The victim blaming by women is particularly depressing.
"Can people really not see that rape is not the victim's fault but still take basic precautions to avoid it happening to you?"
^That right there is an oxymoron. Women can't^ "take basic precautions to avoid it happening". Unless they never ever come into contact with any men.
The problem with idea of women having a responsibility to prevent rape, as well as being incorrect, is the idea that women then actually bear some responsibility for being raped if they haven't taken precautions. In these cases, they are partly to blame, by your reasoning. It is exactly victim blaming.
You can only sit there and type bullshit like that if you haven't any idea what it actually means. I had been drinking alcohol. At about a foot shorter and four stone lighter than him there was absolutely nothing I could have done to prevent it, he would have done it whether I was drunk or sober. Rape isn't about sex, all this "well men will find it easier to have sex with you if you're drunk" stuff is bollocks. They don't have sex with us because we are drunk, they rape us and the two ideas need to be separated. Rape is not sex, it's power and control and it's violence. Men attack us and assault us whether we are drunk or sober and it's not our fault. You need to start realising rape is closer to murder or GBH than it is to sex.
People like you Persian and others agreeing, are exactly why I didn't report, because I knew people would hold me partly responsible with your "logic". And I believed that too at the time, it's taken me over 20 years to believe it wasn't my fault - because of people like you. Now I know he didn't have sex with me because I was pissed, he raped me because he wanted to and he could. It's completely different.
It's so easy to sit there and smugly and arrogantly type that women should take basic precautions and take responsibility for their own safety, I sincerely doubt that you would say it to my face if I described to you exactly what he did to me. If you knew how he hit me and held me down and nearly suffocated me, and left bruises in the shape of fingerprints on my arms, would you still say to my face if I hadn't got drunk it wouldn't have happened?
So come on, you're quick enough to make these pronouncements like "take basic precautions" - think about it and tell me the truth, do you honestly believe I could have prevented it happening by "taking precautions" and "keeping myself safe"? Because if you do think this, you are saying I am partly responsible for what happened, as I could have avoided it but didn't.
Please think about what I have said and answer the question, do you believe I could have prevented what happened to me by taking precautions?