The debate over the controversial book has yet to die down, but its author asks: Is rape so taboo that is can never be discussed?
By Nick Ross
Consider the following: ‘No amount of incitement can excuse rape. Rape is one of the most violating crimes. Victims tend to feel dirty, embarrassed, racked with revulsion and self-blame.’
Would you say the writer of this was any of the following: ‘slimy’, ‘disgusting’, ‘offensive’, a ‘victim-blaming idiot’ or an ‘apologist for rape’?
Well, apparently I am. In a firestorm of outrage I have been denounced as crass and insensitive, and accused of undoing years of progress and promoting the view that men are still ‘just helpless slaves to their own desires’.
I always knew my book would be controversial. The publishers warn on the cover that Crime will delight those who come to it with an open mind and infuriate ideologues from the Left, Right and Centre.
After all it is a wholesale demolition of dozens of misconceptions about crime.
It shows how stunningly fast crime has fallen since the 1990s, how the truth was obscured by misleading police statistics, and how the media, including broadcasters, withheld the truth for 15 years until it became too palpable to disguise.
It challenges all the established social theories about crime. It shows how crime is far more the product of prosperity than poverty, and how well-heeled people are just as prone to be on the fiddle as the poor.
It demonstrates why punishment doesn’t work the way it should, and how most rehab schemes don’t cut re-offending as they claim. It argues for a wholesale rethinking of policing and castigates a lot of criminology for ignoring the plight of victims and indulging in political philosophy. And it says the main answers to crime have been hiding in plain view.
So there is a lot to get steamed up about, quite apart from a chapter about sex.
Even there people might have taken umbrage in a lot of ways.
I explain how far more men are victims of domestic violence than is commonly supposed and how the risk of spiked drinks has been ludicrously hyped.
But it was the word ‘rape’ that set off the chain reaction.
So what caused the howls of outrage?
First, a lot of it was little more than that: an instinctive reaction to someone – worse, a man – suggesting that not all rapes cause the same amount of harm or are equally culpable.
Rape crisis activists were sought out to reproach me. The internet was ablaze with scorn.
And I was hugely heartened to get support from women who matter most: rape survivors. I hesitate to quote them because even the accounts from victims of rape seem to be reviled unless they conform to a politically correct view.
We are supposed to say that all rape amounts to the same thing, that nothing a woman does could make her vulnerable, and it is always the man’s fault.
For example, this email came from a woman who deeply resents ‘the madness’ and ‘the rants’ that drown out voices like her own:
‘I was raped twice in my teens. Neither were traumatic experiences. I didn’t feel great about myself afterwards but I put myself in situations where there would certainly have been confusion/ambiguity on the man’s part. It was to do with my generally low self-esteem at the time, but that was my problem, and not theirs.’
And another wrote:
‘In company with most people I’m getting irate about this story. I am a victim myself and I certainly see the variations between what I experienced and what other victims in other situations might experience. It is a great shame we can’t talk seriously about the very real problem of rape because any comment that isn’t baying for the blood of all offenders everywhere is screamed down. The vitriol makes sensible discussion impossible.’
So was I right? Should I just face down the critics? Well, I do not retract any of the facts I set out or my interpretations of the evidence. But I do have real concerns.
The whole essence of my book is that we can aggravate crime by tempting fate and curb it by playing safe. Whether as governments, corporations or individuals we all need to do what we can to make society less vulnerable to crime.
I explain how it was our collective recklessness that caused crime to surge but also how our responses to the epidemic then caused crime to drop.
But for victims, the distinction I draw between cause (an empirical issue) and culpability (a moral one) was too easily lost.
Unsurprisingly it is deeply wounding if there is any hint that victims should be blamed for their own suffering.
There was one further passage I rather wish I had expressed more clearly. I wrote, ‘Not even in the licentious days of the Charles II Restoration was it acceptable for women to dress as provocatively as they have done in Western culture since the 1960s.’
I went on to say, in spite of this, ‘so-called stranger rapes, the sort most often reported by the newspapers, make up only a small proportion of the rapes that women divulge through surveys’.
I thought this was clear: scanty clothing does not seem to provoke rape, as many expect it might. More importantly, I ridiculed the idea that ‘men cannot help themselves’. They plainly can.
Yet just the mention of scanty clothing in the context of rape is inflammatory.
As you can see, I couldn’t find any evidence that sexy clothes provoke sex crimes – I’m with the ‘Slut-walkers’ on that and I’ve always said so.
But let’s imagine such evidence existed. Should it be censored? Should women not be told? Is the whole subject so taboo it can never be discussed?
If this all sounds like self-justification then I shall leave you with the words of my most prominently quoted critic.
Jo Wood’s front-page attacks on me were especially wounding since she is a thoughtful and formidable woman, a former magistrate and science researcher who runs Merseyside’s Rape & Sexual Abuse (RASA) Centre and was awarded an MBE for her work with rape victims.
Now, though, she’s downloaded Crime on Kindle and has sent me her thoughts on some of the phrases for which I was lambasted, and the context in which they actually appear in the book. She found no fault with any single one of them. With her permission, here is a sample of her analysis:
Quote: ‘Women who are flirtatious are at least partly responsible if they are raped, and a quarter feel the same way about rape victims who act provocatively.’
Jo’s assessment: Quote: ‘This is a section quoting facts discovered by Amnesty International and is not a personal opinion.’
Quote: ‘We have come to acknowledge it is foolish to leave laptops on the back seats of cars...’ followed by ‘no amount of incitement can ever excuse rape’.
Jo’s assessment: ‘This section is actually making the case for rape to be looked at differently and thought about differently.’ It is followed by: ‘It is inane to confuse explanation with justification.’
And so it goes on. She concludes: ‘Maybe they should think about who is fast becoming the victim here – and without even holding a trial.
‘Having read the full version, I am satisfied there is no intention to criticise victims of rape and that the comments made, when read in context, actually strengthen the arguments for sexual violence crimes to be treated with the empathy and respect that victims demand.’
Jo herself says: ‘READ THE BOOK.’ Obviously, so do I.
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