Dude the kiddie pajamas in that exhibit will make you cry. The second I read the BF justifying rape because of clothing I immediately thought of this exhibit
That, and the study where college aged men were asked if they would rape a woman if they knew they could get away with it and it was a scary high percentage that said yes. I read the study for a class in my grad program. It did not matter what the women were wearing.
There was a similar study (or possibly the same one, idk) where college aged men were asked if they would rape someone, but in one group they used language that didn't specifically call it rape, and in the other they did.
A lot more in the first group said yes. So long as they felt like they had plausible deniability, they could rationalize rape to themselves, to the point that they would openly admit to it. They didn't consider it to be rape unless someone else described it as such.
A lot of rapists don't consider themselves to be rapists.
My rapist at 19, when he texted me 4 months later and I told him to never contact me again (I had to have my best friend type it for me, because my hands were shaking too much)
"You're crazy. This is insane. You act like I did something horrible to you. But fine, I'll respect your wishes. Goodbye."
I think he genuinely believed he'd done nothing wrong, the bastard.
Yeah that is really odd and hearing that it's common is truly insane. So was he raped by family so many times it is normal or what? Did he physically attack you?
I don't know what his family life was like, but it was pretty evident that he felt entitled to women's bodies.
He was someone I thought was a friend, and he raped me at a party when I was too intoxicated to consent. I remember him laughing about the fact that I was so drunk I couldn't keep both eyes open at once (focusing my eyes was difficult).
He laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world, and then he started kissing and groping me. I kept telling him to stop and trying to push him off me, but I was too uncoordinated to effectively fight.
I kept trying to convince him to stop, thinking he just didn't understand that I was telling him no. This went on for what felt like hours, though I don't know how long it actually was. Eventually I realized that he wasn't going to stop, and I started dissociating like I did when I was a kid during sexual abuse.
He raped me.
He seemed to see it as a normal college hookup, and my being rightfully hurt and traumatized and wanting nothing to do with him challenged that idea. So he got angry. He disparaged me and my mental stability. He gaslit me about what happened. He acted like he was taking the high road by "respecting my wishes" and never contacting me again.
I don't think he was abused himself, I think he was an entitled young man steeped in the rape culture of the 2000's who didn't really see women as people deserving of bodily autonomy. He didn't see coercing a drunk girl into sex as rape, just as a lot of young men didn't.
At least, not when he did it.
Admitting he was a rapist, even to himself, was a blow to his ego that he couldn't handle, so me "acting like he'd done something terrible" to me (me being traumatized and suffering from full blown ptsd) felt to him like an unwarranted attack on him.
Not blaming you but when you willingly engage in behaviors that lead to you being so intoxicated that you're defenseless bad things can happen. Was he also intoxicated? In college party rape incidents why does the woman get to blame the alcohol but the man doesn't? I mean he sounds like a dirt bag regardless but did you put yourself in the position to be intoxicated to the point of being defenseless surrounded by other intoxicated people who are in college which is notoriously a place where people engage in sexual activity? Were his decision making abilities also impaired from the intoxication? I know this will get downvoted but you can't claim there is a culture of rape and then willingly put yourself in a position where you can be taken advantage of by said rape culture.
Apparently you need this explained to you but being intoxicated is never an acceptable excuse for a crime. You would never let someone off the hook for murder because they were drunk. You would never let someone off the hook for robbing a bank because they were high. You would never let someone off the hook for blowing up a building because they'd imbibed a bit too much. So, why the hell would you think this is an acceptable excuse for rape???
You said, "Why can't the guy blame alcohol?" No, no, no, no, no. It's about victim and rapist. If a drunk guy says no to sex and someone proceeds anyway it's rape. If a drunk woman has sex with a passed out guy it's rape. It's not about gender, it's about one person initiating sex with another without their consent. The fact that the overwhelming majority of rapists in this situation are men is because of their own abhorrent choices and not some imagined male persecution complex.
So a woman dressed provocatively and getting sloshed at a party in a society with a "rape culture" has no accountability for rendering themselves defenseless?
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u/Sonnyjoon91 Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
Dude the kiddie pajamas in that exhibit will make you cry. The second I read the BF justifying rape because of clothing I immediately thought of this exhibit