What's worse is that (via bioephemera) Bad Science blog found that, these weren't the findings at all, according to the researcher Sophia Shaw from the University of Leicester:
"We found no evidence that that women who are more outgoing are more likely to be raped, this is completely inaccurate, we found no difference whatsoever. The alcohol thing is also completely wrong: if anything, we found that men reported they were willing to go further with women who are completely sober. . .When I saw the article my heart completely sank, and it made me really angry, given how sensitive this subject is. To be making claims like the Telegraph did, in my name, places all the blame on women, which is not what we were doing at all. I just felt really angry about how wrong they'd got this study."
Tell author Richard Alleyne that not only creating false news but resorting to victim-blaming for the sake of getting a "good story" is completely heinous (not to mention illegal) and demand the article be taken down. (Or contact The Telegraph directly.)
I was also found that Current reposted the Telegraph piece (trigger warning re: accompanying image); tell them to take it down.
h/t to Ele.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Telegraph joins the victim-blaming bandwagon .
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/14791
News flash! Women who leave the house are more likely to get raped. Women with significant others are more likely to get raped. Women who breathe are more likely to get raped.
It's called rape culture, dude, and I'm not going to wrap myself in bandages just to reduce the risk of having a crime committed against me. I would prefer that all the rapists be held accountable for their actions.
this disgusts me that a horrible and *dangerous* stereotype can be continued by possibly the worst "journalism" EVER. The researcher should sue for damages on behalf of every woman in the WORLD. That writer is a terrible awful person. GRRRRRR
I know you posted a trigger warning, but I still did not expect that kind of image to pop up on my screen. It made my stomach lurch. What were they thinking?
I had the same experience. Here I go, clicking away, thinking, "How nice they always are, trying to make sure I won't have to see it if I might be upset."
I WAS NOT EXPECTING THAT PICTURE.
It is not a cartoon, or a video game. It is an image of a real woman, looking terrified (in the viewer's direction, I might add), partly unclothed, being held down. I guess that's all I will describe because my description might be triggering, too.
G-d.
WTF, Current?!
The photo is from a 10-minute-long rape scene in the film Irreversible and is completely inappropriate in this context.
I just sent him an angry email, but a commenter on the Bad Science website says this:
"Journalists will only correct the copy if they are publicly asked to on twitter! emails to them have no effect. Name and shame? I also find that twitter is merciless when someone says something wrong, whereas people are more passive when it is written in a newspaper or website, they tend to assume it is correct. It often isn’t."
I don't use Twitter but I think it might be a good idea for Twitter users to publicly call him out in that forum.
They all just got angry letters from me.
How could they put that image?!
As pointed out in the first comment, the logic in this article is stupid. It is insulting to both men and women.
is that image from the movie Irreversible?
A rape apologist on another forum just sent me that article yesterday to try to prove his point that women ask to be raped.
Quick! Someone tell Sarah Haskins!
Could someone please provide a template for an email asking Current/Telegraph to take down the article? I want to write to them, but I'm not sure how to word the letter. Thank you in advance.
I just wrote this:
Mr. Alleyne,
I am writing to let you know that the piece you put up at this address: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/5603052/Women-who-dress-provocatively-more-likely-to-be-raped-claim-scientists.html is wrong, harmful, and replete with victim-blaming. It's misinformation and support of rape-apologist arguments like these that are dangerous - this is what leads to culturally-accepted attitudes toward blaming the victim and excusing the rapist, thus perpetuating rape itself in our culture and around the world. I demand that you take the article down immediately and apologize to your readers for printing such an unscholarly, unprofessional, and extremely harmful story.
See this Guardian article for why what you did is outright (in their words and mine) "irresponsible foolishness": http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/04/bad-science-rape-study-telegraph
Alralei,
Victim Advocate & Concerned Citizen
What the ... ? One, why the hell would the Current, of all previously-thought-decent news outlets, choose to propagate this fucking garbage? Two, which dumbass picked out that disgusting rape stock photo? Un-fucking-believable.
As was mentioned above, this isn't a stock rape photo, but a still from the movie Irreversible. I've not seen the movie, but I've seen just the scene in the photo, and it's one of the most realistic rape scenes in a movie. It doesn't pull away and the woman is screaming and crying and struggling the whole time.
Ugh. This article makes me want to throw up. I want to write a letter, but I'm too full of rage right now to be coherent.
Feministing readers will be very interested in the actual press release:
http://www2.le.ac.uk/ebulletin/news/press-releases/2000-2009/2009/06/nparticle.2009-06-23.2976340719
-
The telegraph article currently says this about the effect of women's drunkenness:
But, contrary to popular opinion, alcohol consumption did dampen their ardour with many men claiming that they were put off by a woman who was drunk.
Did it say something different earlier? B/c that is an accurate description of Shaw's findings (although "ardor" is hardly the right word).
That line of the article was correct (at least in terms of correctly paraphrasing the press release). But that's not what this post is about.
This post quotes Shaw as saying
The alcohol thing is also completely wrong: if anything, we found that men reported they were willing to go further with women who are completely sober.
My question is a fair one, and on topic.
Yes. What I'm saying is, Shaw got that part wrong, but the statements blaming women for dressing provocatively are not part of the original research's assertions, and the alcohol bit is a one-liner of truth in an entire article of errors.
To recap:
1) The assertion that "scientists claim" women who dress provocatively are more likely to be raped is wrong, both according to the study author, the study press release, and the fact that the study itself is an incomplete MS dissertation.
2) Victim blaming is FUCKING WRONG.
3) Shaw was incorrect about the alcohol line.
So there you go.
Add option 4) They wrote the alcohol line with an annoying pun, the Telegraph must burn! as it suits you.
But they did severely misrepresent the findings in other parts of the article.
"The way women dress, how flirtatious they are, and their level of drunkeness really do have an effect on the likelihood them being raped, claim scientist."
The article's assertion that drunkeness was shown to effect the likelihood of being raped is not technically true, because men were shown to be willing to be more coercive with sober partners. However, the phrasing of the above quote falsely implies that women who are more drunk are more likely to be raped, because the use of the words "really do" suggests that the study's findings are in agreement with culturally held opinions. This therefore implies that when a women is drunk she really will get raped, just like society expects. It's victim blaming and it's a misrepresentation of the results. They clarify later in the article what the results really showed about sobrierty, but that doesn't justify the skewed and misleading subheading.
And as Shaw stated, the findings did not show that how outgoing a women is (I would imagine that includes how flirtatious she is etc.) has an effect on the likelihood of being raped. So that was a blatant misrepresentation of the results.
Not every single statement in the article was a falsehood, but the overall message that is being made supports an unsubstantiated and hateful idea.
That should say The article's assertion that drunkeness was shown to effect the likelihood of being raped IS technically true"
And to clarify, I mean it's true that those were the results of this particular study, not that it's a proven fact.
All I wanted to know was whether the telegraph article had different text about the alcohol findings at a prior time. It's a fair question since sometimes websites update their articles, and the answer is a simple "yes" or "no."
It did say something else. The Current article has the original text. It was "quietly changed" according to Bad Science. So yes, they did update the article. It did originally state that women who drink are more likely to be raped.
Bitch magazine had a great article a while ago about how journalists often take scientific studies and completely misrepresent them in order to create eye-catching news, especially if there's a possibility of warping it so that it upholds a sexist stereotype.
I really feel for the researcher who had her hard work completely distorted.
This science-news cycle (for non-scientists, who may not be familiar with it) is nicely illustrated here: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174
That's more or less exactly how it works. I don't think I've ever seen a news story in my field where I wasn't able to to identify at least one thing as flatly wrong.
I wrote to the Telegraph, telling them they should be embarrassed & don't they employ a fact-checker? And please print a retraction soon before women get hurt because of this.
I know that science news usually has a lot of incorrect points in it, but this is the first time I've heard of one that is completely untrue that wasn't in an obviously biased source.
Current responded to me:
"Hi Paul,
Thank you so much for taking the time to write in with your concerns about this story. I understand that the conclusions drawn in this article can be offensive, and appreciate the feedback and information.
Current.com is a place for anyone to submit links to articles for discussion. In this case, the article from the Telegraph was submitted by a member of the Current community, and was not posted by Current staff, nor was it featured by Current editors. The original image chosen to accompany the article has been removed, but the story is not in violation of Current’s community guidelines (http://current.com/s/community_standards.htm) and will remain on the site.
If you have sources to more accurate information, you might want to consider adding the links on Current. Those links would help to refute the claims made in the article, and take the discussion in a different direction.
Best,
Steph"
I responded with the interview with the researcher. I wonder if Steph hates her job right now.
yup, i got the same response. Glad the photo is down - that was the worst part about the piece being up.
I just sent them this short email:
"Your skewered reporting on what was found by the University of Leicester's study on men and rape does not match up with what they reported on their homepage or researcher Sophia Shaw's subsequent statements on the subject. Their homepage reports it as discovering that promiscuous men are more likely to rape, yet you twisted it around to make it sound like every stereotype of a rape victim from the 1950's. Why are you perpetuating this blame on women and why would you allow such innacurate and slanted journalism?"
I didn't see the picture people are talking about when I clicked the link--they must have took that down.
This is what I sent to the dude- not sure how good it is but it was the best I could muster under pissed off circumstances. And they did take the picture off current.
Dear Mr. Alleyne:
I was very disturbed to find a post on feministing today indicating that you had completely distorted research on rape to print a salacious and victim-blaming article. Maybe rape is just a headline to you, but to the people who have experienced it might see it differently. I can't imagine what it must feel like to be victimized by rape and then be re-victimized by articles like yours saying that it was my fault because of what i wore, what i drank, or what i said. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. I hope that you will do the right thing and ask the Telegraph to either print a correction or write a follow up piece that looks at the research more carefully and/or shares a victim/survivor perspective. Thank you for your consideration.
Amanda Stevens
this is awful how can anyone say a thing like this. Women don't ask to be raped, we don't like being raped and there is nothing that makes it okay, maybe these scietist should be studying ways to stop men from raping women instead of blaming us for something that is in no way our fault
Fuck me. I mean, it's hardly surprising to me that women who are drunk and dressed "provocatively" would be more likely to be raped, it's not like it means anything as THEY DON'T RAPE THEMSELVES.
But that it is a COMPLETELY misconstrued study? Oh FUCK YOU. *fuming*
When it comes to victim-blaming I have this argument a lot with my peers. They assume that because a person was drinking, alone or dressed a certain way there are asking to be raped. Or they were upping their potential to be victims. I say bullshit. I have known many women and men who have done all these activities and not been raped. I, myself, have walked alone at night or gone out drinking. They nor I have been raped for one very good reason...there wasn't a rapist around. People seem to forget that crucial detail when conducting these studies. The rapist is to blame never the victim. A person doesn't ask to be attacked in any manner and certainly not in such a violent act.
I also wonder, how do studies like this account for attacks in the home or the all to common non-stranger rape? How do these play into their statistics?
The Guardian has an interview-of-sorts with the researcher, and this article points out that everything the Telegraph claims is wrong:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/04/bad-science-rape-study-telegraph
"...the Telegraph has quietly changed the online copy of the article, although there has been no formal correction, and in any case, it remains inaccurate."
I hate things like this. So women who enjoy a drink, like to look sexy, and aren't shy and timid are more likely to get raped, I call bullshit.
There's no likely chance to get raped, it's something that can happen to anybody and blaming the victim isn't going to stop it. That type of mentality is the reason why so many rapists aren't in jail.
This looks like a case of someone being completely uneducated in the ways of statistical and scientific language, reading a study, misinterpreting it and then making the wrong ideas news. This sort of thing happens all the time with all sorts of different areas of study.
It's disgusting and papers need to make sure that they have trained people who can read and digest these studies properly do the reading and writing for the paper. It's the only way to get the real information out there and actually educate people on what's going on in science.
Another way to look at it is this: the copy-editor or author of the article were interpreting the study through the lens of their rapist-apologist culture.
On the other hand... it is very unlikely but more than once I have seen journalists and copy-editors twist scientific findings to fit their personal political agenda. But in all honesty I think the first option I describe is WAY more likely.
Not sure if anyone else has said this yet, but Telegraph online have removed the article completely now.
Had to laugh when i found an article written last month by the same Mr Alleyne with the headline "Scientists faking results and omitting unwanted findings in research". I take it that he doesn't have a problem with Science Correspondants doing it though.
First of all, let me thank all of the Feministing readers who have written to Current regarding this article. I understand how it is offensive to many people, particularly given the image that originally accompanied the piece.
Current.com is a place for our community to contribute stories, articles, videos, photos, and blog posts from around the web in order to discuss and debate. Anyone in the community may submit an article; in this case, a member of the Current community added a link to the Telegraph article for discussion. This item was not added by Current staff, nor was it featured by Current editors. The original image that accompanied the link was not from the article, and it was removed. However, the article itself did not violate Current’s community guidelines, and the majority of the discussion actually focused around criticism of the Telegraph’s presentation of the study.
The Telegraph has subsequently removed this article from their site; for clarity, we have edited the link on Current to the Bad Science interview with the study’s author, as well as updated the title to clarify that the original Telegraph article has been removed. However, the discussion regarding the Telegraph’s presentation of this study remains, as it continues to address many issue that were raised by this piece (including the validity of the study, and the importance of accurate reporting).
Best,
Steph
Online Community Team
Current.com