"Can a Slut be Raped?"

That was the title of a review (apparently in TIME Magazine) for Jodie Foster's "The Accused." That film was was based on a true story in which an intoxicated, single woman was gang-raped in a bar and the men who did it manage to plea-bargain down to "reckless endangerment." In all honestly, "Answers" has the best synopsis:

Based on a real-life 1983 incident, The Accused tells the story of Sarah Tobias (Jodie Foster), a working-class party girl who likes to live it up with her friends and flirt hard with the guys. After a fight with her boyfriend, she heads to a local bar to cool down -- and after a few drinks, plus some dancing and flirting, she finds herself thrown on top of a pinball machine and gang-raped by a bunch of locals, while others watch and cheer the proceedings. District attorney Kathryn Murphy (Kelly McGillis) takes Sarah's case but quickly negotiates a plea bargain in which the attackers' charges are reduced to reckless endangerment. Her reason: defense attorneys could use Sarah's not-so-pretty past to paint her as "asking for it," getting their clients off completely. But a stunned Sarah accuses Murphy of selling her out, and when the lawyer sees how the incident continues to destroy Sarah's life, she decides she must seek true justice. This time, she goes after the crowd of onlookers for "criminal solicitation" -- those who were egging the rapists on.

Jonathan Kaplan's fact-based drama, one of the most thoughtful examinations of the crime of rape on film, features an Academy award-winning performance by Jodie Foster. An account of the gang rape of a free-living waitress (Foster) by some of the male patrons of a dive bar, the film exposes the manner in which the pre-feminist blame-the-victim attitude toward rape victims, still predominant in many areas, is also hard-wired into the legal system. A more subtle secondary theme concerns the role of social class, and the difficulty experienced by the working-class victim in being heard, especially by her well-bred attorney (Kelly McGillis). When, driven by her client's rage, the lawyer finally brings the rape's bystanders to trial, the film means to implicate a society which has always maintained an unwritten code which would shrug off such behavior.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/the-accused-1988-film#ixzz1G1Ei0kJ7

I'm mentioning the TIME review though, because I remembered reading the reactions it produced. There were a lot of angry letters absolutely slamming the reviewer for just not getting it. Yes, "sluts" CAN be raped. She was flirting with those men, not asking to be raped.

[I was going to use an asterisk to explain my use of the word "slut" --- that I use it as an affectionate term of endearment for somebody (male or female) who has a lot of sexual partners. However, upon finishing the sentence, I realized that the reviewer was attaching the label to a woman whose sexual history was completely unknown and who had just been acting flirtaciously!]

So, that was 1988, and that movie (which now has a tv-melodrama feel to it because of some of the heavy-handed characterization of the villains) was super important at the time, because it attacked the very notion that women are "asking for it" when they dress or act a certain way.

So here it is, two decades later, and cops still think that if a woman dresses a certain way ("like a slut") then she's increasing her chances of getting raped.

Now, I'm a middle-aged, white male. My mom (soon to be 80!) is one of those socially conservative, pre-feminist-feminists. I don't think she's ever identified with those "radical, lesbian, man-hating, birth-control-pushing" (not her words, just a compilation of the stereotypes) feminists of the late-sixties and the 1970s, but she was always pretty quick to stand up for her rights and to criticize men and the world they had made. (To the extent that by adolescence I was rolling my eyes at her criticism of the male animals in the nature shows when they didn't participate in parenting!)

Thanks to her though, while I often wobbled on the dark side as a young man, and while I'm still entirely too complacent about women's issues (as I am on race and other issues), I've always acted on the premise that "no means no."

In the internet response to the Toronto cop's stupid outburst, I read this devastating reversal of preconceptions:

• If a woman is drunk, don’t rape her.
• If a woman is walking alone at night, don’t rape her.
• If a woman is drugged and unconscious, don’t rape her.
• If a woman is wearing a short skirt, don’t rape her.
• If a woman is jogging in a park at 5 am, don’t rape her.
• If a woman looks like your ex-girlfriend you’re still hung up on, don’t rape her.
• If a woman is asleep in her bed, don’t rape her.
• If a woman is asleep in your bed, don’t rape her.
• If a woman is doing her laundry, don’t rape her.
• If a woman is in a coma, don’t rape her.
• If a woman changes her mind in the middle of or about a particular activity, don’t rape her.
• If a woman has repeatedly refused a certain activity, don’t rape her.
• If a woman is not yet a woman, but a child, don’t rape her.
• If your girlfriend or wife is not in the mood, don’t rape her.
• If your step-daughter is watching TV, don’t rape her.
• If you break into a house and find a woman there, don’t rape her.
• If your friend thinks it’s okay to rape someone, tell him it’s not, and that he’s not your friend.
• If your “friend” tells you he raped someone, report him to the police.
• If your frat-brother or another guy at the party tells you there’s an unconscious woman upstairs and it’s your turn, don’t rape her, call the police and tell the guy he’s a rapist.
• Tell your sons, god-sons, nephews, grandsons, sons of friends it’s not okay to rape someone.
• Don’t tell your women friends how to be safe and avoid rape.
• Don’t imply that she could have avoided it if she’d only done/not done x.
• Don’t imply that it’s in any way her fault.
• Don’t let silence imply agreement when someone tells you he “got some” with the drunk girl.
• Don’t perpetuate a culture that tells you that you have no control over or responsibility for your actions. You can, too, help yourself. (Men Can Stop Rape)

So, I wrote this post because a couple of days ago my partner asked me how anybody could think that a woman was asking to be raped simply for dressing a certain way. I was uncomfortable because I could explain the logic (so to speak), having once acquiesced to it myself those decades ago, but I knew that if I tried to explain it it would sound like a justification. I said that the basic reason was that we have an anti-woman culture and an anti-sex culture. I then admitted that I'd once bought into the idea that a woman could increase her risks of getting assaulted by dressing a certain way.

Then, this morning, she said "Happy International Women's Day" and then something along the lines of would I make breakfast or do the dishes or make dinner or something.

The real thing I like about that list is that it puts the responsibility where it belongs. On the potential rapists and the actual rapists. It's so clear, but our culture is still so patriarchal that it can come off as shocking. As I said, I'm complacent. I'd be like those men in Golda Meir's cabinet, a couple of seconds after this:

As the late Israeli PM Golda Meir famously — and presciently — told her cabinet during a debate about a curfew on women to protect them from a spate of rapes, maybe it’s better to confine the men.

Can't you just see it? "Hunh! Instead of locking up the women because men are raping them, ... we should lock up them men! But, but, I'M A MAN! Waitaminnit!"
I've always said that I'm not a feminist. Because they wouldn't really have me. But I'm a supporter and so here's this male blogger's International Women's Day post.