Rape and Freedom From Responsibility

Let’s start with the acknowledgement of the of the fact that in the majority of crimes, the victim is at least partially at fault.  A guy mouths off to a hot head and gets the shit kicked out of him.  A distracted driver cruises down the highway and fails to notice that a drunk driver is about to run a stop sign at the intersection immediately ahead.  A businessman decides to take a shortcut through a bad neighborhood and gets robbed.  A homeowner doesn’t properly secure his valuables and gets burglarized.

Although none of these victims were guilty of foul play, they were all guilty of wrongdoing.  Now let’s consider the crime of rape and whether the victim is ever at least partially at fault.  The following is your typical brainless liberal idiot’s take on the subject.

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College Women Should Not 'Stop Getting Drunk' To Prevent Rape

By Sarah Galo  October 16, 2013

College Women Should Not 'Stop Getting Drunk' To Prevent Rape

As a teenager, I was constantly instructed to be mindful of my attire. In my church’s youth group, we were advised that "modest is hottest," and that by dressing like godly young womenwe would be protecting our male friends from "temptation." The conversation was predicated on good and proper behavior for females, while males were painted as creatures of hormones and sexual desire. If we, as young women, followed the guidelines laid out for us, we would be safe from male lust.

I was reminded of these lectures this morning after reading Emily Yoffe’s story for Slate, "College Women: Stop Getting Drunk." Here, the responsibility for male behavior is placed on women. Here, we are given false of hope of safety if we merely avoid certain behaviors.

Here, the problem of sexual assault on college campuses is reduced to a mother’s advice to avoid parties and drinking.

"Don't get drunk" and "modest is hottest" both speak to a desire of elders to protect "helpless" young women by controlling us. If you do mess up, then sexual assault is your fault. It also provides us with a shaky, and faulty, promise of safety.

Avoidance of a particular activity is not a preventative measure against sexual assault. If it was, I would not be a survivor of sexual assault. Yoffe’s patronizing logic of avoidance erases my story, and the stories of other survivors. She eliminates the agency of rapists by claiming that binge drinking allows for assault to occur. Rapists choose to rape and assault. They are solely responsible for the crime of sexual assault. As a victim/survivor, I am not.

While the percentage for rape on college campuses is high, this is not just the problem of young adults, as Yoffe’s focus on college girls and "drunken frat boys" suggests. Sexual violence can occur at any place, at any time, and by committed by all types of individuals with all kinds of relationships to the person they rape, including strangers, close friends, partners, relatives, and parents. By narrowing her focus to the party scene, Yoffe suggests that sexual violence occurs only among students who participate in this scene.

This again erases the experiences of survivors such as myself, who followed the "rules."

I was an honors student who did not party. I listened to the advice of those like Yoffe, and believed that my chances of staying safe were greater if I avoided particular behaviors. Within my first semester, I was assaulted by my then-boyfriend. All the watchful and careful advice I had received was valueless.

If anything, prescriptive advice like Yoffe’s cause more harm by blinding young women (and men) to situations which carry equal, if not greater, potential for sexual violence. According to RAINN, 2 out of 3 of rapes are committed by someone known to the victim, and 28% are in a relationship. Yoffe ignores these statistics, setting up party scenarios with "drunken frat boys "or "shrewd — and sober — sexual predators." Her language suggests that rapists are Law and Order: SVU-type perpetrators shady strangers. While this may be factual in some cases, it is not the over-arching reality.

Ultimately, the narrative that Yoffe tells fosters a culture hostile to stories that do not align with it. My story idoesn't exist within her framework.The most effective measure for preventing rape as political analyst Zerlina Maxwell pointed out earlier this year, is to "teach men not to rape."

I will not allow another article to erase my experience, and the experiences of other survivors, female and male. Ultimately, it is our voices that count in combating rape culture — not how much we drink.

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Obviously, the first thing we want to do here is “erase her experience” and we are going to do that by acknowledging that her experience was almost certainly at least partially, her fault.  Why?  Because as I mentioned before, in the majority of crimes, the victim is at least partially at fault, whether it’s because they weren’t paying, attention, didn’t take the proper precautions, provoked an attacker, or whatever, in most cases, if the victim would have not allowed themselves to be in the situation, the crime would have not happened.

Don’t confuse this fact with thinking that I am somehow excusing the perpetrators.  I am not, but it’s a simple fact that the perpetrators of crimes exist.  They’re out there.  They’re part of the environment.  They always have been and always will be.  

So how does one avoid becoming a victim?  There are two ways we could approach this. 1) We could all kindly ask potential perpetrators to please not commit crimes, or, 2) we could encourage people to take whatever precautions necessary to prevent themselves from becoming victims.  Which do you think would work better?  I’ll give you a hint.  We already have laws suggesting that one should not commit crimes.

People like Sarah Galo, who wrote the above article, should realize that for victims and potential victims, avoiding crime is a safety issue, not a feminist or social justice issue.  Anyone who has had to endure watching industrial safety videos, realizes that safety is all about avoiding becoming a victim of an accident, but safety is also about avoiding becoming a victim of crime.

It’s quite obvious that Sarah’s goal is not minimizing the amount of future victims of rape, but is to excuse victims that refuse to take the necessary precautions to avoid it, and promote her feminist agenda.  It’s another classic example of liberals defining freedom as freedom from responsibility.  She can do so if she she wishes, but there is a price for her to pay. If she chooses to have potential victims of crimes to replace personal responsibility for one’s safety, with “teaching” perpetrators not to commit crimes, she should consider her experience “erased”.

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