Rape bait
Rape bait. Tonight in the supermarket I was catching up with a friend I hadn't seen for a long time, a woman who has not been sheltered from much that is nasty in the world, a woman who I respect. I was horrified when she used the term rape bait. Challenging people on their assumptions that womn are responsible for not getting raped (passive responsibility, as if such a thing has any logic) rather than men responsible for not raping (active responsibility) is something I am trying to find ways to do. So far, I'm not very good at it. Tonight I tried to say that it isn't a young woman's fault if she is raped. I wasn't brave enough to challenge this assumption strongly, and I find it so deeply ingrained in our culture that what should be so simple, is actually radical and difficult to express and discuss. Rape bait. The notion that women need to protect themselves from being raped by their choice of where they go, who they go with, how they dress, and when t