How many ways can you play the "blame the victim game"?
Pull up a chair.

One popular method is to tell women over and over again that they are not safe on the streets and that if they do get attacked or raped, it was their fault for being out on their own. Have to work late? Need some milk for the morning? Want to meet friends? Want to have a social life? Too bad. If you leave the house without a suitable chaperone, you're just asking for it, sister.

Well now the Police Service of Northern Ireland is telling women not to go out alone at night, just like every other law enforcement branch does after a spate of attacks on women. Such guidelines place all the responsibility for rape upon women rather than the criminal.

A 17 year-old woman was raped in the Lower Shankill last Monday by a stranger as she was walking down the street at 10:30 p.m. 10:30? WTF? That's not even Cinderella's curfew for fuck's sake. Now we have to stay indoors after dark?
Last month, a woman in her 20s was also raped by a stranger as she walked at night. Although the Belfast Telegraph surmises that the assaults may be linked, the PSNI is not investigating a connection between the two rapes. Because women's safety fails to rank as a priority.

Eileen Calder of the Rape Crisis Centre remarked that "it's an absolute disgrace that women are not safe on the streets of Belfast. Even at that time of night, women should have the right to walk around without fear of attack." Her sage observation does not register with the PSNI or even with popular opinion.

Women on the streets, whether alone or in groups, are perennial targets for men's violence. Rape is the only crime where we make the victim complicit in the act. Instead of blaming the victim, why not try a collective response to violence against women? How about posting flyers that tells the rapists to stay off the streets? Something like:

The People of the Shankill Warn all Rapists that you are Not Safe on Our Streets.
We Will Not Tolerate Attacks on Women and Will Respond Quickly to Protect Them and Cut Your Balls Off in the Process.
Rapists Beware!

How hard is that? Send a fucking message that no man or woman in the community will stand by and allow women's basic human right to walk the streets unmolested to be questioned. Hold self defense courses that enable women to fight off attackers and defend themselves.

Oh, that's right. It's just easier to shift the burden upon women's independence and right to bodily sovereignty. And then blame the victim. Again.