Last Friday Wales and Sheffield United striker Ched Evans was convicted of rape and given a five year sentence. By Sunday lunchtime the hashtag #justiceforched had started trending on Twitter, and not only had the victim in the case been subjected to some of the most heinous misogynist abuse imaginable, she’d also, in complete contempt of UK law which grants lifetime anonymity for rape survivors, been publicly named.
A quick glance through the hashtag feed (if you can stomach it) shows how rape culture is alive and well in this country. It also shows how completely ignorant so many people are of the laws on rape, specifically the Sexual Offences Act 2003, and the statutory definition of consent that’s contained within it:
“Section 74 defines consent as “if s/he agrees by choice, and has the freedom and capacity to make that choice”.
The CPS provides this legal guidance on the issue of consent:
- The 2003 Act provides a clear definition of ‘consent’ for the purposes of the law of rape, and by defining it with reference to “capacity to make that choice”, it sufficiently addresses the issue of consent in the context of voluntary consumption of alcohol by the complainant;
- If, through drink (or for any other reason) the complainant has temporarily lost her capacity to choose whether to have intercourse on the relevant occasion, she is not consenting, and subject to questions about the defendant’s state of mind, if intercourse takes place, this would be rape.”
So, it couldn’t really be much clearer could it: if a woman is too drunk to consent to sex, then any intercourse that takes place is rape.
Sadly though, I suspect that even if we printed the legal definition of consent and the CPS guidance in sodding great neon letters and posted it on every billboard in the country, we’d still see a significant proportion of people claiming that a drunken victim of rape is simply a “slag”, and was “asking for” everything she got. Because despite all the hard work that’s going into dispelling rape myths such as this one – the one that says that women somehow “provoke” rape by their appearance or their behaviour, myths like these still prevail.
It never ceases to amaze me whenever I write about this subject how so many people are quick to jump in to try and deny the prevalence of these rape myths, or to deny that we do in fact live in a rape culture. Feminist writers are frequently accused of exaggerating the problem by discussing rape and sexual violence in such terms, or else we’re accused of putting women off from reporting rape and sexual violence by painting a wholly unrealistic picture of the reception they can expect to receive if they are brave enough to attempt to report the crimes perpetrated against them.
Well try telling that to the victim in the Ched Evans case, or to the women in the Assange case. Try telling that to Nafissatou Diallo, or to a host of other women who have taken just that step only to find themselves slut shamed and vilified, not only on social networking sites like Twitter, but in the mainstream media and in courtrooms the whole world over.
Because if anything is putting women off from reporting, if anything is making them think twice about seeking justice, it’s not feminists doing it, it’s the reception they see other women get when they try to do the same.
Ched Evans is now a convicted rapist, and yet he’s being bombed with messages of sympathy and support. His victim meanwhile is facing opprobrium and hate, for no other reason than she’s a woman who dared to try and seek justice for a crime that was committed against her.
There’s got to be something seriously wrong in our culture when the response to a crime can become so twisted in this way. And there’s got to be more that can be done to ensure not just that survivors seeking justice get all the support and help they need, but that anonymity for rape survivors means just that.
@stfumisogynists has documented a lot of the Twitter response to this case on the Little Tweets of Misogyny Tumblr (Trigger warning!)
The Rape Crisis National Freephone Helpline is open from 12-2.30pm & 7-9.30pm every day of the year: you can call them on 0808 802 9999
Too Much To Say For Myself 
Yes. All of this. Every word. I’m really too angry about what I’ve seen on twitter in the last 24 hours to come up with anything coherent on it. Thanks for writing this.
Thank you for not only a very thoughtful insightful post but also making the legal position absolutely clear for some of the complete idiots out there! I too have watched with horror the trends on twitter.
Thanks for writing this! It actually makes me feel a bit sick to think there are people who could support Ched Evans; and also quite worried about my teenage niece having go out into a world that contains such people.
There will be a lot of rapists in the crowd of attackers, angry that any kind of brake is being put on their activities.
It’ll be interesting to see if Dominic Grieve actually follows through on the comments he made recently re prosecution of people publishing restricted information. He warned social media users users that just because they got away with it in the footballer case that they should not assume that they would if it happened again.
It’s a criminal offence to breach the law on anonymity for rape victims. Why aren’t the tweeters who are breaking the law being prosecuted?
It is overwhlelmingly men who are the ones tweeting and subjecting this young woman to vicious male hatred and male contempt. The language these men are using clearly shows their embedded male hatred and male contempt for women and girls. Why? Because this young woman courageously charged two powerful male footballer players with subjecting her to group rape. How dare women hold men accountable!! Don’t women know men have the innate right of sexual access to any female 24/7.
The Sexual Offences Act is a mess because it does not state that a person (sic) is presumed to be incapable of giving sexual consent when that person is intoxicated. Note what the Sexual Offences Act does say is: Section 76 is this statement: A person is guilty of an offence if he that is A does not reasonably believe B consents. But then in Section 77 immediately following
there is this statement: Deciding whether a belief is reasonable is to be determined having regard to all the circumstances, including any steps A has taken to ascertain whether B consents. Ah ‘circumstances’ is the key word because men and juries always believe women’s sexual history; women’s medical history; personal character is always suspect because unlike men she is just ‘sex.’ Most males who rape women and girls are respectable upstanding men – such as professional male footballers and it is their social status not their sex which defines them as ‘respectable.’ See this link as regards debunking the notion ‘respectable upstanding males never commit violence against women.’ http://www.feminisms.org/4885/all-the-abusive-men-ive-known-seemed-super-nice-at-first/
The Sexual Offences Act conveniently for men does not define what is ‘reasonable belief’ but instead we are supposed to assume this is what the ordinary male (because men are the ones who define reasonable male sexual behaviour and therefore male sexual aggression and male sexual dominance over women is “normal male behaviour”) not women in the street believes to be reasonable behaviour and that it is in accordance with male defined standards of male sexual behaviour. Most juries believe women are always responsible for ‘provoking’ or not preventing a male or males from gaining sexual access to their bodies and this is why innumerable men are acquitted of the charge of rape and/or group raping a female.
But the crux of the issue is the widespread belief among men that they have the innate and unchanging right of sexual access to any female. That is the issue and that is why men are hysterically engaged in tweeting women-hating messages and telling women what sexual violence they will do to females if they dare to hold a male or males accountable for committing sexual violence against women and girls.
Note too the male accomplices – the males who watched these two men group rape the young woman, have not been charged with the crime of voyeurism or as accomplices to the crime of rape. I wonder why? There is evidence aplenty these males filmed the two men raping this young woman and these male rape supporters did nothing to prevent what was happening. Oh but I forget – these men were merely engaging in ‘boys will be boys behaviour’ so therefore they are not accountable for condoning and promoting male sexual violence against women.
The Sexual Offences Act needs to be radically overhauled and ‘consent’ replaced with mutual, informed and free agreement. That would be a start but given malestream media and male dominated popular culture which includes malestream pornography all promotes the misogynistic lie that women are men’s disposable sexual service stations. We therefore have a huge, huge task if we are to convince Joe Public his condoning male sexual violence against women is a crime. But given men continue to declare world is a male dominant one wherein men’s claims and excuses are swiftly accepted as ‘truths’ and male hatred/male contempt for women because of our sex is accepted as ‘just male banter’ then I do not anticipate any change soon. Instead I predict more and more males will commit rape agaisnt women and men will angrily silence women’s challenge to male socio-economic power.
I don’t know the full story. But in the interests of fairness, what is say that the male in this case, who was also heavily intoxicated was in the right frame of mind to make such a judgement call? Given that they had both been binge drinking during a night out. In my opinion if they are both intoxicated, they are both not in a position to give consent. And why was the other male who also had sex with her acquitted & not guilty?
There have been non-statutory cases of males being raped by females http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7125884 and http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15876968. Which should mean men also have the right of consent.
Mustafa:
The court came to disparate verdicts because the man not convicted is the one whom the drunken woman chose to accompany back to his hotel room; the jury decided that her actions in accompanying him back were enough that, in his drunken state, the acquitted man could reasonably have believed that she consented to sex.
The convicted rapist comes into the picture later – he was invited in by the other man involved, and assured by his male friend, not the woman, that he would be OK to have sex with her.
The difference that the jury picked up on is that the acquitted man could point to a variety of actions on the part of the woman (such as coming back to his hotel room with him having been invited there for sex) that indicated some degree of consent, and given the drunkenness of all parties, those actions created a reasonable argument that she had consented to sex with him at the time, regardless of whether she felt violated by him in the light of sobriety. As a result, the jury decided to find him not guilty.
On the other hand, Ched Evans, when trying to argue that he had a reasonable belief that she consented, could only point to statements made by his friend. He could not point to actions on her part that indicated consent; given this, the guilty verdict was inevitable.
Turning it round a bit, and on the assumption that you’re male – if you go home with a woman, and have sex with her, then fall asleep, does she have the right to tell her friend that it’s OK for him to penetrate you? That’s the analogous situation that Ched was trying to argue would be acceptable; given that I would consider the male friend to be raping me in that situation, I can understand why the jury found Ched guilty.
Reblogged this on raperelatedposttraumaticstress.