When I saw this in my RSS feeds, my second response – the first one was to roll my eyes – was, “Of course it was her fault; I’m sure she just asked those guys to rape her and, ultimately, take her life…” I read the article and when I read the part where a religious leader said – and I’m paraphrasing here – that if she had invoked the name of God and told them that she was of the “weaker sex,” they would have left her alone.
Really. The article goes on to blame Western ways for the rape/murder and tries to make it seem as if rapes happen everywhere else except in rural India… although the data say otherwise. If/when you read the article, take note of the backhanded comment the defendants’ lawyer made, where he suggests that the dead victim wasn’t a respected woman because, um, respected women don’t get raped, even by gangsters.
It’s rather apparent that here in the 21st century, blaming women for their rape is still ‘fashionable’ in some parts of the world.
Kdaddy23's Blog 
John Wilder
11 January 2013 at 12:39
It is because in the middle east women are still considered posessions of men
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kdaddy23
11 January 2013 at 12:51
Yeah, I know; I respect other cultures but this mindset still makes me ask, “What the fuck…”
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John Wilder
11 January 2013 at 12:41
It reminds me of my own dysfunctional father who had sex with his 12 year old step daughter because she ran around the house in her bra and panties and told him that he could do anything he wanted to with her if he would give her booze. In his mind it was her fault and he was blameless. The world is a better place without him in it
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kdaddy23
11 January 2013 at 12:54
Yes, in that kind of situation, if she cries rape and the details came out, they’d say it was her fault – but still impose a life sentence.
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John Wilder
11 January 2013 at 15:29
I would not agree that it was her fault, she does not have the mental capacity to give informed consent and it is definitely statutory rape. He was the adult and had the responsibility to tell her to put some clothes on and don’t be running around in front of him plus he was contributing to the delinquency of a minor to boot. Like I said, the world is a better place without him in it. He was living in Texas at the time with a much younger wife who gave him all the sex that he wanted and anything that he wanted in bed so there is no excuse. Once the mom found out she gave him two choices. One get an immediate divorce and him move out of state never to return or she would call the cops and press charges. He took the former solution.
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kdaddy23
11 January 2013 at 15:33
Okay, yeah, given that, she’s not at fault…
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Ariela
12 January 2013 at 10:40
Unfortunately, I can’t tell you of a culture that DOESN’T blame the woman in a case of rape. We do the same thing. When a woman claims she is raped here, her sex life is put on trial, and God forbid if she happens to like any sort of “kink” or has had multiple partners. Because then, in the public’s mind, there’s no way a woman like THAT could be a victim of rape, she must’ve just had a bad experience and is now blaming the poor, innocent man.
On college campuses in this country, when a woman says she was raped the man accused is more protected than the victim. Just check out this woman’s story:
http://amherststudent.amherst.edu/?q=article%2F2012%2F10%2F17%2Faccount-sexual-assault-amherst-college
She went to Amherst College, was raped on campus, and when she tried to report it was shut down at every turn, being told she should “forgive” her rapist, and asked if she was even sure if she was raped before she was placed in a psych ward for being UPSET.
I definitely think this India nonsense is despicable. But I also think that we have our own problems dealing with this exact problem in America, and that we do a lot of the same things in only SLIGHTLY subtler ways.
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kdaddy23
12 January 2013 at 14:19
There’s no way I can’t agree with your sentiments, Ariela; rape is one of those things that has been with mankind almost since the beginning. I couldn’t imagine wanting a woman so badly that I’d have to rape her; if she says no to sex, I shrug, maybe cuss her out in my head, and go on about my business and settle for some quality time in the bathroom and imagining what it might have been like to do her because I know that if I were to force the issue, I’d get busted and now I have to spend some not-so-quality time in a cell with an HIV/AIDS infected guy named Bubba who has developed a taste for sodomizing his cellmates.
I know when I think about this, it always makes me wonder what we, as supposedly civilized people, could do to make a difference in this. The problem – and whether we want to own up to it or not – is that men want sex from women… but women aren’t always so willing to give it. This can be attributed to the documented fact that in that perpetuation of the species thing we’re compelled to do, sperm is plentiful – but eggs aren’t so we (men) want to spread our seed to as many women as possible while women are always guarded about who gets to fertilize her.
This is a problem and one without a solution that makes any sense. Ideally, we’d do things in a way so that men can get laid ‘easier’, like, legalizing and regulating prostitution… but that doesn’t mean that someone couldn’t get raped because there will always be one guy who, for some reason, feels that a woman’s pussy is his God-given right to have, free of charge, and without having to ask or beg for it.
Another thing that exacerbates the problem is that we like women that look good… and women have this thing about looking good, which is a two-fold issue: One, it heightens her ability to attract a mate and, two, um, it makes her feel good to look good. So you can imagine the clusterfuck this turns into: She looks good enough to fuck – because she’s advertising big time – but trying to get into her panties is, if anything, damn near impossible, which causes a great deal of male frustration and, I don’t know, maybe that lizard part of some male brain says that if she’s not gonna give it up willingly, well, I’m just gonna take it… and society continues to insist that if he forces her to give it up, then she had to do something to cause this to happen… and I’m beginning to wonder if this mindset exists because we really do continue to see women as property to be used whenever the mood strikes us.
Whatever the cause, it is the bane of civilization…
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Ariela
12 January 2013 at 19:11
I think there’s something to be said about the rape “culture” that’s exists in this country. Did you hear about the Steubenville High School rape case? This group of high school students threw a party and got drunk, and some members of the football team raped a 16 year old girl that passed out. The school officials and coaches are sticking by these boys’ side, saying that this girl probably just had a “bad night” and couldn’t just show up home in her “condition,” so she made up the rape.
When these are the messages that young boys are hearing, that it’s not their fault, that she’s just ashamed, that they did nothing wrong, what do we expect them to do? How do we expect them to know which behaviors are right and wrong?
When rape is something we joke about, when we use sex to sell anything and everything, when women are seen as objects, and when we still operate with the madonna/whore complex in mind, how can we expect women to be treated with any sort of respect. THIS is where society fails.
And I am ALL ABOUT legalizing prostitution, which I think would have several benefits for both the workers and the johns, and would eradicate pimp violence and culture. So… yeah.
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kdaddy23
12 January 2013 at 19:22
Sadly, we’ve been sending mixed messages like forever by saying, on the one hand, that sex is bad while also saying that being sexy is the way to be – all that does is make a bad situation worse.
Okay, so maybe the girl you mentioned shouldn’t have gotten drunk and passed out but that doesn’t give those boys the right to take advantage of the situation either… but here again we see the behavior where a womsn is unwilling to consent to sex or is unable to consent so drunken logic demands they just take it?
To hold the boys responsible blameless is pure bullshit!
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