The "Responsibility" Straw Man

So this woman from South Africa invented the vagina dentata, something like a female condom with metal teeth inside it as a rape detterent, and I thought, that's awesome.

The author of the article points out that it could also inflame an attacker (or group of them), and while that's a problem, if many women started using them (they cost pennies) the overall deterrent effect would be huge. And I have to agree with the author that criticisms that this thing is "vengeful" are pathetic. It's vengeful to hurt someone's penis when they rape you?

Then she ends with this little gem:

The biggest problem though, is that it places the onus for stopping rape not on the perpetrators, but on women - entirely the wrong way around. It implies that rape is an inevitable part of human culture and that women need to adapt accordingly. Still, you can understand why South African women might be willing to try anything. Each year, 1.7 million of them are raped. In this environment, vengeance seems fair.

I've argued against this thinking before, but until now I never realized exactly how stupid it is.

A single woman (or man) cannot (instantly) change the world. For an individual woman rape is indeed an inevitable part of human culture, as is murder, theft, and unkindness in general. This argument is a straw man in that no one is trying to absolve rapists of their crimes, but it also seems very damaging to women in that it makes their efforts to defend themselves part of the "patriarchal oppression" they should be fighting against.

This is akin to arguing that you shouldn't call the police if you're being attacked because you're attacker shouldn't be attacking you. Perhaps the real problem with armies is that they absolve other nations of the responsibility not to invade you. And don't female condoms (or the pill) put the onus on the female to avoid pregnancy rather than the man, who, after all, is responsible for the sperm?

We DO hold rapists accountable - we try them and put them in prison. But in the real world we realize that rapists are not going to stop raping, just as killers will not stop killing and thieves stealing just because they really should do so. Real women deserve to be able to protect themselves, and they should ignore fools who tell them they're failing to hold men accountable.