When they’re denying that an attack is even possible

Possible trigger warning.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit recently about rape culture as it relates to women who like to sleep around and women who have sex for money and any other women who have consensual sex outside of monogamous relationships, and I have a small problem with one of the ways this topic is addressed.

One way that I’ve heard many feminists talk about rape culture is to say that people believe women deserve to be raped for being drunk, wearing revealing clothing, being a flirt, whatever. While I agree that in some cases this idea, that a woman deserves to be raped, is widely believed, I think that with women who have a lot of sex with several different people, the reasoning goes a little differently. Take, for example, Amanda Hess’s piece in The Sexist about Hannah, the student at Howard University who was denied a rape kit after clearly being raped. Tito, the bouncer at the party where she was assaulted, said that there was "no way Hannah could have been raped." Since he had already determined that she was sexually promiscuous, he said that "if anything did happen to this girl, she was willing to do it."

He did not say she deserved to be attacked; he said that she wasn’t attacked because, as a slut, there was no way she would have been unwilling to be fucked. This attitude probably comes from the (widespread and mistaken) belief that women can’t actually enjoy sex, so if a woman has casual sex with a few people she clearly doesn’t care what happens to her body and so has given up all rights to consent. It’s a huge problem, and I think it needs to be addressed more directly.

The message has to go out that, even if a woman chooses to have sex with random people she meets on the street, that is always a choice that she is making, and it does not mean that she is willing to have sex anyone who wants to have sex with her.

I know I’m not the first person to say something like this, and I doubt I’ll be the last one, which is good, because it really needs to be said, over and over again, until everyone gets it.