You Know…

…[trigger warning] you ladies wouldn't keep getting yourselves raped if you stopped walking home alone, taking public transportation alone, taking a man home with you, or going home with a man, and instead just called a cab by yourself like a good girl.

Oh.

A taxi driver drugged and sexually attacked 14 female passengers in less than two years, a court has heard.

…Prosecutor Johannah Cutts QC said: "His primary intent had nothing to do with taking them home. His primary purpose was wholly sexual in nature.

"His intent was to ensure that they were completely at his mercy and then to sexually molest them."

Here's the thing about rapists: They rape people. They rape people who are strong and people who are weak, people who are smart and people who are dumb, people who fight back and people who submit just to get it over with, people who are sluts and people who are prudes, people who rich and people who are poor, people who are tall and people who are short, people who are fat and people who are thin, people who are blind and people who are sighted, people who are deaf and people who can hear, people of every race and shape and size and ability and circumstance. The only thing that the victim of every rapist shares in common is the bad fucking luck of being in the presence of a rapist.

Rapists are determined to rape. And if you didn't get into that rapist's cab, someone else would. And if no one got into that rapist's cab, he'd find another way to obtain his victims.

Victim-blaming is based on the damnably fucked-up notion that people (and women in particular) allow themselves to be victimized by virtue of carelessness or stupidity, and they need to be warned and educated and lectured and hectored and cajoled and shamed into never being victims (again).

No.

Our culture creates rapists—and they create victims. No one has ever been a victim of rape, until they had the bad fucking luck of being in the presence of a rapist.

Enough victim blaming. Enough.

[H/T to Sheffield Fems.]