Why do we blame?

A few questions I wanted to explore and am hoping the community will help out here.

1) Why do we blame women?

2) Why are women held responsible for the actions of men?

In light of the Telegraph article which disgustingly misrepresented a scientific study regarding men who rape, I’ve been trying to formulate a post about blame. Why is victim-blaming so tenacious? No matter the logic, the studies, the facts, it is repeated over and over.

One conclusion could be that we feel safer if we can say a victim deserved it. We can think "Well I wouldn’t dress/act like that so I’m safe" This attitude to me is not only callous to the victim (kind of a "I told you so") but also dangerous thinking. I say dangerous because it offers a false sense of security but actually does nothing to protect us.

It would seem that a campaign which was aimed at men, telling them not to rape would be more effective. For example, instead of telling girls "Don’t drink, don’t party, don’t go out without a friend" etc., we could be telling men "If you sleep with a clearly intoxicated girl, you may be accused of rape, so think twice!"

One more thing regarding this. Does anybody else hate when rape apologists use the analogy that if we were walking in a bad neighborhood flashing cash, we should expect it to be stolen?! Come on…classist much? <Sarcasm> Those poor people just can’t stop themselves from stealin’. </Sarcasm>  Also this analogy basically says women’s body = wads of cash.

Anyway, thoughts?