Bill Cosby’s Lawyer Blames Rape Victims: “Women Have Responsibility.” Road To Fame Paved With Rape Histories?
The whole premise of rape is that women don’t get a choice in sex. Rape means lack of choice, not lack of responsibility. Bill Cosby’s lawyer, “defending” him against almost 40 charges of rape/sexual assault,” claims that women bear responsibility for rape. Hear the caveman roar here:
“Women have responsibility. We have responsibility for our bodies, we have responsibility for our decisions. We have responsibility for the way we conduct ourselves,” said Pressley.
Later, she asked: “How many women and men have been willing to offer up their bodies on a casting couch? Have been willing to exchange sex for favors? Have had remorse after doing so and then accused someone who they believed they could get monetary gain out of and sell a story?”
Apparently according to Cosby’s lawyer, women having sex on a casting couch, a form of film prostitution, means that women who have accused Bill Cosby of rape are lying. Or maybe just because women may or may not have had sex on a casting rape is a woman’s responsibility. Oh wait, women who have been raped feel remorse and then build their major claim to fame on stories of rape? All of us recognize that the way most women rise to prominence, women like Hillary Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, even Kim Kardashian have started out falsely accusing men of rape and then enjoyed prominent careers. Um, yeah, and Bill Cosby’s lawyer, a carefully cultivated black female figure is a liar just like the rest of his fabrications.
“They earn themselves a seat in a chair on the front of a magazine. They get interviewed over and over,” said Pressley — as though the promise of “fame” could explain why dozens of women came forward to recall painful, violating memories in a public forum.
I don’t know whether to be more upset that a single black woman supposedly speaks for all black women or the fact that because a woman says these things somehow makes it acceptable. The quote above is taken from a Huff Post article detailing the “rape culture” at work here, that women are to blame for men’s assaults, but it’s bit more insidious than that even. It’s giving a voice to a very damaging form demeaning women and the damage done by rape in a format that seeks to legitimize this type of voice, and it’s done a way with every image accounted for. Bill Cosby’s attorney blames women for rape by undermining every women in order to undermine the women who have accused Bill Cosby of rape, or her logic goes something like this: since rape isn’t a real phenomenon for any woman because women are responsible for rape, Bill Cosby couldn’t be guilty of rape. Somehow the idea that Bill Cosby couldn’t be guilty of rape only can be argued if rape itself isn’t real, not that Cosby has say, an alibi for the time the alleged rape occurred, or that it’s been proved he didn’t give women Quaaludes, no, rape itself can’t be real because Cosby is involved.
It’s kind of like the Wesleyan College student who reported a rape and now Wesleyan College is demanding access to all of her past sex partners, boyfriends or acquaintances, to see if a rape really occurred when she was a virgin. Let’s focus on the virgin status shall we? Condone virginity checks at Wesleyan College? Or just focus on the fact that at Wesleyan College apparently a rape didn’t occur unless your ex-boyfriend says so. If you are a student at Wesleyan College, apparently you need a male voice to corroborate your rape claim or it’s invalid.
Perhaps Cosby’s attorney would hear a rape validation from one of his accusers if the accusers’ ex-boyfriends showed up to validate their claims?
All of these claims, from Cosby, to the Wesleyan College misfire, are predicated on the premise that rape doesn’t exist because women are never victims of male assault and rape is really related to a woman’s sexual history or past, the old, “we will determine you were raped if you weren’t a slut/were still a virgin/were married/not, wore the color blue, had pants on instead of a skirt…” or something else equally inane and unrelated to a claim of rape. Apparently Cosby’s lawyer just plans to leave his rape defense to “rape doesn’t exist because Bill Cosby couldn’t be guilty of rape.” The corollary argument to that is then, if Cosby has raped women, then all men are rapists. Maybe the men need to come out against this one now. Apparently any voice given any credence in the discussion of rape is still a man’s. Funny that when the responsibility for rape belongs to women.
Unasked Advice 