can't believe this attitude re: rape and from women!

[Curiousmama]

I was at my art group this week and somehow we got talking about rape? Then the talk got to men's opinons on 'she's asking for it' etc.. and also what the victim wears etc. enticing rape

I said you'd be amazed how many women have been raped and haven't even reported it. I can count on 2 hands women I know who have. One friend twice the second time gang raped. One of the women said 'but fancy putting yourself in that situation?' and also said 'how do these women come across such men?' She's a nurse and usually seems very educated. The other women weren't much help either. I was incensed. I said if I walk into a room naked and there's 20 men there they have no right whatsover to touch my body. Obviously will fall on deaf ears but I was so angry and sad too. I'll still go to the group but will try to ignore any stupid debates. If my own mother were there she'd have gone off it bless her

Milchardo how horrific. And sorry but I'm ever so angry at your mother. Talk about putting your head in the sand. I hope you've had good support elsewhere?

I think the reason some women have this victim-blaming attitude is to convince themselves that it would never happen to them. If you can say "oh well she was in a rough neighborhood" you are by extension saying "I would never put myself in that position so this simply wouldn't happen to me".

Except of course it doesn't work like that in reality and it just serves to turn the blame away from the person who deserves it - the rapist..

I agree with everything people have said in this thread.

I do volunteer work with Women's Aid and have heard comments from abused women and from people in the general public along the lines of, "What'd I/she do to warrant this assault? Why didn't I/she just leave him?" Rather the question should be, "Why do rapists or other attackers do these things?!"

People do need to apportion blame or responsibility and as others above have said, many people are too scared or in denial to think about the fact that some people are just wanting to hurt others.

I've never been raped, but my heart goes out to all those on this thread who have. A dear friend of mine was repeatedly raped by a family friend when she was a pre-teen. Even now, more than a decade later she still feels that people looked at her as if to wonder what she did to make that person attack her :(

Makes me so angry.

I do think it's magical thinking.

"if i do x or don't do y, it could never happen to me. It doesn't happen to people like me"

Someone once told me I don't seem like a typical rape victim.

Maybe that's something your DM is suffering from Michaldo, a vague idea of how a rape victim looks and is, and that doesn't tally withher idea of her daughter? Just looking around at ideas for why she might want to go into such denial about what happened to you.

For some people, unfortunately, it goes beyond the vague (wrong) idea that if you are a Good Girl you won't get raped. It tips over into a wierd unacknowledged and illogical superstition that the more thoroughly you condemn and disbelieve and diminish rape victims, the safer you are from rape.

I remember discussing this kind of thing a few years ago when I was studying sociology. One theory behind the vilification of women who've been raped is that men need to be able to rationalise it and so blame the woman and that women do so to avoid becoming targets of male hostility. I think that it's part of the patriarchal structure. I have had some horrific sexual experiences myself and I think that there's some truth to it, particularly in situations where the attacker is part of a woman's social circle or family.
I am so sorry that so many of us have experienced this. When I was younger and watched television programmes with rape storylines, the woman was always presented as courageous for speaking out. The sad truth is that despite well meaning media representations attempting to reconstruct social reactions, women are usually posited as wanting in some respect by society, legal institutions or even themselves and their revelations are seldom well received.

I agree with Uppity about the 'magical thinking'. I also think this kind of thinking gets formed when young women start to become sexually aware/active and they get lots of 'good girl' messages from parents (who are trying to protect them, of course). But it can be hard to then disentangle that thinking, I.e that someone who has been raped is, on some level, not a good girl.

These attitudes require thinking about and a lot of people just can't be bothered to do that, which is so sad. Having said that, no reason for a group of nurses to be better at tha than any other cross-section of the population, I guess.

Totally agree that these women may be guilty of magical thinking as in: 'Ah but she did that. I don't do that so it can't happen to me'.
It's rubbish, of course. The only way that a woman can negate any chance of rape is to (somehow) avoid men altogether -and very, very few of us can do that. Live on an island with an electric fence around it or something. Even then the fence may fail. The point is that any contact with men at all may result in rape if that man is a rapist and there is no foolproof way of identifying these men from the rest of the populace.
I wouldn't hold out a nurse as being an expert on these things ; a sociologist or a psychologist is more likely to give a more educated explanation.
People who have studied human nature in depth.