Topics Ethics

Question When a women dresses "slutty" and is raped people are usually divided between two camps. The blame can either be placed solely on the perpetrators or some would argue that the women is also to blame for getting into the situation. While admittedly I fall into the second camp, I don't quite understand why a victim can't be at least partially to blame for his/her situation. Can't people be blamed for creating a situation in which a crime is more likely or will happen? If I supply terrorists with nuclear weapons, and millions die. Yet I didn't kill anyone and the terrorists who did had a choice to disarm the weapon. Yet most people would agree that I would be sharing the blame. If I encourage racism by wearing a "hate blacks" T shirt and speaking in white supremacist rallies do I share any of the blame for the mistreatment of minorities? (Equally am I to blame if I am attacked by black gangs?) Ultimately if a women dresses "slutty" and is raped, can't she be blamed for encouraging the situation? I'm interested in the panel's views.

Accepted:
May 12, 2011

Comments

What I find so interesting about question is that it forces us to evaluate assumptions about why rape occurs.

The second position you suggest, that a woman's style of dress contributes to her rape, assumes a good deal. It assumes that rapists are paying close attention to fashion, that they are then overwhelmed by provocative styles of dress, they subsequently lose control over otherwise normal desires, and then rape occurs. In other words, this is a story about beguilement and sexiness.

It seems to me the above assumptions don't describe rape at all. Maybe they are more apt for a seduction scenario. Rape, on the other hand, is about the rapist's control, dominance, sadism, and humiliation of his victim. The fact of the matter is that all kinds of women - from nuns to sluts - are raped every day.

If more modest fashion choices were all that was needed to protect women from rape I'm sure women en masse would step forward for their rape-proof makeovers. If only solving sexual violence were that easy!

Ps Since this is such a great topic, allow me to recommend two authors whose work is really relevant and accessible: Susan Brison's book Aftermath and Larry May's Masculinity and Morality. Good luck!

We should distinguish the questions (i) whether someone contributes to a bad event and (ii) whether she is blameworthy on account of this contribution (that is, shares blame for the bad event). In your two analogies (supplying nuclear weapons to terrorists and wearing a "hate blacks" T-shirt) the agent contributes causally and also is blameworthy. (Note that any blame we assign to an enabler or encourager or any other kind of causal contributor need not diminish in any way the blameworthiness of the perpetrator.) But in many other cases, the two questions have different answers. Here's an example: someone threatens credibly that s/he will burn down your house unless you marry her/him; you turn down this person, and s/he does burn down your house. Here your refusal of the marriage proposal was a crucial causal contributor to the bad event, but you are not to blame. You're not morally required to marry someone to keep her/him from burning down a house.

Similarly with the way women dress. Even if the way a woman dresses affects the likelihood of her being raped, it does not follow that she shares blame for the rape. Women are not morally required to adjust their dress so as to minimize the likelihood of attracting the attention of potential rapists.

You might concede this and then restate your point with a different analogy. Suppose someone leaves the door to his apartment unlocked and then finds that the apartment has been burglarized during his absence. Even if we agree that the owner does not share blame for the burglary, that he was not morally required to lock his apartment door, we might also say that he could and should have known that leaving one's apartment unlocked increases the likelihood of burglary. Even if we don't blame him for the burglary, we may think that he was careless and we may feel less sympathetic and be less inclined to help him cover his loss than we would do/be if he had taken whatever precautions are appropriate in the area where his apartment is located.

This analogy cannot be undermined by stating that we want to achieve a world without rape. We do; but we also want to achieve a world without burglary. As of now, rape and burglary are still common. And if it is careless (and perhaps reckless in certain areas) not to lock one's apartment, then why should it not be considered careless (or even reckless in certain areas) to dress in ways that make rape more likely?

The analogy can be weakened by pointing to the costs. Locking one's apartment does not impose a substantial cost on its owner; but adjusting (according to potential rapists' dispositions) the way one dresses is a real cost on women. We all have a fundamental interest to be appear in public as we choose, to express our personality in our dress, hairstyle, ear rings, etc. And this fundamental interest makes the dress case more like the refused marriage proposal than like the apartment kept unlocked. When a friend's house burns down, my feelings of sympathy and my inclination to help her cover her losses do not diminish at all when I learn that the fire was set by a guy she refused to marry (even after he had warned her that her refusal would have this consequence). When a friend is beaten up, my feelings of sympathy and my inclination to help him do not diminish at all when I learn that he wore a religious or gay symbol even while, in his neighborhood, most frown upon the relevant religion or homosexuality. And likewise with rape. Should a woman friend be raped, I would not feel less sympathy nor be less inclined to help her overcome her trauma upon learning that she had worn a sexy outfit.

I have discussed the gap between causal contribution, on the one hand, and a verdict of blameworthiness or carelessness on the other. This discussion is not very relevant to your specific question if Lisa Cassidy is right to hold that there is no causal contribution, that the likelihood of rape is wholly unaffected by how a woman dresses. Based on spotty anecdotal evidence, I believe that Lisa is in fact wrong. To be sure, there is no rape-proof make-over, but there may still be ways of dressing that make rape attempts less likely and ways of dressing that involve greater risks. I agree with Lisa that rape is typically about dominance and humiliation. But this desire to humiliate is in some cases fired up by a rejection that the rapists experiences as humiliating (remember, a large percentage of rapes occur between people who know each other). For many men, being rejected by a woman is easier to cope with when this woman is generally unavailable (e.g., married or in a steady relationship or about to return to another country) than if she is in fact looking for a male partner but one who is different, "better" than the man she rejects. Some men respond to the perception of being rejected in the second way with anger and a desire to humiliate the woman who (in their mind) humiliated them. If this sort of emotional reaction plays a role in some rapes (and I certainly don't have the empirical expertise to assert this with much confidence), then the way a woman dresses probably does affect her likelihood of being raped. Since there is this possibility, it is worth pointing out that, even if Lisa were wrong, even if the likelihood of being raped is affected by how a woman dresses, one cannot derive therefrom a verdict of blameworthiness or carelessness. (And even if, despite my argument, you retained your judgment that some rape victims are "partially to blame" for being raped, it does not follow therefrom that the rapists of these victims are any less blameworthy than they would be if their victims had dressed more conservatively.)

I just wanted to weigh in again to reassert that the belief that a woman's style of dress contributes to her rape is, in my view, totally absurd. Is rape unknown in Africa or the Middle East, where more modest norms of dress prevail? Of course not.

We know from interviews with convicted rapists that most rapists do not remember what their victims were wearing. In fact, a widely cited Federal Commission on Crimes of Violence study found that only 4.4% of all rapes involved any sort of particular, precipitating behavior (such as flirting) on the part of the victim.

Thomas Pogge's above speculation on the psychology of acquaintance rape, wherein a man avenges himself on some perceived humiliation by raping his acquaintance, may be totally correct. According to his reasoning, the soon-to-be rapist sees himself as humiliated and rejected, and then driven is to act out by raping his victim. In that case, Thomas Pogge is saying that it is victim's rejection of her suitor (or his perception of this rejection) which causes which causes rape. Her outfit, even in Pogge's own account, has nothing whatsoever to do with it!

To show how pressing this issue is, and how tired women are of defending themselves from the 'she was asking for it' charge, we can look to the "Slut Walk" protest movement that is sweeping across the world. It began with some Toronto women, to protest a policeman's advice to college women to dress that "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized." http://www.slutwalktoronto.com