Rape myths are extremely dangerous. Did the Lehrmann verdict bust them?

It’s taken centuries to establish that women aren’t silently longing to be raped by men. By the Victorian era, a significant bulk of scientific research claimed to prove that a woman could not be sexually assaulted against her will by one man, mostly because she just needed to cross her legs to repel them, or utilise “the tremendous power of the pelvic and abductor thigh muscles”, as detailed by historian Joanna Bourke in Rape: A History from 1860 to the Present.

In fact, it was thought that “merely by vibrating”, a vagina could “ward off attack”. Such mighty power! If these vibrations – or muscles - were to fail to prevent assault, then the woman was at fault, declared a weighty line-up of lawyers, doctors, academics, scientists and religious leaders. Or it could be that despite protesting, in truth, she – or her mischievous subconscious – were “willing” and even eager to be violated.

Illustration: Simon Letch. Credit:

“Asking for it.” “You know you want it”. “Yes means no.” Blurred lines.

As late as the 1970s, police asked victims if they had orgasmed during rape. As for drinking – well if women drank, they were somehow more responsible for being raped, while if men drank, they were less responsible for their actions.

And this week, even though, at the conclusion of a defamation trial, Justice Michael Lee found that “Mr Lehrmann raped Ms Higgins”, on the balance of probabilities, the hoary, stubborn myths still scattered like cockroaches on social media and far-right sites. This was despite – or perhaps because – Lee’s careful judgment had blasted pesticide in their faces.

Take this gem, from The Spectator Australia (I won’t link to it because – well, you’ll see. Note: it is not satire). Given Higgins was drinking and had kissed Lehrmann, “[I]t is reasonable to conclude that [Higgins] was not averse to having sex with Lehrmann. In other words, the act itself would not be repugnant to her. And why would it? Most women enjoy it … ‘date rape’, particularly in the circumstances of the Lehrmann/Higgins matter, can, as the law stands, be little more than a misdemeanour. Sex is not some act intrinsically horrifying to women. How traumatic can it be for someone, not a virgin, who embarks on a drinking spree with a man whose clear intention is to have sex, to wake up to find that, yes, they did after all have sex? In the sober light of day, she may reflect that she wishes she hadn’t done it. Issues of personal hygiene and so on aside, for many women, presumably, it’s rather like buyer’s remorse, not entirely dissimilar to deciding the day after a shopping spree that she doesn’t really like that black strapless dress after all.”

Yep, this was published. In 2024.

I hope the women in that pundit’s life can have a wee chat with him about how women agreeing to drink with men who may fancy them is not consent, that it’s nothing to do with personal hygiene (!) or whether or not one is a virgin. That survivors don’t tend to feel like they’ve been on a shopping spree. That even if this was a date (it wasn’t) it’s long been established women can be raped on dates and in marriages. That rape is not sex but violence.

I won’t air the other myths that re-emerged this week; they’re too ugly. But they persist.

Analysis of Twitter, now known as X, found victim-blaming remarks are more likely to be retweeted than victim-supportive remarks. According to a 2016 study, when accused perpetrators and victims are well known in pop culture, the incidence of victim-blaming on social media becomes even higher.

In his opening remarks, Justice Lee directly addresses those “disposed to be sceptical about complaints of sexual assault and hold stereotyped beliefs”, who might object to his findings. He carefully pointed out that survivors respond very differently to rape, can continue to be friendly with the rapist, can take time to recognise what happened to them, and may be passive or frozen during a sexual assault instead of taking a “fight or flight” response.

The good news is that rape myths are eroding. The bad news is, they are doing so very slowly – and this erosion is not doing enough to prevent sexual assault.

In an incisive, important new essay published this week, author and domestic violence expert Jess Hill and Professor Michael Salter argue for a need to rethink primary prevention of violence against women. We should no longer prioritise changing attitudes as our primary approach, they say, because even as attitudes have changed, often glacially, the prevalence of sexual and domestic violence has persisted or even worsened.

The 2021 National Community Attitudes Survey found there had been “no significant improvement between 2017 and 2021 in attitudes towards violence against women overall”, which, as Hill and Salter point out, “is particularly alarming because the years between 2017 and 2021 were a period of extremely high awareness and traction on issues of gendered violence”, with broad media coverage and increased public investment.

While there has been some marked improvement in the attitudes of young people, they describe as an “alarming rise in perpetration” among the same cohort.

This is a startling finding. The authors argue for the need for a more targeted approach, one that goes beyond education and awareness-raising, that doesn’t suggest that ending gendered violence is “the responsibility of everyone”, but recognises particular population groups need greater focus and resourcing than others, and “that some sections of the community, our systems and industries have greater power and responsibility to affect change”. How do we manage the impact of porn, of TikTok and YouTube, for example? How do we avoid drifting into “framing maleness as bad”?

Hill and Salter identify four “missing pieces to the puzzle of prevention”: accountability and consequences; prevention of, and recovery from, intergenerational trauma and child abuse; addressing the socioeconomic impacts and gradients of domestic and sexual violence and coercive control and addressing the commercial determinants of the same, asking who benefits financially from porn, gambling and alcohol sales?

Rape myths are incredibly dangerous and need to be stamped on whenever they appear. But we need to do more. After the awful, vitriolic and often ignorant public debate we’ve seen during the Lehrmann trial, now is the time to elevate the best drivers of change: experts, evidence and experience.

Julia Baird is a journalist, author and regular columnist. Her latest book is Bright Shining: how grace changes everything.

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