Ab Fab Star Conflates "Bad Behavior" with Rape. Another Case of Blaming the Victim?

Ladies, in case you've been in, like, a blackout or something, let us fill you in: Blaming the victim is alive and well.

"Don't behave badly," warned Brit actor Joanna Lumley, star of the classic comedy series "Absolutely Fabulous," as well as its upcoming movie version. "Don't be sick in the gutter at midnight in a silly dress with no money to get a taxi home, because somebody will take advantage of you, either they'll rape you, or they'll knock you on the head or they'll rob you."

Uh oh.

Lumley, whose role on the series as a messy lush named Patsy took the art of onscreen inebriation to new levels, issued her warnings in an interview with the Telegraph published Thursday. And angry Twitter followers, predictably, reacted with angry criticism.

"I like Joanna Lumley but it saddens me that her advice for girls is HOW NOT TO GET RAPED rather than telling boys NOT TO RAPE IN FIRST PLACE," noted one disappointed fan. Tweeted another: "Women in mini skirts get raped. Women in pyjamas get raped. Naked women get raped, women in niqab get raped. STFU Joanna Lumley, seriously."

Her comments were shocking in their old-school, she-had-it-coming sort of way--and could even be harmful, say rape experts.

"Statements like these are not only erroneous in a myriad of ways, they are dangerous, as they point to situations and measures that are not the most likely to occur or to prevent a rape," Susan Caringella, professor of sociology at Western Michigan University and author of the forthcoming Rape: 3000 Years and Counting, told Yahoo! Shine. "We do not, and should not, blame crime victims for their plight in all other cases, and we cannot and should not blame women for rape--contributing to not only their victimization, but to men getting away with rape, which encourages more rape."

In eight of 10 rape cases, the victim actually knows the offender, National Sexual Violence Resource Center spokesperson Tracy Cox added. "When people make comments like this, they are misinformed and disrespectful to victims everywhere," she told Yahoo! Shine about Lumley's statements. Such comments also silence victims, she added. "There is a space for talking about risk reduction, but it doesn't get to the core of the issue. It's not about drinking, it's not about dressing a certain way."

But making it about that--even using it as a legal defense--is certainly nothing new. In 2011, a jury acquitted two New York police officers of charges that they raped a drunk woman after helping her into her apartment while on patrol, effectively heightening the age-old problem of women being looked at skeptically when they report sexual assaults. A more recent incident, in Steubenville, Ohio, involved Tweets, a video and Instagram photos, football players, and the alleged rape of a very intoxicated 16-year-old girl; the case has reportedly divided the town, and plenty of folks are blaming the blacked-out young woman instead of the boys.

Whose side would Lumley take? We can't say for sure. But, in a culture in which young women are seemingly more public about their heavy drinking and drugging-and in which that is seemingly more acceptable, if forums like Cat Marnell's altered-states Vice writings are any indication-when is it okay, if ever, to also talk about the practicalities of public safety for women?

A 2011 ad campaign by the Pennsylvania Liquor Authority warning women about the dangers of drinking and sexual assault-which included disturbing photos and the line, "See how you could have prevented this" preceding advice-was skewered in online spaces from Jezebel to xoJane. There is a for-real fetish website called "Girls Getting Wasted Stories." And Slate advice columnist Emily Yoffe, who answers questions from readers in Dear Prudence, has often been on the wrong side of feminist bloggers for connecting rape with binge drinking.

"Getting so hammered that you don't know what you're doing enables you wake up in mysterious locales and have intimate adventures with people whose names you haven't quite committed to memory!" she wrote in response to a young woman seeking advice for her friend, who was "traumatized" at having blackout sex and not recalling if she had given consent. Another time, in response to a college student seeking advice on how to deal with a friend who is a loud and annoying drunk, Yoffe noted, "Hers is the kind of behavior that leads to young women finding themselves waking up next to young men they didn't intend to have sex with."

Feministing responded to the columnist angrily, with a post entitled, "Dear Prudence: How Should I Respond to Your Rape Denialism?"

Perhaps the best way to deal with looking out for each other's safety, Cox told Shine, is to "model respectable behaviors," and to let other women know that you've got their back, no matter what they're wearing.

But talking about women's behavior in a rape culture is beyond touchy, she admitted "It is a tightrope," Cox said, "because we live in a world where these crimes do occur."