According to a UK survey, one in seven people think it’s ok to hit a woman if she wears revealing or “sexy” clothes in public. Similar numbers think it’s ok to hit a woman who “nags.” An even higher percentage — a full one-quarter of respondents — believe that a woman who wears revealing clothing should be held responsible if she’s the victim of sexual assault.
Thanks to Laurence for the link.
Those statistics are pretty much horrifying. I’m curious though as to what people think about the proposal to allow women to look up previous domestic complaints about their partner. Is it necessary to prevent violence or just an invasion of privacy?
such a long way to go …
I think it’s okay to hit one in seven people in the UK.
Don’t kill yourselves.
Organize; mobilize; agitate
!
Feminist activism would be a lot more constructive.
(I don’t mean to suggest that you’re actually advocating suicide; it’s more of a general ‘downer’ tone in the post title that I’m trying to challenge.)
Um, those figures deal only with England and Wales. Not Scotland or Northern Ireland, which currently do still make up part of the United Kingdom.
It would be like me saying that Americans do something because Canadians or Mexican do.
And violence doesn’t solve anything, Neil. Sorry.
Depresso, no need to get rude. Does it say that the figures only deal with England and Wales in the article? The article says that the pilot scheme is happening in England and Wales, but I don’t see any reference to where the figures came from. And since it was filed under “UK news,” I assumed the figures represeted a UK-wide survey.
I could very well be wrong in that assumption, and the survey very well may only have covered England and Wales, but you should take that up with the reporter, not with a post that I’m pretty sure reflected the information in the article.
I found out today that 100% of my students thing that Rhianna deserved to get beat up because she a) gave him an STD and b) threw his keys out of the car. However, 100% of them agreed that if a man hit their mama’s, they’d be pissed off enough to kill the guy.
Violence and more violence.
Well, perhaps you could have done a little more reading around the subject?
http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2009/03/one_in_five_bel
What I am taking issue with here, is that a fairly influential site is misrepresenting the whole of the UK to a lot of reader who won’t bother to find out that the figures are only regarding England and Wales.
And, pardon me for saying, I am not being rude. I find your needlessly agressive tone to be more rude than mine, thank you.
Sorry, I don’t do in-depth research on every three-sentence post I put up. I have a full-time job and this is not it.
And starting off a comment with “Um” is generally a connotation of a rude tone. If my tone is needlessly aggressive it’s because I deal with irritating comments like this all day long, and it tends to get a little bit tiresome. There are plenty of ways to correct information in a post without coming across like a jerk. But hey, now we’ve de-railed this entire thread to talk about a wording issue instead of the fact that one in seven people somewhere in the UK believe that it’s ok to hit a woman if she dresses in a way you don’t like. Awesome.
Wow.
I’m not going to take this from a Canadian, I won’t be back to continue a petty and pointless argument.
Perhpas you could take some of your clearly valuable time, and read up on what the Scottish Government are doing to combat GBV and post about that? Instead of tarring all of us with the same brush?
Nagging:
If you remind someone to do something, you deserve a slap.
If that something fails to get done, you deserve a slap.
If you throw up your hands and do it yourself, you’ll end up deserving a slap because after doing everything for everybody your attitude is gonna go in the shitter.
And do you have any reason to assume that domestic violence rates in Scotland and Northern Ireland are not equal to, or greater than, those in England and Wales?
Here is the full survey:
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/violence-against-women-poll
Depresso: How’re things these days at the SNP these days?
The most shocking thing in that survey is that younger people are more likely to believe this stuff. I’d kind of hoped that it was a case of outdated attitudes among people in their 70s and 80s creating that scary high figure.
depresso- while i certainly understand not wanting to be misrepresented, i would imagine these findings generalize to most “western” countries, not just the countries in which the study was conducted.
and many countries have made considerable steps toward preventing sexual assault and changing the beliefs and social norms allowing for a culture of violence. as Thomas pointed out, though, we still have a long way to go.
“depresso- while i certainly understand not wanting to be misrepresented, i would imagine these findings generalize to most “western” countries, not just the countries in which the study was conducted.”
I was curious, so I went off to look for comparable statistics about other areas of the UK. The surveys aren’t all done at the same time, and the questions aren’t exactly the same, and sometimes important distinctions are blurred (e.g. between partial and total responsibility) when the results are reported in summary, but here’s what I found.
In the report being discussed here, which surveyed people in England and Wales, some of the questions and responses were as follows
Would you say that a woman SHOULD BE held responsible, should be PARTLY held responsible or should NEVER be held responsible if she is sexually assaulted or raped in the following circumstances? A. If she is drunk?
Should be held responsible – 11%
Should be partly held responsible – 25%
Should never be responsible – 62%
B. If she is out in public wearing sexy or revealing clothes?
Should be held responsible – 6%
Should be partly held responsible – 20%
Should never be responsible – 72%
E. If she is flirting heavily with the man beforehand?
Should be held responsible – 10%
Should be partly held responsible – 33%
Should never be responsible – 55%
A 2007 survey in Scotland
A 2008 survey carried out by Amnesty International:
At first glance, I thought this said one in seven said it’s OK to hit on a woman wearing sexy clothes, which makes sense in a perverse way. But hitting a woman for wearing sexy clothes? WTF? What is this, Saudi Arabia?
Kacie – my students, too! Although apparently biting her ear went “too far.” INSANITY.
Reason #34304932840324 not to leave my house… geez.
Well I had no faith in the human race anyways so I suppose nothing is lost…
“I’m not going to take this from a Canadian”
WTF? On several levels?
@Kacie and Kakodaimon: How old are your students?
“WTF? What is this, Saudi Arabia?”
Well, there are some parallels there, yes.
Jill, the press often already misrepresents scientific data collected in surveys and other studies. That’s because journalists don’t generally go through rigorous research methods classes. So journalists aren’t taking enough time to research what they print, and neither are you. The more people the story goes through, the more the story could be changed and misrepresented. Maybe then it shouldn’t be published until there’s a full understanding of what the results mean. I think depresso was reacting in this way because he/she felt misrepresented, just like Feministe readers feel when we read some bogus study about abortion causing breast cancer or single motherhood causing rape and murder. Depresso pointed out a very valid and common mistake made by people who report on the results of studies. It’s not that big of a deal when someone finds a problem with something you’ve posted. Learn from the mistake.
[...] said she should never be held responsible. (More at The F-Word; I originally heard about the survey at Feministe.) It is bizarre that anyone could think that a survivor is to blame for someone else’s [...]
Unfortunately, I find this utterly unsurprising. I guess it’s not even the violence itself that I find outrageous, it’s the rationalisation.
I like to imagine the other six ganged up and beat the shit out of the seventh guy.
Thickredglasses: Laura’s post just proved that depresso was attempting to create a distinction that doesn’t exist! The attitudes are worse in Scotland than England or Wales, according to those surveys, and anecdotally I would say that is definitely true, having lived in Glasgow for 6 years and witnessed first hand the reductive, dismissive attitude an awful lot of men here have towards women, and heard things my “nice, middle-class” male friends would say about the above. They agreed, that women are partly responsible if they drink.
This isn’t a news site, it’s a platform for discussion. It is assumed that we are all insightful enough to do some of the work ourselves.
I think depresso was reacting in this way because he/she felt misrepresented, just like Feministe readers feel when we read some bogus study about abortion causing breast cancer or single motherhood causing rape and murder.
No, I think Depresso was reacting this way because he feels like this survey could NEVER apply to people from Scotland, and is upset to be tarred with the same brush as those awful misogynist barbarians to the south, with their completely unrelated cultural traditions, media outlets, gender norms, etc.
As if there is something about Scottish (or Northern Irish) culture that implies the results would be different if those areas were part of the survey.
When a study about how abortion causes breast cancer comes out, we’re not pissed because they didn’t interview us, we’re pissed because it’s bad science. It’s not bad science to survey England and Wales but not Scotland or Northern Ireland – it’s just what you’ve decided is the scope of your survey.
Well, perhaps you could have done a little more reading around the subject?…What I am taking issue with here, is that a fairly influential site is misrepresenting the whole of the UK to a lot of reader who won’t bother to find out that the figures are only regarding England and Wales.
Oh, so it’s only England and Wales. Oh, well, that’s fine then, carry on. Notwithstanding the fact that the population of England alone exceeds the population of the country I live in. Move along now.
Oh, so it’s only England and Wales. Oh, well, that’s fine then, carry on. Notwithstanding the fact that the population of England alone exceeds the population of the country I live in. Move along now.
I don’t think that the size of England alone should be permitted to erase the presence of different nationalities, statistics, and circumstances in other parts of the UK. Just because one nationality or ethnic group is very large doesn’t mean that other nationalities or ethnic groups within the same state should be ignored.
I think Jill’s original post was perhaps technically correct in describing the survey as a “UK survey,” in much the same way that a survey carried out in California could be described as an “American survey” or a survey carried out in Melbourne could be described as an “Australian survey” but at the same time, this kind of description would be likely to make the casual reader misunderstand the scope of the survey.
But 27% said if a woman was drunk she was partly to blame, while the proportion was 26% if the woman was wearing revealing clothing.
Almost a third – 32% – told researchers it was partly a woman’s fault if she was flirting, while almost a fifth said she may be to blame if she has had many sexual partners.
These stats, from upthread, imply that people in Scotland do not substantially differ in their opinions from people in England and/or Wales. In fact, they kind of imply that the results would be worse if they’d included people in Scotland. So I don’t really know what y’all are so worked up about, unless it’s just general pedantry. It seems like Scottish people as likely as other Brits to buy into rape culture.
Incidentally, I would also guess that numbers in the US are virtually the same. It wouldn’t surprise me if these numbers were pretty constant across Teh West, or at least within countries with strong cultural ties to Britain and/or other EU countries.
ThickRedGlasses, I don’t dispute that depresso had a point, and I’m always happy to accept criticism and move along. Here’s the context, though: I spend all day wading through comments on this site from people who are ready to jump on every little tiny thing. Usually when someone I know and respect (or even just know) makes a mistake and I think it’s worth addressing, I’ll point it out in a polite way. I won’t start out my critique with “Um…” and follow with a series of condescending points unless I’m trying to be a jackass. So yes, I could have responded more graciously to depresso, but (a) I don’t think what I wrote horribly mischaracterized the article, and (b) since it didn’t mischaracterize the article — even if the article and my post were incomplete — I don’t see why a corrective comment had to be so damned condescending and rude. I’m happy to change the post, and at some point today I will, but I worked until midnight last night and by the time I got home I was thinking about going to bed, not about fixing a blog post. Sometimes I just get a little tired of being spoken (or “written”) to like that, all damned day long, and every once in a while I get annoyed enough where I respond in kind.
@ Stacy– my kids are high schoolers, aged 15 to 20.
[...] I first read the news at Feministe that a full one-quarter of people surveyed in England and Wales said that a woman is fully or [...]
“I’m not going to take this from a Canadian”
I may just be a stupid Canadian but I’m confused. I thought Jill was American. ..
ThickRedGlasses has a point, journalists/citizen journalists do not check facts. They used to, perhaps 20 years ago, but not now. It’s really an important issue when news is so routinely cannibalised from one media source to the next and distortions can end up everywhere…
I think what you have to bear in mind in understanding depresso’s sharp response is that issues of national identity here in the UK are constantly a sore point. The Welsh, Scottish and Irish are constantly sick of being called English – and ime, it tends to come from people outside the UK more. My guess is, this is an American site – depresso saw this post as lumping us all together and flew off the handle a bit. Obviously the rest of the UK is just as, if not more misogynistic as they’re so closely aligned. But honestly I’d put it down to a simple intolerance of being put in the same category as another country.
& to address the actual intention behind the post, it is really worrying. Particularly the finding that respondents aged 25-38 (iiirc) found violence more acceptable, whilst those over 65 and from lower demographics were more likely to victim blame. Here is a link to the write-up from the Home Office website: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/violence-against-women-poll?view=Binary
The Welsh, Scottish and Irish are constantly sick of being called English
Nobody called the Welsh, Scottish, or Irish English. The mistake was that Jill believed the study to cover the entire UK, when it did not. An easy misunderstanding, since apparently the original article doesn’t make it entirely clear.
Just as I’m sure that there are European blogs out there lumping together various US states which are in reality quite different from each other culturally and politically. Traveling overseas, I’ve been asked weirdly generalized questions about Why Americans Do X, when it’s obvious that they’re talking about something peculiar to a certain state or region and not applicable to the whole US. I generally don’t take much offense to this, because it’s stupid to expect that everyone else on the planet fully understands the regional and cultural intricacies of my particular part of the world. Brits should get used to doing the same.
I may just be a stupid Canadian but I’m confused. I thought Jill was American. ..
I wonder if depresso included that mistake deliberately, in order to make the point that the difference between Scotland and England is not totally dissimilar to the difference between America and Canada (although obviously the Scottish Parliament only has limited powers, since Scotland is still part of the UK, whereas Canada and the US are both sovereign states).
A lot of journalists do fact-check; all the freelancers I know (myself included) do, and it was emphasized heavily in my journalism classes. Yes, there are journalists who don’t, and this is a big problem with daily newspaper journalism in particular due to short deadlines. But saying “journalists don’t fact-check anymore” is inaccurate and offensive to all the ethical journalists out there.
The issue of misinterpreting statistics is a much deeper one in society, and not specific to journalists. As I’m finding in the mindbogglingly hard graduate stats class I’m taking now, scientists misinterpret statistics more often than you want to think about–or don’t run the right analyses to start with. The average member of the public–and most journalists fall into that category when it comes to statistical knowledge–isn’t very good at interpreting statistics, which I think is a big problem with education, since being able to understand statistics (e.g. risk assessment) is pretty important to modern life.
I think a lot of that is an artifact that comes from how we use statistics in society, especially in the social “sciences.” Statistical analysis can be really useful when you’re looking at things that can be easily translated into numbers, but the further you get from the concrete and the objective the more trouble you run into. In most of the social “sciences” we use something called “null hypothesis significance testing. Now its not been long since I’ve had a graduate level statistics course, and I’m in the midst of a graduate level research methods course right now taught by an esteemed and multiply published professor. In both of these courses I’ve been taught that good statistics can tell you the probability of your hypothesis being correct given the data you have. Thats the conventional wisdom, its how we find things out in the social sciences. It’s also wrong. Jacob Cohen wrote an excellent article entitled “The Earth Is Round (P < 0.05)” that was somehow published in the American Psychologist in 1994. You can find it for free with a google search, good stuff if you’re interested in being able to critically read stats.
No, I think Depresso was reacting this way because he feels like this survey could NEVER apply to people from Scotland, and is upset to be tarred with the same brush as those awful misogynist barbarians to the south, with their completely unrelated cultural traditions, media outlets, gender norms, etc.
Actually, the results of this survey can never apply to people from Scotland or the US or Brunei or any other country besides England and Wales. Results of any study can only be generalized to the population from which the sample came and only if that sample is representative. Otherwise, you’re making assumptions based on nothing.
As if there is something about Scottish (or Northern Irish) culture that implies the results would be different if those areas were part of the survey.
There very well may be. There are limitations to every study. Until the group is studied, you have to assume that there are myriad differences between the group being studied and the group that was not studied. That’s the point of having controlled studies. That’s the point of having a large representative sample.
When a study about how abortion causes breast cancer comes out, we’re not pissed because they didn’t interview us, we’re pissed because it’s bad science. It’s not bad science to survey England and Wales but not Scotland or Northern Ireland – it’s just what you’ve decided is the scope of your survey.
And it’s bad science to make generalizations about all people based on the study of a few people of a particular group. You don’t have to survey Scotland and Northern Ireland. But you have to survey Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as England and Wales, if you want to support the claim that 1 out of 7 people from the UK believe women deserve rape sometimes.
Thickredglasses: Laura’s post just proved that depresso was attempting to create a distinction that doesn’t exist! The attitudes are worse in Scotland than England or Wales, according to those surveys, and anecdotally I would say that is definitely true, having lived in Glasgow for 6 years and witnessed first hand the reductive, dismissive attitude an awful lot of men here have towards women, and heard things my “nice, middle-class” male friends would say about the above. They agreed, that women are partly responsible if they drink.
That doesn’t mean I didn’t have a point. And the second survey was only given to college students in Northern Ireland, so those results can only be generalized to students in Northern Ireland from the college or colleges wherever the survey was conducted.
And there are always, always, always, always distinctions between and within populations. Always.
Nobody called the Welsh, Scottish, or Irish English.
Quite right. But I was reiterating that this was probably something related that may have made depresso act in the way they did. I’m not defending being rude, just trying to add some context… ‘UK’ is synonymous with England for many people, and that’s what’s annoying to a lot of people.
But saying “journalists don’t fact-check anymore” is inaccurate and offensive to all the ethical journalists out there.
Let me amend: the vast majority of journalists do not fact check. Especially the quality quintet, as they are called. Since this article came from The Times iirc, my point still stands.
It looks like you are diminishing the point under discussion by focussing on a technical point. The fact that the headline was possibly misleading doesn’t take away from the fact that the content of the article shows England and Wales to have disturbingly retrogressive attitudes to women and rape. The other survey proved this to also be the case in Scotland. We don’t know about Northern Ireland, granted.
Do you fell like this tiny slip has negatively affected the impact of these findings? I don’t understand your agenda here, why you are so eager to make this point, or what you think it will achieve?
“We don’t know about Northern Ireland, granted.”
We do: in comment 17 I provided a link to, and quotes from, an Amnesty International report about attitudes in Northern Ireland among university students.
Brits should get used to doing the same.
Please don’t refer to the “Welsh, Scottish and Irish” as Brits. Particularly not the Irish, although I’m pretty sure a lot of Scottish people don’t really identify as “British” either.
Laura — good point. That explains what I didn’t get (a bizarre and incorrect assumption, and implied insult).
And also, M., as a former reporter, I was expected to fact-check every article I wrote to avoid lawsuits. We’re taught fact-checking in J-school. That many modern reporters and editors don’t do it is not a problem with journalism as a whole, it’s a problem with how sloppy journalism has become, ridiculously, acceptable.
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