No

by Ginger Voight

Created on: May 09, 2008   Last Updated: May 07, 2011

A man is walking down the street, late at night, wearing a suit and tie. From the shadows, a mugger leaps from his hiding place and attacks him. He takes his watch, his PDA, everything that this man had the audacity to wear or carry late at night when he was alone in the dangerous city.

He immediately calls the police. The cops who respond to the scene ask, "Why were you walking out so late at night?" "Did you show off your watch?" "Have you been drinking?"

The man hangs his head in shame. He had walked alone late at night knowing that he could be targeted for a crime. Maybe he should have not worn his watch. Maybe then he would not have been singled out as an easy victim.

Another man drives his Mustang to a convenience store late at night. He runs into an old friend in the store and they chat. When he leaves, his car is gone. The cops come and ask him, "Why were you driving such a popular car? Didn't you know that people might want to steal it?"

These scenarios seem unthinkable. How can we blame a victim for the crimes of another? Why can't a man own a Mustang? Does he have to instead own a cheap car to prevent himself from becoming victimized? Or can't a man walk down the street with the reasonable expectation that he shouldn't be attacked?

What message would it send to the criminal when police officers and lawyers assign any responsibility, no matter how minor, to the victim?

This is a message our society sends to rape victims and their attackers every day in every court across America.

It is a mindset that once again delegates women to second class citizens, virtual property at the disposal of men. They must play defense in how they live, what they wear, whom they date. If a rapist targets one, they must answer for every decision that they made in previous consensual relationships, as if this past history makes them vulnerable to an attack. As if they ever lose the right to say no, just because they've ever said yes.

This detracts from the attack or the attacker, and instead criminalizes the free will and choices of the victim.

The injustice of this is unthinkable.  And because of this it makes rape one of the only crimes where it is socially acceptable to assign blame onto the victim.

If an old woman is brutally raped in her home, it inspires sympathy. If a young girl is stolen from the safety of her bedroom and attacked, it inspires outrage. But if an attractive, sexually active woman goes on a date with her attacker, a person she knows, somehow, society needs to know more before they can render their verdict of sympathy or outrage.

This should be an outrage in and of itself, considering that college aged women are four times more likely to be attacked, and nearly two-thirds of victims know their assailants. And even though one in six women will be the victims of assault, because of the social implications of being a victim, it is one of the most unreported crimes in our nation.

Only six percent of rapists will ever spend any time in jail.

Rape is not a crime about sex, it's a crime that uses sex to control - to dominate. Rapists are drawn to those they can overpower. It's an angry, hateful crime, not one of passion or lust. Because of its intimate nature it devastates its victims in ways that will reverberate through their entire lives, through guilt and humiliation that is validated by a justice or social system that would put any responsibility at all on their shoulders when in fact their choices were stolen.

It is no wonder why they are three times more likely to suffer depression, twenty-six times more likely to abuse drugs, and four times more likely to commit suicide.

All because of the actions of a pathological criminal - one who is far more likely to become a serial criminal, perpetrating other crimes including violent offenses... like mugging a businessman or carjacking a Mustang.

It also suggests that men themselves are no more than animals enslaved to their impulses - that they cannot see a woman dressed a certain way without devolving to their baser nature that would seek to immediately dominate and possess, rather than treat a woman like an equal who has full control over her own choices. That doesn't sound like any man I know, nor the men I've raised.

And yet, socially we can still ask the question of irresponsibility of the original victim. As a rape survivor I say the irresponsibility sits directly with those who would lay the blame of a crime on the victim, instead of the perpetrator where it fully belongs.

Learn more about this author, Ginger Voight.
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