I found out about this outrageous article via Feministing that was posted in the LA Times. It reminds me so much of the woman-blaming that occurs when it comes to rape. Over the summer, I overheard a conversation between three male students at Georgetown that made me sick to my stomach. The Georgetown student who dominated the conversation was recounting the story of a murder of a girl at Texas A & M that was committed by her boyfriend. He commented that "you know, she was probably one of those girls that loves to date sketchy guys. She probably deserved it." He continued by stating that, "you know what, it's the same with girls that go to sketchy frat parties and get raped. I don't even feel bad for them. They deserve to be raped."
It is incredulous to me that ANYONE, much less a student at my own university, could believe that ANYONE DESERVES TO BE RAPED OR KILLED. Why is he blaming the victims in these situations instead of the perpetrators? Why didn't he blame the person who committed the murder or individuals who commit rape instead?
Let's think about this logically. So, we make the assumption that women who go to sketchy frat parties have some awareness of the risk they are exposing themselves to. We can also make the assumption that soldiers going to Iraq are aware of the risks they are exposing themselves to. Or people that decide to go into surgery. Or people who are walking alone late at night. Do those people deserve to be killed in battle, die on an operating table, or be mugged? Why is it that these women "deserve to be raped" then?
Monday, February 25, 2008
Women deserve to be raped?
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3 comments:
1) No where in the article you linked to does the author claim that those who are raped "deserved" it, or any other such nonsense. If I missed something there, perhaps you should quote the offending line. The line "deserve to be raped" which you put in quotes in the last sentence of your post does not appear anywhere in the linked article. In fact, the word "deserve" does not appear in the linked article. The article for the most part disputes the statistic that 1 in 5 or 1 in 4 college women will be raped or be the targets of attempted rape during their college years. And frankly, the argument against those statistics is convincing.
2) Is this a post about that article, which is well thought out and makes valid points, or is this a post about the idiot undergrads you overheard? I do not understand why the two have been merged here.
Thanks for sharing the article LJ!
The post (as explained) is to share both the article and the incident LJ overheard.
It commingles the two unnecessarily and unfairly, resulting in the following criticism being ambiguous with regard to its target.
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