No woman asks to be raped. Blaming the victim — whether in the Delhi or Los Angeles — is so tempting. So tempting, that far too many men and women cave in to this pathetic excuse so as to avoid a challenge to their world view.
“She wore a short skirt,†she asked for it. “She had ‘that’ look,†she asked for it. She … well, she existed… so naturally, she ‘asked for it’. Maybe some women find this belief of comfort; “I will never be raped because I don’t wear, do, look…whatever ‘that’ thing, action, fill-in-the-misogynist-blank,†is.
Well, this is simply not true. An attack on a woman, even of a sexual nature, is an act of violence against a gender whose powers intimidate the attacker — a poor, weak excuse of a man.
All those who attack women share a common, despicable thread: the desire to wrest power from the gender that can give and sustain with only a singular, male ejaculation. Ladies, the gentle shall not inherit the earth as Matthew suggests, these women shall be gang raped and beaten to death while a bus driver keeps on his route for some 23 blocks (as I understand news reports) as an innocent medical student’s is raped and murdered Her male companion was also brutalized and thus unable to help.
No woman asks for ‘it’ unless she is in an intimate relationship where both partners claim their right to enjoy mutually desired sex. Wearing a short skirt, polite smile or whatever misread signal is not justification for anything other than violent rage by a bully toward the power of womanhood.
I pray that December 16, 2012 will go down in history as the turning point for people in India and everywhere who will no longer allow savages to rape and beat a woman – on a coach that kept on its route allowing the violence to continue– to be another news story about which we shake our heads and move on. I hope that the continue protests in India enlighten all throughout the world to take action.
Women’s sexuality is ours to enjoy as we see fit even if fearful men insist on continuing to encodify their weakness, fear and hate of it into laws that justify harming women. Both men and women deserve better.
