Inspired by this thread http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=536501
I don’t want to specifically finger Heckity’s son by any means, but the attitude that he shows towards his girlfriend and his girlfriend’s potential attacker are, in my experience, representative of an endemic attitude that Americans have towards the sexual violation of young women, particularly young upper-middle-class college-aged girls. The idea is that any woman who is sexually violated in any way is a victim to be pitied and protected, and has suddenly become extremely fragile and emotionally bruised by her traumatic experience.
This next part is going to be pretty controversial, but Heckity’s elucidation of the gf’s story reminded me of similar stories, and my irritation at most other people’s reactions. The girlfriend drank quite a bit too much, to the point of falling down, and maybe had a male friend try to kiss her, is not quite sure what happens, and reports it to her boyfriend-protector as rape. Then everyone gets all up in arms, the boyfriend gets super defensive of his helpless young thing, and we all vilify the perpretrator and treat the poor little victim with kid gloves.
My question is this: why we do generally assign no responsibility to the victim? Now, I know that “blaming the victim” is the wrong attitude to have, but the fact of the matter is, she went out and drank way too much, and go back to a friend’s house with a guy she barely knew. To me, it’s similar to someone reporting that they had gone for a walk late at night in a bad neighborhood and gotten mugged. We would all say, “wow, that sucks and I’m sorry and let me know if I can help you out at all . . . and next time please be more careful.” In this situation, if we added at the end of our support, “and please next time monitor carefully your drinking around strange men,” we would be chastised for blaming the victim.
And why do girls think it’s okay to tell people they had been raped when they have little recollection or evidence of the event? Why was she willing to tell her boyfriend and not the police? Could it be because she knew that her boyfriend would be summarily outraged/protective, whereas the police and legal system would employ more rational and evidenced-based means to pursue her story?
I think that we do young women a disservice when we treat sexual abuse as such a boogeyman. I’m not denying that rape is very real and the consequences very devastating. However, I think that by treating rape as a crime more heinous than non-sexual battery, we are elevating the sanctity of female sexuality inordinately, and undoing a lot of the work that has been done in the past fifty years or so to demystify female sexuality. Furthermore, I think that when a sexual crime against an adult woman is committed, and we all rush to comfort her and cocoon her from the outside world, we are not allowing her to take control and responsibility for the situation from this point forward, and to deal with the crime as she feels is most appropriate.
Again, not to single out Heckity’s son or his gf, this is an attitude that I have seen many times in response to similar stories.