So I got a lift home today from my cousin's boyfriend's friend. My cousin's boyfriend and another man I didn't know were also in the van. At some point the discussion turned to women and how they dress and how some women wear revealing clothes and "advertise themsleves", so that when they get raped...

You know the rest, right? The old "oh, she was dressed like this, so she was asking for it" bullshit. And I really really couldn't let them get away with that crap, so I challenged it. At which point my cousin's boyfriend wised up and sort of agreed with me (although I'm sure that he holds strong to his dumb-ass opinion nevertheless) and dropped the issue. The other guy just didn't get it however, and continued to blithely blather on about advertising it, and make some ignorant statement about rape "being alright for the person who does it" (huh? can he be for real?) except if "the girl gives them AIDS" (again, WTF?), and then just gave up and changed the subject when I refused to back down and continued to challenge him on it.

The thing that bothers me about that is not even that I didn't change anybody's mind. I never go into an argument expecting to change anybody's mind, anyway. But I could tell from this guy's arguments and the expression on his face that he just couldn't understand my point (plus I got the feeling that he'd never had a discussion on that level with a woman before and that I was kind of scaring and intimidating him and he just couldn't deal). He just could not get the concept that there is nothing that makes rape justifiable and that no matter what a woman is wearing, she doesn't deserve to be raped, that the fact that a woman wears skimpy or tight clothing does not in any way excuse her rapist or diminish the atrociousness of his crime. It's not like he understood my argument, but disagreed -- he just didn't get it. At all.