Rape Victim Blaming Quotes

As a girl, she was a legal prey, especially if she was dressed in a worn black leather jacket and had pierced eyebrows, tattoos, and zero social status.

It is more like carrying something really heavy, forever. You do not get to put it down: you have to carry it, and so you carry it the way you need to, however it fits best.

I give the victim the benefit of the doubt when it comes to allegations of rape and sexual abuse. I choose to err on that side of caution. This does not mean I am unsympathetic to the wrongly accused, but if there are sides to be chosen, I am on the side of the victim.

Denial forces victims to retreat in lifeless existence, dieing in the shadows of buried trauma and painful memories.

We mute the realization of malevolence- which is too threatening to bear - by turning offenders into victims themselves and by describing their behavior as the result of forces beyond their control.

People may not realize the damage that they are doing by placing the blame on the victim ~ but that doesn't lessen the damage that they cause by doing it.

Why me, then?” I ask. “Why not Branley? She’s way hotter and was just as drunk as I was.” Alex shakes her head as she sits back down. “Physical attractiveness has nothing to do with it. You were alone, isolated, and weak. The three of them had been watching girls all night, waiting for someone to separate from a group. It happened to be you, but it could’ve been anyone else. Opportunity is what matters, nothing else. […] I’m telling you, Claire. It doesn’t matter. What you were wearing. What you look like. Nothing. Watch the nature channel. Predators go for the easy prey.

Being a victim is supposed to set you free; it acquits you of any agency, any sense of responsibility to the person who did you harm. It's not your fault, they say. Leave him, they say. Nobody ever tells you what to do if leaving isn't an option. They just call you stupid. A dumb bitch. Sympathy is only meted out if you follow all of society's rules for how a victim is supposed to behave.

If you have been raped or sexually assaulted and you have been blamed, or fear that you may be blamed, I just want you to understand this: You are not to blame. There is nothing you did to make someone hurt you, nor is there anything you could have done differently to prevent or stop it.

The part I wanted them to understand is that these equations can implode, constricting your whole life, until one day you're sitting in a locked steel box breathing through an airhole with a straw and wondering, 'Now? Now am I safe?

Sometimes the shame is not the beatings, not the rape. The shaming is in being asked to stand judgment.

As long as we as a society continue to belittle and dismiss women's accounts, disbelieve and question their stories, and blame them for their own assaults, we are playing right into the hands of those who silence victims by asking: "who would believe you anyways?".

Feminists don’t single out rape jokes because rape is “worse” than other crimes—we single them out because we live in a culture that actively strives to shrink the definition of sexual assault; that casts stalking behaviors as romance; blames victims for wearing the wrong clothes, walking through the wrong neighborhood, or flirting with the wrong person; bends over backwards to excuse boys-will-be-boys misogyny; makes the emotional and social costs of reporting a rape prohibitively high; pretends that false accusations are a more dire problem than actual assaults; elects officials who tell rape victims that their sexual violation was “god’s plan”; and convicts in less than 5 percent of rape cases that go to trial.

How is it that two eyes, a nose and a mouth can be positioned in such varying ways that it makes one person beautiful, and another person not?

The shame, embarrassment, feeling of low self-worth, and scores of "labels" we give ourselves are not fitting. I am beginning to see how I had no control over the situation. He was a big man, I was a little boy.

Words are small things. No one means any harm by them, they keep saying that. Everyone is just doing their job. The police say it all the time. 'I'm just doing my job here.' That's why no one asks what the boy did; as soon as the girl starts to talk they interrupt her instead with questions about what she did. Did she go up the stairs ahead of him or behind him? Did she lie down on the bed voluntarily or was she forced? Did she unbutton her own blouse? Did she kiss him? No? Did she kiss him back, then? Had she been drinking alcohol? Had she smoked marijuana? Did she say no? Was she clear about that? Did she scream loudly enough? Did she struggle hard enough? Why didn't she take photographs of her bruises right away? Why did she run from the party instead of saying anything to the other guests? They have to gather all the information, they say, when they ask the same question ten times in different ways in order to see if she changes her answer. This is a serious allegation, they remind her, as if it's the allegation that's the problem. She is told all the things she shouldn't have done: She shouldn't have waited so long before going to the police. She shouldn't have gotten rid of the clothes she was wearing. Shouldn't have showered. Shouldn't have drunk alcohol. Shouldn't have put herself in that situation. Shouldn't have gone into the room, up the stairs, given him the impression. If only she hadn't existed, then none of this would have happened, why didn't she think of that? She's fifteen, above the age of consent, and he's seventeen, but he's still 'the boy' in every conversation. She's 'the young woman.' Words are not small things.

Two-thirty comes during Testifying. It's Janine, telling about how she was gang-raped at fourteen and had an abortion.But whose fault was it? Aunt Helena says, holding up one plump finger. Her fault, her fault, her fault. We chant in unison. Who led them on? She did. She did. She did. Why did God allow such a terrible thing to happen? Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson.

There is healing in telling. There is healing in exposing abuse. There is healing in being truthful. There is healing in knowing you are not to blame. There is healing in standing up for yourself. There is healing in setting boundaries. There is healing in self-love. Hold onto hope that you will recover.

Oddly then, in our search for meaning, we often assign victims too much blame for their assaults, and offenders too little. Our inconsistencies do not seem to trouble us, but they are truly puzzling. After all, if the offender is not to blame for his behavior, why would the victim be, no matter what she did our didn't do? Our views make sense, however, if you think that we are trying to reassure ourselves that we are not helpless and, that, in any case, no one is out to get us.

Young women are not putting themselves in danger. The people around them are doing the real damage. Who? you might wonder. The abstinence teacher who tells her students that they'll go to jail if they have premarital sex. The well-founded organization that tells girls on college campuses that they should be looking for a husband, not taking women's studies classes. The judge who rules against a rape survivor because she didn't meet whatever standard for a victim he had in mind. The legislator who pushes a bill to limit young women's access to abortion because he doesn't think they're smart enough to make their own decisions. These are the people who are making the world a worse place, and a more dangerous one, at that, for girls and young women. We're just doing our best to live in it.

My mom doesn't say anything. I don't say anything. Neither of us knows yet what you should say when rape victims blame themselves: 'It was not your fault.' It was not your fault, even if you were drunk, even if you were wearing a low-cut minidress, even if you were out walking alone at night, even if you were on a date with the rapist and kind of liked him but didn't want to have sex with him.

She was so upset about a blog that maybe a total of six people read yet had no compassion for her granddaughters who had suffered the physical and emotional pains of sexual abuse and whose lives were changed forever. The two cannot even be compared, yet when someone is in denial about what happened, they cannot perceive what is true. It seemed too hard for her to let her mind go there and believe her grandson could do such terrible things.

To be sure, you would like to live in a world where people in white hats bring people in black hats to justice, but you don't. Don't let this discourage you, though. You can accept that life is unfair and still relish it. You aren't in total control of your life, but there is a nice big chunk of your life over which you have complete authority--beat that part to a pulp. Just remember the unfair nature of the world, the randomness of birthright, means people often suffer adversity and enjoy opulence through no effort of their own. If you think the world is just and fair, people who need help may never get it. Realize that even though we are all responsible for our actions, the blame for evil acts rests on the perpetrator and never the victim. No one deserves to be raped or bullied, robbed or murdered. To make the world more just and fair, you have to make it harder for evil to thrive, and you can't do this just by reducing the number of its potential targets.

Viciousness is part of the world we live in, some of us choose to ignore it with the rationalisation of wanting only positivity to flow our way. How selfish we have become! That the pain of others has become a hindrance to the fulfilment of our positive selves.

over and over victims are blamed for their assaults. and when we imply that victims bring on their own fates - whether to make ourselves feel more efficacious or to make the world seem just - we prevent ourselves from taking the necessary precautions to protect ourselves. Why take precautions? We deny the trauma could easily have happened to us. And we also hurt the people already traumatized. Victims are often already full of self-doubt, and we make recovery harder by laying inspectors blame on them.

When school kids are shot by a random shooter, nobody asks whether the victims should have taken more precautions. Nobody suggests that maybe the victims should have skipped school that day. Nobody ever blames the victims. So why is it that when women are attacked, the onus is on them? “If only she hadn’t walked home alone.” “If only she hadn’t cut through the park.” “If only she’d taken a cab.” When it comes to rape, it seems to me “if only” is used all the time. Never about the man. Nobody ever says “if only” he hadn’t raped her. It’s always about the woman. If only …

The idea that clothing choices can stop men from raping is a frustratingly common belief having nothing to do with sexual assault. According to a study by A Federal Commission on Crime of Violence, rapists could not remember what their victims were wearing. So why do people continue to blame the clothing choices of women?

They tell you to get a guy friend to walk you home, not realizing that guy friends can rape you. Take a cab! But the cab driver can rape you. Take an uber, but they're even more rapey. Take the metro -- rapists ride free. What if everyone was like me, I wondered, and hunted down their respective Will's? Would the economy collapse?

It doesn’t matter. What you were wearing. What you look like. Nothing. Watch the nature channel. Predators go for the easy prey.

Now in my eleven years of conventional life I had learned many things and one of them is what it means to be convicted of rape--I do not mean the man who did it, I mean the woman to whom it was done. Rape is one of the Christian mysteries, it creates a luminous and beautiful tableau in people's minds; and as I listened furtively to what nobody would allow me to hear straight out, I slowly came to understand that I was face to face with one of those feminine disasters, like pregnancy, like disease, like weakness; she was not only the victim of the act but in some strange way its perpetrator; somehow she had attracted the lightening that struck her out of a clear sky. A diabolical chance--which was not chance--had revealed her to all of us as she truly was, in her secret inadequacy, in that wretched guiltiness which she had kept hidden for seventeen years but which now finally manifested in front of everybody. Her secret guilt was this: She was Cunt. She had "lost" something. Now the other party to the incident had manifested his essential nature, too; he was Prick--but being Prick is not a bad thing. In fact, he had "gotten away with" something (possibly what she had "lost"). And there I was at eleven years of age: She was out late at night. She was in the wrong part of town. Her skirt was too short and that provoked him. She liked having her eye blacked and her head banged against the sidewalk. I understood this perfectly. (I reflected thus in my dream, in my state of being a pair of eyes in a small wooden box stuck forever on a grey, geometric plane--or so I thought.) I too had been guilty of what had been done to me, when I came home from the playground in tears because I had been beaten up by bigger children who were bullies. I was dirty. I was crying. I demanded comfort. I was being inconvenient. I did not disappear into thin air.

They were so thrilled when I said I’m a virgin,” I blurt out. “I’m so fucking stupid.” I start crying again, and Alex hands me a napkin. “You’re not stupid,” she says. “You simply don’t assume people mean you harm.” “Yeah, well.” I blow my nose loudly. “Last night that equaled being stupid.” “No, it means you’re normal,” Alex says.

Although drinking to the point of becoming incapacitated is unwise and risky for anyone, the blame for rape must be put on the rapist who preys on a drunk woman, not a drunk woman who becomes prey. If my car is stolen after I’ve parked it with the door unlocked in a neighborhood known for car theft, a crime has been committed, and I have the right and expectation to report the crime to the police. No one would tell me that the thief is the one who deserves sympathy, and that apprehending him would ruin his life. No one would tell me I’m a terrible person for getting my car stolen, and that I deserve to have my car stolen. They would be right to question my judgment, but not the fact that a crime has been committed. But when it comes to rape, the victim’s pre-rape actions are used to justify the crime.

We aren't the only girls with fathers like these. They're more common than you might think. He told me the stories like different fathers might spin tales of love and happiness. Nycteus, who threatened his lovely daughter with fearful punishments when she was raped by Zeus. Danaë, another of Zeus's victims, another whose father blamed her and cast her and her baby off to sea inside a sealed chest, hoping it would be her tomb. Echetus, who blinded his daughter for the crime of looking at a man. That was the kind of husband my father would have chosen for me, if he had the chance.

When I tell someone that the most important thing a young woman can do to avoid being raped is to avoid places with lots of young men (and if you absolutely have to go to those place, don't drink) the dumb responses range from: 'Girls have a right to have fun' to 'You're just blaming the victim' all the way up to the ludicrous, 'A woman should be able to walk naked into a biker bar and not be bothered.' These are political ideals. They might even be the way the world should work. They are not the way the world actually works. The responsibility for self-protection has to rest with the potential victim because the potential rapist has no interest whatsoever in her safety or rights. The potential victim is the one who cares.

Now, whenever she thinks of it, she is confused about what she did and didn't cause. She is confused about desire, and her own desirability. She is confused about her own sexuality. It should be hers to wield as she wishes, she knows this, but why—even if she isn't wielding it, exactly, even if she's just being herself—is there the sense of a shameful invitation, or even an invitation at all? She knows she should be able to invite if she wants to invite, to say no if she wants to say no, yes if she wants to say yes, to allure or not allure, to just simply feel good about what her body is and does and how it looks. She is supposed to be sure and confident about those things, but how can she possibly be sure and confident about those things? There are so many colliding messages—confidence and shame, power and powerlessness, what she owes others and what is hers—that she can't hear what's true.

Jokes and media slurs about rape and its survivors not only desensitize the issue but also have an impact on rape conviction rates! "Widespread “myths and stereotypes” about rape victims may give jurors “preconceived ideas” that could affect their decisions in court. When victims were demonised in the media, you can see how juries would bring their preconceptions to bear." -Alison Saunders, head of the Crown Prosecution Service, UK.

I was the Goddess, the hunter of pearls. The drinker of liquid diamonds. The flower girl that threw out golden stars. The prescriber of poems for the soul. The dreamer who sees butterflies with wings of steel. Daughters raised by the voices in their heads Will now blame it on the green sun.

Young women are not putting themselves in danger. The people around them are doing the real damage. Who? you might wonder. The abstinence teacher who tells her students that they'll go to jail if they have premarital sex. The well-founded organizarion that tells girls on college campuses that they should be looking for a husband, not taking women's studies classes. The judge who rules against a rape survivor because she didn't meet whatever standard for a victim he had in mind. The legislator who pushes a bill to limit young women's access to abortion because he doesn't think they're smart enough to make their own decisions. These are the people who are making the world a worse place, and a more dangerous one, at that, for girls and young women. We're just doing our best to live in it.

Her eyes bled from venomous anger... Her flower had been gruesomely deflowered... Her life had slowly turned into a blunder... There was no more thinking further.... She would rather become a Foetus murderer Than end up a "hopeless" mother.... Of course, she found peace in the former Until later years of emotional trauma Oh, the foetus hunt was forever! The only thing you should abort is the thought of aborting your baby. Stop the hate and violence against innocent children.

Just imagine coming from people of two different races that had not a blamed thing in common except a love of blood in every which way. Imagine knowing your white daddy was a robber and killer just crazy with greed who raped your Indian momma who herself believed in cutting out people's hearts to please the gods and eating what was left of the victim.

He bites down on a further explosion, but Doc is already rolling with her counter-attack: "I am done letting you use my rape against me, you oversized hunk of shit!

Blaming her meant that she was at fault, that she must have done something for this to happen to her. And so it could never happen to their innocent, sweet, obedient daughters.

It's easy to blame the patriarchy, to rightfully point at the men who rape and hold them accountable. What's harder is to notice the women who sometimes passively direct rapists toward their victims by contributing to the hypersexualization of women of color under the guise of empowerment... Feminist white women who think "sexy Pocahontas" is an empowering look instead of lingering fetishization of the rape of a child. The same imagery they claim to find sexually empowering is rooted in the myth of white women's purity and every other woman's sexual availability.

Young women are not putting themselves in danger. The people around them are doing the real damage. Who? you might wonder. The abstinence teacher who tells her students that they'll go to jail if they have premarital sex. The well-founded organizarion that tells girls on college campuses that they should be looking for a husband, not taking women's studies classes. The judge who rules against a rape survivor because she didn't meet whatevel standard for a victim he had in mind. The legislator who pushes a bill to limit young women's access to abortion because he doesn't think they're smart enough to make their own decisions. These are the people who are making the world a worse place, and a more dangerous one, at that, for girls and young women. We're just doing our best to live in it.

Riley made a simple but telling observation about both feminist and nonfeminist rape deniers. “They are all talking about sex and promiscuity,” she said. But, she observed, “Rape is not about sex at all.

We don’t widely accept the idea that bad things happen for uncontrollable reasons because of fear. How could that be? If that is true, we can’t make sense of it with our cognitive brains. And that is scary. If that is true, there is no way for us to control those things while in human form. And that is scary. So we search for meaning, a less scary understanding. And we usually end up assuming the victim is to blame.

I saw now that bad men existed who would take advantage of any weakness and insecurity they found when violating a victim. I saw it was not my fault; I did not choose to be raped or kidnapped. But now I was learning how to protect myself from the predators, to trust my No and my instinct and my strength. I was learning I was not to blame, I couldn't prevent men from trying to hurt me, but I could definitely fight back. And sometimes fighting back worked.

Then the evil presence steals her innocence, and she is blamed for his actions. I mean, come on. I couldn’t help but feel that this story is a reflection of modern views of rape: blaming the victim instead of prosecuting the villain.

Rape culture is the culture of silence. It’s the culture of girls thinking a boy’s desires trumps their own. It’s the culture of girls thinking they’re choiceless, of girls thinking their bodies are the most valuable parts of themselves and their worth is determined by how much they are wanted. It’s slut shaming and victim blaming. It’s parents not talking openly with their children about consent. It’s parents not talking to girls about their entitlement to pleasure. It’s parents not talking to their children about sex at all.

What you reckon make him do a thing like that?" "Beats me. Just nasty." "Well, they ought to take her out of school." "Ought to. She carry some of the blame." "Oh, come on. She ain't but twelve or so." "Yeah. But you never know. How come she didn't fight him?

- Rape is a unique crime, representing both a physical and psychological violation. More than with any other crime the victim can experience reporting rape as a form of revictimisation. l In no other crime is the victim subject to so much scrutiny at trial, where the most likely defence is that the victim consented to the crime. Powerful stereotypes function to limit the definition of what counts as ‘real rape’." Kelly, L., Lovett, J., & Regan, L. (2005). A gap or a chasm?: attrition in reported rape cases. London: Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate.

Some readers may find it a curious or even unscientific endeavour to craft a criminological model of organised abuse based on the testimony of survivors. One of the standard objections to qualitative research is that participants may lie or fantasise in interview, it has been suggested that adults who report severe child sexual abuse are particularly prone to such confabulation. Whilst all forms of research, whether qualitative or quantitative, may be impacted upon by memory error or false reporting. there is no evidence that qualitative research is particularly vulnerable to this, nor is there any evidence that a fantasy— or lie—prone individual would be particularly likely to volunteer for research into child sexual abuse. Research has consistently found that child abuse histories, including severe and sadistic abuse, are accurate and can be corroborated (Ross 2009, Otnow et al. 1997, Chu et al. 1999). Survivors of child abuse may struggle with amnesia and other forms of memory disturbance but the notion that they are particularly prone to suggestion and confabulation has yet to find a scientific basis. It is interesting to note that questions about the veracity of eyewitness evidence appear to be asked far more frequently in relation to sexual abuse and rape than in relation to other crimes. The research on which this book is based has been conducted with an ethical commitment to taking the lives and voices of survivors of organised abuse seriously.

Now, whenever she thinks of it, she is confused about what she did and didn't cause. She is confused about desire, and her own desirability. She is confused about her own sexuality. It should be hers to wield as she wishes, she knows this, but why—even if she isn't wielding it, exactly, even if she's just being herself—is there the sense of a shameful invitation, or even an invitation at all? She knows she should be able to invite if she wants to invite, to say no if she wants to say no, yes if she wants to say yes, to allure or not allure, to just simply feel good about what her body is and does and how it looks.

According to Schafran, many women, including women judges and jurors, “avoid acknowledging their own vulnerability by blaming the victim. This distancing mechanism operates particularly in non-stranger rape cases, because it is in acknowledging the likelihood of these crimes that women jurors feel most at risk.

In place of a firing squad, I stare down the barrels of endless interrogation. Why did she not run away? Why did she not use the opportunities she had for escape? Why did she stay if, indeed, the conditions were as bad as she claims? How much of this wasn't really consensual? Let me tell you a story. Not mine, this time around. It is the story of a girl we call after the place of her birth, lacking the integrity to even utter her name. The Suranelli Girl. Forty-two men rape this girl, over a period of forty days. She is sixteen years old. The police do not investigate her case. The high court questions her character. The highest court in the land asks the inevitable. Why did she not run away? Why did she not have the opportunities she had for escape? Why did she say, if need, the conditions were as bad as she claims? How much of this wasn't really consensual? Sometimes the shame is not the beatings, not the rape. The shaming is in being asked to stand for judgement.

Whereas rape victims' self blaming has often been misunderstood as merely a self-destructive response to rape, arising out of low self-esteem, feelings of shame, or female masochism, and fueled by society's desire to blame the victim, it can also be seen as an adaptive survival strategy, if the victim has no other way of gaining control.

How often do we hear from the local diocesan people—the bishop, the communications director, the victim assistance coordinator, and others—that this abuse is not restricted to clergy, but, rather, it is a societal problem? It does occur outside in the public realm. When was the last time you heard of a sex offender not being held accountable for his actions once caught? The Church treated the abuse as a sin only and nothing more. Out in society, sex offenders are not moved to another community quietly. “But protest that priests are 'no worse' than other groups or than men in general is a dire indictment of the profession. It is surprising that this attitude is championed by the Church authorities. Although the extent of the problem will continue to be debated, sexual abuse by Catholic priests is a fact. The reason why priests, publicly dedicated to celibate service, abuse is a question that cries out for explanation. Sexual activity of any adult with a minor is a criminal offense. By virtue of the requirement of celibacy, sexual activity with anyone is proscribed for priests. These factors have been constant and well-known by all Church authorities” (Sipe 227−228).

She blamed herself and hated herself and punished herself because that’s what women are taught to do. Blame themselves. Blame the victims. Tell themselves that since the Angela Dunleavys and Taylor Morrisons and Madeline Forresters of the world had sat through the same lessons on assault, received the same tiny bottles of pepper spray, and endured the same self-defense classes, it must have been their fault they were attacked. Or raped. Or killed. No one tells women that none of it is their fault. That the blame falls squarely on the awful men who do terrible things and the fucked-up society that raises them, molds them, makes excuses for them. People don’t want to admit that there are monsters in their midst, so the monsters continue to roam free and the cycle of violence and blame continues.

...if you truly want to live with peace in your heart and be free of the burdens of the past - you must be brave enough to be willing to look at yourself honestly, clearly, and without reservation. You must take responsibility for everything that's ever happened to you. Not blame. Responsibility. There are, of course, parts of your life that simply can't be your fault. You could not control much of what happened to you as a child...or whether you were abused or raped or have a chronic illness, so to say you have a part in anything like that would be untrue and damaging. But you can decide - by no longer allowing the circumstances of your life to victimize you - that none of it owns you anymore. You can say, Now, I know better. Now, I know different. I am not helpless anymore. And then you can go about doing the hard work of healing.

No rape victims should ever be shamed and silenced! This is critical for those investigating violations in Christian communities. The victims should always receive full support, not stigmatization, blaming, guilt-trips or pressure to ‘forgive and forget,’ because the perpetrator (who was caught) apologizes. There should be transparency and accountability. Any suggestion of suppressing a legal investigation to protect the institution only reinforces the notions of hypocrisy that exists from those outside the church.

I don’t know you. I’m not going to sleep in a small, confined tent with a man I don’t know.” She’d sleep next to her knife anyway, but if he decided to attack her, hopefully the zipper would provide an early warning. His shoulders relaxed. “I hadn’t thought about that.” Of course he hadn’t. Men didn’t constantly make decisions to minimize their risks of sexual assault. Not that all men were bad or men weren’t victims, but the majority of them lived life blissfully unaware of things like rape culture and victim blaming.

A white man raping a white woman is not a threat to white male power, and if it destroys or threatens to destroy the woman’s life, then so be it. And this, I believe, is why, despite all our claims, our society still does not take violence against women seriously. When perpetrated by white men, frequently either such violence is ignored or the blame is heaped onto the victim. It is only when white women are violated or even imagined to be violated by nonwhite men that white society suddenly seems to find its moral compass.

If people worked harder, were more responsible, were not lazy, or simply thought differently, they would not be victims of injustice. We end up holding children morally responsible for sexual abuse, victims are blamed for rape, and battered wives own their husband’s violence. Our egocentricity says to us, “You have experienced these things because you have ”—not been responsible; not loved your spouse well; not made moral choices, etc. We do the same for poverty and lack of jobs. Implicit is the idea that if they did what we did, made similar choices to ours, or behaved well, then injustice would not be present in their lives. If someone is downtrodden or oppressed, it is probably their fault.

Roman ignored her and took her ankles and flipped them purposefully, but because of her hands she could not turn all the way and ended up with her legs scissored unintuitively, and suddenly things were different. Ashley had heard girls tell stories of getting into situations and changing their minds as though this made them victims of what happened next, like that was how it worked, that you got so far and it switched off just like that and they were not themselves to blame for being little sluts and cock teases in the first place. But now she understood: it was not like that. Changing your mind was not the thing that happened at all, what changed was your body telling you what was right and what was wrong and before now she had never known the way things can just like that go all wrong.

Twenty thousand troops drawn from several countries, including Japan, marched to Beijing to relieve the siege and loot the city. Among the British contingent was a north Indian soldier, Gadhadar Singh, who felt sympathetic to the anti-Western cause of the Boxers even though he believed that their bad tactics had ‘blanketed their entire country and polity in dust.’ His first sight of China was the landscape near Beijing, of famished Chinese with skeletal bodies in abandoned or destroyed villages, over whose broken buildings flew the flags of China’s joint despoilers- France, Russia and Japan. River waters had become a ‘cocktail of blood, flesh, bones and fat.’ Singh particularly blamed the Russian and French soldiers for the mass killings, arson and rape inflicted on the Chinese. Some of the soldiers tortured their victims purely for fun. ‘All these sportsmen,’ Singh noted, ‘belonged to what where called “civilized nations”.

Probing Wolf’s construction of rape crisis feminism as victim feminism also shows that Wolf ignores an important aspect of victim identity that rape crisis feminists acknowledge centrally. Namely, the much-examined tendency of victims of rape to engage in self-blame and ‘experience only self-directed anger’ (Alcoff and Gray, 1993, p. 284). Wolf espouses a version of survivorship called power feminism, without carrying through rape crisis feminism’s cautions about forms of agency that centrally involve self-blame. A core argument of Wolf is that victims are peculiarly at risk of failing to assume personal responsibility – this is what is so disabling about victim identity. Rape crisis feminists put the problem very differently: victims often assume excessive responsibility, for their own actions and for the actions of others. In fact, for rape crisis feminists, ‘victim identity’ primarily consists of this self-blaming consciousness. ... Rather than seek the ‘rewards’ of victim recognition, the self-blaming victim situates themselves as the agent of their own victimization.

When a victim does go for help, she is seen as attacking the assailant. These are separate; seeking aid is her primary motive, his fallout is a secondary effect. But we are taught, if you speak, something bad happens to him. You will be blamed for every job he doesn’t get, every game he doesn’t play. His family, friends, community, team, will unleash hell on you, are you sure you want that? We force her to think hard about what this will mean for his life, even though he never considered what his actions would do to her. Inherently the victim is outnumbered. She is the sole object of his sexual aggression, expected to single-handedly undo all of their staunch beliefs, backed by years of amiable stories. They’ll say, We’ve never seen him behave that way, so you must be lying. This sentiment was echoed in Brock’s sister’s statement: The evidence presented during his trial and the conclusions that were made about his character were only from one night of his life, from strangers that didn’t know him: a fraction of a fraction of his existence. Victims are not fractions; we are whole.

As I let it out, layer by layer, Dr. Driscoll helped with the bumps and valleys. He knew just how much to draw out of me and how much I could handle. He is such an expert in his profession. He told me that the guilt I was feeling was not guilt, but regret. Guilt is a good thing. It is a mechanism by which we shouldn't make the same mistake twice. If you do something questionable, then the next chance you get to do it, guilt should stop you. I had no guilt. I had regrets, many regrets, but no guilt. It took some convincing, but he prevailed. There was always a nagging in my head, that if only I had had the guts to kill Neary myself, it would have stopped him from harming others, but that was not to be as a small boy. It does hurt that, maybe, just maybe, if I had carried out one of my many plans to kill him and myself then I could have saved victims younger than I. As victims come forward from almost all the churches where he served—and some are twenty—five plus years my junior—I feel that they would have been spared, if only I hadn't chickened out as a boy. Therein lies the answer; I was a little boy, a ten—year—old boy. Other victims of Neary were as young as six.

One of the most serious harms of trauma is that of loss of control. Some researchers of trauma have defined it as a state of complete helplessness in the face of an overwhelming force. Whether or not such total loss of control is constitutive of trauma, a daunting, seemingly impossible, task faced by the trauma survivor is to regain a sense of control over her or his life. Trauma survivors (rape survivors, in particular, because they are frequently blamed for their assaults) are faced with an especially intractable doubled bind: they need to know there's something they can do to avoid being similarly traumatized in future, but if there *is* such a thing, then they blame themselves for not knowing it (or doing it) at the time. They are faced with a choice between regaining control by accepting (at least some) responsibility--and hence blame--for the trauma, or feeling overwhelmed by helplessness. Whereas rape victims' self blaming has often been misunderstood as merely a self-destructive response to rape, arising out of low self-esteem, feelings of shame, or female masochism, and fueled by society's desire to blame the victim, it can also be seen as an adaptive survival strategy, if the victim has no other way of gaining control.

The BFMSS [British False Memory Syndrome Society] The founder of the 'false memory' movement in Britain is an accused father. Two of his adult daughters say that Roger Scotford sexually abused them in childhood. He denied this and responded by launching a spectacular counter-attack, which enjoyed apparently unlimited and uncritical air time in the mass media and provoke Establishment institutions that had made no public utterance about abuse to pronounce on the accused adults' repudiation of it. p171-172 The 'British False Memory Syndrome Society' lent a scientific aura to the allegations - the alchemy of 'falsehood' and 'memory' stirred with disease and science. The new name pathologised the accusers and drew attention away from the accused. But the so-called syndrome attacked not only the source of the stories but also the alliances between the survivors' movement and practitioners in the health, welfare, and the criminal justice system. The allies were represented no longer as credulous dupes but as malevolent agents who imported a miasma of the 'false memories' into the imaginations of distressed victims. Roger Scotford was a former naval officer turned successful property developer living in a Georgian house overlooking an uninterrupted valley in luscious middle England. He was a rich man and was able to give up everything to devote himself to the crusade. He says his family life was normal and that he had been a 'Dr Spock father'. But his first wife disagrees and his second wife, although believing him innocent, describes his children's childhood as very difficult. His daughters say they had a significantly unhappy childhood. In the autumn of 1991, his middle daughter invited him to her home to confront him with the story of her childhood. She was supported by a friend and he was invited to listen and then leave. She told him that he had abused her throughout her youth. Scotford, however, said that the daughter went to a homeopath for treatment for thrush/candida and then blamed the condition on him. He also said his daughter, who was in her twenties, had been upset during a recent trip to France to buy a property. He said he booked them into a hotel where they would share a room. This was not odd, he insisted, 'to me it was quite natural'. He told journalists and scholars the same story, in the same way, reciting the details of her allegations, drawing attention to her body and the details of what she said he had done to her. Some seemed to find the detail persuasive. Several found it spooky. p172-173

Can't you just let it go? Move on?" His face darkened. His eyes glared in response and he was silent a long time while his jaw worked over a toothpick. She'd used the same line that the prophet and his representatives had been using for years. Even if these things did happen, there is no point in being bitter. You should forgive and forget and let bygones be bygones. Kind of galling, considering the insistence upon forgiveness was being made by the people who had done the hurting and done nothing to make up for it. But then, that was the standard 'blame the victim' abuser mentally, and to be expected. Gideon seemed to work through this slap in the face and let it slide. He said, "For a while I thought maybe, you know, if I could talk to the people responsible. If I could show them how difficult life has been because of them, that maybe they would care. I don't know. I thought maybe if they apologized, it would be so much easier to forget this shit. You know? To do what they say and 'let it go'. But nobody will take any personal responsibility. My own parents have nothing to offer but a bunch of whiny excuses. They try to convince me that my life wasn't as bad as I remember it." "Fuck that," he said, "They weren't even there. They don't even know what went on with me. I just..." He paused and pulled his fingers through his hair. "Christ," he said. He paused again, eyes to the sky, and then back to her. "Even the people who never personally raised a hand against me still propped up the regime that made it happen. They stood by and allowed it. Played a part. All of them. Every single one was a participant. Either directly or by looking away. Institutionally, doctrinally, they abused us. Sent us into the streets to beg, denied us an education, had us beaten, starved, exorcised, and separated from our parents. They broke up our families, gave our bodies to perverts, and stole our future. And then they turn around and say we're supposed to just forget it happened and move on from it. If instead we bring up the past, then they'll call us liars. Say we're exaggerating or making it up completely. Why the hell would be make any of this shit up? What's the point in that? To make our lives seem worse than they were? Not that I would, but do you have any idea how much exaggeration it would take for the average person to even begin to grasp how fucking miserable it was? And then, if they ever do admit to any of it, they say that 'mistakes were made'. " "Mistakes." he said. He was leaning forward again, punctuating the air with his finger. "Michael, they commit crimes against children. You know, those things people in society go to jail for when they're caught. And then to the public they do what they always do. Deny. Deny. Deny. And we're left more raped than ever. Victimized first by what they did, and again by their refusal to admit that it happened. They paint us as bitter apostates and liars to a world that not only doesn't give a shit, but also couldn't possibly understand even if it did." "I do," Munroe said. And Gideon stopped.

She was interviewing one of my favorite television actors, Don Johnson of Miami Vice. As he reclined on a couch in his lovely home, Don told Barbara about the joys and difficulties in his life. He talked of past struggles with drug and alcohol abuse and work addiction. Then he spoke of his relationships with women—how exciting and attractive he found them. I could see his energy rise and his breath quicken as he spoke. An air of intoxication seemed to fill the room. Don said his problem was he liked women too much and found it hard to be with one special partner over a long period. He would develop a deep friendship and intimacy, but then his eyes would wander. I thought to myself, this man has been sexually abused! His problems sounded identical to those of adult survivors I counsel in my practice. But then I reconsidered: Maybe I’ve been working too hard. Perhaps I’m imagining a sexual abuse history that isn’t really there. Then it happened. Barbara leaned forward and, with a smile, asked, “Don, is it true that you had your first sexual relationship when you were quite young, about twelve years old, with your seventeen-year-old baby-sitter?” My jaw dropped. Don grinned back at Barbara. He cocked his head to the side; a twinkle came into his blue eyes. “Yeah,” he said, “and I still get excited just thinking about her today.” Barbara showed no alarm. The next day I wrote Barbara Walters a letter, hoping to enlighten her about the sexual abuse of boys. Had Don been a twelve-year-old girl and the baby-sitter a seventeen-year-old boy, we wouldn’t hesitate to call what had happened rape. It would make no difference how cooperative or seemingly “willing” the victim had been. The sexual contact was exploitive and premature, and would have been whether the twelve-year-old was a boy or a girl. This past experience and perhaps others like it may very well be at the root of the troubles Don Johnson has had with long-term intimacy. Don wasn’t “lucky to get a piece of it early,” as some people might think. He was sexually abused and hadn’t yet realized it.   Acknowledging past sexual abuse is an important step in sexual healing. It helps us make a connection between our present sexual issues and their original source. Some survivors have little difficulty with this step: They already see themselves as survivors and their sexual issues as having stemmed directly from sexual abuse. A woman who is raped sees an obvious connection if she suddenly goes from having a pleasurable sex life to being terrified of sex. For many survivors, however, acknowledging sexual abuse is a difficult step. We may recall events, but through lack of understanding about sexual abuse may never have labeled those experiences as sexual abuse. We may have dismissed experiences we had as insignificant. We may have little or no memory of past abuse. And we may have difficulty fully acknowledging to ourselves and to others that we were victims. It took me years to realize and admit that I had been raped on a date, even though I knew what had happened and how I felt about it. I needed to understand this was in fact rape and that I had been a victim. I needed to remember more and to stop blaming myself before I was able to acknowledge my experience as sexual abuse.

would go back to the body dump site. The prison interviews helped us see and understand the wide variety of motivation and behavior among serial killers and rapists. But we saw some striking common denominators as well. Most of them come from broken or dysfunctional homes. They’re generally products of some type of abuse, whether it’s physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, or a combination. We tend to see at a very early age the formation of what we refer to as the “homicidal triangle” or “homicidal triad.” This includes enuresis—or bed-wetting—at an inappropriate age, starting fires, and cruelty to small animals or other children. Very often, we found, at least two of these three traits were present, if not all three. By the time we see his first serious crime, he’s generally somewhere in his early to mid-twenties. He has low self-esteem and blames the rest of the world for his situation. He already has a bad track record, whether he’s been caught at it or not. It may be breaking and entering, it may have been rape or rape attempts. You may see a dishonorable discharge from the military, since these types tend to have a real problem with any type of authority. Throughout their lives, they believe that they’ve been victims: they’ve been manipulated, they’ve been dominated, they’ve been controlled by others. But here, in this one situation, fueled by fantasy, this inadequate, ineffectual nobody can manipulate and dominate a victim of his own; he can be in control. He can orchestrate whatever he wants to do to the victim. He can decide whether this victim should live or die, how the victim should die. It’s up to him; he’s finally calling the shots.

Even if the press were dying to report on the Hmong gang-rape spree, the police won’t tell them about it. A year before the Hmong gang rape that reminded the Times of a rape in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, the police in St. Paul issued a warning about gang rapists using telephone chat lines to lure girls out of their homes. Although the warning was issued only in Hmong, St. Paul’s police department refused to confirm to the St. Paul Pioneer Press that the suspects were Hmong, finally coughing up only the information that they were “Asian.”20 And the gang rapes continue. The Star Tribune counted nearly one hundred Hmong males charged with rape or forced prostitution from 2000 to June 30, 2005. More than 80 percent of the victims were fifteen or younger. A quarter of their victims were not Hmong.21 The police say many more Hmong rapists have gone unpunished—they have no idea how many—because Hmong refuse to report rape. Reporters aren’t inclined to push the issue. The only rapes that interest the media are apocryphal gang rapes committed by white men. Was America short on Hmong? These backward hill people began pouring into the United States in the seventies as a reward for their help during the ill-fated Vietnam War. That war ended forty years ago! But the United States is still taking in thousands of Hmong “refugees” every year, so taxpayers can spend millions of dollars on English-language and cultural-assimilation classes, public housing, food stamps, healthcare, prosecutors, and prisons to accommodate all the child rapists.22 By now, there are an estimated 273,000 Hmong in the United States.23 Canada only has about eight hundred.24 Did America lose a bet? In the last few decades, America has taken in more Hmong than Czechs, Danes, French, Luxembourgers, New Zealanders, Norwegians, or Swiss. We have no room for them. We needed to make room for a culture where child rape is the norm.25 A foreign gang-rape culture that blames twelve-year-old girls for their own rapes may not be a good fit with American culture, especially now that political correctness prevents us from criticizing any “minority” group. At least when white males commit a gang rape the media never shut up about it. The Glen Ridge gang rape occurred more than a quarter century ago, and the Times still thinks the case hasn’t been adequately covered.

When women accuse men of wrongdoing, they are doubted; when they retract, they are believed. If they allege abuse, their word is suspect; if they retract an abuse allegation, their word suddenly becomes credible. One is prompted to ask: Why is women's word to be trusted only when it excuses and absolves men of responsibility for their violence against women?"' Quote from Jan Jordan

DEFENDING A RAPIST What is the character of a person who becomes a sexual enabler? We get an early glimpse into this question from 1975, when Hillary Clinton defended a man, Thomas Alfred Taylor, who was accused of beating and raping a twelve-year-old girl. A virgin prior to the attack, she spent five days in a coma, several months recovering from her injuries, and years in therapy. Even people who are accused of heinous crimes deserve criminal representation. Hillary’s strategy in defending Taylor, however, was to blame the teenage victim. According to an affidavit filed by Hillary, children who come from “disorganized families such as the complainant” sometimes “exaggerate or romanticize sexual experiences.” Hillary suggested the girl was “emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and engage in fantasizing.” Here Hillary seems to be echoing what Bernie Sanders wrote in his rape fantasy essay. In this case, however, the girl certainly didn’t dream up the assault and rape. There was physical evidence that showed she had been violated, and she was beaten so badly she was in a coma. Prosecutors had in their possession a bloodied pair of Taylor’s underwear. But fortunately for Hillary and her client, the forensic lab mishandled the way that evidence was preserved. At the time of trial, the state merely had a pair of Taylor’s underwear with a hole cut in it. Hillary plea bargained on behalf of Taylor and got him released without having to do any additional time. A tape unearthed by the Washington Free Beacon has Hillary celebrating the outcome. “Got him off with time served in the county jail,” she says. Did Hillary believe that, in this case, justice was done? Certainly not. On the tape, Hillary admits she never trusted her client. “Course he claimed he didn’t, and all this stuff.” So she decided to verify his story. “I had him take a polygraph, which he passed—which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs.” Clearly Hillary knows her client is guilty, and this fact doesn’t bother her. The most chilling aspect of Hillary’s voice is her indifference—even bemusement—at getting a man off after he raped a twelve-year-old. The episode is a revealing look into the soul of an enabler. In fact, it reminds me of Alinsky protesting to Frank Nitti about the wasted expense of importing an out-of-town-killer. Hillary, like Alinsky, seems to be a woman without a conscience.9

Blame the rapists for rape, not rape victims and don’t say it’s because her clothes were provocative. If you want to say it; you must also blame the bank that was robbed because its content was provocative.

Rape humour signals that the victim blaming which feminists have fought against for decades has triumphed and that the sexual assault of women is permissible because victims inhabit a culture in which their suffering invites, not compassion, but a predatory, malicious laughter.

That’s what happens all the time when women are victims of crimes. They’re blamed for their own injuries. Whether it’s rape or domestic violence or assault, the inference is always that women bring it on themselves.

Contrary to my own misconceptions, it turns out that serial killers have been around for as long as there have been people—neither the modern world nor America is to blame. After discussing the well-known case of Jack the Ripper, Dr. von Krafft-Ebing discusses the far lesser known Vacher the Ripper, who stalked the French countryside in the late 1800s, murdering perhaps two dozen people. He would rape, strangle, and mutilate his victims, who included girls, women, and boys. It was said that he was born “of honourable parents and belonged to a mentally sound family. He never had a severe illness, [and] was from his earliest infancy vicious, lazy and shy of work.

it is not uncommon for experts in DNA analysis to testify at a criminal trial that a DNA sample taken from a crime scene matches that taken from a suspect. How certain are such matches? When DNA evidence was first introduced, a number of experts testified that false positives are impossible in DNA testing. Today DNA experts regularly testify that the odds of a random person’s matching the crime sample are less than 1 in 1 million or 1 in 1 billion. With those odds one could hardly blame a juror for thinking, throw away the key. But there is another statistic that is often not presented to the jury, one having to do with the fact that labs make errors, for instance, in collecting or handling a sample, by accidentally mixing or swapping samples, or by misinterpreting or incorrectly reporting results. Each of these errors is rare but not nearly as rare as a random match. The Philadelphia City Crime Laboratory, for instance, admitted that it had swapped the reference sample of the defendant and the victim in a rape case, and a testing firm called Cellmark Diagnostics admitted a similar error.20 Unfortunately, the power of statistics relating to DNA presented in court is such that in Oklahoma a court sentenced a man named Timothy Durham to more than 3,100 years in prison even though eleven witnesses had placed him in another state at the time of the crime. It turned out that in the initial analysis the lab had failed to completely separate the DNA of the rapist and that of the victim in the fluid they tested, and the combination of the victim’s and the rapist’s DNA produced a positive result when compared with Durham’s. A later retest turned up the error, and Durham was released after spending nearly four years in prison.21 Estimates of the error rate due to human causes vary, but many experts put it at around 1 percent. However, since the error rate of many labs has never been measured, courts often do not allow testimony on this overall statistic. Even if courts did allow testimony regarding false positives, how would jurors assess it? Most jurors assume that given the two types of error—the 1 in 1 billion accidental match and the 1 in 100 lab-error match—the overall error rate must be somewhere in between, say 1 in 500 million, which is still for most jurors beyond a reasonable doubt. But employing the laws of probability, we find a much different answer. The way to think of it is this: Since both errors are very unlikely, we can ignore the possibility that there is both an accidental match and a lab error. Therefore, we seek the probability that one error or the other occurred. That is given by our sum rule: it is the probability of a lab error (1 in 100) + the probability of an accidental match (1 in 1 billion). Since the latter is 10 million times smaller than the former, to a very good approximation the chance of both errors is the same as the chance of the more probable error—that is, the chances are 1 in 100. Given both possible causes, therefore, we should ignore the fancy expert testimony about the odds of accidental matches and focus instead on the much higher laboratory error rate—the very data courts often do not allow attorneys to present! And so the oft-repeated claims of DNA infallibility are exaggerated.

Responsibility is still laid on the victim. Years of educating the public about these issues seem to have resulted only in the expectation that women should now know better than to let themselves get raped … only gendered crimes generate the kind of victim-blaming responses rape and domestic violence produce. Whereas forgetting to set the antiburglary alarm or getting robbed despite the “neighborhood watch” does not exculpate the thieves, getting raped always elicits an investigation into the ways in which a victim might ultimately have been responsible for what happens. Bad judgment becomes cause.

Feminists don’t single out rape jokes because rape is “worse” than other crimes—we single them out because we live in a culture that actively strives to shrink the definition of sexual assault; that casts stalking behaviors as romance; blames victims for wearing the wrong clothes, walking through the wrong neighborhood, or flirting with the wrong person; bends over backwards to excuse boys-will-be-boys misogyny; makes the emotional and social costs of reporting a rape prohibitively high; pretends that false accusations are a more dire problem than actual assaults; elects officials who tell rape victims that their sexual violation was “god’s plan”; and convicts in less than 5 percent of rape cases that go to trial. Comedians regularly retort that no one complains when they joke about murder or other crimes in their acts, citing that as a double standard. Well, fortunately, there is no cultural narrative casting doubt on the existence and prevalence of murder and pressuring people not to report it. Maybe

Like mediation programs, many restorative justice programs are designed around the possibility of a facilitated meeting or an encounter between victims, offenders, and perhaps community members. However, an encounter is not always chosen or appropriate. Moreover, restorative approaches are important even when an offender has not been apprehended or when a party is unwilling or unable to meet. So restorative approaches are not limited to an encounter. Even when an encounter occurs, the term “mediation” is not a fitting description of what could happen. In a mediated conflict or dispute, parties are assumed to be on a level moral playing field, often with responsibilities that may need to be shared on all sides. While this sense of shared blame may be true in some criminal cases, in many cases it is not. Victims of rapes or even burglaries do not want to be known as “disputants.” In fact, they may well be struggling to overcome a tendency to blame themselves. At any rate, to participate in most restorative justice encounters, a wrongdoer must admit to some level of responsibility for the offense, and an important component of such programs is to name and acknowledge the wrongdoing. The neutral language of mediation may be misleading and even offensive in many cases. Although the term “mediation” was adopted early on in the restorative justice field, it is increasingly being replaced by terms such as “conferencing” or “dialogue” for the reasons outlined above.

Even when an encounter occurs, the term “mediation” is not a fitting description of what could happen. In a mediated conflict or dispute, parties are assumed to be on a level moral playing field, often with responsibilities that may need to be shared on all sides. While this sense of shared blame may be true in some criminal cases, in many cases it is not. Victims of rapes or even burglaries do not want to be known as “disputants.” In fact, they may well be struggling to overcome a tendency to blame themselves. At any rate, to participate in most restorative justice encounters, a wrongdoer must admit to some level of responsibility for the offense, and an important component of such programs is to name and acknowledge the wrongdoing. The neutral language of mediation may be misleading and even offensive in many cases. Although the term “mediation” was adopted early on in the restorative justice field, it is increasingly being replaced by terms such as “conferencing” or “dialogue” for the reasons outlined above. • Restorative justice is not primarily designed to

Blaming the victim, she was dressed provocatively and was raped: the bias of recall.

The social class who intends to excavate reasons to justify rape or forced conversion, cannibalise my brain box and moral compass which often says to each other “My dear, it’s so unnecessary.

We also need to recognise that denial is used by abusers to protect themselves. People who work with sexual offenders talk about a ‘triad of cognitive distortion’. This means that almost every abuser ‘thinks wrongly’ and this is a key area of work for treatment with sexual offenders. Basically they have three wrong thought patterns, and these are denial, minimisation and blame.

Saying "But she consented" is just one of the myriad ways we are so quick to blame the victim. Yes, we have choices. We choose between humiliation now or humiliation later, we choose between short skirts and long, we choose when to leave and when to stay. We choose when to say yes is just easier than saying no, at least in that moment. None of these choices equals consent.

I had grime pushing itself with entitlement between my legs, without permission, without consent - without conscience. Society would blame me, the victim; after all, I was a drunken woman in a short dress who had idiotically chosen to take a nap on a bench.

Rape culture mandates that women and men have very different sexual responsibilities. The assumption is that it’s normal for men to rape women, which means that victims are to blame. By her action (or inaction) a woman creates an opening that allows a man to do what’s perfectly natural for him to do—assault her.

When asked for their opinion men, more often than not, blamed western culture as the source of the rape epidemic. This most often found expression in blaming the victims, whose clothing styles showed that they had been corrupted by western culture. Men who come to big cities like Delhi looking for work are shocked at seeing young women wearing tight western clothing that, in their minds at least, leaves nothing to the imagination. Men from the villages who are accustomed to seeing women wearing the ghunghat, or traditional veil, in public arrive in Delhi to find themselves sexually overstimulated by the Delhi girls, who are like mangoes. What do you do with the fruit? You eat it, suck it, and throw it away. These women are being used and overused. Sometimes, they have ten boyfriends. In such a situation, how can you stop rapes? The current discourse is being created by elites and it ends there. You have all these rich people talking on TV, but if the rich want to have fun, they can afford to hire women and go to a hotel. Where will a poor man go?

Rape culture doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it is built consciously and unconsciously by societal norms. It requires everyone else to buy into respectability as safety, then immediately position every step away from that standard as culpability for being violated. Rape culture is normalized and ratified not only by patriarchal notions of ownership and disposability but also by attempts to combat it by buying into the framing that the patriarchy creates. Respectability politics, victim blaming, and fetishization can only create

Other feminists can gnash their teeth all they like, accuse me of victim blaming, and insist that the burden should be on rapists, not their victims, to prevent rape.

Ask yourself, What kind of person aspires to have sex with a comatose young woman? And how do you label someone who deliberately gets a girl drunk in order to do so?