from the Home Office: rape is wrong (because you might have to go to prison)
Winter Woods at the Mind the Gap points us towards one of the posters the Home Office is actually using for its anti-rape campaign:
A few thoughts:
1) A woman is not a 'place' you can enter.
2) Women have faces and clothes.
It's a ham-fisted attempt to confront the logic that says a girl in her pants is an invitation to sex, passing over the situation whereby most women who get assaulted are not standing around, shop-dummy like, in their clean white under-wear.
In fact, it's the sanitisation of assualt that worries me, a clean passive headless white body. WW argues pointedly that:
..this image objectifies women. This woman here is not represented as a person. She is reduced to her crotch, a nameless, faceless cunt which exists to be penetrated. How can we fight the objectification of women with .... the objectification of women?
It really does seem as though this campaign has little to do with women - not because it's aimed at men, but because it's aimed at keeping men out of prison. Respect for the person you want to sleep with has been ignored for scare tactics.
To that end, the second poster (pdf) works through the threat of homosexual assault: the image of a surly middle-aged man on the top bunk of a prison cell staring at the camera, above the slogan 'If you don't get a yes before sex, who'll be your next sleeping partner?' The message is clear: don't not rape because women are people too, but because you might end up getting raped by someone bigger and stronger than you are.
Remember how I said that my rationale for this campaign might be different from the Home Office's? A small understatement, I think.
WW also invites ideas for a for 'a less icky, less lazy, and more intelligent campaign.' How about something along the lines of a series of progressive posters: 'if you buy her a drink, no doesn't mean yes', 'if you buy her dinner, no doesn't mean yes', 'if you give her a lift home, no doesn't mean yes,' 'only yes means yes: rape is a crime'.
Maybe the tag line could be 'Respect yourself. Respect the one you want to be with. Always get consent.' - which could also be read to cut both ways about sharing responsibility when starting a sexual relationship.
Anyone else have any ideas?
11 comments:
I'm considerably more horrifed since you pointed out the homophobic aspect of the campaign. I like your idea about conceptualising consent as respect both for yourself and your partner. As you point out, this campaign is about scare tactics and its just so depressingly negative.
> Everybody knows that no means yes,
> Just like glasses come free on the NHS.
...anyway :)
How does this compare to other crime-related adverts? The ones that I can think of ("Think!"; the benefit-fraud mysterons; tv licence evasion) emphasise the punishments or show pictures of minced people.
I don't think there's much of a cultural change gonna come about through advertising (or we'd have a lot more "be nice to people!" posters...) so highlighting the results is about the only option left.
What are the effects on the victim worth highlighting? Psychological damage is such a... hard thing to convey it wouldn't necessarily be worth it. Is a would-be rapist going to have the empathy to realise why it's bad if they can't work it out for themselves?
It really only leaves us with the punishment angle. The whole point of punishment, after all, is as deterrent.
I think that's the problem: the threat of prison is going to have a relatively minimal impact, not least on those who assault women in the full knowledge that what they do is assault.
I suspect these posters will provoke a couple of common responses in men. Some men will choose to ignore this campaign because they don't think they're 'kind of guy' who needs to be lectured. I also have a feeling a large number will ignore or be angered by these posters because they feel that they carry the implicit assumption that all men are rapists by default.
So, rather than issuing a blanket threat this campaign should have attempted to address the attitudes behind rape: to address men who do not realise their behaviour borders on assault, who do not realise that a short skirt is not even partial consent.
This also means addressing men who commit assault but do no think of themselves as rapists going out with the intention of raping someone: men who do not think they are doing anything wrong.
An emphasis on deterrence is going to have a minimal impact without addressing the cultural situations in which rape arises - situations which are related to the way we treat drink, drugs, clothing and gendered expectations of behaviour. That's why I think a focus on people in identifiable situations would be more productive than a depersonalised threat.
If I have any time I'll see if I can dig up some adverts relating to other crimes, particularly assault.
i like both your ideas a lot, I have to say. I can see the first one running on the tv, HEBS stylee.
the second is an interesting idea because it is about so much more than just rape; it's about communication of the whole situation and of limits and standards and expectations. Respect is something we're not good at these days and I particularly like the emphasis on respect for self.
> to address men who do not realise their
> behaviour borders on assault, who do not
> realise that a short skirt is not even
> partial consent.
Mm, good point.
Does anyone know the legal difference between rape and sexual assualt? I read somewhere recently that a lot of cases get downgraded from one to the other (but I can't remember which direction that is) because it's an easier case to prove.
Maybe that would be a good start: making it clear what is considered illegal. Thus, preconceptions about rape only occuring in dark alleys etc can be cleared out in the process.
I don't think rape is in any way comparable to not paying your tv license or similar crimes. It's a violent crime with a real victim.
A better comparison is with the awareness campaigns about drink-driving and speeding. The angle taken there is 'don't do this because you risk hurting someone or worse, because real people will suffer'. It's assumed that this is enough to make the average person think twice before doing it. The point is that women's suffering as a result of being raped is apparently not enough to deter the average man.
On the difference between rape and sexual assualt, there's the text of the Sexual Offences Bill which came into force in 2004.
The difference seems to be that rape involves the intentional, non-consensual penetration of 'the vagina, anus or mouth of another person with [the] penis' and sexual assualt is intentional, non-consensual sexual touching (yes, it is as vague as that).
There's also the offence of 'assault by penetration' which is the intentional, non-consensual penetration of the anus or vagina (but not mouth) with 'with a part of [the] body or anything else.'
I too think the headless woman with the no entry sign is crass and does nothing to give women respect or even to acknowledge them as human beings. As well as these objections a white teenager isn't the only kind of victim. Some instances of rape are carried out on women in their 70s and even their 80s.
Overall DB, I pretty much agree, however one quibble.
It's a ham-fisted attempt to confront the logic that says a girl in her pants is an invitation to sex, passing over the situation whereby most women who get assaulted are not standing around, shop-dummy like, in their clean white under-wear.
I think this aspect may be an attempt to deal with Date Rape, which I don't know stats on but is undoubtedly a problem; I know (or have known) people (not just men) who think that if a woman is down to her underwear, she's consented to sex. She has no right to say no, she's 'led him on'.
Completely wrong, of course, but it's an attitude that's out there. Because someone may want to spend time with you and allow some degree of intimacy doesn't mean they're consenting to "all the way", nor does it negate thir right to change thei mind.
Cack handed campaign, but this bit of the message is important, even if they've messed it up completely.
I linked to this post in my own discussion of the campaign. As I'm new to blogging I wasn't sure whether to ask first or not, so if I've violated blog ettiquette by linking already, let me know and I can take it down.
Thanks for being a feminist inspiration! :)
Please link away - the more, the merrier. :)
I think the only fragment of etiquette I've ever seen respected online is crediting someone if you cut and paste their words - aside from that, it's a free for all.
Post a Comment