If a woman is drunk while being relentlessly violated then she should have been more responsible and she should not have been drunk enough to "Get herself raped." We want women to be responsible and proper while men do as they wish. Just to recap, a man is not at fault if he is drunk and commits rape but if a woman is drunk then she failed to keep herself safe. A significant degree of cognitive dissonance is necessary to cling to this double standard.
What rape survivors call the "Drunk Co Ed fallacy" is alive and well in discourse on rape. This is not different than the Saudi woman that was sentenced to 200 lashes for being raped. The only component that is absent is the post assault physical abuse. The post assault psychological abuse is part of the main course in the treatment of the American rape victim. The case against the midshipman that was raped at the United States Naval Academy illuminates this double standard. A rape victim is being punished in order to exonerate her attackers.
The case should be against her attackers but whether or not she was drunk has taken center stage. There is a very well written article in the September 7, 2013 Washington Post local blog about the Naval Academy trial and what it tells us about culture at America's Naval Academy.
Would what is happening to this Naval Midshipman be acceptable if this were your daughter? Our current approach will not suffice for my children. I will not subject another person's child to something that I will shield my own children from experiencing. We have to do this Meta CBT.
Inequality is the foundational philosophy of rape culture.
Red herrings and the half-truths that we tell ourselves lay at the heart of rape culture. Holistic and comprehensive facts lay the foundation for solving this problem. The whole population needs to think about what we think and determine whether our opinions about rape are exportable to other situations. We need to ask if we would participate in the excuses that promote rape today if they were used by parents that rape their children. What if the child was taking cold medicine? If a drunk woman is walking home and a drunk man is driving home and the drunk man hits the drunk woman with his car, is she guilty of getting herself struck?
What do we think about what we think?
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