I’ve never seen the movie Superbad, but I just saw a couple scenes that seemed to me to promote rape culture, so I did a quick Google search to see if that has been brought to light…I found one comment from a guy in which he says that it’s not rape if the woman was at a party and was not forced to drink the alcohol, because she knew that intoxication would lead to sex and that women get drunk so that men will want to have sex with them.

It’s a pretty classic justification of victim-blaming, but this seems to be on the more extreme side because he’s claiming to know the intentions of the women, instead of just claiming that her prior intentions stopped mattering when she chose to become intoxicated.

None of that is new. The reason I’m making this post is because I thought of a comparison (and I’m sure it’s been made before but whatever)…if I leave my door open, I am not consenting to be robbed. I’m making it a hell of a lot easier for someone to rob me, but if someone walks into my home and takes something, it’s still robbery. Heck, I see crime reports in my local newspaper every week of robberies of bicycles and things that were left in the front yard for hours. Someone might say to the victim “You were stupid to leave it outside/unattended/unlocked” but no one doubts that it’s a crime regardless, because everyone knows that the owner never said to the robber “You can have this.”

So why does that respect disappear when we talk about sexual assault and rape? Why do the decisions made by the victim prior to the crime suddenly matter? If a woman had her BIKE, something of little importance in the long run, stolen one afternoon after she left it unattended, people would sympathize and shake their heads at the selfishness present in society today, but if the woman had her BODY temporarily stolen that very night, those same people might shake their heads at the reckless behavior of young women nowadays.

Basically, they think people should know better when it comes to stealing $100 of property, but that teaching them to not steal the bodies of living people is hopeless. Therefore, in the latter situation, they blame the woman for not preventing the inevitable, in the same way that you should put sunscreen on if you’re going to be outside for hours.

Ugh.