An article published in the Guardian last week reports that 1 in 3 people in the UK believe that women who behave flirtatiously are partially responsible for their own rapes. A quarter thought that “provocative” dress makes a woman partially responsible for rape. 15% thought that women who are known to have many sexual partners are partially responsible. 8% said they are completely responsible.

The survey talked to people in the UK, not the US, but in my experience British and American views on this sort of thing are about the same. If anything, Americans may be slightly more conservative.

When I end up next to a talker on the greyhound and they ask me what I do, I’d say I get into the “Yes, but some women ask for it” debate about a third of the time. And no matter how many times it happens, whenever someone spouts this stuff it makes me want to climb the walls.

How many people believe a five-year-old girl is “partially responsible” for rape if she behaves flirtatiously? What about a man who goes shirtless while playing basketball in the park?

Of course no one believes that those situations provide justification for rape. That’s because what they really mean when they say women are responsible for rape is that there are certain things women shouldn’t do. And purely by chance, those amorphous “things” happen to be anything that indicates independence or sexual agency.

So women are supposed to avoid alcohol, wear baggy clothes, have “few” sexual partners (whatever that means), avoid flirting (whatever that means), and never walk alone.

Then everything would be perfect, just like it was in the 1800s.

This dude is kind of an easy target, what with the writing skills that rival those of Coco the gorilla (she was a very smart gorilla). But his argument has been regurgitated so many times I just had to respond.

First, the claim that about one in four women have been raped was never disproved. In fact, there have been numerous studies since Mary Koss’ original 1985 article that have confirmed the 1 in 4 number as fairly accurate (there is always a range of stats, but the number unbiased researchers come up with is consistently somewhere between 1 in 3 and 1 in 5).

Why do the haters have such a huge problem with the statistic? Because if such a claim were true, it would indicate a deep-rooted problem in our culture. A problem deep enough and serious enough to require radical social change, particularly in our culture’s treatment and perception of women and queer/non-gender conforming people.

The horror.

Second, Christina Hoff Sommers is a psycho right-wing hack.

Third, “begging the question” is a term that refers to a logical fallacy. When you beg a question, your premises assume your conclusion to be true. Rape does not beg any questions. It is a physical act. Don’t they teach grammar in school anymore?

And finally, men are oppressed. Not by feminism, but by people like Chris Cantu who insist that rape and other issues of oppression are unimportant or imaginary. His claims make life much harder for all of us, men included.