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.