The Times of Swaziland is back to its old trick blaming the victims of rape for bringing it upon themselves.
On Friday (4 January 2008) the newspaper reported the rape of a woman security guard. In a separate piece the newspaper gave advice on ‘how to avoid being raped’.
Top of the list of advice to women was ‘avoid dressing seductively’. It went on, ‘When a woman or girl dresses half-naked she is saying through her action “I am available to any man that needs me”. When you dress seductively you are exposing yourself to the danger of being raped.’
This is nonsense. Rape has nothing to do with sexual desire; it is about men having power over women. Blaming women is just an excuse to justify female oppression through the control of women’s behaviour. The people who say that women bring rape on themselves by wearing short skirts tend to be the same people who want to restrict the role of women in Swaziland society to that of servants to men. That’s why in Swazi customary law women have no legal rights separate from men (usually husbands or fathers).
I would suggest that the Times managing editor reads his own newspaper, because not only did he allow this dangerous nonsense about rape victims to be published, he also included another report on the same day which was headlined 700 children raped in two years.
The Police Child Protection Unit released these figures along with a statement ‘children were the most vulnerable to rape because they were defenceless.’
The Times quoted the Swaziland Action Group Abuse saying the statistics showed that it was the children’s relatives rather than strangers who raped them.
This is a direct contradiction of the earlier Times report. These children were not raped because they dressed seductively. They were raped because they were defenceless and someone took advantage of this.
Just as children are defenceless so are women.
The crime of rape is prevalent in Swaziland. In the past two years as well as the 700 children, 463 women were reported raped. The newspapers are full of reports of pastors who rape women in their congregation; teachers raping their pupils and gangs of men raping women as punishment for perceived wrongdoing.
This is not the first time the Times has misled its readers about rape. In its truly dreadful weekly column Let’s Talk About Sex, the Times told its readers ‘the way women dress is entirely leading. Women bring it [rape] upon themselves. If they dress up in mini-skirts and body hugging pants, what are men supposed to do?’
This is nonsense. There is absolutely no independent evidence anywhere in the world that supports the ‘short skirts’ explanation for rape, yet the Times repeats the lie to its readers.
The Times is wrong on rape. It has been told time and again that it is wrong, so why does it insist on continuing to give men permission to rape?
See also
‘TIMES’ PEDDLES IGNORANCE ON RAPE
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