Confronting Victim Blaming: A Review of 'Some Boys'

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Some Boys by Patty Blount is the story of a girl who is raped by a school sports star, Zac, and then is ostracized by everyone around her and branded a slut. It is a familiar story, we hear about it far too often in the press. It’s an important story, reminding us that we must keep having discussions with teens about what sexual violence and sexual consent is and what it isn’t.

It is also a story in which a girl who is raped is labelled a slut and ostracized by her community rather than supported. Part of the reason this happens is because is that many of our school systems value sports – which can generate income and good press – over people, so we are often willing to overlook the bad behavior of our sports stars. It’s cognitively easier for us to blame the victim and dismiss the severity of the crime than it is for us to break down the ideals we build up in our minds about these men and women we declare “stars”; we write cultural narratives that idolize our subjects and when we get information that contradicts that we have such a difficult time with this incongruent information that it’s easier for us to deflect blame elsewhere. This is one of the reasons why we continue to talk about slut shaming. As Christa Desir points out repeatedly, slut shaming is one of the reasons that more
Some Boys is told in alternating voices, the voices of Grace and Ian. They are both forced to spend some time coming in to the empty school to clean out lockers as punishment for various bad behavior.
Grace is already at this point hurting and reeling from the after affects of her rape. She is shunned by everyone at school, branded a slut. Her former best friends are actively tormenting her. Not even her family seems to believe what she says happened.

Ian is the best friend and team mate of Zac, the boy that Grace claims raped her. He struggles to live up to his fathers demands and expectations and to keep his spot on the

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