{"id":42779,"date":"2013-03-21T11:00:39","date_gmt":"2013-03-21T16:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=42779"},"modified":"2013-03-21T02:03:42","modified_gmt":"2013-03-21T07:03:42","slug":"pennsylvania-public-service-announcement-blames-rape-victims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/03\/21\/pennsylvania-public-service-announcement-blames-rape-victims\/","title":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania Public Service Announcement Blames Rape Victims"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/em>Re-posted to add to the discussion about sexual assault in the aftermath of the\u00a0Steubenville rape trial<\/a>, the\u00a0Senate hearing on rape and harassment in the military<\/a>, and the\u00a0controversy at Occidental College<\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0Cross-posted in Portuguese at Conhecimento Prudente<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Rape reporting, prosecution, and conviction rates across the country\u00a0are\u00a0appallingly low<\/a>, but it’s easier to get away with sexual assault in some places compared to others. \u00a0Pennsylvania\u00a0is one of those places<\/a>.\u00a0In Pennsylvania, expert testimony isn’t allowed in the courtroom.\u00a0 Instead,\u00a0jurors\u00a0frequently rely on abundant, harmful\u00a0rape myths<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We shouldn’t be that surprised, then, that earlier this week\u00a0the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) aired an ad\u00a0plainly promoting the\u00a0idea that women are to blame for being raped.<\/p>\n

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The ad shows a young woman sprawled on what appears to be\u00a0a bathroom floor, underwear down at her ankles, with the caption, “She didn’t want to do it, but she couldn’t say no.”\u00a0 The victim blaming here couldn’t be any clearer, right down to the illogical language suggesting that the victim both had agency (she is to blame)\u00a0and lacked agency (because she couldn’t say “no”).<\/p>\n

Crafted by the\u00a0Neiman Group<\/a>, this ad was part of a larger $600,00 campaign — two years in the making — to\u00a0raise awareness of the\u00a0ill effects of drinking.\u00a0 Several different\u00a0themes were proposed, but this was the “winner.”\u00a0\u00a0Another ad<\/a> in the same campaign\u00a0holds\u00a0a rape victim’s friend responsible for her rape.<\/p>\n

The PLCB pulled the ad campaign in response to\u00a0hundreds of messages from concerned citizens, some of whom claimed they were traumatized by the image\/message.\u00a0 However,\u00a0a\u00a0statement<\/a> from the\u00a0PLCB shows that those in charge still don’t comprehend the problem:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel very strong, and still do, that when we entered the initial discussion about doing a campaign like this it was important to bring the most difficult conversations about over-consumption of alcohol to the forefront and all of the dangers associated with it\u2014date rape being one of these things.”<\/p>\n

The PLCB\u00a0is right that alcohol and “date” rape\u00a0(a term that trivializes rape) go hand in hand, but not because women are responsible for the criminal actions of\u00a0the approximate\u00a06% of men<\/a> who perpetrate this crime.\u00a0 Instead, perpetrators\u00a0exploit cultural narratives — like the idea that intoxication = miscommunication and that “date rape” isn’t “real” rape — to repeatedly commit\u00a0this crime.\u00a0 In a\u00a0recent study<\/a> of college students, 4% of men were found to be serial rapists; they committed an average of 5.8\u00a0rapes each.<\/p>\n

In short, sexual assault is committed by (often serial) perpetrators. \u00a0Yet ad campaigns like this will continue to ensure that sexual assault will continue to be the only crime\u00a0in which\u00a0society treats the victim like a perpetrator.<\/p>\nCaroline Heldman is a professor of politics at Occidental College<\/a>. You can follow her at her blog<\/a> and on Twitter<\/a> and Facebook<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Re-posted to add to the discussion about sexual assault in the aftermath of the\u00a0Steubenville rape trial, the\u00a0Senate hearing on rape and harassment in the military, and the\u00a0controversy at Occidental College.\u00a0Cross-posted in Portuguese at Conhecimento Prudente. Rape reporting, prosecution, and conviction rates across the country\u00a0are\u00a0appallingly low, but it’s easier to get away with sexual assault in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2056,55,2090,212,23704,133],"class_list":["post-42779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crimelaw","tag-gender","tag-gender-violence","tag-alcohol","tag-public-service-announcements","tag-violence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42779"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54516,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42779\/revisions\/54516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}