Author William Ryan wrote a book in 1971 titled Blaming the Victim, popularizing the term. In the magnum opus, Ryan argues that impoverished black families are not to blame for their destitution. The book successfully refutes Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat from New York, and his claims that blacks are to blame for their poverty.
As world-renowned black economists Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams often write about in their books and articles and speak about in their interviews and lectures, urban poverty is often a result of government intervention. Both point at minimum wage, occupational licensing, gun control, the drug war, and affirmative action as examples of policies hurting racial minorities.
While victim-blaming has long been associated with racial minorities and debunked by libertarians, it has been applied to sexual assault. In today's society, if a girl is raped, the suspect is automatically the victim herself.
"She was asking for it" because she dressed a certain way, she went to a certain place, consumed certain substances, and liked certain things. What the girl actually consented to and what the rapists actually did are not concerns in today's society.
To add insult to injury, if the rapist is of social stature, like celebrities, rising-star athletes, politicians, police officers, and the offspring of elite families, society, especially in the media, occasionally treats these special-class people as the victims. When convicted, if they get convicted or if the crime even goes to court, the rapists get a slap on the wrist.
Victim-blaming also allows the rapist to transfer responsibility, not to mention scares victims from coming forward. When someone talks about an attack, the wording often focuses on the victim, not the rapist. Rumors are about a girl who got raped by someone, not about a guy who raped someone. A victim does not choose to be raped, but a rapist chooses to rape.
By forgetting this imperative detail, society has fostered a culture where coming forward results in social stigma, personal humiliation, and the gradual reduction of faith in security and justice. If a girl fights back, with a gun or other tool at her disposal, she risks being challenged by the court system over gun control or self-defense laws. If a girl comes forward she risks the aforementioned results.
By blaming the victim, society projects their fears inappropriately. Rape "couldn't happen to me" because "I do not <act, dress, talk, or walk> like the victim." This fear ignores two facts. Rapists have various motives when they attack, some have little to do with the way a girl looks or acts. And the victim is yet again put in the position to defend herself from the court of public opinion.
Rapist-blaming, or blaming the rapist, should be a thing. In a rape, only one person(s) is to be blamed for the attack: the rapist(s). How this is a question is odd in a civilized society. Consent is required for any sexual contact. "She was asking for it" is not a priori consent. Either she explicitly asked for it or she did not, there is no implied consent.*
If being under the influence of a substance, whether alcohol or otherwise, causes a man to rape, it was still his responsibility to not be under the influence that badly, or at all. Men are not biologically wired to rape - science does not claim this (the 2000 book A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion by biologist Randy Thornhill and anthropologist Craig T. Palmer has been debunked by science, and even by methodology, in the 2003 book Evolution, Gender, and Rape by various scientists and sociologists).
The rapist, regardless of social status or potential, is responsible for raping, not the victim for "ruining his life." Marital status is also irrelevant - if a husband forces himself on his wife, who did not offer consent, it is rape. While the list of excuses for rapists is long, there is no credible reason for rape. None.
It should be noted that men can be raped, too, by other men or by women; by the same token, women can be raped by other women. None are moral, legal, or okay in any sense.
If there is a rape culture it is because going public about abuse, defending oneself, questioning authority and finding competition for it, and blaming the attacker for rape are all generally frowned upon. The media rarely wants a solution, so it keeps stirring the pot for ratings, otherwise it would hold the state accountable to its actions when it prevents security and justice, and hold special-class rapists accountable as well.
If you want rape culture to be quelled, it starts with you. Reframe the questions/observations of rape allegations and blame the attackers and perpetrators of rape.
*Consensual non-consent is a term used in the BDSM community, meaning partners enter an agreed-upon arrangement to be able to act as if consent has not been given - usually safe words and safe gestures are used to indicate actual withdraw of said consent. Rape play is consensual and pretty normal, but not justification for actual rape.
For more about rape fantasies, read this Bustle article with good psychology sources.
