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Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Depressing survey on student attitudes to rape

Quick post today, pinching this from the F Word:

A LondonStudent survey carried out on over 1,000 students at 119 Higher Education institutions around the UK has found that around a third still believe a woman is at least partially to blame for being raped if she is drunk (34%), was ‘alone or walking in a deserted or dangerous area’ (31%) or has behaved in a flirtatious manner (29%), while almost half (48%) believe she would be partially or wholly to blame if she failed to clearly say ‘no’ to the man. Perhaps as a reflection of more liberal attitudes to sex among the younger generation, a smaller - but still depressingly significant - proportion believe that a woman should take some share of the blame if she was wearing ‘sexy or revealing’ clothing (19%) or if it is known that she has had many sexual partners (13%).

Male students place greater blame on the woman than female students in all scenarios apart from where the woman is alone or in a supposed dangerous area. So not only are young people continuing to perpetuate the same old myths about rape, female “responsibility” and men’s inability to control their dicks, but young women continue to internalise the generally misplaced fear of being raped by a stranger when walking alone or in certain parts of town, while some male students appear to feel a need to justify male sexual violence against women, or at least to defend their apparent ‘right’ to access women’s bodies.


Very depressing that these attitudes are still so prevalent among supposedly educated young people.

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