I know a friend who was beaten unconscious at a bar and literally right after he got out of the hospital people were saying things like "why were you drunk alone at a bar?" "why did you try to stand up to that guy? he's huge!" "you shouldn't have said anything." Do we also need to hammer home how awful physical assault is? To "end the stigma" of victim blaming when someone gets beaten to the point of having to be put into an induced coma just so they can survive? I understand that there's a minority of people in our country that legitimately think women are largely responsible for being raped, but this is almost entirely older Republicans and even then it's not even most of them.

I understand that rape is awful, and that it happens for reasons that many times women can't control (and regardless of if they can control it or not, it STILL shouldn't happen) but practically nobody in the United States rights now thinks rape is ever justified - some people just have different view of its severity. I for one think it's obviously on a scale where violent forced rape is one of the worst things that could ever happen to someone, but that passing out and waking up naked with semen on you isn't a crime so awful that people should be put to death for it unless this is a multiple time offender.

This is a side note but it's kind of related - I am totally and 100% sick of the arguments that we need to believe victims/accusers immediately and punish the accused before their trial. I know that "innocent until proven guilty" is only a strictly legal policy, but the idea that accusations are enough proof to punish someone in their private or work life (by spamming them with hate messages or having them fired or posting their private information online for people to scare them) to me is ridiculous. There is a burden of proof in all crimes, and to throw that out for one particular crime is an insult to our legal precedence - it is more important to let innocent people go than it is to punish guilty people. If you can't conclude with reasonable certainty that someone is guilty of rape or any other crime, it's better to let them go (and keep a close eye on them in the future) than it is to say "well, we're uncertain but accusations carry enough proof in and of themselves that we're going to still punish you."