By Katharhynn Heidelberg

That victims of sexual assault somehow "deserved" to be attacked, or that they "asked for it," is a comment I have heard once too often.

The general belief is that, if the woman is a matron on her way home from church, and she screams loud enough, and she fights, then it is a rape. But if she is on her way home from a nightclub, has maybe had a few drinks and is dressed to party, somehow, the man who leaps from the dark, knife in hand, hasn’t committed a crime! If she is too terrified to fight, then she must have "wanted" it. And, God forbid she should actually know her attacker.

I concede that walking alone at night doesn’t help matters, and neither does being rendered incompetent by alcohol to make any decision. But nothing the victim does actually excuses the assault. It does not change the fact that an assault has been committed, and most rapes are, in fact, perpetrated by acquaintances.

In the eyes of society, though, a rapist is completely controlled by his victim’s behavior. Perhaps by applying this "logic" to other crimes, we may begin to see the folly of it. Let’s say you leave your house in a hurry, and in so doing, forget to lock the door. In your absence, your home is robbed.

How would you like it if the thief alleged that no crime took place because the door was unlocked? How about if your neighbors and the courts agreed? How about if they also pointed out that you frequently forget to lock your door? Does it change the fact that the thief came into your home, without your permission, and took things that did not belong to him? No. Your indiscretion made the criminal’s job easier, but it does not change the fact that a crime was committed.

It is boggling that many who advocate personal responsibility, and who believe men are somehow morally superior to women, forget both precepts in a flash when the word "rape" comes up. Suddenly, the responsibility falls onto the victim’s shoulders, and the moral, strong man is reduced to a gibbering idiot, helpless to control himself. Sometimes, this absurd idea even gets a scientific gloss by researchers who believe men are compelled by biology to reproduce.

If any of this is true, why is it that the majority of men manage to overcome whatever "urge" they have to rape women? Am I wrong to believe that most men are fundamentally decent despite whatever imperatives allegedly leave them "helpless"? And is it not demeaning to men to suggest they are unable to control themselves?

Yet, if we must insist that the female of the species bears sole responsibility for controlling the male, whose standards should be imposed to dictate "proper" female behavior? Western standards differ, for example, from Middle Eastern standards. The church-going matron referred to above might not get much sympathy in some Muslim countries because her ankle-length dress, sensible sandals, and uncovered hair and face would be considered too revealing for a man to resist.

What should be done? Should we lock all our girls in their rooms until their wedding day, making them pay for what a man might do to them? Should we foster a needless climate of fear, thereby rendering them incapable of functioning in the real world, instead of teaching them how to deal with unpleasant people and dangerous situations?