To what extent is a rape victim responsible for the crime?

[Zazzy]

The problem is determining who is the real victim. Sometimes, women cry rape to get back at the man. As I stated above, rape cases are hard to determine who is telling the truth because it is a case of he said, she said.

I'm sorry to say that this is sometimes true- I've seen it happen (a false accusation). How do you balance these (which I really believe are very, very few) with the number of rapes that aren't reported (most of them)? Or with the number of rapes which women manage to convince themselves were just really bad sexual experiences that they got themselves into, so they feel like they can't report them?

This is why I feel like men and women need to TALK more about this- because there's such a huge divide in experience. Unless you've lived Deliverance, if you are a man you probably don't know what it feels like to be dependent on someone else's sexual decency. Yes- women change their minds sometimes at disappointing moments for reasons that range from good (you said or did something awful) to bad (I know that you are panting after me and that's all I wanted). Does it matter? I tend to think not.

* Quote tag edit.

[MindForgedManacle]

The problem with every discussion about rape I've ever seen is that anyone who might have a valid point that mightn't be completely siding with the person who was supposedly raped gets shat upon. So most people will just go on agreeing with everyone else pretty much (and that's boring).

For example, TF makes what I think is a valid point that - sometimes - supposed rapes that happened while one or both parties are drunk can be utter bullshit, because the woman might think that she wouldn't have had sex with the guy had she been sober, yet she clearly chose (in this hypothetical) to drink lots of alcohol and is now claiming she was raped. Well, this woukd be nonsense in all other instances involving drunkeness, but given this really is a 'he said, she said' situation, this guy can very likely be in a shitty situation. Now he's 'the guy that raped that girl', even if he's cleared by the courts (assuming charges were pressed).

I'm not blaiming the victim or saying rape doesn't happen, but false allegations like this piss me off.

[pineapplebunnybounce]

Edit: took out my own personal experience because I just wanted to make the point that rape and sexual assault often happens in places where women don't expect to be treated that way, and by people they trust to be "safe".

I always appreciate hearing other womens' stories, and it seems there are few enough of us here. But I respect your decision to take your personal story out. I'm sorry you had a bad experience- I did, too. Kudos to us for being strong women and getting through it.

I can only classify what I experienced to be sexual assault (physical not verbal), so it isn't comparable to rape, IMO. It wasn't all that traumatic for me but it was unsolicited and it was refused and that wasn't enough to stop it.

I personally think that most women have experienced similar things. At least once. Most I know have experienced it multiple times.

Do men get sexually assaulted often? Do people grab your butts when unsolicited and continue when you tell them to stop?

[Ryantology]

The victim is never responsible.

The problem is determining who is the real victim. Sometimes, women cry rape to get back at the man. As I stated above, rape cases are hard to determine who is telling the truth because it is a case of he said, she said.

This is true, but you're describing a situation in which it's not clear who the victim is. I think the thread is addressing the very real problem of actual, 'legitimate' rape victims being blamed for the rape because they 'dress slutty' or something fucking dumb like that.

[Fruity]

My body means my choice. If I say no... It means no. That simple.

I had a "bad experience" as a child and then again when I was 18. Was it my fault? No. Did I feel guilty? Yes. Did I speak about it to anybody? No. Always said it happened to someone I know. It did... But then to me too.

(edit to remove a sentence. TMI.)

There are no excuses. No means no. If you are not sure that the person is fine with it, back off. That simple.

[Davidthegoliath]

In all seriousness, though, in most instances it is very difficult to determine who is telling the truth and who is lying in rape cases, because it is a he said, she said scenario.

That I think might be the reason why so many rapes happen and are suffered in silence. If a person is dominated in the first place and raped then they are unlikely to easily overcome that dominance when they have to fight against the rapers word and prosecute them. This is even more complicated in the victims mind when they are raped by someone they love or care about.

Every rape is an abuse of trust and power.

[Creed of Heresy]

Well, as someone who deals with rape victims on a pretty constant basis, I can pretty much assure virtually anyone that few indeed are the times wherein a woman would call rape to get back at a guy. I mean, yes, there ARE sociopaths out there and they do not heed the gender divide, and unfortunately it's rather hard to determine when someone is telling the absolute truth in a rape trial. But that's exceptionally rare. Given the extent of trauma I've seen, and worse, given the horribly low rate of rapes being reported, I am less concerned with the possibility of falsehood, and far more concerned with getting people who have been raped to seek justice.

The problem is, in order to see someone brought to justice for their crime, it requires the victim facing the offender. Most of the time they're in such a state of trauma, and the experience so damn horrible for them (extremes of pain, helplessness, terror, unwarranted guilt [brought on by the disgusting diatribe spewed by evangelists, muslims, and the ignorance of our stupidly conservative society], and complete subversion of their will to another who holds the victim's life in their hands as they ruthlessly assault their bodies in the most invasive way imaginable all leads to an intense longing to "just move past it." It's like wanting to slap a band-aid on a bullet wound instead of seeking actual medical treatment because of the knowledge that the treatment will hurt even more for a short time. Already in a state of pain, it's understandable to not want to bring more on, but it's not something that goes away, it's not something that can just be forgotten and ignored and left untreated.

So often do I find myself struggling against what the perceptions and bias of society has wrought. Girls terrified of facing their rapist because they think that, since society seems so "you were begging for it with the way you dress, you slut" in attitude [You try telling me the media hasn't all but indoctrinated the belief that such tripe is true. Go on, try to tell me with conviction and honesty. See if you can] that they will have to face their rapist, which will force them to remember the experience all over again, and that the court will side not with them, but with their assailant [which happens all too often; forget what you think about courts just going "SHE SAID HE RAPED HER, YUP, HE SURE DID!" It doesn't happen like that], making the entire experience not worth it and worse, reminding them, falsely, that it was their fault, that they deserved it.

Guys completely horrified at the idea of being socially emasculated ("men can't be raped! We have sex drives and women don't! We pursue it, and women don't! We're stronger! We're bigger! Wait, you got overpowered by a woman? And you didn't want it?! LOL, you're a fucking weak shit and a faggot, dude, get the fuck over it!"), trying to hide their pain through bravado and stoicism, too mindlessly indoctrinated with the stupidity of the masculine-bravado bullshit with its deep-set roots, ironically, through the misogyny of the past and the misandry of the present ("All men are potential rapists! " tends to lead many men to believe that they couldn't have been raped, it's not possible for the "only gender capable of rape" to be raped after all...and the low reported incidence of men being raped does not help this mindset at all...), and the fucking stupidly pervasive media (and overly-feminist)-fueled idea that all men want is sex. And all men want sex. Women do not. Men do. Men must pursue it. Women never do. Ergo men cannot be raped by women. This logic is just...it's just, it's NOT. OK? It's just...it's not. It's not, and it isn't. This doesn't even factor in the just-as-if-not-more painful idea of admitting it when another man raped them. "LOL HE MADE YOU HIS BITCH, YOU TOOK IT TOO, YOU WEAK LITTLE FAGGOT! Man you're a pussy!" Another mentality, deeply engrained through stupid, culture-fed and media-fueled ideas of masculine bravado and strength and dominance and your status being so damn important. The idea of having to admit it, in a court-room full of people, that another guy made you his bitch and you were utterly helpless and powerless... Not to mention how widely-accepted it is that rape happens in prison between men all the time. "Ha ha, it's funny!" Right, it's hilarious when a guy goes to prison for smoking or selling weed and gets gangraped by the white-supremacist brotherhood. Cuz that's justified, he totally deserved it, right? It all leads up to this idea that it's just not even worth it. You CAN'T go to court about it. You have no case. You're a man. Men cannot be raped. No matter how false a statement this is...it's still just what society thinks ever so broadly.

The occasional times I've had guys come into the RCC, it's mostly been young males. Teenagers. Sometimes it's small boys who call us about this. Either instance, we are required by law to inform the police (given the status of being a minor; they cannot make the decision for themselves, ergo it is our responsibility to inform the authorities). The look on their face differs from the looks on the women. The women are horrified, disgusted with themselves, despondent, weak, and vulnerable. The men are defeated. They look completely broken. Everything they've been told is a lie. They've had the experience happen, something that supposedly cannot happen, or something they have to "just deal with" turns out to be something they cannot deal with. The most common males to come in or call in are teenagers. Oftentimes, it's the outcasts, the unpopular ones, assaulted by the bigger, more popular apes who can't help but love to beat their chests and show others who has the biggest banana. Football players tend to be the most common assailants, though not exclusively so. The younger kids...boys or girls...

...If I wasn't an atheist before I started volunteering, I sure as fuck would've become on through this. You hear about kids...children, who should be learning their arithmetic and spelling, whose thoughts should be more about after-school sports and video games and cartoons...going through...that... And then the memories that come drifting up into my mind. Things I would rather just...move on, to get over, and forget about.

The idea that a rape-victim of any gender or age might have any shred of responsibility is completely and utterly alien. It simply does not compute. It is an abstract of non-logic so bizarre and unreasonable that the fundamental elements of the very idea just are not capable of being processed or understood in any form or extent.

[bladevalant546]

I listened to a few segments of this guy yesterday. While sometimes I agree with his points, I find most of them lacking. First things first rape and mugging are sort of different. Mugging as a specific goal to gain a material or monetary object. Rape on the other hand is based on sexual drive combined with lack of self-control and certain psychological issues behind their ability to resist their dependency to sex or ego (depending on motives) with that said, it is very subjective on the what women/man gets rape thus the same situation cannot be applied all around. I feel the emotional responses to this are holding the real solution back. We need to think objectively and not my misandric or misogynistic. Rape is bad and the victim is never at fault!

[NoraBrimstone]

I couldn't even watch the whole video. I lost it at "Do you have a lock on your front door." I can guess where it went from there, and please correct me if I have the wrong end of the stick, because I didn't watch the vid beyond that. But if he was about to compare leaving your door unlocked and getting robbed to "dressing provocatively" then getting raped, he can shut the fuck up until victims of burglary are routinely made to stand up in court and be asked questions to determine whether or not they deserved to be robbed, which is basically what happens to rape victims here.

Also, in my school, the girls were taken out of class occasionally to be warned about rape and how to behave and dress to avoid it, we even had kick boxing lessons. Were the boys ever taken out of class and taught about why rape is wrong? Nope. Even when a girl at my school was raped in the toilets, the girls were again taken out of classes to be told not to flirt with boys during break time. Again, the boys were never given a talk on not raping.

Sure, society is supposed to know not to rob and kill either, and they still happen. But there isn't a culture of blaming the victims of those crimes. "Oh, he got murdered? He shouldn't have been an irritating twat, what did he expect?" "Your house got robbed? That's what you get for having a nice house!" You just don't hear that kind of thing all the time. With rape, you do. All the time. Even in court, it's less about trying to prove whether or not a man raped a woman, but whether or not she deserved to be violently attacked.

I feel that I could go on and on in a long long rant about this shit, but I will stop there before I get going.

</angryfeministpost>

[Jackalope]

I couldn't even watch the whole video. I lost it at "Do you have a lock on your front door." I can guess where it went from there, and please correct me if I have the wrong end of the stick, because I didn't watch the vid beyond that. But if he was about to compare leaving your door unlocked and getting robbed to "dressing provocatively" then getting raped, he can shut the fuck up until victims of burglary are routinely made to stand up in court and be asked questions to determine whether or not they deserved to be robbed, which is basically what happens to rape victims here.

Also, in my school, the girls were taken out of class occasionally to be warned about rape and how to behave and dress to avoid it, we even had kick boxing lessons. Were the boys ever taken out of class and taught about why rape is wrong? Nope. Even when a girl at my school was raped in the toilets, the girls were again taken out of classes to be told not to flirt with boys during break time. Again, the boys were never given a talk on not raping.

Sure, society is supposed to know not to rob and kill either, and they still happen. But there isn't a culture of blaming the victims of those crimes. "Oh, he got murdered? He shouldn't have been an irritating twat, what did he expect?" "Your house got robbed? That's what you get for having a nice house!" You just don't hear that kind of thing all the time. With rape, you do. All the time. Even in court, it's less about trying to prove whether or not a man raped a woman, but whether or not she deserved to be violently attacked.

I feel that I could go on and on in a long long rant about this shit, but I will stop there before I get going.

</angryfeministpost>

I can't find fault with any of your post, Nora. You know what else is fucked up about it? The implicit assumption that men cannot control themselves, and cannot be expected to - ergo we must control women instead.

No. I reject that implication.