THERE IS ONLY ONE AT FAULT FOR RAPE. THE RAPIST.

This month I heard that a young former staffer in the Australian Government, who was raped, has been appointed to an organisation for women’s rights founded by former Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. One of the most appalling and degrading things I saw in relation to it was someone who said that while it was great, that women needed to take responsibility for themselves and prevent themselves from being raped.

My former landlord, for reasons I’ll never understand, used to leave his car unlocked with the windows down and the keys on the floor of the car. Okay, the insurance company won’t pay out if the car is found burnt out with a key in the ignition (they’ve had to address that with people breaking into houses and stealing keys and then stealing the car, and I remember my mother talking of someone who had a Holden that was stolen and the insurance company wouldn’t pay even though it had a Mazda key in the ignition). In fact, you have no right to touch another person’s property without their permission.

I remember an obnoxious bully at school who used to steal my schoolbag (well, there was more than one) and this same obnoxious bully pinched me in the chest (after saying, “Lock it or lose it.”). My shirt wasn’t unbuttoned. He also pulled my pants down one day, which my mother sneered at my attempts to say it was abuse. It was abuse.

So, if a person with a good nature knows that you don’t steal another person’s property, what right does a person have to violate another person’s body? None whatsoever. I have seen videos of women breastfeeding babies and people have objected and I saw a video of a woman wearing a shirt that showed some cleavage and a man walked past and touched it and when she objected, he said that she shouldn’t show it if she didn’t want it touched. Then, this week, I saw the outrageous story of girls at a Tasmanian Catholic School having to kneel and have their skirt lengths measured as they were seen as distracting to male teachers! Now, apart from the fact that they were under the age of consent, a male teacher should control himself. I remember people used to say that one of my teachers used to look down the front of girls’ blouses!

Short skirts, bikinis, crop tops or anything else are not responsible for rapes. Alcohol is not responsible for being raped. NOBODY, and I mean, NOBODY, has the right to rape a drunk person! Even being flirtatious is not grounds for a rape.

There is only one thing that is responsible for rape. And no, it’s not a matter of demonising men, we’re not demonising men. We are demonising those responsible for rape. Rapists. There is only one group of people responsible for rape. Rapists.