One in five is never okay. Victimizing the criminal is never okay. Blaming the victim is never okay. While our rape culture teaches us that the victim of rape could have avoided it by taking certain steps, my Psychology 101 course taught me that this form of thinking doesn't come from ignorance. Instead, most of the time, it comes from fear.

We often hear comments saying things that indicate the amount of alcohol the person drank, the amount of clothing the person did or did not wear, how the person was acting, or whether the person was paying enough attention all contribute to the reason they were raped. The fact is, people are raped because the person who raped them is a rapist, not because they didn't wear enough clothing or drank too much. People often make these comments out of fear without even realizing they're afraid, though.

Sandra E. Hockenbury, Susan A. Nolan, and Don H. Hockenbury describe victim blaming in their textbook 'Discovering Psychology.' They explain that victim blaming often derives from hindsight bias and the just-world hypothesis. Hindsight bias is the belief that you could have predicted an event that was going to happen after the event actually took place. It's an overestimation. You hear this in everyday conversations with phrases like, "I could have told you that would have happened," or, "Oh, you should have just ___." The just-world hypothesis describes the human need to believe that the world is fair. We get what we deserve and deserve what we get.

This way of thinking is illogical.

It's scary to think that the world isn't fair. No one wants to believe that a random act of violence could happen to them. This is why, when scary things like rape happen, people try to justify the event. It's easier to think that a woman was raped because she flirted too much and wore a short skirt than to acknowledge that the only reason she was raped is because her attacker is a rapist. That's it. The only explanation to rape is the rapist, not the victim's behavior.

CollegeHumor recently made a video that explained rape culture perfectly. "Bears will be bears."