In a very sick way, it’s totally hilarious what men say about women who get raped:
“Oh you shouldn’t have been there alone”
“That’s what happens when you wear those clothes”
“Females should stay out of the men’s barracks”
“She was drunk, what did she expect?”
Don’t they realize what they are saying about themselves?? What they are saying about their fathers, brothers, and sons?
Apparently not…because what they are saying is that men are animals. That men are unable to control themselves, like dogs humping your leg. That men are so pathetic they have to rape drunken women to have sex because they can’t get it from a sober, coherent woman. Or they have to rape women to prove a point because they can’t use words, like civilized humans. Or that men rape women to puff up their poor, squashed egos.
They are saying that men are criminals just waiting for a victim to stroll in their territory. That it’s so obvious what the male animals will do that women should just stay away to save themselves. They are saying that, duh, men are so dangerous that it’s foolish to have them as your friends unless you also happen to be a male animal, otherwise they will take advantage of your prey-like qualities.
You don’t think much of your gender, do you?
How sad.
That pisses me off almost as much as the “she was asking for it” attitude because I know so many GOOD men who would never act like uncivilized swine. Men are NOT uncontrollable animals. They are people, many of them good people. So why do a few of them smear their entire gender with such ugly female-hating comments?
What century are we in again? I’m getting a little confused.
I am a female Marine currently in the Individual Ready Reserve. I like to sleep, travel, read, eat, explore, and take photographs. I read lots of news and I like reading about life in other countries. I am easily amused and my dream job is to be snoozing in a warm patch of sunlight, hopefully with a piece of tasty cheese nearby for when I wake up hungry.
You think men are bad? Women are just as bad. This is why prosecuting attorneys do not want women on their rape trial juries.
Some women — many women — NEED it to be the woman’s fault, as in your statements aquoted bove, because OTHERWISE they have to face the fact that THEY could be raped also.
Yes. If they can make it the victim’s fault, then they themselves feel safer. But, they’er not. Nuns get raped in their cloisters. Teachers get raped in their classrooms. Grandmothers get raped in their own beds.
Rape is the fault of the rapist. I’d worry about guys who make up excuses for rapists.
Bill Smith
Former Cop
Hmm. Good point, I didn’t think about that, about women saying the same things. I’ve just never actually heard one but I hear men say it all the time.
I just remembered an exhibit somewhere that’s a display of the clothes various women happened to be wearing when they were sexually harassed on street. And it wasn’t a bunch of leather mini-skirts and spikey heels. It was jeans, long skirts, sweatpants, T-shirts, and winter coats. It’s not about “sluts” asking for it, it’s about men thinking it’s their right…
So what do you do in a situation where someone says a rape occured, and then refuses to testify to that under oath? Someone claiming that they were raped does not give them a carte blanche to be believed. It’s a serious charge which can be used to destroy someone’s life. I’m not an ignorant troglodyte who thinks that every person who claims they were raped “had it coming”. But I’m also not ignorant to the fact that people do use “I was raped” as an excuse for their own bad or embarassing choices.
When a guy says “She had it coming because of how she was dressed,” that is painfully insulting and demeaning to all of us with a “Y” chromosome and puts us in the same category as a dog wanting to hump a leg. However, to claim that a woman who got drunk and voluntarily went into a private room with three men she may or may not know, who had been drinking as well, was not making a really, really stupid choice is insulting to women. It assumes that they need protecting and cannot think or act for themselves and should not be held accountable for their own actions.
Individuals have a responsibility to protect themselves and limit their ability to be harmed. It’s why laws exist to protect children and the mentally handicapped from being victimized. It’s why people who prey on the elderly are a particular brand of scum with their own circle of Hell waiting. But those are categories of people who, likely, have no choice in the matter. A 12 year old can’t help the fact they’re 12. Someone with a 50 IQ can’t help the fact they’re not all there. Age and its assorted maladies will catch us all eventually. Someone who, through conscious choice or ignornance, leaves themselves open for harm is no less a victim, but they are not entitled to an aegis from their own behavior. “Victim” is a label someone should be ashamed to have, and should strive to avoid.
Someone claiming to be robbed, almost killed, mugged, beaten up, or burglarized, or defrauded shouldn’t be automatically assumed to be telling the truth either then. But nobody questions them, they just go after the perpetrator. But every time a women is attacked, it’s automatically assumed that she’s lying. If a man is raped, nobody questions that either. Only when a woman is raped is the victim of a crime assumed to be at fault. Look at how horribly women who report rapes are treated, especially if becomes a public story. Only a fool would report a rape out of embarassment over a bad choice because the result smears you for life as a “slut” and “liar”.
The vast majority of drunk men don’t rape women. So should I avoid all drunk men anyway? The vast majority of women who are raped are raped by people they already know. So am I “leaving myself open for harm” every time I am with a male I know? It would be a whole lot easier if we just did like Saudi Arabia and banned women from hanging out with men not of their famiy, wouldn’t it? Should we also borrow their rule about a women needing four male witnesses to prove she was raped, since obviously her testimony as a woman doesn’t count?
Who assumes that a woman is lying when she says she was raped? You’re making a very broad accusations which isn’t supported by the facts available.
I’ve read several articles about A1C Hernandez (the airman whose rape allegation started this post, and the one before), and I’m yet to see anything which indicated that anyone doubted her story until she refused to testify at the Article 32 hearing. The MP/CID investigators obviously thought her claims were credible enough to refer it to JAG. And JAG thought it was credible enough to refer it to an Article 32 hearing. That doesn’t sound like anyone didn’t believe her. It sounds like they believed her more than she believed herself.
Every bit of information out there implies that the USAF investigated her allegations, and went after the perpetrators. From what I’ve read, the only people who didn’t treat her well when she was considered a rape victim was the attorney for the men she accused of raping her; you know, the person responsible for vigorously defending those people.
Charging a rape victim with indecent acts related to their rape would be a horrible, horrible thing. However A1C Hernandez ceased being a “rape victim” as soon as she didn’t testify that a rape occured. At that moment she stopped being a victim and became a willing participant in something defined as an indecent act in the military.
Just because she didn’t want to testify about it doesn’t mean she’s not a rape victim anymore. There’s a new program in the Marines that let’s women(and men) report rape and get counseling that they need without reporting it to the police, or even the chain of command. They made the program because it’s an embarassing horrible thing to be raped, and it’s almost as bad to report it. Instead of being able to move on everything in their life is put under a microscope, and they relive the event over and over. It’s not good times at all. So if they decide they just want help and they don’t want to prosecute the offender because they don’t want to go through the pain and misery of it all, does that make them not a rape victim? What about the ones that never tell anyone? Are they not rape victims?
And why is going into a room with three drunk guys a bad idea? She should be safe there, besides, it’s always easy to watch what happens and then say something was a bad idea after the fact. So congrats on your use of hindsight to tell her that was a bad idea…
Although I would agree with one point, that most of the time women crying rape is taken very seriously, bad enough that I’ve seen more then one career ruined by an accusation that turned out to be false later on…remember the Duke Lacrosse team anyone? Women have more power with that one word then men have with anything else.