I saw a quote on Facebook that said, “When a woman drinks too much she expects to wake up the next day hung over, not raped.” I agree. But as women, shouldn’t we take responsibility for our bodies by not becoming so intoxicated that we don’t know what is happening? Every woman should know her drink limit and stop there. No, she’s not asking to be raped by being drunk. But isn’t it her responsibility to reduce the risk by not getting to that point? And if you wake up the morning after doing the ‘walk of shame’ don’t yell rape if you regret your actions of the night before. Accept your role in what happened, learn from the experience and move on.
As a man who’s never for a moment entertained forcing a woman to have sex with me, it seems as it should be a pretty simple concept: rape happen because men rape. Rape doesn’t happen because “she was asking for it,” because “she was drunk and seemed like she wanted it,” or because she was wearing a little black dress. There are a million and one reasons men who rape use to justify their actions…but not one of those reasons pass for an excuse, must less a justification.
There IS no excuse for rape, no excuse for a man not respecting a woman, her wishes, and her right to consent (or decline). Sex isn’t something a woman “owes” a man. It’s not something a man “deserves” once a night’s activities have reached a certain level of stimulation and excitement. Sex is, and should always be, a mutually consensual activity, something given freely by both partners. No one has a right to take anything as inferring that sex is his due and his right.
Additionally, those who feel they have the right to comment on a woman’s “responsibility” to not get raped, deserve the shitstorm they will almost certainly face. Laura Herrick, a columnist for the Kansas City Star, has become the latest apologist for men who rape to attempt (and fail) to tap dance through the minefield of justifying rape culture. Her column (since deleted), was a (poorly thought out and executed) attempt to lecture women on their responsibilities (to not put men in positions allowing them to feel rape is appropriate and warranted).
Herrick starts with preemptive defense, possibly at the urging of an editor who sensed a gathering storm in the distance but decided, unwisely, to ignore it.
“I empathize with women who have been raped,” she writes, adding “I would also like to remind men that ‘no means no’ (and if someone is too drunk to say no, then no is implied); that no matter what a woman wears or does, she isn’t ‘asking for it.”
She then spends the rest of the piece asserting literally exactly those things. It’s almost poetic; the contradictions are so flagrant they could catch fire[.]
Herrick’s advice to women is as astonishingly simplistic as it is thoroughly offensive:
Accept responsibility for your own body and stop drinking so much.
Stop yelling “RAPE!” every time you have a drunken sexual encounter you wake up regretting the next morning.
Accept that you will never be 100% safe around men.
Think of what a false rape accusation might do to a man’s reputation and future.
Stop wearing revealing clothes.
Stop wasting energy fighting to be seen as something more than an object existing primarily for the sexual gratification of men.
There you have it, eh? If women would just start being more responsible, men would likely not feel it necessary and appropriate to rape women. It’s not like we can hold men responsible for acting on urges and temptations…right??
