Religionists can engage in victim-shaming, too

The personification of “rape me” attire, no?

It’s currently way past my bedtime and my neurons have gone on strike anyway, so I’ll forgo the introduction and lead you right to it. Once again, why fundies can be such assholes:

BRISTOL, Va. – Nineteen-year-old Keshia Canter handed three burgers, fries and milkshakes to a car-load of Tuesday afternoon customers at the Hi-Lo Burger’s drive-though window. A lady sitting in the backseat leaned forward, between the two men in front, and handed her a leaflet: “Women & Girls” it said across the top.

“Even though nothing is showing, you’re being ungodly,” Canter recalled the woman telling her. “You make men want to be sinful.”

Canter was wearing boots pulled up over jeans, a pink zebra-print shirt with a black jacket zipped up over it. She has blond hair, dark eye make-up and a little red lip ring. “I just asked if she needed any salt, pepper or ketchup,” Canter said. “I mean, how do I respond to that?”

Minutes later, Canter’s mother, Pam Yates, who owns the restaurant, returned from the bank. Canter handed her “Women & Girls” and Yates started reading.

“You may have been given this leaflet because of the way you are dressed,” it begins. “Have you thought about standing before the true and living God to be judged?”

It continues with one essential theme: The sins of men are, in part, the fault of women, specifically women in tight-fitting clothing. Yates was annoyed. Then she got to a section on page two:

“Scripture tells us that when a man looks on a woman to lust for her he has already committed adultery in his heart. If you are dressed in a way that tempts a men to do this secret (or not so secret) sin, you are a participant in the sin,” the leaflet states. “By the way, some rape victims would not have been raped if they had dressed properly. So can we really say they were innocent victims?”

The hand-out is signed “anonymous.”

Yates was angry.

And I think I taste vomit in my mouth, now. This is so disgusting – not only for its loathsome victim-shaming (especially in a fundagelical context, which just exacerbates its condescending vileness) and usage of that ridiculous, unfounded and harmful claim that women are only raped when dressed provocatively, but also for its depiction of men as being nothing more than mindless drones who are unrestrained (not to mention amoral) to the point where anything in a skirt gets them in a rapey mood.

Oh, religionists, you do have a knack for that whole PR stuff, don’t you?

(via Fark)