I suspect, though I am hypothesising, that this would indeed change the numbers because of the following thought process among the moralists:

My daugher is properly brought up, and would never behave like those gutter sluts who wear such clothes, or nag, or commit marital infidelities. Therefore, in any situation where my daughter was assaulted, since she would not be behaving badly, she would bear no culpability.

I suspect that it would have no impact at all on the serious misogynistic category, since ime the desire/compulsion to abuse their own family seems to be central to the desire and/or compulsion to abuse other women.

Q: “is it possible that there could be power imbalances under which adults are forced to negotiate unfreely and hence accept outcomes that couldn’t reasonably be described as ‘consenting’?”

A: No. Of course there are always power imbalances in any negotiation but if it is freely entered into by both parties and is conducted without any element of complulsion then the end agreement is consensual.

It is one of the blind spots of the authoritarian left that they believe they can legislate all power imbalances out of society. Stalin discovered that was impossible and, even if it weren’t, it would be undesirable.

I’m a bit disturbed by the prostitute thread here, though. However complicated the nature of their contracts are – the fact that there is at least some degree to which their consent is coerced by circumstances when they sell their services, and I think that’s true though at best no more so than anyone selling a service (at worst it’s much worse) – they’re not selling rape. Raping a prostitute is rape, not theft.

For Christ’s sake, some of these women are horribly vulnerable. Think about Ipswich, not that long ago. Defending them should go without saying.

PS, I like the neologism glibertoonian. The bloggertarian meme is becoming Joycian in its complexity.

“A senior Vatican cleric has defended the excommunication of the mother and doctors of a nine-year-old girl who had an abortion in Brazil after being raped.
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, head of the Catholic church’s Congregation for Bishops, told the daily La Stampa on Saturday that the twins the girl had been carrying had a right to live.
‘It is a sad case but the real problem is that the twins conceived were two innocent persons, who had the right to live and could not be eliminated,’ he said.
…
The regional archbishop, Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, pronounced excommunication for the mother for authorising the operation and doctors who carried it out for fear that the slim girl would not survive carrying the foetuses to term.
“God’s law is above any human law. So when a human law … is contrary to God’s law, this human law has no value,” Cardoso had said.
He also said the accused stepfather would not be expelled from the church. Although the man allegedly committed “a heinous crime … the abortion – the elimination of an innocent life – was more serious”.

Can we really draw such conclusions after a few phone calls and a disclaimer from the researchers themselves, stating:
“Please note that this research is NOT part of the Home Office National Statistics programme but is EXPLORATORY work (my capitals)
Results should be seen as indicative and directional rather than absolute.
It is not recommended that exact percentages are used outside the context of this document”.

Thankfully, Unity provides much needed context to make sense of the potential basis for some of the responses obtained after the phone surveys.

Shatterface @ 6 – Dishearteningly, I suspect that you might be right. I also think that there’s a lot in the arguments that much, much black homophobia stems from the disproportionate number of black people likely to end up incarcerated in an institution where they are likely to get raped.

Sunny @ 7 – See Shatterface @ 12, please.

Unity @ 16 – Ouch.

John B @ 30 Agency?

(Q: “is it possible that there could be power imbalances under which adults are forced to negotiate unfreely and hence accept outcomes that couldn’t reasonably be described as ‘consenting’?” / A: “no, because free markets are T3H WIN and I love Mises to pieces”)

OK. That is a hard one.

(Not the opening line of the negotiation).

Just a minute I think I’ve got it. Yes thats it.

Both parties consent

No suprise to me .

Prostitution is a classic – and horribly complicated – is-ought problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is-ought_problem

And, if you read the section on criticism you should very quickly realise that non of the proposed solutions to Hume’s formulation of the is-ought problem provide a basis for solving the ethical issues relating to prostitution.

Won’t it?

As John B has pointed out, in non-binary attitudinal surveys (i.e. where respondent are given more than just straight yes/no or agree/disagree options) the data will invariably some some degree of skew towards the middle option(s).

This is a particular issue when it comes to attitudes towards contentious issues in which there a personal contact element between the researcher and the respondent, i.e. face to face interviews, telephone surveys, etc.

In simple terms, if we look at the data on attitudes to responsibility in the different rape scenarios, then it not unreasonable to suggest that one would get a somewhat more accurate picture of people’s real attitudes if we were to revise the figures for ‘fully responsible’ upwards by as much as 2-3%, at the expense of the figures for partial responsibility on the premise that some respondents will have moderated their real opinions so as not to appear to be a complete arsehole.

Now, of our three response groups to the questions on rape, the misogynist group is overwhelmingly the least likely to moderate its responses based on considerations of what the researcher might think of them – so this is the ‘I’m an arsehole and proud of it’ group.

The moral responsibility group, however, will show some evidence of respondents moderating their expressed opinions – remember, members of this group perceive themselves to be good people and at least some of possess sufficient self-awareness to realise that taking too hard-line a stance on a question of this kind may create, in the researcher, an impression of them that is somewhat at odds with their self image. At least some of this group care enough about what other’s may think of them to moderate their response to question to questions of this kind, and that blurs the boundary between fully/mostly responsible and partly responsible.

If we then consider the other boundary, between partly responsible and not responsible, although there may be some blurring at the edges, the effect will be considerably smaller than for the boundary between fully and partially responsible, and that’s because the people who’re operating close to that boundary do so from the , standpoint of taking what they consider to be a reasoned, carefully thought out and, therefore, defensible point of view.

Now, let’s think about how these viewpoint differ in relation to the underlying view of women on which they’re based.

Both the misogynist and moralistic view stem from a personal value judgement about the character of the hypothetical rape victim. In essence, their judgement of each scenario is based on how they ‘feel’ about the woman in the scenario. Its an internalised view of the situation.

The risk realist perspective is, on the other hand, based entirely on assessing externalities, the moral and personal character of the woman in the scenario is not a factor in the assessment except in the limited sense that it may explain how and why the woman failed to adequately assess the risk in each scenario.

The underlying psychology behind these different perspectives is very different and this, naturally, raises the question of exactly how prevalent each of these two perspectives is in wider society – and what the data on the rape scenarios suggests is that we have about and 80:20 split between what I suppose could reasonable be considered to be the non-judgemental and judgemental perspectives on these issues.

So, about 1 in 5 of all respondents express a view that is primary founded on their opinion of, or towards, women of a kind that could reasonable considered to be sexist, while remainder are express either a broadly gender neutral view or taking a view of women that is diametrically opposed to the sexist viewpoint – and there’s insufficient detail to reliably try to assess the relative proportions of the two.

Now, when we come to questions about hitting/slapping women there’s a very interest anomaly in the results.

Of the five questions asked in the section of the poll, four are broadly situational – nagging, two different degrees of sexual infidelity (flirting or actual infidelity) and showing a lack of respect. Each of these scenarios is, in part, situational as evidenced by the significantly high responses for ‘acceptable in certain situations’ (7-14% depending on the situation) than just ‘acceptable’ (1-3%).

Each of these responses is interesting in its own way because, to some extent, the data seems to paint a counterintuitive picture of public attitudes – for example, the scenario though to provide the least justification for hitting a woman turns out to be actual sexual infidelity while nagging is seen to provide the most justification. There’s some rather interesting psychology going on there, but now is not the time to get into it.

What’s most interesting here is that its actually the fifth question, which asks about a scenario in which a woman is wearing sexy/revealing clothes in public, which attracts the highest response. 6% of respondents think its generally acceptable to hit a women for wearing revealing clothes in public, with a further 14% suggesting that this can sometime be acceptable, even though – for most of us – this would be least acceptable scenario by a very large distance. For the other four scenarios, one can at least rationalise the scenario in terms of sexual jealousy or psychological provocation as a causal factor – its possible to understand how and why such situations arise even if you consider that its never acceptable to resort to violence but when it comes to hitting a woman just for wearing a short skirt or a bikini, or whatever else, then that’s something most people would struggle even to understand.

So, what is this actually telling us?

It’s actually validating the 80:20 split in general attitudes because the question about wearing revealing clothing is the only one in which the primary consideration in the question is a value judgement on the perceived character of woman in the scenario rather than an, at least partially, situational judgement.

In the other four scenarios, the women in the scenario could have a valid reason for behaving as they do. They may nag or show a lack of respect towards a partner because he’s basically a lazy, good for nothing, arsehole and they could be flirting or even having an affair for a wide range of reason in which some culpability can be ascribed to the partner.

Only in the fifth scenario is the perceived character of the woman the central issue such that the wearing of revealing clothing is taken, by the minority who think that hitting a women may be acceptable, to be ‘evidence’ of ‘bad character’ and ‘moral deficiency’.

Basically, what the data on hitting women tells us that 20% of the British public think its okay to hit a woman if she’s a slut, and that correlates very neatly with the figures in the sexual violence data on prostitution, alcohol and drug use.

That is not a nice figure to contemplate at all, by any stretch of the imagination, but what it does give us is a useful assessment of the scale of the social and cultural issues we face because a sizeable percentage of that figure will be related directly to religious, social and cultural values in certain, readily definable, sections of British society.

A person is not a commodity. I’m not convinced the terms on which prostitution can be wholly consensual exist, but let’s assume for a moment they do. In that context, consent still has to be given even if there is payment. Payment can be refused if the prostitute doesn’t want sex with the client. So I’d say consent is entirely separate from the payment/non-payment issue.

Fair point about the bias towards the middle option, but we should also bear in mind that when polling on a subject where there’s a strong social norm (to be against sexual violence and supportive of its victims), we can expect under-reporting of views that go against this norm.

So to some extent (how much, I have no idea) the two factors will cancel out here.

I think that if someone can be ‘nudged’ by the wording of a question on a topic like this, that’s at least indicative that their views are at best iffy.

And I see Unity’s point about ‘responsibility’ vs ‘blame’, but that won’t account for the similar responses to the set of “How acceptable or not do you think it is for a man to hit or slap his wife or girlfriend” questions.

Yes back in the real world the real difference between you and I is that I do not disapprove of sexual display nor do I make any special judgement of the fact that in our culture , at this time ,it is women who largely are responsible . You may say stealing is rational, I do not steal . I do not rape and neither is a “rational calculation “of risk and reward . Without suggesting they are equivalent crimes they are both crimes against which we take precautions .

Suppose a young man becomes involved in gangs , carries a gun and involves himself in violent confrontation on a regular basis immerse himself in a culture of violence . Should he be murdered would we not say he was partially responsible ? This hardly represents an approval of murder which I hope you will admit is a similarly serious crime to rape .
Now there are young women who adopt a life style in which sex is similiarly down graded the way life is in the above example . A young woman may have consented to sex on numerous occasions with numerous partners perhaps her assailant . These transactions may be related to drugs , her relationships often involves degrees of violence and her status in this environment causing her body to become viewed as a perk. In this context it might be possible for those around her to view rape as no worse than theft as the women herself treats her body as no more than tradeable currency tradable for acceptance perhaps ,or a sense of worth .
This is not an invention . I know such a person and there are many in the UK living precisely this sort of life usually in welfare slums created by New Labour.

What do you tell this woman . Its never your fault , or get out of there and change your high risk life . I say the latter .

You see how harmful moralising in a fairy tale world can be Tim ?

Calabamat, damn right. Everything about this poll screams ‘PR voodoo’ not ‘serious attempt to find out people’s attitudes and address the problem’.

Newmania, Unity doesn’t agree with you, any more than someone who says ‘The majority of Jamaicans hate gays’ hates gays.

tim f, I’d be interested to hear your response to Unity, I can’t see how opposing his friend’s conclusions can go beyond ‘I wouldn’t start from here if I were you guv’na…’-ing.

Only 12% of adult victims of sexual assault were attacked by a stranger, most knew their attacker

Wrong.

That should actually read

Only 12% of female adult victims of a serious sexual assault were attacked by a stranger

For less serious offences (indecent exposure, unwanted sexual touching and sexual threats) the BCS data clearly indicates that the majority of perps (61%) are strangers and these lesser offences make up 80% of all sexual offences recorded in the BCS data on intimate violence.