Why is rape the only crime where people are constantly trying to determine how much the victim was at fault? Hell, some people don't even blame the rapists at all.

I went to college at 17, when the drinking age was 18. Almost everyone else was 18. I drank around men and women, and sometimes just around men. I was never raped. Was I just lucky? If I had been raped, would I have been somewhat culpable, because I was underage at the time? Seventeen is not that far from 15.

Let me tell you about when I was raped. I was 21, my ex-boyfriend was 25, and he got angry when he found out I had a new boyfriend. There were no drugs or alcohol involved. And I was wearing a sweatsuit. He had never been violent in any way before. I was alone, in my house, and he came over to talk. Was the rape in any way my fault? Would it have been my fault if I had been drinking?

In your example, what if the young man drinking in a bar was not only beaten up by the other man, he was also raped? Is he still just as culpable as you originally imagined? Men do get raped. Please, just imagine that for a moment. Your fictious drunk man is not only beaten up, he is raped. Do you still see the crime as partially his fault?

There are foreseeable consequences of our actions, and the foreseeable consequences of a 15-year-old drinking at a school dance, if indeed she was willfully drinking, was that she might get drunk, and she might get sick. Not that she would get gang-raped.

Do you really think that if she were stone-cold sober, she wouldn't have been gang-raped? Do you really think she was the only teen drinking there that night? Not a chance.

Please tell me why is it that if someone had shot this 15-year-old teen, instead of raped her, no one would have said it was partially her fault because she was drinking.

Maybe some of the people who want to blame the victim, even partially, are just trying to console themselves that if they and their loved ones follow the rules, they'll be safe. Maybe that's what you're doing. I doubt that's what some of the commenters Tracy cited were doing. But a_typical_man, if that's what you're doing, you're not only fooling yourself, you're letting down your beloved granddaughter.

I followed the rules. I got raped anyway. Lots of women follow the rules and get raped anyway. Blaming the victim of rape, the victim of a crime, helps enable the perpetrators. It makes it harder for victims to go to the cops, for trials to go forth, for perpetrators to be convicted, and so on. Which makes it more likely for men to get away with rape, which makes it easier for some men to think it's OK to rape, and on and on.

Why is this so hard to understand?

I am a little perplexed by this "rape".

I would be totally opposed to it and would never violate someone this way. But I can't help thinking that the perpetrators are people of color and thus are basically socioeconomic victims of society. Does it make sense to victimize them further by putting them in jail?

Also some of the perpetrators are apparently Hispanic. As part of their "macho" culture, violence against womena and sexual aggression are standard. As Hispanics become more and more of the country, I would expect that eventually laws against rape would be weakened either explicitly or through jury nullification. So this is what we all are in for.

As for the "she should have been careful". By doing what exactly? Even if she hadn't drunk anything, she still very well may have been raped. People say that because they want to believe that "it wouldn't have happened to me, because I'm smarter, less slutty, etc. etc." It's not true, but it makes them feel better.

It's a different America today, and the chivalry and respect of yesteryear are gone (along of course with racist/sexist patriarchal oppression system (for the most part)).

I fear for my daughters. I think we're in for a clockwork Orange type of future.

Are you joking? Being poor gives you a free pass at raping someone?

These guys need to go to jail. For life.

If you read enough comments you can eventually find a nutjob-stance on any issue. Reader comments are notorious for being poorly-written, ignorant diatribes. Reporting on them, frankly, is lazy journalism. Comments should be taken with a grain of salt -- except this one, of course.

The rapists are of all colors - white, Hispanic, black, etc. So any attempts to link this to race and culture are incorrect as well as racist and primitive.

And no, Hispanic people don't think rape is just fine.

Nice post. You put the Broadsheet broads in their place for spinning this thing into something other than what it is. Who cares what some blogger said when anything whatsoever can be said in the blogosphere.

I have volunteered on a few occasions to teach women how to defend themselves against rape. In every case I was turned down because the acts were condemned as "too violent." One of them asked, "Don't you know any actions that don't either blind, maim, or kill the attacker?"

I said that unless you're bigger and stronger than he is, no, I do not. As with the others, she declined to learn how to defend herself.

A gang of Latinos targets and rapes an unpopular white girl, and liberals should feel warm and fuzzy that decades of multiculturalism and massive Third World immigration have finally had an effect. A crowd hoots and cheers (prison rules!) while the weak are victimized. This is truly Ted Kennedy and Obama's America.

Speaking of prison rules:

"If these young men are found guilty of rape, they will find out, the "hard" way, the true horror of rape. My advice to them would be, "don't drop the soap."" - RoRo13

You'd think so, but what really happens is that predators in the real world remain predators in prison. Short eyes, of course, being a significant exception.