It's a reaction that no one wants to admit to having. When an individual is attacked the first thought that arises has to do with how they brought the situation on themselves. What was he doing there? Why was she dressed like that? Sure, it's a reaction. However, it can be easily refuted with a little education.
I have dealt with my fair share of victim blaming. When I was being driven home after my assault, the driver was relentlessly deriding me. What did I expect? I was at a party with four guys, he kept telling me that I had asked for it.
Let's deconstruct that argument. I was at a party with four men, A,B,C and D. A was my boyfriend, B was a mutual friend of us both, C was another mutual friend of ours and D was a friend of C's who was also a police officer. Why shouldn't I feel safe? What should be expected from that situation? After dark, men lose control and turn into sex-crazed, sadistic rape-wolves? All us delicate females should head for home at dusk? To the safety of our fathers and brothers? What would this man have to say about himself and his friends if he admitted that his friend was a rapist? It was easier to say that I was a stupid female who got what she was asking for. This argument follows the idiotic age old argument that men are better and women are somehow less valuable.
Argue all you want but this is an inherent truth about our current situation regarding the inequality of gender. Rape is not about sex, it's about power and control. Rape is the action borne of the idea that one person has a right or an entitlement to another's body, regardless of the owner's opinion. Until we adjust the current attitude that men and women are unequal, we will encounter these problems forever.
There are lessons that can be learned when we look at situations in which a woman is attacked. And the lesson is that no matter what a woman does, she is never safe from a sexual assault. We encounter sexual assault in domestic violence and teen dating situations. How can you blame a woman whose husband has taken her keys and her access to family funds, as well as threatens the life of her children, for not leaving? Not to mention the pages and pages on the isolation techniques abusers use to create a bubble in which the victim lives, cut off from everyone who loves her and anyone who can help. Men have been known to threaten and abuse the family pet to control their partners. Who can judge someone for wanting to protect the innocent?
I've heard that lesbians just need a "deep-dicking", they just need a man to "give it to them right". A feminist's husband needs to "teach her her place". "If that was my wife", is another argument. These are violent statements in which women are portrayed as less-than and as though they are the possessions of their partners. Should they simply submit to men, they would follow the path indicated for them. However, this very submissiveness that is demanded from them is the submissiveness that is used to blame them when they become victims of the men in their lives.
It's a double standard. We will continue to be blamed ad infinitum. Every time someone blames the victim, I ask, so men have no control? Men are animals? No greater than a dog in heat? How can society blame a woman for being stereotypically female when she is the victim of a crime and not blame the man for being stereotypically male?
copyright 2011 Michelle Cahill
I have dealt with my fair share of victim blaming. When I was being driven home after my assault, the driver was relentlessly deriding me. What did I expect? I was at a party with four guys, he kept telling me that I had asked for it.
Let's deconstruct that argument. I was at a party with four men, A,B,C and D. A was my boyfriend, B was a mutual friend of us both, C was another mutual friend of ours and D was a friend of C's who was also a police officer. Why shouldn't I feel safe? What should be expected from that situation? After dark, men lose control and turn into sex-crazed, sadistic rape-wolves? All us delicate females should head for home at dusk? To the safety of our fathers and brothers? What would this man have to say about himself and his friends if he admitted that his friend was a rapist? It was easier to say that I was a stupid female who got what she was asking for. This argument follows the idiotic age old argument that men are better and women are somehow less valuable.
Argue all you want but this is an inherent truth about our current situation regarding the inequality of gender. Rape is not about sex, it's about power and control. Rape is the action borne of the idea that one person has a right or an entitlement to another's body, regardless of the owner's opinion. Until we adjust the current attitude that men and women are unequal, we will encounter these problems forever.
There are lessons that can be learned when we look at situations in which a woman is attacked. And the lesson is that no matter what a woman does, she is never safe from a sexual assault. We encounter sexual assault in domestic violence and teen dating situations. How can you blame a woman whose husband has taken her keys and her access to family funds, as well as threatens the life of her children, for not leaving? Not to mention the pages and pages on the isolation techniques abusers use to create a bubble in which the victim lives, cut off from everyone who loves her and anyone who can help. Men have been known to threaten and abuse the family pet to control their partners. Who can judge someone for wanting to protect the innocent?
I've heard that lesbians just need a "deep-dicking", they just need a man to "give it to them right". A feminist's husband needs to "teach her her place". "If that was my wife", is another argument. These are violent statements in which women are portrayed as less-than and as though they are the possessions of their partners. Should they simply submit to men, they would follow the path indicated for them. However, this very submissiveness that is demanded from them is the submissiveness that is used to blame them when they become victims of the men in their lives.
It's a double standard. We will continue to be blamed ad infinitum. Every time someone blames the victim, I ask, so men have no control? Men are animals? No greater than a dog in heat? How can society blame a woman for being stereotypically female when she is the victim of a crime and not blame the man for being stereotypically male?
copyright 2011 Michelle Cahill
AMEN, Michelle!!
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