Defying belief.

You ever notice that rape is one of those issues where we’re discouraged from looking at complicated multi-faceted answers?

Don’t get me wrong, blaming a girls flirtatious nature or revealing outfit is repugnant and probably inaccurate. However, just declaring, “rape happens cuz rapists is evul!” is nearly as stupid.

We know that rates of rape are different from society to society, we know that what constitutes rape is different from society to society, we know that attitudes towards victims of rape are different from society to society. Why can’t we have a frank discussion of the anthropology of rape, the sociology or rape, the sociobiology of rape, the psychology of rapists and rape victims?

Why do we have to settle for easy answers and applaud this sort of pablum?

To be fair to this girl and her sign, accountability does, at the end of the day, rest on the shoulders of the individual. However, this is really the case more out of pragmatism than an honest inquiry into where the blame lies. I’d say victims are nearly entirely ruled out as being anywhere near responsible or “to blame” for what happened to them.

But we’re in denial if we think that environmental factors, genetic abnormalities, mental illnesses, societal attitudes, belief systems and particular subcultures don’t have an impact. If they didn’t, you’d see far greater parity in the rates of rape from one place to another.

I know that this is a very touchy issue. Saying someone didn’t take the proper precautions to prevent getting robbed isn’t going to upset them—someone who was robbed, even though they’re not directly responsible for what happened, are usually able to accept that maybe they didn’t take proper precautions.

It’s a lot harder for a rape victim to accept that level of responsibility, due to the psychological trauma associated with rape. Now, not all girls who were raped react that way to the sexual assaults the suffered. I’ve known rape victims who are capable of accepting that something bad happened to them and being more cautious in the future. However, I also know girls who were very effected by what happened to them. It’s very difficult to look at someone who has suffered like that and tell them, “You should have taken these precautions.” It seems incredibly cold and by putting even a little bit of the responsibility on the victim, you may do further damage to her psyche.

But at the same time, to act as if victims are totally powerless and there is simply nothing they could have done is usually somewhat factually and intellectually dishonest. And it doesn’t really serve the best interest of women as a whole to adopt the attitude that they’re in no way accountable for their own well-being when it comes to rape. It’s a catch-22.