Rape is never the victim's fault

Recently, I saw this very realistic post on my Facebook wall shared by one of my friends, the post conveys a very important message "Rape is never the victim's fault". We all read many posts or articles where many people accuse victims of rape or any sexual assault for that crime. They question the victim's behavior, dress, choice of friends, and many other things. These things according to them encouraged the other person to sexually assault the victim. Most of these comments and objections try to put the entire blame of the incident on the shoulders of the victim and draw some ridiculous conclusion that the victim asked for it and got what she deserved. Forget about the insensitive nature of all these comments that's not what is important here but the attempt to put the blame on the victim and indirectly sympathize with the perpetrator of crime bothers me a lot. 

This picture below speaks for itself, no need to explain anything. Women have the total right to choose what they want to wear (the same choice that most cultures and societies offer to men). There is heavy commoditization of the human body in the advertising world but that's true for both genders. But women get criticized more for exposure compared to men. Some people (mostly men) are not very comfortable with the exposed women's bodies and behave erratically and they try to blame their weakness of erratic behavior on women. They use the name of culture, tradition, religion, or whatever that can help them to justify their erratic behavior. Women are expected to cover their bodies and show some decency, follow the rules that are supposed to help men control their sexual desires. Somehow society thinks that the responsibility of keeping men's sexual desires under control lies on women.

The accusation that by dressing in a particular way or by their behavior or choice of friends or partners in a relationship they ask or invite sexual assault is ridiculous. Nothing, absolutely nothing, gives anybody license to sexually harass anyone based on their appearance or behavior or anything. By putting the blame on the victim these people make that victim feel inferior, guilty, and worthless which is very dangerous as such isolated victims sometimes take the extreme step of ending their lives (then the same people blame them for being weak). Victim of any crime needs all support and help society can offer to him/her and victims of sexual crimes like rape need even more support because not only their bodies but their minds are also hurt and it's not easy to heal these types of injuries without a robust support system. Because of social pressure and the stigma attached to such crimes sometimes even near and dear ones hesitate to support victims the way they should. We need to confront this mentality. If these people are allowed to become successful they will bring back the era of human civilization where women were forced to cover themselves (not by choice but by force) and follow all gender-biased restrictions imposed on them by a male-dominated society. I don't think we want that era back. We need to make this clear to these people, stop blaming victims. I can't say that there are no fake rape accusations or that some people don't misuse sexual harassment laws to their advantage but these types of cases don't justify any victim blaming or shaming.

Sexual harassment is a very serious and complicated issue, and treating it in such a casual way is not the way to handle it. People need to be educated about this issue. Both men and women need to be educated about their rights and responsibilities. I know that we can not eradicate this problem completely but at least we can help the victims to deal with their pain and spread awareness to reduce these incidents.

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic. 

(Copyright for text: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing) 

Links:

1. Elizabeth Smart: Abstinence Education Teaches Rape Victims They’re Worthless, Dirty, And Filthy