Rape: "Why didn't you make it more difficult for him?"

We have to stop conflating these two issues...

The person who is drunk and the person who thieves from them.
The person who is dressed attractively and the person who rapes them.
The person who is shy, sweet, helpful, friendly, trusting, kind...and the person who harms them.

It is nurture and nature that causes someone to do wrong to another person. Either by way of a severe and sometimes undiagnosed mental illness or because the person has learned bad ways or not learned good ways. Either ways, they are that person. They are a rapist, mugger, robber, serial killer... etc...and nothing any victim did caused them to suddenly turn into that person.

Let's take rape....some people say the victims of rape make it too easy for the rapist to rape them. Dressing in showy way, behaving unguarded, immodest.

My question is...Why should the victim take any part of any blame because in, society's opinion, they didn't make it as difficult as they could for the perpetrator?

As Muslim women, we could be seen to be making it 'as difficult as we possibly can' for rapists when we wear our long black dresses, hair and face coverings - Muslim women still experience rape.

So clearly, even with that single example, we can see that no amount of making it difficult or easy for a criminal intent on acting out their sick fantasy, makes any of the haters actions the victim's fault.
If you hold the opinion that all rape victims must make it as difficult as possible for a rapist to rape them. Doesn't that lead to people staying indoors with alarmed entry points and guard dogs outside trained to kill?

Going too far? Ok so how far is not too far? Where is the line that is reasonable for protecting yourself? How much must we all shrink back into life-limiting isolation so that the haters can roam free looking at women like they want to eat them?

Don't put ourselves in harms' way? Drinking, dressing provocatively, walking alone?

So....the criminal owns the streets and by walking along them alone, dressed provocatively and drunk it becomes therefore partly a victim's fault because they put themself on display?

The main factor in rape is a power issue not an attraction issue. The rapist knows they have physical or psychological power over their intended victim and that's the reason it happens. No amount of breasts on display, skirts being short of hijabs, niqabs and abayas being worn makes even the slightest bit of difference.

I know what some Muslim brothers and sisters might say about women dressing provocatively being a causal factor in rape, but for the reasons I've given, I would have to disagree with them.

Some might see it odd that as a covered Muslim woman I argue in favour of the provocatively dressed woman. It's because she has rights! The right not to be raped and the right not to be blamed for something which is not her fault at all. Just because I disagree with her style of dress it doesn't make her to blame, just because I don't like what she's wearing, doesn't make her to blame, just because I might not like her as an individual, doesn't make her to blame.

What about the man who is raped, the 90 year old woman who is raped, the vicar who is raped, the woman working on a farm in the middle of the day in her muddy farm clothes? This is where that lazyass argument can be seen for exactly what it is, lazyass!

Instead of always trying to figure out how much responsibility the victims should carry for what happened to them, why don't we look instead, to those who are supposed to be keeping our streets safe and the government who is continuously under-resourcing them and shouting "Look over there!".