I find rape apologists and victim-blamers fascinating and absurd.
I've been engaging in a heated discussion on one of my favorite discussion lists. A poster shared a story about a woman who'd been gang-raped. The rapists taunted her for being a lesbian and then attacked her.
While the poster says he does not blame her, he goes on to say she should have known better than to have a rainbow sticker on her car. Yes, she should have automatically expected that rainbow stickers would turn random groups of men into gang-raping machines. He claims he is not blaming her in anyway, shape or form while simultaneously claiming she has "causal culpability".
Hmmm, "causal culpability" sounds a lot like victim-blaming in some degree to me. He goes on further to continue to condemn the rapists while again asserting that it should not be so hard for her to just not have any bumper stickers on her car. How is that not blaming her again?
I explained that rapists rape because they are rapists and enjoy the control and terror they exercise over their victims, not because bumper stickers control their minds. I pointed out that they'd have likely committed the act regardless of what was on her bumper and had most likely been intending to do so before she even showed up at the scene. The bumper sticker was just an excuse and she was a random victim.
He dances and sings and jumps and prances to the same tune – she is not to blame yet she is to blame, yet she is not – all over a bumper sticker. Over and over again, he makes the claim that she should not have had the bumper sticker on her car while saying that he is not blaming the victim for having the bumper sticker which he claims is the reason she was raped – then calls me a liar for pointing out that his is indeed blaming the victim.
Then he denies it and makes the same assertion several times again.
Why stop at bumper stickers? Why not say she should change her sexual orientation? Or move out of the area? Or pretend to be heterosexual? Why not continue that logic train to it's natural, ridiculous destination?
I guess I didn't smoke enough crack today, because that just doesn't qualify as logic in my book. He is clearly engaging in victim-blaming out of one side of his mouth, while claiming he is not out of the other side of his mouth.
Seriously, WTF is wrong with people?