I don't even know where to begin with today's distortion of Justice Secretary Ken Clarke's interview on BBC 5 live. The audio is here and the transcript here; I beg you to listen/read (preferably listen, so you can hear tone as well) before you read the rest of this or form an opinion on the subject. Immediately after the interview aired, the reports began to come in: that Clarke doesn't think date rape is rape, that Clarke thinks some rape is trivial, that some rapes are not rape at all, that Clarke doesn't believe 'rape is rape'...and then began the flood on Twitter, with people who had clearly not heard the interview or even read a proper news report about it informing their followers that Clarke thinks rape isn't rape if you know the attacker, if you're wearing a short skirt, etc etc etc.
First of all: yes, absolutely, Clarke made some horrible choices in terms of the language he used, and didn't take any opportunity to correct himself. He repeatedly referred to 'serious' rapes, which is what has led a slew of people to accuse him of believing that some rapes are 'trivial' (ie the opposite of serious), or that rape in general is not a serious crime.
But in listening to the interview, it is crystal clear that Clarke is trying to distinguish between what he later calls a 'classic' rape scenario - one person violently pinning down another person and having sex with them against their will (the 5 live discussion is framed exclusively in terms of women victims, though of course men can be and are also victims of rape) - and other crimes that can be classified as rape but aren't in that same way. Actually, Clarke is specifically trying to distinguish between that 'classic' rape and statutory rape, or his example of consensual sex between an 18 year old and a 15 year old. It turns out that, actually, that crime would be a sexual offence with a minor and not classified as rape and so not included in the average sentence Clarke is trying to refute, but that doesn't change the fact that, at the time, Clarke's 'serious' was not a demarcation of some rapes as worthy of our attention and concern and others not, but an attempt to distinguish between the sentences given to violent, repeat offenders and those given in cases of statutory rape. I think Clarke made clear on the show, and then again in later interviews, that he views all cases of rape - sex against someone's will, regardless of the circumstances - as serious crimes.
He alluded to some 'confusion' around date rape when he was a practising lawyer, but unfortunately was never asked to clarify, and nor did he volunteer to. He did say that all date rape cases are different and that some cases of date rape are that 'serious' classic scenario - which is to say, violent, forceful. I would guess that the confusion he speaks of lies in cases where perhaps two people have been out together, are both drunk, and have sex, and where in sober retrospect neither party is sure if consent was given at the time, or whether a person can be capable of giving consent after a certain point of inebriation. I am emphatically not saying that a woman who has been drinking is in any way at all to blame for rape, or was 'asking for it'; a person has a right to say no to sex at any point up to and during the act, and the other person has an obligation to stop. But I think it's disingenious to pretend that society thinks that a man in the 'confusing' date rape scenario above is the same and needs to be treated the same as a predatory rapist (whether a stranger in a park or a colleague in the office) who intentionally commits a pre-meditated and violent rape.
And actually, I don't really want to get into that whole debate, though this blog fairly sums up my thoughts on it (and much more concisely, I might add). My main outrage today was not with people who were unwilling to see that rape is an incredibly complex and nuanced issue and not nearly as black and white as being able to say all rape is exactly the same. My main outrage was with the media and politicians, led by Labour leader Ed Miliband, who were determined to score political points and create a controversy by purposely ignoring the context and meaning of Clarke's words and reducing the interview to a couple of patently false soundbites, which were then repeated and further distorted through other media and Twitter.
Miliband demanded in PMQs that Clarke be sacked by the end of the day for his views on rape. This might have been justifiable if, say, Clarke had actually denied that rape was a serious crime, or actually said that date rape isn't rape, or actually said that some rape isn't really all that serious. But he didn't, and Miliband knew that. I hate to have to agree with David Cameron on anything, but when he accused Miliband of jumping on a bandwagon, he was absolutely correct.
The Telegraph followed with the headline 'Kenneth Clark questions whether date rape is really "rape"'. Er, no, he didn't. A blog on the New Statesman website said that 'a significant amount of people agree with [Clarke]' that there is a 'scale of rape', trotting out as proof a survey showing that 30% of people think that a woman is partially or totally responsible for rape if she is drunk. Except, since Clarke didn't say anything about drunk women asking for it, it was a lie to say that 30% of people agreed with him. Independent columnist Johann Hari, who I normally adore, posted a link to an old article on the prejudices that allow rapists to go free, saying the 'horrible views that Ken Clarke subconsciously revealed about rape are dismayingly common in Britain'. Except none of the views in the article are ones Clarke discussed.
I have no problem with journalists taking a current event and using it as a platform to foster discussion on important topics - and, as I had planned to write about in relation to the SlutWalks, common attitudes toward rape are absolutely something that need to be brought out into the open. But so many journalists and political activists today took the opportunity to purposely ignore Clarke's fundamental point, which was, ironically, that the BBC 5 live presenter Victoria Derbyshire was reducing a political policy covering all crime into a tabloid headline about Clarke reducing rapists' sentences to 15 months. Clarke was trying to clarify facts about the average sentencing (which, granted, he did not do very well at all), and to stop the discussion from becoming hysterical over figures that he believed weren't true.
Any discussions about the pitiful figures for rape reporting and conviction rates, about the way the police and justice systems treat rape victims, about funding for rape crisis centres, about public attitudes toward rape and the idea of victim-blaming and myths about false reporting - all of these and more would have been very valid questions to ask of Clarke and ourselves. There are enough real problems in the way society and the legal system treat rape - there was no need to create a fake hysteria around something that Clarke just clearly does not believe, and I was immensely disappointed in the media today for insisting on perpetuating sensationalist trash.
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