Given the recent Stanford rape case, I’ve seen a number of people express how the victim should be held accountable for the decision she made. One person tweeted “she put herself in a bad situation, she should have expected a bad outcome.” That “bad outcome” the tweet is referring to is rape, meaning the person who made the tweet is saying that because the victim went to a party and got drunk she should have known she was going to be raped. I mean what else could have happened? People were saying getting black out drunk isn’t a smart decision; I agree with that, but not because you will inevitably be raped. No, getting black out drunk is a bad decision because of the hangover that may follow, embarrassing yourself, or alcohol poisoning. Rape should never be an expected “bad outcome” for a woman. Seeing all these responses blaming the victim made me really angry; so angry that I wanted to set some things straight about rape.
To begin, if you are blaming the victim, you are the problem. You are the reason rapists like Brock Turner believe it wasn’t their fault. By blaming the victim you are making rape not the rapist’s fault. Let me make something clear: in every instance of rape, it is the rapist’s fault, not the victim’s. It doesn’t matter if the victim was drinking, wearing a short skirt, a revealing top, or walking alone late at night. She was a victim of a rapist. Brock Turner raped an unconscious woman. The blame falls on him and only on him.
Second, to the people who are saying that the victim put herself in a situation where she should have expected to be raped: what exactly is a “situation” where people should expect a rape to occur?
If women avoided all situations where rape could occur, we wouldn’t be able to leave the house. There is not one place, time, or situation in which rape consistently occurs. People are raped in many different locations, at all times and in any situation. So saying she shouldn’t have been at a party drinking because rape often occurs in that situation is frankly just ignorant.
Many women are raped by someone they know, so should women also avoid people they know? Many women are raped in parking garages, so if I’m raped while walking back to my parked car, it’s really my fault, isn’t it? What should I have expected by walking in a parking garage? To just go to my car and leave? No, obviously I was going to be raped. Do you see how terrible and ridiculous that sounds? Yet people do that constantly to rape victims, asking them questions to see where they made a mistake by making themselves vulnerable, and claiming that their vulnerability makes the rape their fault.
Where Brock Turner’s victim was and what she was doing are very minor details to me. The detail that concerns me is the part where she was raped. The details of a rape such as the location, the state of the victim, and the time are details of the case that should only be used to prove the rapist guilty, not be used to put blame on the victim. Rape occurs because of rapists. It’s that simple.
Third, I’ve seen people advocating for parents to teach girls how to protect themselves from rape. Let me tell you, I have been raised to protect myself. I carry mace, I don’t wear my hair in a ponytail (because it’s an easy way for an attacker to grab you), I am always alert when walking by myself (and I try to walk with someone whenever possible), and I never use my phone/ have ear buds in listening to music while I’m walking. I know how to do everything I can to protect myself. Most woman do; my friends and I have conversations about safety techniques, but guess what? Women still get raped. I see so many people stressing the importance of teaching woman how to protect themselves, yet I see those same people protecting the rapist, saying the woman should have been more careful. The issue of rape occurrences isn’t women not knowing how to protect themselves – it’s the fact that someone choses to rape someone; it’s the fact that most of those safety techniques we have learned still can’t, without fail, protect us from rapists. Yet people still tell rape victims they need to be more careful, and not put themselves in vulnerable situations. As I’m getting older, I’m realizing that it is going to take a lot more than a self-defense class to protect myself from the segment of society that still views rape as a woman’s fault.
