Rape is a crime of violence and is about power. Wearing sensible shoes will not combat it, writes ANTHEA McTIERNAN
WE'VE ALL had tricky sartorial incidents. Heel trapped in a drain. Dress caught in the old knickers. That twisted bra strap you're unable to retrieve during a crunch meeting with the bank manager. However, it seems that, for women, clothes are more than occasionally irritating.
Clothes are, in fact, downright dangerous. Remember that next time you are in Top Shop.
Remember it tonight when you're getting ready to let your hair down. (On second thoughts keep your hair up, or just bite the bullet and get it cut, who knows what your golden locks might do to a man? You have been warned.)
According to this week's Irish Examiner/Red C poll, 26 per cent of those asked agreed that women who are raped bear some responsibility for being attacked. Yeah, you heard right. One in three people, according to the survey, think you are asking for it ("partly or fully", whatever that means) if you wear revealing clothes.
Just to be sure we're all singing from the same hymn sheet here - and before we get on to "suitable" clothing for the girl about town - the Oxford English Dictionarydefines rape as "the crime, typically committed by a man, of forcing another person to have sexual intercourse with the offender against their will".
That's clear then.
Which leaves us women facing the tricky question of what exactly we are allowed to wear before we are deemed by a quarter of a significant sample group to be asking for it? Perhaps a government department (Justice, Equality and Law Reform, maybe) could produce a leaflet advising the female population how short a hemline can be before it could be adjudged by a court of law to be an incitement to violate. I'm thinking heels, cleavage and bum-hugging trousers should also come under the department's ambit.
It would help the courts. It would help us. And I believe a number of countries already have a state-sponsored dress code for women. We wouldn't be the first.
It's serious. According to the report accompanying the poll, the results will arm defence barristers looking to swing the deciding three members in every 12-person jury at a rape trial. Not guilty, your honour.
It's a huge responsibility for fashion manufacturers to bear. It seems it is they - and the ill-advised woman who purchased the label's faux-leather mini-skirt in the first place - who bear the responsibility for a brutal crime. The rapist, it would appear, is off the hook.
When you bear in mind that only one in 12 rapes are reported and of those reported fewer than 10 per cent result in a conviction, it's an even greater worry. That's a 1 per cent conviction rate! Just to make it even clearer where we stand amongst other mature democracies, between 1998 and 2001 Ireland had the lowest conviction rate for sexual crime in the EU.
We can't be dressing that badly.
Rape is about power. Rape is about the abuse of power. Rape is the result of the inequality in power between men and women, who, in the majority of cases, take the role of the attacker and the attacked.
Rape is not about short skirts and dark alleys. Rape is not about alcopops and drunken snogs. Rape is not about beautiful teenage girls learning to express their beauty.
It is about violence and violation and control and all of us should take a stand.
The Red C poll has provided a bitter, but salutary reminder of a public mindset that has changed little since the sexual revolution. The survey unearthed an embarrassment of reasons to blame women for their own violation. Some 41 per cent of respondents said a woman who is drunk and takes drugs is to blame for being attacked. Ten per cent thought the victim is entirely at fault if she has had a number of sexual partners.
Some 37 per cent thought a woman who flirts extensively is at least complicit, if not completely in the wrong, if she is the victim of a sex crime and 38 per cent thought a woman must share some of the blame if she walks through a deserted area.
The presence of the threat of rape keeps women in their place. It is not a reason to stop us going out at night. That's called a curfew. It's not a reason for stopping your daughter wearing what she wants. That's called a uniform. It's not a reason for stopping a woman enjoying a glass of wine. That's called prohibition.
Until it stops, until "the crime, typically committed by a man, of forcing another person to have sexual intercourse with the offender against their will" ceases to be, women will not enjoy the full panoply of human rights. Wearing sensible shoes is not the answer.
Anthea McTeirnan in an Irish Times journalist