Recent events reflect poorly on our country
After watching a movie with a friend, a 23-year-old Indian medical student was gang-raped so severely that she died from internal injuries. Many citizens were rightly outraged and took to the streets to highlight the dangers many Indian women face.
However, some individuals have blamed the victim, by claiming that “respectable” women aren’t raped or that if the medical student had “chanted God’s name and fallen at the feet of [her] attackers,” everything would simply have turned out all right.
While these comments have been brushed off as the harsh realities of a misogynistic society, they’re not so different than comments our fellow citizens and organizations have made regarding rape victims at home — here in a so-called “enlightened” society that embraces women.
Last month in Ohio, many citizens took to social media networks not to offer support to a teenage rape victim, but instead to chastise her for putting herself “in a position to be violated.” Similarly, when an 11-year-old girl was gang-raped by 18 young men in Texas in November 2010, media outlets such as The New York Times questioned why the girl “dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s.”
Is this the side of us we want to show the world, a place that lacks the empathy to care about the victims of such a dehumanizing crime? Rape is a serious issue whose victims need our support, not our contempt. It’s time we start treating it that way.