Introduction
Rape is inhumane and a vice in most societies. The
problem with rape can be likened to food poisoning. In most cases, the problem
is discovered only after the harm has been caused. Since it is difficult to identify a rapist or
someone who is motivated to commit such a crime, pragmatism requires that
potential victims be on the look out. Similar logic imposes responsibilities on
pedestrians to be careful when crossing the road because, even when you are
careful, technological failure and in particular carelessness on the part of a
driver could lead to your harm or demise.
But sometimes, being extra careful could save your life. Thus, reasonable care and minimum effort
requirements from both the people whose actions can cause harm and the
potential victims are principles in law.
Not to hold brief for anyone, it is reasonable to believe that this
logic perhaps influenced the advice given by the Minister to the girls
(students) during an event in one of Ghana’s second cycle institutions (Krobo
Girls Senior High School), which has received wide spread critique from various
corners.
I wish to start a series of articles on the “indecent dressing
can cause rape” hypothesis, with the hope of raising a more fundamental issue – populism
and societal deregulation - that would make it practically impossible for the
Minister for Gender and Social
protection – Ms Otiko Djaba - to win on
this matter in this dispensation. In this first article, I attribute this line
of reasoning to political ideological differences between the Minister and her critics
that have deeper roots in economics. I will also explore the assumptions of the
arguments of the critics and identify some the flaws in them.
Background
The context of the Ministers advice requires an
understanding of her background and expertise. Ms Otiko Djaba is the Minister
for Gender and Social protection. Prior to becoming a Minister, she was the National Facilitator for the
Campaign for Greater Discipline under Former Vice President Aliu Mahama in
2004. She also has so many years of work experience as a Consultant in
Children’s Rights and rural women’s development
for Plan Ghana in extremely deprived rural communities in Sissala districts of
the Upper West Region. So this is not a person who is completely ignorant of the
need for social protection for all. Indeed, if we are sincere, this is a
consultant in matters, perhaps, peculiar to her critics.
During her presentation in one of the female senior high schools
in Ghana, the Minister in a motivation packed speech also advised the girls to
dress decently. Verbatim, she said:
“In conclusion, I will like to say to you that be bold, be confident, be
respectful. If you wear a short dress, it is fashionable, but know that it can
attract somebody who would like to rape or defile you. You must be responsible
for the choices you make because you are the future leaders”.
Public reactions to this part
of her speech are mixed. While some people have decently disagreed with her, others
have condemned and trolled her in the media, especially on almighty Facebook. I
like to share some of the arguments first. Papa Yaw Ashon, a Senior Policy
Analyst expresses shock at the narrow view taken by some people of the
motivational and beautiful speech delivered by the Minister. Henry Ernest
Baidoo-williams pulls out academic studies by Gloria et al. (1997) and others
to support his hypothesis that “dress can cause rape”, with an emphasis on
gender bias in perceptions about the causes of rape. This study according to
him shows that “the most predominant perception for the causes of rape when all
respondents, male and female, are given equal weighting, is ”female
precipitation” which believes that the woman’s actions or appearance is what
causes rape. Immediately following “female precipitation” is the so-called
“feminist theory” which believes that rape is caused by imbalance in power
between males and females. One would think, only men would find nothing wrong
with the Minister’s speech. But, even woman like Jidi Ewurama Ocran share
similar views, particularly in the spirit of preventing rape in a world of
unequal information among rapists, potential rapists and victims.
However, the critics are
perhaps more than the apologists. On his facebook wall, Dr. Kwabena
Opoku-Agyemang expresses his disagreement as follows:
“I disagree
with this notion that dressing causes rape. Men are able (or should be able) to
control themselves in the face of 'provocative' dressing. Rape is not logical
in any case; it's an act of violence. This
argument is like saying that if a man enters a wrong hotel room and sees a
woman in lingerie he is justified in sexually attacking her because her
dressing provoked him. Some way kraa”.
In another post, he describes the
apologists as:
“Patriarchal princesses and their male counterparts (who have nothing to
lose in this debate apart from ego and unnecessary privilege)”.
Another critic, Mss Ess, submits that “…these narratives are arming rapists with a
defense thinking they can get away and yes, many are getting away because some
judges share the view too”. This
narrative she points out is a BIG problem. For this group of critics, the
Minister’s advice purports to shift the blame for rape unto the victim
and seeks to exonerate the perpetrators.
On the Feminist theory, some academics like Dr Kofi Boakye, a Cambridge trained
Criminologist contends that narratives like ‘indecent dressing can cause rape’
are myths and goes ahead to support his claim with his own study entitled “Attitudes Toward Rape and Victims
of Rape: A
Test of the Feminist Theory in Ghana”. But
this study did not set out to explicitly test the “indecent dressing can cause
rape” hypothesis. It thus cannot be admitted as evidence against the likelihood
of indecent dressing causing rape.
The common understanding despite these disagreements is that none of the
contenders support gender violence in any form, whether against men or women.
The basic line of disagreement can be seen in their attribution of the causes
of rape. While the apologists postulate that “indecent dressing can cause
rape”, critics beg to differ. Although an apologist of the hypothesis that
indecent dressing can cause rape, I wish to focus more broadly on the
implications of the views of the critics for social sustainability. I will do
this by evaluating the ideological underpinnings of the views of the critics,
which are closely linked to neoliberal thinking, which is associated with both
good and evil in society. Think of the United States and the junk-bond-induced
takeover mania and resulting scandals of the 1980s; the corporate scandals of
the 2000s; the egregious increase in the pay gap between chief executives and
ordinary employees; and the real estate mortgage bubble and ensuing financial
crisis.
Leaving
in abstraction: The neoclassicals, faulty assumption and reality
In the 1970s, lovers of market economies as a tool
for organizing social life emerged strongly and currently dominate discourses
in most fields. They rely on perfect information and market efficient
assumptions to disapprove the need for market regulation by the state. Thus,
driving home the idea of self-regulation, the epitome of the freedom movement.
This ideology fundamentally argues that human beings make rational choices by
maximizing utility and minimizing cost. They often support their claim with
reference to the words of the father of modern economics, Adam Smith: “It is not from the
benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner,
but from their regard to their own interest”. Therefore, a cardinal principle of the neoclassical school
of thought is that each person is capable of making better choices for him or
herself on the assumption that they always have full information. In context,
the neoliberal will typically argue that the girls and women in general are
always capable of making the best decisions for themselves, and hence require
no help in the form of social regulation whether formal or informal, such as
the advice provided by the Minister.
Unfortunately, we live in an imperfect world
with imperfect information and thus, the assumption of perfect information is
flawed. Therefore, decisions that anyone can make are as good as the limited
information available to them. So, instead of achieving full rationality,
humans can only make do with “bounded rationality” according to Economist
Herbert Simon. Bounded rationality is the idea that in decision-making, rationality of individuals is limited by the information they have, the cognitive limitations of their minds,
and the finite amount of time they have to make a decision. The girls obviously do not have perfect knowledge of
the motivations of all men – those who want to rape them, those who could be
attracted to rape them and those who by some constraints would not rape them
irrespective of their dressing. So, these critics who argue that indecent
dressing cannot cause a man to rape a girl are thriving on this faulty
assumption of perfect information. The
reality is that similar faulty assumptions in financial markets continue to
contribute to financial economic crisis in many countries with debilitating
implications for social sustenance. Memorable among them is the recent 2007-2008
financial crisis. This is because, individuals continue to make seemingly
rational but more accurately “faulty” bounded rational decisions that continue
to hurt them and society at large.
In his book, “What
money can’t buy: The moral limits of markets”, Harvard Professor of
Philosophy, Michael Sandel acknowledges the important role of market economies
as a tool for organizing economic activity. He however, observes the increasing
marketization of society based on these flawed neoclassical principles of
perfect information and rationality as particularly problematic. This we see in
the continuous marketization of dressing as neoliberal thoughts increase. This
flawed idea of total freedom and no need for regulation has penetrated the
social fibre of society to such an extent that it has entered into the “dress
can cause rape discourse”. The liberals
or democrats assert that people should be allowed to wear anything they want,
whether decent or indecent, so far as they are fine with it, not society. I term this posture as SOCIAL DEREGULATION. This posture often thrives on the back of
populism. Most people desire to disentangle the webs of social constraints
imposed by social institutions like religion and culture more broadly,
particularly in this dispensation. Populism and social deregulation like
financial and economic deregulation is the order of the day. Some have pointed
to Brexit and the election of Donald Trump as evidence of this global wave of
ideology. Those who claim that indecent dressing can cause rape are also faced
with the challenge of defining indecent dressing, which could vary greatly even
among them.
Statisticians are dumb, not the critics
To the liberals, the hypothesis that “indecent dressing can cause rape” is
flawed. They argue that even well dressed women and babies are raped. Unfortunately,
this view is also flawed at many different levels. First, it is flawed in that
the hypothesis that indecent dressing can cause rape does not imply that decent
dressing cannot attract rape. On this basis, it is important to note that the
Minister never said that well dressed women cannot be raped or cannot be
victims of rape. In statistics, this requires a one-way (tail) hypothesis test,
in which the critical
area of a distribution is one-sided so that it is either greater than or less
than a certain value, but not both. If the sample that is being tested falls
into the one-sided critical area, the alternative hypothesis will be accepted
instead of the null hypothesis. An example of when one would want to use a
one-tailed test is in the error rate of a factory. Let's say a label
manufacturer wants to make sure that errors on labels are below 1%. It would be
too costly to have someone check every label, so the factory selects random
samples of the labels and test whether errors exceed 1% with whatever
level of significance they choose. Acceptable values are those below or equal
to 1%.
Disapproving the Ministers advice on the
basis that well-dressed women are also raped is a common flaw in most arguments for many reasons. First, it involves
the substitution of the original hypothesis or question for another. For
instance, such acts of substitution is synonymous to the popular “what is a
bird?” analogy. For example, if a person
is asked, what is a tree? Those who do not know the answer but are well vexed
in birds could start by saying that birds perch on trees, and so, what is a
bird? They then go ahead to answer that question instead of the original
question: what is a tree?
Second, it is important to note that this hypothesis “indecent
dressing can cause rape” is different
from saying that “indecent dressing
causes rape”. The latter hypothesis can easily be falsified just by one
past or present evidence of rape caused by indecent dressing. But, the former
is practically untestable because it does not only require past and present
data but also perfect knowledge of all future events and their probabilities,
which lies in the remit of only God. This is another evidence of the ‘what is a
bird” analogy. The critics appear to have created their own hypothesis and
answered it. Besides, the Minister’s
suggestion only raises a question of POSSIBILITY and does not provide a PERFECT
DEFINITION of a necessary causal link, which her critics assume. To support
this, I liken the "indecent dressing can cause rape" hypothesis to a
pedestrian crossing the road and ask myself why we look left and right before
we cross roads, and not assume that drivers are at all times responsible for
us? Is there not a possibility that with a little carelessness, a similarly
careless driver could easily knock us down?
In this brief note, I have laid the foundation for a more critical analysis of the debate on the “indecent dressing can cause rape” hypothesis. In the next part of this series, I will address a more theoretical issue with social deregulation (which forms the foundations of views of the critics) and the future of our society.
