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

by Kate Harding

It’s a maddening catch-22. If we get assaulted while walking alone in the dark, we’re told we should have used our heads and anticipated the danger. But if we’re honest about the amount of mental real estate we devote to anticipating danger, then we’re told we’re acting like crazy man-haters, jumping at shadows and tarring an entire gender with the brush that rightly belongs to a relatively small number of criminals.

You’ve heard of “victimless” crimes. Rape is perhaps the only perpetratorless crime, in our collective imagination.

Police, prosecutors, and juries already think women lie about rape all the time—I’m sure victims would have zero trouble proving they shot sexual predators in self-defense.