alerted by ginmar

[novapsyche]

A third of people believe a woman is partially or completely responsible for being raped if she has behaved flirtatiously, a survey suggests. (Note: this survey took place in Britain)

Also, as ginmar notes: "Why... do we keep saying 'when women get raped'? It's passive voice without an actual person doing the raping. Why is that, huh?"

Comments

[simianpower.livejournal.com]

Why... do we keep saying 'when women get raped'?

Well, usually because we're talking about the woman, what happens to her, how she feels, and so on. When we talk about the rapist the sentences get changed. I'm no english major, but I like it when the subject of a sentence is, well, the subject of the sentence rather than the object.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Her point is that rape is conveyed in popular culture as a passive act: the woman gets raped. To get across the full impact of the act, it would make more sense to frame it with the actor (as well as the acted upon).

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

Well, only when you are interested in the actor (as well as the acted upon).

Personally, when I am talking about the time when I was stabbed, I talk about the time that I was stabbed. When I talk about the person who stabbed me, I talk about the person who stabbed me.

Ginmar's words are not baseless; but overgeneralisation would be easy.

[simianpower.livejournal.com]

This is my point, exactly. The person/event being talked about should be the subject of the sentence; everything else comes in add-on clauses or prepositional phrases.

[pachamama.livejournal.com]

I disagree. Take the sentence in the post:

A third of people believe a woman is partially or completely responsible for being raped if she has behaved flirtatiously, a survey suggests

-- it could just as easily be phrased:

A third of people believe a woman is partially or completely responsible for a man raping her if she has behaved flirtatiously, a survey suggests.

Likewise, you could just as easily talk about "the time when X stabbed me" as opposed to "the time when I was stabbed" and still be talking about you and the stabbing, not about X.

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

What do you disagree with?

I don't actually see any contradiction between your reply and my position, so it's likely that I was unclear.

[mr-quackenbush.livejournal.com]

crimes are always in the passive voice when we're talking about the victim. "her parents murdered." "His pocket was picked." "my house was broken in to." "the convenience store was robbed."

[mr-quackenbush.livejournal.com]

*parents were murdered.

I'd like to go on and point out that this is the reason we have the passive voice at all. It exists as a construction in order to talk about something happening to something. As such it's entirely appropriate grammatically to use it when speaking about victims of sexual assault because being a victim places one in the category of having something happen to you. It's intellectually irresponsible to assume that this is a unique grammatical case that says something about cultural attitudes towards rape victims, when it in fact has nothing unique about it.