Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture--and What We Can Do about It

by Kate Harding

We look for ways to rationalize sexual violence as a big misunderstanding—she was flirty; he thought the sex was consensual—without questioning why we can easily believe there are people who deliberately murder, steal, and beat the crap out of strangers, yet not people who deliberately rape. Or rather, we believe there’s one very specific type of rapist—the kind who wields a weapon, attacks strangers with no warning, and leaves abundant evidence of violence on the victim’s body—but not that some people deliberately rape their friends, girlfriends, wives, children, colleagues, or drunk new acquaintances. We can talk about how that sort of rape exists, and even about how it’s the most common sort, but when pressed, we’re almost never willing to acknowledge that those rapists exist. Not when the accused are people we know, or even just people who remind us of people we know. Not when they remind us of us.

Human beings do not have to say the word “no” to be understood clearly in any number of social situations—but when it comes to sex, rape culture tells us that only “no” can possibly mean no. Them’s the rules.

Nebulous vagina magic isn’t quite as reliable as, say, noses that grow whenever women lie, but it’s something to help reasonable people know who’s a real victim and who’s just “crying rape.”

If a frat boy gets plastered, wanders into the street, and gets hit by a drunk driver, the driver is the criminal. If a businessman overindulges at happy hour and insults an equally loaded person who decides to punch said businessman in the face, the punch thrower is the criminal. If two people drink the exact same amount of alcohol and do the exact same amount of the exact same drug, and then one murders the other, the killer is the criminal, and the dead person is the victim. See how this works? Likewise, if two people get equally fucked up, and then one rapes the other, the rapist is the criminal. Even if the person who got raped was flirting, even if she went into a bedroom with the rapist, even if her friends told her she should probably go to bed an hour before it happened, and she told them to piss off and ordered shots. The person who got raped is the victim. Period.