Shame on the Rapist, not on the Victim

I won't ever comprehend why it is more shameful to be raped than to be a rapist. For
anyone whose once typical regular day to day existence was out of nowhere broken by a
demonstration of sexual brutality the injury, the fear, can break you long after one ghastly
assault. It waits. You don't have the foggiest idea where to go or who to go to and individuals are
more dubious of what you were wearing or what you were drinking, as though it's your
shortcoming, not the issue of the individual who attacked you. We actually don't denounce rape
as noisily as we ought to. We rationalize, we look the alternate way. Laws will not be sufficient
except if we change the way of life that permits rape to occur in any case.

What were you wearing when it occurred? For what reason didn't you approach sooner?
These are questions that assault and rape survivors regularly hear when they at last summon the
fortitude and choose to open up about their generally unspeakable difficulty. These comments
propagate the way of life of victim blaming and just deter victims from approaching. An
upsetting pattern much of the time of homegrown maltreatment, rape, and assault against ladies
is the propensity to blame the victim of the wrongdoing, as opposed to the rapist.

In the course of recent years, there have been various prominent instances of viciousness
against ladies that feature the victim blaming society we live in. Inside this culture of victim
blaming, ladies are advised to change their own conduct to try not to be raped or assaulted.
Ladies are advised over and again to dress less provocatively, drink less liquor, and not put
themselves in unsafe circumstances. This multiplies the conviction that ladies are to blame when
they are assaulted, and prompts an absence of responsibility for men. There are 2,962 revealed
rape cases cross country from January to May 2018 alone as per the most recent Philippine
National Police (PNP) insights. Ladies' privileges advocates, nonetheless, regret that official rape
case measurements are not a genuine portrayal of the real assault occurrence in the country,
where rape culture proceeds to flourish and shame stays common.

Quite possibly the most disputable rape cases in the Philippines is the Chiong murder
case as a result of the measure of exposure it acquired. Tales encompassed the case, including
one that guarantees that the sisters were not killed, yet are in reality still alive and living in
Canada. Another bizarre wind for the situation is the apparently strong justification of the lead
suspect for the situation. This issue acquired a great deal of remarks from the mass, accusing the
people in question, accusing the circumstance, yet not the rapist. Individuals even had a great
deal of negative words against the victims’ families. The sisters' family was tormented,
condemned, and peered down to. They had a great deal of remarks on why the victim was raped
all prompting the fundamental thought that it was the victims’ fault. Another famous rape story
was of Maria Clara's. Maria Clara, conflicting with the glorification of female compliance, asks
Padre Dámaso to end her commitment and permit her to enter Santa Clara as a religious recluse,
where, in lieu of comfort, Padre Salvi, creator of the disorder, efficiently raped her until her
passing. Maria Clara's was last seen on the community rooftop during a tempest, reviling the sky
for her destiny. Now tell me, how did one’s clothing invited the rapist to rape them when even
Maria Clara and her mother was raped while being wrapped with clothes that touches the floor.
Society often teaches us not to get raped rather than do not rape. They often criticize
those women for wearing skimpy clothes, being friends with men, and doing things that are not
conservative. But to be honest, blaming the victim actually means that you stand for the
perpetrator. I once read a short article online that said “If you blame the rape victim because her
clothes were provocative, you must also blame the bank that was robbed because its contents
were provocative”. Victims should never be shy of what happened to them. They should use it as
an inspiration and a lesson to the people surrounding them for it is never shameful to be a rape
victim, being a rapist is.

Sources:
Reyes K. 2021 March. [OPINION] Maria Clara, the idealized Filipina: Why does she matter
now? Rappler. Retrieved from https://www.rappler.com/voices/ispeak/opinion-maria-clara-
idealized-filipina-why-matter-now

Virtudes S. 2020 July. Victim-blaming: Why survivors of sexual violence won’t come forward.
Rappler. Retrieved from https://www.rappler.com/nation/victim-blaming-why-survivors-sexual-
violence-not-come-forward