Rape and the left: Assange, Galloway and the problem with women [View all]

[struggle4progress]

By Ian Dunt | Talking Politics – 14 hours ago

... Several days have passed since Galloway's outburst, but when I talk to Harriet Harman about it she's still livid. "Thousands of women who have suffered rape, who wonder if they dare report it, will have read Galloway's comments," she says. "The message will be: 'Don't, because you won't be believed.' It has a practical impact. We don't want commentary which reinforces the notion women are asking for it."

Harman's response to the outburst is to frame it in the history of victim blaming and the belittling of rape complaints, rather than any particular failure of a political viewpoint. She's not the only one. While much of the left looks on aghast at the comments from their own troops, rape campaigners seem broadly unsurprised at the standard of debate. "Ignorance and misinformation around the type of women who become victims of rape - and the type of men who rape - are unfortunately cross-cutting and have never been solely issues for either the left or the right of the political spectrum," Katie Russell of Rape Crisis tells me.

Ignorance about rape — and in particular the obsessive attention paid to 'stranger-rape' - also contributes to the misunderstanding. "The disproportionate focus on 'stranger rape' in the media is a significant factor in the endurance of that particular myth," Russell says. "In practice, around 85% of women and girls who experience sexual violence know their attacker. The stranger myth is confusing and unhelpful in a number of ways, not least of all in the way it can be used to restrict women's behaviour" ...

Somewhere in Sweden, two women will have doubtless watched a news story reduce their own complaints to footnotes. They will have been appalled that anti-imperialism and the fight for freedom of information have been used to question their behaviour and lionise their alleged attacker. It will hardly have consoled them that this process is now prompting soul-searching on the left. But if there is a morsel of comfort to be had from a depressing week, it's that at least the left is doing some soul-searching. Despite the horrific comments from Akin, there is precious little of that going on in the Republican party.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/comment/talking-politics/rape-left-assange-galloway-problem-women-144733581.html