Blame the victim mentality regarding rape/sexual assault

In My Humble Opinion
41

In *some *situations, I think the victim *does *have to take some responsibility for making foolish decisions. I mean, if I sport a fancy gold watch while walking alone in a crime-ridden part of town, and someone mugs me and steals my watch, who’s to blame? The perpetrator for committing the crime, or me for being foolish? In the situation described, I think most of the fault is with the perpetrator, but I also believe I must bear at least some of the responsibility for being stupid.

While certainly not true of all cases, I think a significant percentage of rape victims were engaging in foolish or stupid behavior before the crime was committed. No, they didn’t ask to be rape… and yes, rape is a horrific crime… but people should learn that foolish behavior can put you in risky situations.

42

The blame the victim mentality is one of the primary reasons I failed to report being raped to the authorities. It’s also one of the primary reason I generally do not discuss the matter.

At the time, I was a young adult - and had seen the aftermath of several other rapes in my community. To this day, the mere thought of being on the receiving end of that peculiar mix of blame and infantalizing victimization-assumption makes me nauseous.

Never did I see any rape victim treated like, say, an assult or theft victim - in other words, nobody ever said “Jesus, that sucks ass! Anything I can do? No? How about we go have a beer/ice cream/fries and bitch then?”

It was inevitably either “What were you wearing? Why were you out at night? Why did you trust him anyway? Why didn’t you fight more?” or solemn discussions of how the victim would never be whole again and was essentially scarred and traumatized forevahs. Sometimes both - from the same person even.

In my case, it was contemplated by the fact that my rapist wasn’t a stranger (or a family member, thank God) - which just adds a whole pile of more layers of the blame, and pseudo-blame like what Chessic was espousing (it’s not really blame in that it’s not a clear “it’s your own fault, you slut/idiot”, but it’s clearly implying that the victim should have been doing something other than what they were doign and that their failure to do so was the root cause of their assault). I realize there are a number of people who are personally affronted by the fact that I know precisely who my rapist is and chose not to press charges, but they can kiss my lily-white ass, frankly. I made the best choice for my own mental and emotional health, and if people don’t like it, there’s the damn door.

43

You know what’s funny and sad about metaphors for sexual assault? How many people don’t need them.

The ‘gold watch’ thing is so close to what my friends relatives tell her about wearing a burqa – that she’s a precious jewel who needs to be protected. Wonder how they’d feel if they ever found out (allah forbid) about her getting assaulted. My guess is her own western-dressed virtue would be to blame. It also reminds me of the SDMB thread on street harassment, and on what women should be doing to prevent it even though street harassers are hardly discriminating. Women are not gold watches, no matter how revealing their clothes or how long their hair or how large their breasts. Walking While Female is not a crime or an invitation to crime.

44

I don’t think that’s true. Plus, as I said in the OP, I really don’t want to make this into a debate. We’ve had lots of debates on this topic–I just wanted to share an experience I’ve had and see if others have had it, too.

Even if someone was engaging in “stupid” (by your standards) behavior, they’ve probably gone over it a million times in their head wishing they hadn’t done that. Believe me–pointing it out is not necessary at all.

45

That’s no good either, because it makes the presumption that no burka-wearing woman has ever been raped. Which is something I simply do not believe. Not for a millisecond.
And that’s not because I have some sort of misguided notion that all men in countries and societies where women wear burkas are all rapists, I hasten to add. Rather it’s because rape happens everywhere in every culture and the only thing we know for sure about it is that it happens because the person doing the raping has decided that the other person’s views on the matter are an irrelevance.

46

Agreed. Often the victim isn’t even chosen for being her/him, it’s a matter of opportunity. And many of those opportunities can’t be avoided by the victim at all. I mean, how do you avoid going to see your Class Mentor when he says he wants to have a one-to-one talk with each student?

47

A human being is not a watch. Forcible sexual intercourse or other sex acts is not comparable to theft.

48

Damn this is a depressing thread… there is SO much more work to do to get it through people’s heads, isn’t it?
The sad part about it is that many victim-blamers who raise the issue as to why wasn’t she more on the defensive and why didn’t she take every possible provision to avoid it, could also be people who would not like having it preached to women that every interaction with a male is a rape risk and has to happen in permanent defensive mode.

49

I haven’t been raped - I successfully fought my attacker.

However, at times when I have mentioned the attempted rape I have been asked “how did you know he wanted to rape you?”

Well, fuck - I was in my own backyard on a Sunday afternoon when this goon grabs me from behind with an arm around my neck, drags me into the bushes, and starts trying to remove my clothes. I thought “impending rape” was a reasonable conclusion. And it’s not like the alternatives to rape for that scenario were going to be fun for me either. It sure felt like assault of *some *sort before he even finished dragging me into the bushes.

Just for the record - I hit him a bunch of times, but what made him drop me long enough for me to run like hell was the kick that broke his leg. The pity is, I’d been aiming for his testicles and missed, hitting his leg instead.

Still, I never said anything to anyone for years afterward. I was afraid I’d be brought up on assault charges myself, even if he was an intruder on home area. And yeah, I was pretty sure it was rape on his mind - I knew him from school, I was the first girl he ever attacked, just probably the first one to fight him off.

Anyhow, it sure convinced me that it could happen any time and any where. Perhaps, because I did defend myself, it still didn’t stop me from going places or doing things, though even today, over 30 years later, I tend to be quite wary when people approach me while I’m outside and I can’t stand people “surprising” me from behind - I do not find it funny. I still have the urge to go into “combat mode” if it happens. I’ve had a couple boyfriends who thought it was “fun” to grab a girl from behind without warning. It’s not, m’kay? Especially not to me. I have zero sense of humor about it. Zero.

50

:smack: I was *NOT *the first girl he ever attacked!
Grr… typos. But they do happen with those emotionally charged posts.

51

Only when that’s what the person means. When it isn’t, it isn’t. Saying “A happened because of B” is not automatically the same thing as “She deserved A because of B”.

It’s not clearly implying anything. Maybe some of the time. Maybe even most of the time. But certainly not all of the time.
I’m walking down the street. I see a shiny nickel on the sidewalk. I stop to pick it up. A piano falls on my head (why is always a piano?) and kills me. Someone tells you I died via piano, and the first thing you want to ask “Why was he standing under a piano?” It makes sense to want to know what events led up to this rare, unfortunate event. Does that mean I’m to blame for the incident? That I deserved my death? Of course not. But that’s not what the question was. And no one would argue “See? That’s why you shouldn’t pick up loose change.”

Thus, one of my original points was that trying to figure out *why *and *how *something happened is not the same thing as assigning responsibility and blame to the victim. Thus my conclusion that the pervasiveness of BtV is overstated.

52

The difference, Chessic Sense, is that no piano mover has ever argued in his defense that seeing someone on the sidewalk picking up a nickel provoked him to let go of the rope.

53

Chessic Sense, so basically, that IS putting the responsibility on the victim. “You shouldn’t wear such and such type outfit if you don’t want to be raped.” Well BULLSHIT.

I would grant you that there are areas where a person should avoid as they are unsafe. (Certain parts of town, for example, that are known for high crime, or whatever). BUT…even if I make a foolish mistake, that does not mean I brought something on myself.

Woman aren’t raped out of lust. They’re raped because rapists are assholes. I’m not one of those “rape is about power,” bullshitters. In my view, it’s no different than beating the shit out of someone, just for the sake of causing someone pain. You want to hurt someone – but you also want to get your rocks off? Well, there’s a way to do it. Some guys get off on forcing women to sex.

It’s basically assaulting someone – using sex as a weapon. It’s NOT because they see a woman wearing such and such outfit that they’re so overcome by lust they can’t help themselves. And if they ARE, then it’s THEIR problem, and they need to control themselves.

Hell, little old ladies get raped! Are you telling me that Gramma was at fault for her rape?
(Besides, most people are raped by someone they know.)

54

Wow, here I thought my school was lousy with student safety when I got most of the bones in my face shattered in a beating. Where exactly were the teachers during all this?

(Didn’t think this sort of thing happened outside hentai.)

55

Must really eleborate, this was too terse. The history of either explicitly or implicitly attributing from at least “contributory negligence” to as far as actual provocation to the raped person, which has gone on within living memory, forever influences the dialog so that questioning “but what were you doing/wearing”“why were you there at that time” tends to be heard of as not just a need for information on the circumstances leading to “damn, wrong place at the wrong time, I guess”, even if sincerely meant that way, but as a suggestion that the person could have actually excercised some preventive due dilligence and/or taken effective defensive measures; this is in turn insensitive because generally the victim IS already wondering what went wrong, and she’ll hear that “could” as a “should and didn’t”.

56

I saw a Montel where a 21 year old had fathered the child of a 10 year old girl. He was interviewed in prison and clained it was the child’s fault because she “dressed like Brittany Spears and was always sitting on his lap.”

Montel told him that he didn’t care because she could make the guy unzip his pants. He said if the guy had knocked up his 10 year old, Montel would be the one in prison for murdering the rapist.

57

I’d like to take this moment to point out that, until fairly recently (historically speaking), “provocation” has been a legitimate and widely used criminal defense to a rape charge. It wasn’t until the Shield Laws of the late 1970’s - early 1980’s that blaming the victim was essentially procedurally discouraged as a criminal defense strategy. Not disallowed, mind you - merely discouraged in that the way a defense lawyer goes about blaming the victim is proscribed. Shifting the blame to the victim is still a widely-practiced criminal defense strategy in rape defense cases - although, granted, the Shield Laws ensure that at least the defense attorneys have to be delicate in their approach to it.

Rape victims are typically already blaming themselves for being assaulted - or, at the bare minimum they’re doubting their own freedom from culpability. They don’t need any help from random passers-by in the form of questions that have been loaded down with “you were asking for it” connotations over centuries of common usage and cultural implication.

If you’re not a police officer investigating the crime or the victim’s trained counselor/therapist or the lawyer for one of the parties, the details of the crime really aren’t any of your damn business, are they? How do can you imagine asking details of it is going to be helpful to the victim? Mostly people who were the victim of sexual assault don’t care to go into the gory details any more than is strictly necessary. Do you also ask someone whose house just burned down if they had too many things plugged into an outlet? Or if their basement was clean and tidy? Ask them for a complete list of the family treasures they lost?

58

But it sure as hell is implying “B wa a contributing factor to A,” which is absolutely unacceptable. People don’t get raped because of their attitudes or how they were dressed. People get raped because rapists are fucked in the head. Period.

59

It has been used (and accepted by the judges) in widely-publicised cases in Italy and Spain, in the last 10 years.

Cases in Spain have involved judges declaring the accused innocent (that’s the legal term in Spain) because the accuser was wearing a miniskirt, real short shorts or long flowing skirts (they were different cases). Then again, until the early 80s it was considered that a man beating up his wife was “a family matter” and that “she must have done something to deserve it,” so long as he didn’t kill her (in which case he was likely to get off clean anyway by claiming she made him real furious; the “I killed her cos she was mine” mindset); this started changing when a woman went to one of the first open-to-the-general-public talk shows to speak about her husband’s many years of beatings and ask for protection for her and so many other women in her case - the husband (who had been defended and his violent actions put in doubt by everybody in the studio) killed her less than 48 hours later. She claimed that, while she loved all 13 of her children very much, 8 of them were the product of rape, sometimes of rape at “I’ll smash the baby’s head against the floor if you don’t spread 'em bitch”-point.

There was an Italian judge that decided it wasn’t rape because the accuser was wearing very tight jeans that the accused wouldn’t have been able to take off her without her help. Apparently having a knife at your throat isn’t, in that judge’s considerate opinion, enough reason to reckon you might rather lose your virtue than your neck. The female MPs protested by going to Parliament in the tightest jeans they owned.

60

This post is not going to make me popular. But, here goes.

I realize that rape is a very emotional topic. Still, people love to make unbacked assertions like this, rather than provide actual reasons that their statement is true.

I think this is why the “blame the victim” mentality is so common. There aren’t enough people with the guts to argue it rationally, so these people stick with their emotional reasons that happen to be different than yours. The only way to prove our position to these people is to distance ourselves emotionally.

In other word, explain, without appealing to emotions, why this position is “unacceptable.” Provide citations that prove that rape is only attempted by those who are “fucked in the head.”

I still think it is sad that we can’t have a dispassionate, logical debate on this board, even in Great Debates.

As for the OP, I haven’t been raped, but I know of people who think this way. I’ve even seen it codified in Mennonite societies. Funny how rapes still happened back when everybody wore head coverings and dresses…