Rape and Responsiblity

If you feel like crossing over to a land where up is down and green is brown, have a look at this thread on Mia’s blog where among the wild and bizarre accusations thrown out by the feminists, the current final comment reads…

I think the ideological point of view you mention Dave, is the crazy idea that when rape happens in our society it is more than just one “nasty” person attacking someone, but a reflection of the sexist regime we live under.
Is it that crazy to assert that men should change their behaviour (ie stop raping women) rather than women changing theirs?
Because that is something that is not being said on ads on tv or anywhere else in the mainstream – so its good to see it said here.
MEN STOP RAPING WOMEN!

She then agrees with a previous commenter who likened the idea that “women should be careful when drinking” to telling women that their privates are like an ipod – a “piece of property”. Hm, next time my wife tells me not to go out drinking lest I get my head cracked open on the pavement after a drunken fight, I’ll try that line – “My head is not property like an ipod”!

It’d be great if we could stop rape*. Fantastic. Sadly there are evil people in the world and we have to live with that reality. It’s no use standing in front of a freight train saying “it would be morally wrong for that train driver to hit me”. It doesn’t matter how right or wrong something is, some things are just reality.

A valid point is made during the debate that of all the drinkers, only the woman is a victim – and all 3 are blamed for what happened. Except the blame is only in the eye of the beholder, it’s created in the minds of these bloggers, and they take that to bizarre extremes, vastly beyond anything the creators of the ads had in mind – warning people about drinking too much.

One of the commentors has a post on another blog where she says:

I won’t go over the points that Maia has made, but I did want to add one more issue about the ad and the rape myths it perpetuates – namely that stranger rape in a dark alley (whether you are drunk or sober) is How Rape Happens. Actually most rapists know their victims, often already very intimately. Strangers are not usually the real danger.

This one reminds me of the guy who walked onto a plane with a fake bomb, thinking the odds of 2 bombs being on board were astronomical.

That’s not how statistics work. If statistics show that most rapes are from people known to the victim, that doesn’t change the danger of a woman being drunk in a bar by herself. This ad points out that danger, the fact that there is a danger of being a victim of the same crime in a different way has nothing to do with it.

*It’d be even better if these bloggers spent their time working on ways to stop rape in the real world.