Ah, yes. The editing error commonly known as “printing a completely untrue story”.

Sure, absolutely. Puts me somewhat in mind of the arguments about whether homosexuality is genetic or not; seemingly important, but utterly irrelevant to the fundamental issue of gay rights. But then you know it’ll be used as ammunition by bigots/sexists, so you end up getting drawn in to a complete sidetrack. Ah, debate.

Time will tell…

That site reads like a UFO kook’s recycle bin after a binge on LSD.

read this scary horrible rotten story that has been hushed up.

http://doctor-cheat.blogspot.com/

Point taken. I agree that the Telegraph has some rather poor word choice and the article is extremely loaded and I hereby retract any statements that could be interpreted as defending the Telegraph.

I wrote my reply primarily to address the magically morphing of statement such as “Women’s clothing have an impact on rape” to “Women are responsible for being raped.”

Now that’s not meant to be a critique of Ben Article I rather agree that the Newspaper has a duty to keep their articles neutral and at the very least factual.

I’m just perplexed that so many people seem to be so offended by the statement even in a context where it is simply presented as a fact (wrongly, obviously) with no social implications or hidden agendas attached to it.

It is as if, if it turned out, that it was true, it would suddenly become the women’s fault if she was raped.

The aim of my comment was not to defend the telegraph, but rather to point out that the rapist would be to blame either way and it therefore shouldn’t matter, what the women wears.

I realize of course that we don’t live in a utopia, and “should” does not equal “is”, but really the statement can only be used offensively by constructing a completely fallacious argument in the reader’s mind, that couldn’t be true even if its premise was.

and then mentions an analogy about getting run over. But it is a poor analogy. Increasing your chances of being run over is indeed a consequence of taking a walk, but an unwanted, an unsought consequence.

Very different from doing something provocatively. Leave aside the overused phrase “dress provocatively”, and the synonyms ’sexy’, ‘tempting’ etc. Doing something provocatively is to attempt to provoke some thought or action in another person. The person being provocative is indeed ‘asking for it’, for provoking a response is exactly what is intended.

We can argue what kind of response is sought, but one certainly is being ‘asked for’.

Saying “women who dress provocatively are more likely to be raped” is in no way at all the same as saying “if you dress provocatively you are asking for it”.

Of course, the pseudo-story was in the Torygraph so they might well have been trying to imply this, but it doesn’t make it a correct implication.

Lets put it another way. People who leave the house to walk to the shops are more likely to be run over than people who stay at home. Is this the same as saying that if you leave the house to walk to the shops then you are asking for it?