The Daily Telegraph published a story with the headline “Women who dress provocatively more likely to be raped, claim scientists”. The story went on to claim that women who are outgoing or drunk are also more likely to be raped. The wonderful Ben Goldacre of Bad Science followed up on the story. Turns out the “study” didn’t say anything like this, it was actually very preliminary work by a Masters student, and it was called “Promiscuous men more likely to rape”, in the author’s own press release.
Many thanks to Flaffer and possibly others (I think there were some, but I can’t find the emails)!
Just for the record, Phil – in a comment here – also drew out attention to the story. The link given is really worth checking out.
Hi,
I personally believe rapists have a mental illness but, I was wondering whether someone with the intention to rape or mentality to rape, as well as capacity would be provoked or aided in the process by women whom do not dress modestly? i.e. miniskirts.. Is it possible?
Your thoughts.
Isn’t the title of this post a little misleading? There’s a big difference between that women who wear revealing clothing are more likely to be sexually assaulted, and thinking that this amounts to such women “asking for it.”
typo: “between **thinking that women …”
RM, rape is a terrible assault on a person’s body. Perhaps there are various things that trigger it: a dark night, certain music, and perhaps clothes. Perhaps a scent in the air triggers his desires.
I have a gay relative and, when he was an adolescent in Princeton, NJ, his wearing preppy clothes got him threatened a couple of times by gangs from nearby places like Trenton.
Mini-sirts might be like preppy clothes; anything that makes a target more visible might set off an attack.
That’s a pretty awful fact, just unfortunately unsurprising.
Deb, your concerns are important. it’s significant that it was the newspaper that WRONGLY reported the research in terms of women asking for it.
Deb, you are right. One could indeed think that women who wear revealing clothes are more likely to be raped, while denying that they are “asking for it”. But it is very, very common for the revealing clothes claim to be taken to entail the asking for it claim. I was making a flippant reference to the narrative that the badly-reported story fit into. And maybe that was a little unfair.
Update: the Telegraph printed an error notice regarding the article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/5818138/British-Psychological-Society-Miss-Sophia-Shaw.html
Good to know– thanks! But what a stunning explanation:
“Owing to an editing error, our report “Women who dress provocatively more likely to be raped, claim scientists” (June 23) wrongly stated that research presented at the recent BPS conference by Sophia Shaw found that women who drink alcohol are more likely to be raped. In fact, the research found the opposite. We apologise for our error.”
An editing error??