have been designed to improve the prosecution's chances in acquaintance rape cases, and to lessen the victim's ordeal by restricting inquiries into her relationships with other men. In the prosecution's point of view, acquaintance rape cases are most difficult to win if the woman either had engaged in consensual sex with the defendant at some time before the alleged rape, or behaved in ways that violated traditional norms of female propriety such as those mentioned above (5). What is the origin to this prejudice against "bad victims" who are raped by acquaintances? One theory is that male ideology pervades the criminal justice system. According to this view the "respectable" males who dominate the system such as police, prosecutors, jurors, and judges, are sincerely horrified by stranger rapes, and rapes involving guns or knives (5). They also hate rapes that occur in "inappropriate" relationships such as incest. In such cases, the rape scenario does not resemble ordinary, socially acceptable sexual relations. On the other hand, respectable men empathize with men who are accused of having raped a woman on a date (6). The "respectable" men tend to identify with the male in a dating situation, and he can easily imagine feeling accused of rape, or irresistibly provoked by a "loose woman" (6). Accordingly, he wishes to ensure that "normal' aggressive male sexuality is protected by the law.Many contend that men, irrationally fearing false rape accusations, are deeply suspicious of women who claim to have been raped by an acquaintance. Men and women who have adopted this male ideology often express this suspicion by blaming the female victim of the rape rather than the male perpetrator. One example is that some used to claim that it is impossible to rape a woman against her will (8). Another rape myth is that all women ant to be raped and those who decline men's sexual advances are only being coy, consciously or not, they secretl...
