A few days ago, Chrissie Hyde had some unfortunate words about victims of rape, blaming the women who have been victims of sexual assaults, the type of things you would imagine coming from men… however, sentences like these were coming from Chrissie during an interview with the Sunday Times: ‘If I’m walking around, and I’m very modestly dressed and I’m keeping to myself, and someone attacks me, then I’d say that’s his fault. But if I’m being very lairy and putting it about and being provocative, then you are enticing someone who’s already unhinged – don’t do that. Come on! That’s common sense. You know, if you don’t want to entice a rapist, don’t wear high heels so you can’t run from him.’
Don’t wear high heels if you don’t want to be raped? Was she out of her mind? This idea that a woman should dress modestly to prevent the beast sleeping inside each man to wake up, is so outdated, so (should I use this word?) retarded that it made me very sad to hear it from such a female rocker pioneer. Has Chrissie even taken a good look at map like this one, comparing the rape rates in different countries? Muslim countries and other very religious countries, where women aren’t even allowed to show a square inch of skin, have, by far, the highest rape score!! Sorry for you Chrissie, wearing the burqa is really not a rape prevention method. But everyone is getting old and Chrissie’s brain must be getting mushy. The worst of this is that she is also blaming herself at the same time, since, in her forthcoming memoirs, she is referring to her own sexual assault – she was assaulted by a biker gang in the 70’s – and is totally blaming herself: ‘Technically speaking, however you want to look at it, this was all my doing and I take full responsibility,’
Ex-Runaways Jackie Fox recently put herself at the opposite side of the rape controversy, when she revealed she was raped by band manager Kim Fowley, at a backstage party. She reacted to Hynde’s comments during an interview with Yahoo Music:
‘I found myself being surprisingly angry,’ she told Yahoo Music. ‘don’t put your heroes on pedestals’…. ‘But I don’t want to cast a stone at Chrissie Hynde — just at that one particular statement. Because it’s a really dangerous message.’
She continued:
‘It bothers me, because I don’t know that she’s gone out there and talked to [other] rape victims. If you had seen the messages that people sent me, so many of them were about ‘I’ve always thought it was my fault.’ We already think that anyway. So this is just telling people who’ve recently gone through this experience of being raped or abused, ‘Yeah, you’re right, it is your fault.’ But there’s no such thing as asking for it. And poor judgment is not an invitation to rape, nor an excuse for it. I know so many women who were raped while they were drunk or high, and they all blame themselves. To say that a woman can’t misjudge how much she’s drinking, or dress in a way that makes her feel good about herself for fear that men aren’t going to be able to control themselves, or that she has to be able to know who is dangerous and who isn’t, is asking an awful lot of men and women — especially young people.
Maybe, we’ll just say maybe, for women who came up in rock in an era when there weren’t a lot of women in it, they just thought they really had to act tough. And they’ve carried that with them. And I have no idea whether she really is that tough. If she is, good for her. But you can’t expect everyone to be that way. If you want to, for your own-self-empowerment, take personal responsibility because you feel like you need to for something you did, that is one thing. But you don’t get to make that statement for everybody else.’
How two women who have almost the same age and went through the same awful traumatic experience can react so differently? Why does Chrissie think she should be blamed for her rape? I have no answer, but it’s a shame that Chrissie still doesn’t get it after all these years.