Does clothing cause or justify rape?
No one believes that cleavage means “consent” or that provocative clothes “justify” rape.
These women are making a serious mistake in protesting ridiculous and cynical rationalizations by criminals.
Rape has nothing to do with how a woman is dressed.
One of the worst countries for sexual harassment and rape is Egypt, where 80% or more of the women now wear the traditional Saudi outfit, an abaya with a niqab (face cover), a fashion that started becoming popular around the year 2000.
Cairo 'most dangerous' megacity for women - survey
No matter what is argued before courts - even if accepted - the issue is that rape is a crime of opportunity. A small percentage of men will do it when presented with the opportunity and a low risk of being caught or of suffering serious harm.
Rapists will rationalize their behavior in all sorts of ways.
Rape convictions are very hard to get and ironically, the harsher the penalties for rape convictions are, the harder it gets to get convictions, because the consequences of a false convictions get so much worse.
In the UK, only 3% of all rape cases that the police know about (!) lead to someone being charged (not even convicted):
No-one charged in 9 out of 10 crimes - Home Office
“In sexual offence cases, only 5% resulted in someone being charged or summonsedThat figure falls to 3% for rape cases. In about a third (34%) of rape cases, the victim did not want to take the case to its conclusion. In all, one in five cases went unresolved because the victim did not support action, usually meaning they did not want to go through the courts“
A major problem is that women are not all innocent lambs who would never lie. The most optimistic estimates put false rape accusations in the 2–10% range. Other estimates mention 20% and more.
Motives for Filing a False Allegation of Rape
Given the significant percentage of false accusations, courts have no choice but to set a high bar for the evidence demanded from alleged victims (yes, I have to use the proper terminology…)
There’s that ridiculous “just educate men to not rape” - rapists are criminal, not stupid. Well, maybe also stupid, but not that stupid - they know that what they do is wrong, just as thieves and murderers know that they commit crimes. They do it anyway.
So ultimately, women have to:
avoid dangerous situations
try to always have someone trustworthy around
avoid getting drunk while on a date or at a party
learn self-defense methods
carry self-defense tools - whatever is legal, where you live, from a mace spray to a gun
clothing most likely won’t make any difference
Famous or serious fake rape accusation cases:
Former Duke Players Cleared of All Charges
Brian Banks, ex-football player, was wrongly jailed for rape for 5 years and only released because his accuser felt remorse and admitted to having lied:
There’s worse…
Woman 'made up rape and sex assault claims against 15 men’
Woman who made false rape claim sentenced to prison
Woman is finally jailed after FIVE false rape allegations against her ex-boyfriends in eight years