nonethefewer | In which I rant about rape. (Reply)

Somehow, the subject of feminism came up yesterday when I was chatting with B, my live-in partner. (That makes him sound like a sofa-bed.) He asserted, partially tongue-in-cheekily, that the world is run by a small group of rich white men, and he's not one of them. There's The Top Of The Pack, and then waaay later on the power scale, there's men, women, non-whites, and so forth.

Somehow, this turned into me ranting about rape. I broke it down to chat style for ease of reading.

X: Recently, there was an item in the news wherein which a woman who was throwing up due to being so drunk was prevented from leaving the building and was gang-raped. The responses to this were normal – "She probably deserved it. She got herself drunk. She got herself raped. Oh, those poor boys!"

X: Like the Duke lacrosse thing – a bunch of frat boys hired a prostitute for their kegger, she files rape charges, and all anyone can talk about, aside from at the feminist blogs I read, is oh, those poor boys! Meanwhile, her personal information – her full name and a picture of her – is plastered in the media.

X: And what other crimes are there (crimes that involve two people, I mean, a victim and a perp) where the victim is told that they were probably lying, or they were asking for it, and oh those poor perps? I mean, if we left our front door open and we were robbed, we'd be called fucking stupid, but we still would have been robbed. It's still a crime.

X: FURthermore, about the lying part, you know what the stats are for "those crazy bitches" lying about rape? The same as any other two-party crime. In the same range, anyways. But oh, those lying bitches.

X: And where is this coming from?

B: … I hope you don't expect me to answer that.

X: I think that was rhetorical.

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* Rape — Sexual Assault at the US DoJ's Office for Victims of Crimes site.

* Sailorman at Alas, A Blog has a neat breakdown of types of rape charges.

* Of course, when the victim in question is male, rape is suddenly a traumatic event. To quote a commenter, "Afterall, rape of a man is a terrible, traumatic crime. Rape of a woman/gay man/child is your average Tuesday."

* That item in the news I mentioned.

* And to end this on a really terrible note, from London: "A teenage girl who claims she was gang raped by three 13-year-old schoolboys was overweight and would have been "glad of the attention", a barrister told a jury."

…

Okay, I can't end there. Check out the cutest kitten in the world.