For once, just for once, I wanted to try to have a discussion about a woman getting raped and murdered that DIDN’T devolve into an extended rehash of the same goddamn argument we always seem to have whenever a rape and/or murder of a woman is discussed: Namely, we start out on topic, then someone has to come in and blame the victim (she was drunk! doesn’t she know there were consequences! she was dressed like a hoochie! she was a stripper! she must be lying! what was she doing alone at night? what was she doing trusting a man?) and we’re off to the races.
And inevitably, in all the talk about what the victim did or didn’t do and whether the natural consequence of having a few too many and making some poor parking decisions is to be abducted, raped, murdered and your body left in a dumpster, someone disappears.
And that person is the rapist/murderer.
Why does this man always disappear in these discussions? It’s as if he had no role at all. Even those of us who are feminists and fight victim-blaming tend to, as hexy pointed out, ignore the perp.
What need do we have to make him disappear? Do we not want to think about the fact that regardless of what we do or don’t do, we can’t always know who will harm us or who poses a danger to us? Do we need to believe that by analyzing what the victim did or didn’t do, or did or didn’t have every right to do, we’ll somehow be insulated from what befell her?
Sometimes I wonder why I bother writing about any of these crimes. The same discussion, always heated, always follows. And we never advance the ball.