Thank you. Don, for bringing the thread back to its actual topic when it had drifted into "feminism/employment·for·women &c".

It seems to me that there are two issues which have not been sufficiently discriminated thruout the thread. Look at the thread title again, & distinguish, please, between "blame", the word the OP used; and "guilt", the word with which it has been persistently confused to muddy the issue.

No-one has disagreed that Rape is a 'Crime', an enormity committed agaist the victim, and that no man committing it by insisting on subjecting an unwilling woman to intercourse can be other than absolutely and indisputably guilty of it. So much for "GUILT".

But it has surely been repeatedly demonstrated also that however GUILTY the perpetrator may be, the extent to which the victim might be regarded as BLAMEWORTHY for the outcome can vary enormously according to the circumstances.

That is the distinction some of us have been trying to draw; ~~~ and I repeat that I do not think enough attention has been paid to these two distinctions: i.e. that between 'Guilt & 'Blame'; and that between the degree of either to be attributed in each and every specific case.