Is this public awareness poster from the NHS offensive to women?

@hawkeye10,

You and I agree on the message in the poster and the situation in general.

We'll have to agree to disagree on how we read RF.

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@ossobuco,

Quote:

but I want to see the NO poster re men who drink too much and rape women (or others).

I would be all for a poster that tell men to avoid having drunken sex with any women that they do not have a long relationship with and who they can trust.

To do so is putting themselves into harm way in the same manner as women who get drunken in unsafe situations are putting themselves in harm way where only luck decided the outcome.

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@ehBeth,

I dont see how the words he used go anywhere but " If you make yourself an easy victim you should not be shocked if you become a victim". Most humans are lazy, abusers too, they tend to take the easiest route to what they want. Why would any sane woman choose to make the rape of her easier? A woman getting super drunk with men she can not trust is on par with walking around Rome with a 100 Euro bill half sticking out of your back pocket. You probably will not find it there when you want it, and guess what; I am not going to be very receptive to you whining that you got robbed..." but that was my money, no one should have taken it from me!" will fall on deaf ears.

We cant save everyone. The stupid ones can go first.

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@hawkeye10,

Again, we will have to agree to disagree about how we read RF and his comment.

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@ehBeth,

ehBeth wrote:

Again, we will have to agree to disagree about how we read RF and his comment.

perhaps he/she will pop around to clarify, but the language has rules, if they were followed then I am right.

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@hawkeye10,

I get that you want to argue.

I don't disagree with anything you have written in this thread other than your interpretation of what another poster has written.

Enjoy your time defending him.

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@iamsam82,

Quote:

Bill. I'm mystified as to why it's caused a minor furore over here.

Part of the controversy is because these are old posters, from an ad campaign initiated in 2005, and which was discontinued in 2007, to decrease binge-drinking, not rape, but some of the posters remain up in some locations, and do appear to blame rape victims for their own rapes. An online petition was started to get all the old posters taken down.
'There Will Be No Apology' Over NHS Rape Posters - Despite 43,000-Strong Petition
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/07/31/nhs-dimisses-outrage-over-rape-posters-victims_n_5636953.html

In addition, the implied victim-blaming is contra to the NHS' own message to rape victims.

Quote:

'It is not consistent with the NHS' own guidelines on "Help after rape and sexual assault" in which they say "If you have been sexually assaulted, remember that it wasn’t your fault. It doesn’t matter what you were wearing, where you were or whether you had been drinking. A sexual assault is always the fault of the perpetrator.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2706734/Anger-government-poster-appears-blame-rape-alcohol-women-drink.html#ixzz39CNORVwV

So most of the controversy is simply over the fact that all the old posters haven't been taken down or removed from download on the internet. The government should just take them all down. They are sending a mixed-message regarding rape and who's responsible for the rape.

The purpose of the defunct campaign had been to try to reduce binge drinking for 18-24 year olds, and they chose a bad example to try to send that anti-excessive drinking message. If the campaign posters had also pointed out that sex with a drunken woman is rape, they would have been less offensive, and more accurate, and better balanced.

I can't imagine that this was even an effective anti-binge drinking campaign 9 years ago, and I see no point in keeping those old posters up now. I don't understand why they just don't take all of them down now.

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@firefly,

Quote:

So most of the controversy is simply over the fact that all the old posters haven't been taken down or removed from download on the internet. The government should just take them all down

Only if they send an unhelpful message, which they do not. They send a message that the feminists once supported but now do not, that is the problem.

Quote:

I don't understand why they just don't take all of them down now.

It really is not difficult, most of us would like it if there were fewer rapes, and so we like good common sense messaging which can be assumed to degrease rapes. A huge portion of the rapes happen in cases where both people are very drunk, fewer very drunk people in the company of people they dont know very well should help.

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@firefly,

Thanks for the background.

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@ehBeth,

The thing is, people now equate rape with loose women hanging around, probably under influence.

I was raped at noon, neither person on any drug, he was just way larger.

I am reactive to the idea that women are somehow takeable for being there.

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@ehBeth,

Quote:

Enjoy your time defending him.

Strange that anyone, either myself or Hawkeye would need to defend a posting that clearly does not state or imply that raping a drunken woman is ok.

I read that posting at least ten times looking for how anyone could interpreted it in the manner you had done without any success.

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@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

Quote:
Enjoy your time defending him.

Strange that anyone, either myself or Hawkeye would need to defend a posting that clearly does not state or imply that raping a drunken woman is ok.

I read that posting at least ten times looking for how anyone could interpreted it in the manner you had done without any success.

amazingly enough I have no trouble defending

Quote:

If you make yourself an easy victim you should not be shocked if you become a victim"

I have from the beginning of my time here been unequivocally hostile to victim culture and all of its tenets. I dont want to celebrate victims, I want to do away with them. This of course will do away with all of the work that the feminists occupy themselves with as well as draw paychecks for, which is why they cant deal with me.

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@ossobuco,

Quote:

The thing is, people now equate rape with loose women hanging around, probably under influence.

Where do you get that idea?

Quote:

I am reactive to the idea that women are somehow takeable for being there.

An idea/concept I have yet to see here or anywhere else expressed by anyone.

The simple commonsense idea that it is damn unwise for a woman to get drunk, in a not known to be a safe location, to the point that she is are no longer able to function and therefore greatly increased her vulnerability to being sexuality assault should not be an invalid concept.

Nor do I see how that is either victims blaming or implying that rapes only happen to loose women and or drunken women!!!!!!!!!!!!

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@hawkeye10,

I have been looking for an analogy for this nonsense that it is somehow wrong to suggest to women to not placed themselves at greatly increase risk of being sexuality assaulted.

It is wrong to have a poster warning people not to cross the road in the middle of the block instead of at the corners as that is telling drivers that it is ok to run over anyone who cross in the middle of the street.

It is wrong to have a poster that tell people that it is unwise of walk the streets during a lighting storm as it is everyone rights to walk the streets and you are implying that the only ones that get hit by lightening are acting in such a manner and therefore victims blaming.

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I think it all boils down to how you interpret the message. If you think that the poster is saying it's the woman's fault she got raped because she'd been drinking then of course it's offensive.

The fact is that sexual predators prey on vulnerable people, and if you drink a lot you're vulnerable. If you drink so much you can't remember what happened it's very easy to be taken advantage of, and predators always claim consent was given when the victim was incapable of consent. It's not easy to say you didn't consent if you can't remember what happened, and there are people on this thread who would take the rapist's word over the victims any day.

Drinking isn't a problem, binge drinking is. In many towns across the UK on a Friday and Saturday night you can see young people considerably the worse for wear. It's not just sexual assaults that are a problem, violence and drink related illnesses are another consequence, some people are getting cirrhosis of the liver in their late 20s/early 30s.

The NHS is the front line in dealing with this, you want to avoid going to casualty on a Friday/Saturday night. Even Sunday afternoon can be fraught. Quite a few years ago my then 5 year old son slipped coming down the stairs and cracked his head open. He had a huge gash that needed immediate medical attention. We had a five hour wait, because a lot of drunks who injured themselves Saturday night only realised how badly they'd injured themselves when they came to Sunday afternoon.

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After spending three years in the Army Medical Corps, i worked for many years in hospitals, in hospital emergency rooms (what is called casualty in the UK). Friday, Saturday and Sunday were nightmares in which the usual work of the emergency room was overwhelmed by the consequences of drunkenness. It pissed off the medical staff and it pissed off the police. In many cases, if a drunk could be stabilized, they would be strapped to a gurney and put away in a treatment room while everyone else was dealt with. Alcohol is the biggest drug abuse problem of the human race, and in most places, it's legal.

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@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

I think it all boils down to how you interpret the message. If you think that the poster is saying it's the woman's fault she got raped because she'd been drinking then of course it's offensive.

You never see other posters telling men to not get drunk or they might end up rolled in an alley. No posters telling people to lock their doors to prevent robberies. For no other crime and with no other group do we see posters like this. It is always telling women how to modify their behavior not to get raped. That is the questionable part. The flip side is that I do take common sense precautions to prevent being robbed. Reminding people to use common sense isn't bad, is it? Why does the NHS feel it just needs to warn women of the dangers of excess drinking?

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@engineer,

engineer wrote:

izzythepush wrote:

I think it all boils down to how you interpret the message. If you think that the poster is saying it's the woman's fault she got raped because she'd been drinking then of course it's offensive.

You never see other posters telling men to not get drunk or they might end up rolled in an alley. No posters telling people to lock their doors to prevent robberies. For no other crime and with no other group do we see posters like this. It is always telling women how to modify their behavior not to get raped. That is the questionable part. The flip side is that I do take common sense precautions to prevent being robbed. Reminding people to use common sense isn't bad, is it? Why does the NHS feel it just needs to warn women of the dangers of excess drinking?

Exactly, to both izzy and engineer.....

This is where my thoughts are churning.

1 Reply