Rape - a Man's right?

“If you wouldn't have been running around with those little dresses on it would have never happened.” That is not the response you would expect from your father when you are raped, but that is what is reported in this story.

It is sad that any person would make such a comment, let alone a relative. It does, however, highlight some of the problems still to be resolved.

When a woman is raped it is NEVER her fault: yes means yes and no means no. It is that simple. If a woman does not consent, then it is rape. The person at fault for that rape is her attacker.

I covered my feelings on this fairly recently, following the rapes at the Latitude Festival Why are women blamed for getting themselves raped?, but it just keeps coming up.
I also talked about clothes What is wrong with the clothes I wear? And here we are once again with a story that blames women for putting themselves at risk because of the clothes that they wear.

Of course, we are told that men just cannot help it, after all, it is just their natural reaction to a pretty woman to want to have sex with her. I don’t have personal knowledge of those kind of feelings, so I cannot easily challenge it, but I can challenge the idea that people should act on that feeling.

Let’s be honest, many of us at one time or another have felt jealous of someone else. Perhaps it is the new car, the money, the house or the job. Perhaps it is their partner, or their looks. All sorts of things raise emotions in us that may make us think “why should I not have that as well?” But do we act on it? Laws help, but our moral codes are the ultimate determiner of our actions. Most of us do not succumb to these temptations. Why should rape be any different? Just because it is sex? Because men have an inalienable right to have sex with women, whether or not the women truly wishes to do so

An inalienable right? How can I claim that many men believe that they have this right? Take a recent story Councils pay for disabled to visit prostitutes and lap-dancing clubs from £520m taxpayer fund. The paper is making a point about council’s wasting money, but that is not what I want to focus on. I want to focus upon the idea that this 21 year old man with learning issues had an inalienable right to have sex with women, and because he could not get a woman himself, he should be able to seek sex with a prostitute. Where does this right come from? The paper reports his social worker as stating that “Refusing to offer him this service would be a violation of his human rights.”

That is deeply worrying: it is a breach of human rights for a man to be denied sex with a woman. Not only is it a woman’s fault for wearing the wrong clothes, but it is also a breach of human rights for a man to be denied sex with a woman. Does that mean that rape must be a woman’s fault? After all, she cannot say no to a man’s inalienable right to have sex with a woman.