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Robot-Heart has a cool post that gets back to problem with the whole “myth of male weakness“ ideology

“Left to my own devices, I never would have been raped. The rapist was really the key component to the whole thing. I was sober; I was wearing sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt; I was at home; my sexual history was, literally, nonexistent—I was a virgin; I struggled; I said no. There have been times since when I have been walking home, alone, after a few drinks, wearing something that might have shown a bit of leg or cleavage, and I wasn’t raped. The difference was not in what I was doing. The difference was the presence of a rapist.”

Shakesville

It bears repeating.

I don’t understand the contortions of logic people go through to find reasons why a rape victim is at fault for some other person raping them.

You know what is logical? Blaming the person who decides to rape someone else.

Read the quote in context here.

Once again, the problem with blaming the victim (she must have known that sitting at home in sweatpants watching a movie was asking for it!!!!) isn’t that it absolves the assailant(s) it’s a declaration that men are weak, impulsive, hormonal, dictated to by their organs of reproduction, undisciplined, infantile, base, and governed by their animal nature and an overwhelming, instinctive drive to inseminate.

You know what it is? (You’re not going to like it.) It’s saying that rapists are indistinguishable from all other men. Which created an unholy uproar when Susan Brownmiller or Andrea Dworkin or Mary fucking Daly said it. But which passes not simply without comment but as conventional wisdom whenever someone says “well, she must have been asking for it” or “what did she expect?”

If you’re a man and you hear someone blaming a victim for rape why not take it as a personal slap in the face?

How about saying “no, she didn’t ask for fucking anything — a man who knew exactly what he was doing made the deliberate choice to rape someone he believed he could get the drop on under circumstances he calculated minimized the chance of being brought to justice.” I mean, seriously, every time someone blames the victim they’re letting the rapist slide on the low, low expectations their shitty attitude about men’s incapacity for responsibility creates.

To paraphrase The Elephant Man “men are not animals, they are human beings.” And like all human beings men deliberate, decide, and then act. When anyone gets raped it’s because someone deliberated raping them, decided to rape them, and then acted on their decision to rape them.

Remember: it’s not feminists who believe in blaming the victim. Consequently its not feminists who can be held accountable for society’s predators-from-the-sewers narratives about men.