http://www.care2.com/causes/womens-r...-was-inviting/

Once again a rapist has been given a soft sentence because the woman was seductively dressed. This doesn't seem to stop.

The problem seems to be more than just going easy on men because they were "led along." There seems to be also an idea that rape can't have been so bad if she liked the guy a bit and was feeling sexy. Which is fine in the sort of stories I and many others here like to write and read, but it's a fictional convention to make fantasies work better, like the idea that a blow on the head is a safe anaesthetic with no after effects. Maybe what judges need is an explanation that rape is always horrible and damaging, regardless of how good you felt up to the moment when it went dreadfully wrong.

But speaking as someone who came very close to forcing himself on a woman once in my youth, and can see how it happens even if my own controls are better adjusted than that, at least some men are victims too in this. There are plenty of predatory men who intentionally go out to commit the social equivalent of robbery with violence. But there are also many who are raised in a culture where men are expected to be forceful and women to be passive, and who honestly don't know for sure how much force is too much. They are still criminals, but one can have some pity for them too: like someone who thought they could safely knock someone out, because it always works on TV, and then finds they've committed murder.

I've said this before, and I know it's whistling in the dark because people are never going to be that rational, but sex education for vanillas should also include safewords. It wouldn't just protect women: it would also protect men who honestly can't tell when "No" meaning "Push me" switches to "No" meaning "Stop right there."