Some ideas about sexual violence have been around so long that people repeat them without recognizing what they are. A woman says she was drinking
Some ideas about sexual violence have been around so long that people repeat them without recognizing what they are.
A woman says she was drinking before an assault, and somebody asks why she drank so much. She says she cannot remember everything, and her missing memory becomes suspicious. She trusted somebody, went upstairs, kissed him, stayed late, took something voluntarily, or made some other ordinary human decision, and suddenly we are investigating her judgment instead of another person’s alleged behavior.
There is a name for beliefs like these: rape myths.
Photo by OurWhisky Foundation
Rape myths are false or distorted beliefs about rape, victims, and perpetrators that tend to blame victims, excuse perpetrators, minimize sexual violence, or create a narrow picture of what a “real” rape and a “real” victim are supposed to look like. Rape myth acceptance means accepting or endorsing those ideas. The research literature specifically includes blaming women who were drinking when assaulted among these patterns.
Once you learn to recognize them, some of these arguments become painfully familiar.
1. 🍷 “She shouldn’t have been drinking.”
THE MYTH: Her drinking transfers some responsibility for another person’s sexual behavior onto her.
THE REALITY: Alcohol can increase vulnerability. It cannot create another person’s entitlement.
We can encourage people to understand alcohol, know their limits, stay with trusted friends, and take precautions without pretending that failure to follow safety advice gives someone permission to harm them.
There is a difference between “This may make you more vulnerable” and “Therefore, what someone does to you is partly your fault.”
Those sentences do not mean the same thing.
🔎 PATTERN TO RECOGNIZE:
Her vulnerability has quietly replaced his conduct as the subject of the conversation.
2. 💰 Try the exact same argument with her wallet.
Imagine that a woman gets drunk at a party and passes out.
Someone reaches into her purse and steals $500.
Do we say:
“Well, how many drinks did she have?”
“Why did she allow herself to get that drunk?”
“She voluntarily consumed the alcohol.”
“Maybe she should take some responsibility for losing her money.”
No.
We know who stole the money.
Her intoxication explains how she became vulnerable to theft. It does not make her responsible for somebody deciding to steal from her.
The same principle appears throughout ordinary life. If someone steals from you while you are asleep, sleep isn’t permission. If someone takes your belongings while you are unconscious, unconsciousness isn’t permission. If someone waits until you are impaired to exploit you, your impairment doesn’t become their defense.
📌 THE PROPERTY TEST
Vulnerability: She was incapacitated.
Opportunity: Someone could take advantage.
Decision: Someone chose to exploit her.
Responsibility: Belongs to the person making that decision.
We understand every step when the object is a wallet.
Why would a human body deserve less moral clarity?
3. 🚪 “She shouldn’t have gone upstairs with him.”
THE MYTH: Entering a private space creates an expectation of sexual access.
THE REALITY: Location is not consent.
Going upstairs means she went upstairs.
Going into someone’s bedroom means she entered a bedroom.
Going home with somebody means she went home with somebody.
None of those actions answers the separate question of what sexual activity she agreed to once she got there.
🗣️ TRANSLATION
What she did: “I went upstairs.”
What the rape myth adds: “Therefore, I agreed to whatever happened upstairs.”
That second sentence did not come from her.
4. 💋 “But she kissed him.”
This one exposes how badly people sometimes misunderstand consent.
A woman can want the kiss and not want intercourse.
She can want intercourse and not want another sexual act.
She can want sexual contact with one person and absolutely not want sexual contact with another.
She can change her mind.
She can enjoy something at 11:14 and refuse something at 11:20.
Consent to something is not consent to everything.
🧩 VISUALIZE IT
Kissing ✅
Touching ❓
Intercourse ❓
Another person ❓
Another sexual act ❓
Later sexual contact ❓
One checkmark does not automatically fill the rest of the boxes.
5. 🥃 “She voluntarily took the drugs.”
This is another place where people confuse two different decisions.
Decision A: I chose to consume this substance.
Decision B: I consent to sexual activity.
Those are not the same decision.
A person can make a reckless choice, a foolish choice, an unhealthy choice, or simply a choice she later regrets without surrendering ownership of her body.
We already understand this elsewhere.
A drunk person still owns her car.
A drunk person still owns her money.
A drunk person still owns her jewelry.
A drunk person still has legal and human rights.
Intoxication does not convert human beings into abandoned property.
6. 🧠 “If she can’t remember everything, how does she know?”
Memory gaps can raise real evidentiary questions. They are not proof that nothing happened.
And this is where we should be especially careful about turning vulnerability into suspicion.
If someone tells us:
“I remember this. Then I don’t remember part of the night. Then I remember this.”
the missing portion is information.
Investigators investigate information.
The person reporting an assault should not be required to fill every hole in her memory before anyone becomes curious about what occurred during the hole.
🔎 ASK THE BETTER QUESTION
Not only:
“Why can’t she remember?”
But also:
“What happened while she couldn’t?”
7. 👛 “She should have protected herself better.”
I was robbed twice within roughly a week or two years ago. One of those robberies happened while I was at work.
That experience taught me something.
When property was stolen from me, nobody expected me to have already investigated the crime before reporting it. Investigators could ask questions, examine circumstances, look for evidence, establish timelines, and determine what might have happened.
And nobody needed me to prove that I had taken every conceivable precaution before recognizing that stealing my property was wrong.
We understand the difference between crime prevention and responsibility for committing a crime when property is involved.
Lock your doors.
Watch your purse.
Don’t leave valuables sitting in the car.
Those are prevention messages.
But if I forget to lock my door tonight, my television does not belong to whoever discovers that I forgot.
📌 SAFETY ADVICE: “Lock your door.”
🚫 VICTIM BLAMING: “You left your door unlocked, so the burglary is partly yours.”
We can give women safety information without handing them responsibility for somebody else’s behavior.
8. ⚖️ “She made bad choices.”
Maybe she did.
This may be one of the most important things we can say to Survivors:
You were not required to behave perfectly in order to have boundaries.
You were allowed to misjudge someone.
You were allowed to drink more than you intended.
You were allowed to trust somebody who turned out not to deserve your trust.
You were allowed to flirt.
You were allowed to go to the party.
You were allowed to kiss him.
You were allowed to have consensual sex earlier.
You were even allowed to make decisions that, years later, you wish with everything in you that you could change.
None of those decisions makes sexual assault something you earned. The source material for this post puts the distinction plainly: people become tired, intoxicated, distracted, ill, unconscious, or simply make mistakes, but societies do not ordinarily treat vulnerability as permission for other people to take what they want.
❤️ FOR THE WOMAN STILL BLAMING HERSELF
You can say:
“I wish I had made a different decision.”
And still say:
“What that person chose to do was not my decision.”
Both can be true.
9. 🔄 Watch how responsibility gets moved.
This is one of the easiest ways to recognize rape myth acceptance.
Start with the alleged action:
Someone sexually assaulted a woman.
Then watch the conversation migrate.
⬇️
What was she wearing?
⬇️
How much did she drink?
⬇️
Why did she go there?
⬇️
Why did she trust him?
⬇️
Why didn’t she leave?
⬇️
Why didn’t she fight?
⬇️
Why didn’t she report immediately?
⬇️
Why didn’t she explain it better?
And somehow the conversation that began with another person’s alleged conduct becomes an investigation into her character.
That movement is worth learning to recognize.
Research on rape myths describes precisely this kind of shift toward victim responsibility. Greater rape-myth acceptance has been associated with greater victim blaming and reduced perpetrator blame.
⚠️ PATTERN ALERT
When every road leads back to what she should have done differently, ask whether responsibility has quietly been moved.
10. 🪞 Sometimes the Survivor believes the rape myth too.
This may be the cruelest part.
Rape myths aren’t only things other people say about victims. Survivors grow up hearing the same messages everybody else hears.
So a woman may wake up knowing something terrible happened and immediately begin prosecuting herself.
But I was drinking.
But I went upstairs.
But I kissed him.
But I liked him.
But I didn’t scream.
But I don’t remember everything.
But I didn’t go to the police.
She may have a picture in her mind of a “real rape”: a stranger, a weapon, physical resistance, visible injuries, complete sobriety, immediate reporting and perfect memory. Anything outside that picture can become harder for her to recognize and name.
That is why challenging rape myths is not about winning some theoretical feminist argument.
There is a human being listening.
Sometimes she is listening while deciding whether what happened to her counts.
Sometimes she is listening while deciding whether she deserves help.
Sometimes she is listening while deciding whether to tell anyone at all.
🧭 THE SIMPLE TEST
When you hear an argument about sexual violence, try replacing the woman’s body with something valuable she owns.
She was drunk.
Would that make stealing her wallet acceptable?
She trusted him.
Would that give him permission to empty her bank account?
She fell asleep.
Would that give somebody ownership of her jewelry?
She voluntarily took drugs.
Would that make taking her car legal?
She made terrible decisions that evening.
Would those decisions make her belongings available to whoever wanted them?
If the reasoning suddenly sounds ridiculous when applied to property, ask yourself why it sounded reasonable when applied to her body.
🌿 IF YOU HAVE BEEN CARRYING THIS BLAME
I want to leave something here especially for women and girls, though these words belong to every Survivor who needs them.
You did not have to earn the right not to be sexually assaulted.
Not by staying sober.
Not by dressing differently.
Not by recognizing danger sooner.
Not by being less trusting.
Not by making every decision correctly.
Not by fighting harder.
Not by remembering everything.
Not by becoming a perfect victim afterward.
If you were drinking, you still deserved safety.
If you were incapacitated, you still deserved safety.
If you trusted someone who betrayed that trust, you still deserved safety.
If there are decisions you regret today, you still deserved safety.
Your vulnerability may have given somebody an opportunity.
It did not give them permission.
And those two words should never be confused.
THE TRUTH TO CARRY WITH YOU
Vulnerability explains why someone may have been easier to exploit. It does not transfer responsibility from the person who exploited them.
We understand that when somebody takes a wallet.
We understand it when somebody burglarizes a home.
We understand it when somebody steals from a sleeping person.
We understand it when someone takes advantage of an elderly person, an unconscious patient, or somebody too impaired to protect their property.
Human beings deserve at least that much clarity.
Your body should never receive less respect than your wallet.
You CANNOT Call it a Free Choice While Punishing Her “No” – WE Survive Abuse
When the Help Hurts: Understanding Institutional Betrayal – WE Survive Abuse