Warning: This article contains descriptions of traumatic events, including rape, which some readers might find upsetting.

Humans are not always very good at predicting how we will react in certain situations. In fact, we’re notoriously bad at it. This is one of the things that historically has made attitudes to rape and sexual assault so complex.

“In cold states, when we are feeling calm and rational and not in any danger, it is really hard to imagine what we are going to do in hot states – situations of high energy and stress,” Professor Paul Dolan, a behavioural psychologist at the London School of Economics, tells Refinery29.

“Most people would like to think that we would fight back when we’re attacked,” he continues, when I ask him how this might apply to a rape or a sexual assault. After all, how many times have you heard someone ask the tired and reductive question: Why didn’t she just fight back?

“We think, Well, I would have fought back, so why didn’t she? It is difficult for us to understand, and once we believe in something, it is very hard to dissuade us. All the compelling evidence in the world isn’t going to change that.”

This is perhaps why one of the biggest rape myths – that not fighting back against an attacker or trying to flee is an indication of consent – has persisted for so long as such an effective line of questioning for defence lawyers in court.

It is a widely held belief despite the fact that there are huge swathes of scientific and psychological evidence to debunk it. And that’s what makes it an easy tool in the manipulation of a jury. It has been this way for centuries.

One of the biggest rape myths is that not fighting back against an attacker or trying to flee is an indication of consent.

The ancient Greeks and Romans spun myths of women who begged the gods to be turned into birds or trees rather than remain a ‘damaged’ woman after an assault. Philomela, for instance, is raped by Tereus then turned into a nightingale. These were later accompanied by legends of brave women who fought their attackers and died from their injuries, and were sometimes made saints or had constellations named after them – like Catholic saint Maria Goretti, who declared she would rather die than submit to her rapist and was stabbed 14 times.

Later, in the Victorian era, rape was considered a fate worse than death. Women, who were supposed to be virgins until marriage, had better fight back than be sullied and outcast for the rest of their lives. During this period, the accused would remain anonymous in court cases until ‘proven’ guilty in a trial that would largely be based on gender stereotypes – such as the idea that women were inherently untrustworthy – and heard in front of an all-male audience (the explicit details required of survivors in these trials were not suitable for the ears of a chaste lady, after all).

Unfortunately, our modern criminal justice systems have not come as far from that as you might think.

This age-old myth was peddled recently by lawyers representing Harvey Weinstein. They asked why survivors had not tried to escape him in the hotel room, even implying that by entering the now convicted rapist’s room, they were in some way consenting to their attacks.

It doesn’t stop there. In Britain, a family court judge in Sheffield recently sparked ire for twice ruling that victims had not been raped because they took “no physical steps” to stop their attacker. Judge Robin Tolson has faced calls to resign from peers, campaigners and MPs, and his case was subject to a retrial.

Then there are the many cases (out of the frighteningly few that actually make it to court, with just 1.7% of all reported cases being prosecuted and conviction rates at a historic low) that escape media attention. The same argument is used to discredit survivors on the witness stand – and justify sexual violence.

I was always the girl who said, ‘If a man tries that on me, I’m going to kick him where it hurts and run away.’ But in that actual situation, a fear overcomes you and you feel powerless. I was so shocked he could do such a thing, it just freezes you. Amy* 28

Amy*, 28, was a schoolgirl when her teacher locked her in a classroom and raped her.

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