Very well said.

And, it could get worse...not only are victims reviled and sneered out, but people who refuse to be trapped in the victim role, speak out, and fight back, are actively attacked as victims...u see how that works...
A hits B
B has been taught it is wrong say anything, because, that would mean they are a victim.
A hits B again.
A continues to pick on B.
And, all of A's friends, and some of B's friends start taking pokes at B.
So in spite of the teachings, B fights back.
And gets others to join in.
Victims are the product of Bullies...And so are the lesser bullies.
Example...My daughter used to bathe in oil, because she has excema. When she was little, it got in her hair. At school, people started picking on her, because her hair was greasy. I talked to the principal, who excused the bullies by saying that my daughter's hair did look greasy. What is wrong with this picture? The message...it's okay what they did to her, she deserved it, she shouldn't have greasy hair.
Several studies in psychology have revolved around a syndrome called "blame the victim"..which arises, not because most of us are monsters, but because we all want to see the world and each other as just and fair. So, when we see a victim, instead of addressing the probably very real pathology in the perpetrator, we look for the cause in the personality or behaviour of the victim.
"He or she did not pick on me...so, there must be something wrong with the person they did pick on, or that person must be lying"...pretzel logic.

Cut and pasted from Wikipedia:

It has been proposed that one cause of victim-blaming is the "Just World Hypothesis". People who believe that the world has to be fair, may find it hard or impossible to accept a situation in which a person is unfairly and badly hurt for no cause or reason. This leads to a sense that, somehow, the victim must have surely done 'something' to deserve their fate. Another theory entails the need to protect one's own sense of invulnerability. This inspires people to believe that rape only happens to those who deserve or provoke the assault (Schneider et al., 1994). This is a way of feeling safer. If the potential victim avoids the behaviours of the past victims then they themselves will remain safe and feel less vulnerable. A global survey of attitudes toward sexual violence by the Global Forum for Health Research shows that victim-blaming concepts are at least partially accepted in many countries. In some countries, victim-blaming is more common, and women who have been raped are sometimes deemed to have behaved improperly. Often, these are countries where there is a significant social divide between the freedoms and status afforded to men and women.

This theory dates from very ancient times: the biblical Book of Job offers a canonical exploration of it.

Supporters of this view (once referred to as "Job's comforters") must perforce accept that to do otherwise would require them to give up their belief in a just world, and require them to believe in a world where bad things — such as poverty, rape, starvation, and murder — can happen to good people for no good reason. The cognitive dissonance in doing this becomes too great, and results in victim-blaming.

Another example, this one from the net..A man writes

More blaming the victim.Conservative Nathaniel Blake at Human Events Online links positively to John Derbyshire’s post, then writes that the students at Virginia Tech should feel “heartily ashamed” for not acting more bravely:

College classrooms have scads of young men who are at their physical peak, and none of them seems to have done anything beyond ducking, running, and holding doors shut. Meanwhile, an old man hurled his body at the shooter to save others.

Something is clearly wrong with the men in our culture. Among the first rules of manliness are fighting bad guys and protecting others: in a word, courage. And not a one of the healthy young fellows in the classrooms seems to have done that. …

Like Derb, I don’t know if I would live up to this myself, but I know that I should be heartily ashamed of myself if I didn’t. Am I noble, courageous and self-sacrificing? I don’t know; but I should hope to be so when necessary.

Digg It! April 17, 2007 3:30 pm | Comment (228)

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Posted by Nico April 17, 2007 3:30 pm

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*dm,
Thank you for articulating the heart of the matter. What is going on at RSE is difficult to grasp and occurs on different levels. Understanding and being able to hold onto the understanding can be slippery, really slippery.

But it has to be done. We have to understand where we've been and how we got there. And we have to be able to endure what is revealed. And we have to hold onto our integrity, whatever that means for each of us as individuals.

We can't give up, we've got to keep going, we have to find our way. There's too much at stake not to.

Keep talking denotes, just keep talking.

And thanks, you can't imagine how badly I need to hear your voice.

For *denotes meaning from EyesWideOpen

Consent requires sobriety. Only person who is cognizant and whose intellectual and emotional faculties are intact can give valid consent. A drunk person cannot give consent. A man of honor, a man of integrity, a man who is doing his job of providing a safe and secure environment, a “Real” man would not have sex with a drunk woman who had not previously, sober, given consent. Most of the sex that occurred during wine ceremonies was probably not consensual.

There is a possible defense called "Reasonable presumption of consent", where two people have been engaged in a long term sexual relationship...however, that clearly does not apply in the cases cited on this forum as having occured at wine ceremonies at the ranch.