A few months ago, one of my closest friends was raped. She was moving to a new city and a friend put her in contact with his friend who lived there. The friend-of-a-friend offered her his spare bedroom until she got settled. On the first morning after she arrived, she woke up to find this man on top of her, pulling down her pyjama pants.

She didn’t cry out or ask him to stop, she explained, because she was paralysed by shock. It’s possible he took this as consent, she said, and partly blamed herself.
I am ashamed to say that, when she told me, I had wondered the same thing. Why didn’t she say anything? And wasn’t staying with a strange man a recipe for disaster?
Victim blaming is common in cases of sexual assault. The reasons for this are complex: the persistence of misogyny; the idea of contributory negligence which argues that if a woman was drinking, out late, wearing a short skirt or somehow less vigilant than a professional spy behind enemy lines that she was ‘asking for it’; the fallacy that women routinely lie about rape; class and race discrimination and the bias that the middle class, those from so-called respectable families or white people, are less likely to commit acts of violence than the poor, people of colour or foreigners; and the ‘just world hypothesis’, which is the belief in some sort of karmic weighing scales via which the good are rewarded, the bad punished and consequences are always the direct outcome of actions.
From a very early age, girls are taught how to avoid being sexually assaulted. We learn not to accept sweets – and later drinks – from strangers; that hitchhiking is dangerous, as is walking home after dark; that we shouldn’t be alone with a man we don’t know well, and even if we do know him we shouldn’t be too flirtatious or be wearing a low cut top, in case we provoke him into
losing control.
If lessons like these help anyone to avoid a violent assault, then I suppose they are necessary. However, they also suggest that as long as a woman is cautious, well behaved and primly dressed, she can mitigate the risk of being raped. Which is simply not true. Yes, you can avoid potentially risky situations, but when all is said and done, nobody would be raped if rapists didn’t choose to rape.
Perhaps it is because none of us want to imagine that we, or our loved ones, could be a victim of sexual assault, both men and women indulge in different levels of victim-blaming.
If I picture what happened to my friend I could comfort my own fears by believing that I would have fought back – but is that really true? You don’t know how you’ll react to a situation until it happens; and there are times when not fighting back may be smartest way to survive.
I could also tell myself that I never would have stayed with a strange man. But that’s not true either. When I first came to Ireland I lived with my father’s cousin for weeks, a man I didn’t know. Furthermore, we tend to trust the friends of friends, assuming that they’ve been vetted and vouched for – despite the fact that statically speaking a woman is far more likely to be raped by someone she knows than by a stranger jumping out from behind a bush.
Any woman who reads the newspapers will know that the police and the justice system rarely seem to be on the side of sexual assault victims. Accusations may not be believed; the DPP may decide there is not enough evidence to prosecute; your sexual history may be brought into evidence and used against you; and even if your assailant is indeed found guilty, he may get off with a minimal sentence or even a fine.
If you live in a small town, everybody will know what happened and everyone will have an opinion. As we’ve seen in a number of well-publicised cases in Ireland and abroad, it’s often the victim, and not the perpetrator, that gets shunned.
Because our culture teaches women that they are partly, if not wholly, to blame for being sexually assaulted, and that danger is almost everywhere, most women spend a huge amount of time assessing their surroundings for potential threats.
Earlier this year I was explaining the idea of “Schrodinger’s Rapist” to a male friend. Like Schrodinger’s Cat, which may be alive or dead, any man may – or may not be – a rapist. Schrodinger’s Rapist explains how whenever a strange man approaches a woman, she weighs up the likelihood that he is a rapist, or a potential rapist, and her options for fight or flight if he is. Women do this, almost automatically, because we’ve been taught we need to – despite the fact that we also know that most men are not in any way dangerous.
My friend was astounded and more than a little upset to think that if he walked towards or spoke to a woman he didn’t know, even with nothing more than the intention of being friendly, that there was a good chance she was wondering whether or not he was a rapist. Not only was he personally insulted by the idea – and I can understand that – but he also found it horrifying that women’s lives could be constrained by this thinking. Unfortunately, on occasion they are.
Every single woman I know has experienced some form of sexual harassment or assault – and I don’t mean being hit on by men that don’t appeal to them. I mean being the victim of a verbal or physical assault; being called a bitch or a slut for not returning someone’s interest; receiving rape threats either in person or online; having their breasts, backside or genitals groped by strangers; attempted rape – or worse still, actually being the victim of rape. Given the amount of aggression the average woman experiences by the time she is twenty-one, it should not be surprising that we are often wary of male strangers.
If a man talks to a woman at a bar where she is surrounded by other people, and her friends are close by, she’ll see the threat level as low. Low but not zero – because until you’ve exchanged more than a few words she still doesn’t know if you are going to turn aggressive or spike her drink. After a few minutes she may realise that you are completely harmless; and even if you are trying to pick her up, she won’t see you as a danger. In fact, she may see you as the best thing that happened that evening.
However, take the same two people and put them in a deserted bus shelter and chances are the woman is going to be very cautious. You may be the same harmless friendly guy who just wants to chat or get to know her, but because the context has changed, you will be seen as significantly more threatening.
Teaching women that is their job to avoid being raped, and that it is their fault if they are, is certainly unfair to women – but it also unfair to men.
Firstly it makes sexual assault a “women’s issue” instead of a human one. This not only disregards the fact that a far greater number of men than you’d suppose have experienced sexual assault or sexual coercion, it also means that male victims are even less likely to seek help or justice.
Secondly, by arguing that men cannot control themselves in the presence of a miniskirt or a drunk woman, all men are turned into little more than slavering animals: the rationalisation of the utterly unjustifiable behaviour of the few taints everyone else.
Thirdly it means that women are taught to view all strange men as potential rapists, which is grossly unfair gender discrimination.
The next time you approach a woman and she is cold, aloof and standoffish or if she hurries away, ignores you, tells you to back off, or makes you feel bad by treating you as a threat, remember that we live in a culture that tells women, time and time again, that they are to blame for being sexually assaulted. You could be sensitive to this and cross the street to avoid her, not talk to a woman walking alone, or corner her in a bus stop or elevator. But changing your behaviour doesn’t address the underlying problem.
Instead you could help to change culture – and that would be better for all of us.