Singer Chrissie Hynde has been criticised this week for suggesting that rape victims who were dressed provocatively or drunk are to blame and "have to take responsibility." Writer Daisy Buchanan on who does need to take responsibility for their actions...
“Is it ever a woman’s fault if she’s raped?” is a weird, hackle raising, fist clenching, brow knotting sort of a question that has only one answer. No. Not ever. Not in 2015, and not in 1972, when Chrissie Hynde was attacked by a gang of bikers, an attack that she said she takes ‘full responsibility for’ . Not if, to paraphrase Amy Schumer{
If you want to take off all your clothes, write the words ‘RAUNCHY LADY’ on your collarbone with a Pink Bic and walk down the street singing Nelly’s 'Hot In Herre', you might frighten your neighbours and, possibly end the day at your local police station, but you do not deserve to be raped. As one gentleman mansplained to me on Twitter, ‘Why are we still talking about this?’
We’re talking about this because a few weeks ago, at a festival, I was getting drunk on overpriced Pimm’s with a couple of mates, and it came up in conversation that two of us had been raped by people we knew. We weren’t sad ladies crying in a special victims unit - we were happy, tipsy 30 somethings who had just been discussing our favourite places for lobster rolls.
We’re talking about this because when I wrote about harassment, sexual threats and the men who make us feel scared a couple of weeks ago, I had more @ replies on Twitter in 48 hours than I’d received in my entire six years of using the social network, put together. ‘Me too!’ ‘When I was reading your article, a guy on the street asked me to sit on his face.’ ‘I was on a bus and a guy in the car next to it showed me a picture of his penis on his phone.’ It’s like a really bad, 90 minute remix of 'Blurred Lines' - a song that every woman can join in with, because she’s grimly familiar with most of the words. We’re talking about this because British Transport Police report that recorded sexual assault on trains is up by 25 per cent, and we feel so unsafe that Jeremy Corbyn is considering the possibility of special women’s only carriages.
It’s incredibly sad that Chrissie Hynde went through an awful, traumatic experience and came out the other side blaming herself. I think her words are wrong and misguided, but she’s attempting to help and protect us nonetheless. When I was a teenager, my Mum would attempt to help and protect me by having painful conversations about what I was allowed to wear and why. ‘You don’t want boys to get the wrong idea,’ she’d warn when I came hope from Topshop with a stash of teeny tiny skirts from the sale rail.
I don’t think she was slut shaming me - just using the logic that the world had presented her with to protect her daughter. Logic the world continues to use. When* Loose Women* asked whether women should take the blame for being raped, plenty of people used the argument about not leaving your front door open, or your car keys on the front seat. If only we could leave our vaginas at home under a sofa cushion. If only we were taxi drivers, and it was understood that we weren’t to be approached when our lights were off.
But every woman who has talked to me about this - and there are thousands - has assured me that it doesn’t make any difference if they look ‘sexy’ or not, strange men will still make them feel harassed, threatened and objectified. In fact, most of us don’t get hassled and harassed in a short skirt with a full face of make up - we’ll be leaving the gym, or carrying shopping, or striding through torrential rain while holding a golf umbrella.
We all know we’re at risk, all the time. Having someone make an unsolicited comment on your breasts is horrible in itself, but it’s also distressing because the fear and anxiety it generates. Will they go further? Will they follow you? Even if there’s just a one in a thousand chance of being attacked on your way back from work, the numbers are high enough to make you figure out a different route home. Rape culture is so prevalent and problematic that it can happen in broad daylight in aJohn Lewis car park - yet we still internalise the idea that it’s on us, the potential victims, to solve the problem and stay safe. This has to end.
I’m so grateful to Hynde for putting rape on the front pages. It’s finally time to join the dots between street harassment and rape culture. We need to address the fact that potential rapists aren’t baddies lurking in unlit streets, waiting for the image of a miniskirt to be projected into the sky. They’re people who grow up believing themselves to be entitled to womens’ bodies, attention and time - the ones who haven’t been made to understand that a ‘Hey gorgeous’ can sound more threatening than complimentary. There’s a group of people who do need to start taking responsibility for their actions immediately. But it isn’t the victims of harassment and assault.
- Daisy Buchanan