffs in rape cases habitually lie links in pretty well with the backlash against feminism stuff. But you aren't going to convince people they are wrong by quoting statistics (gathered godknows how) that false claims of rape are no higher than of other crimes.
In cases like the Amnesty one, statistics might serve as a crude way to get people who otherwise aren't bothered (read: most politicians) to take notice of something important.
Might, but most likely won't. That's the slight redeeming feature of a society in which statistics are utterly abused and misunderstood. Science isn't a substitute for principle, and much statistics is a long way from science. Incidentally, I take "never be able to answer the actual questions" to mean being no substitute for principle. They're v useful for monitoring, if ~objective monitoring is what you want; they are sadly also v useful, as we know, for making any situation fit your preferences. Which is a symptom of a wider dishonesty in our society, where the media puts sales first and politicans put the party first.
Under my government, asying "Crime is down 11% on last year" will be treason. Because of course, zero crime is 100% down on last year, and thereafter we cease to speak of such things.
For dishonest society see here
although perhaps truth not being a criteria for public information broadcast is in some ways more honest than prentending our information is true!
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