You are never responsible for being raped.

Rape prevention efforts (especially those I've noticed on my college campus) nearly always focus on helping the would-be victim doing something to prevent herself from being victimized. The idea is that if women take self defense classes, don't drink anything that's been out of their sight, refuse to wear skirts to parties, don't "advertise" their bodies with skimpy clothing, and never walk alone outside at night, there won't be any more rape.

Well, I have a problem with this approach. A lot of problems, actually.

This approach presumes that women get raped because of some personal thing about them. If a woman's raped at a party, it's because she was carelessly drinking. If she's raped in an alleyway, it's because she should have known better than to be in such a dangerous place. If she's raped unlocking the door to her apartment, it's because she didn't fight back hard enough or well enough.

Um, no.

Women aren't raped because they're stupid and generally fucked up, women are raped because rapists are violent and generally fucked up.

Why should it be incumbent upon women to alter their daily life patterns so as not to tempt rapists? Why should women's choices be controlled by the fear of rape? Why should it be my responsibility to make sure people don't rape me? Shouldn't it be other people's responsibility to just not fucking rape me??

I get that most of these efforts mean well, but they are patronizing as hell. As if women didn't already know it isn't smart to do things like getting drunk and passing out in a stranger's bed! But to translate such common-sense practices into a larger rape-prevention strategy turns simple wise decisionmaking into an obligation. You are obligated to worry about your safety at all times and make choices based on safety as your paramount consideration, and if you fail to meet this obligation, well, no wonder you got raped. That's absurd - no one should have to pay such slavish, infinite attention to making sure their basic human rights aren't brutally violated. Because, really, at the end of the day, even if you make a stupid choice (like getting so wasted you leave yourself vulnerable), people still shouldn't rape you.

If every woman followed the tips given out on these well-meaning fliers, we wouldn't have lives, or at least we'd be closed off to a particular fast lane of life that men are allowed unfettered access to. If men can drink, walk by themselves, and generally live their lives without having to alter their behavior out of fear of being assaulted, any rape prevention strategy that presumes women who do those things to be foolishly endangering themselves for doing them is completely unfair. It places women in a box in which they can only do that which is considered "safe" for them to do, and creates the implication that the penalty for failing to stay in that little box is getting raped. (This seems to support the thesis of one of my favorite bloggers, Nine Deuce, who considers rape a form of terrorism.)

Also, I should point out that this strategy totally sucks in practice. While there may be a few not-terribly-invasive changes you can make to make yourself less of a target of a random violent attack, most rape is perpetrated by people you know. Staying away from frat parties won't help you if the guy who came over to watch movies with you takes advantage of being alone in your house and rapes you, or if your dinner date slips a roofie in your lemonade. Wearing only turtlenecks and long pants as soon as you hit puberty won't stop your sicko uncle or cousin or father or grandfather from sneaking into your room your at night to touch you in ways you don't want to be touched. Taking a self-defense class won't mean much if your attacker catches you by surprise or is carrying a gun - in fact, it may get you into more trouble. All of this basically means that this strategy does not only aid the cultural trend towards blaming the victim, it does very little to actually stop acts of sexual violence.

I don't know how we prevent rape at a societal level. The legal system is obviously fucked up on this point and so is the culture. But the one small tactical suggestion I have to offer is to shift the cultural blame from victim to perpetrator, one person at a time. For me, this means not being afraid - I will do what I damn well please and I dare anyone to try to stop me. It also means calling out victim blaming when I see it, and explaining to others that nobody is ever "asking for it."