© 2008 Springer Publishing Company 373 DOI: 10.1891/0886-6708.23.3.373 Violence and Victims, Volume 23, Number 3, 2008 Rape Myths Among Appalachian College Students Holly Haywood, BA Southern Illinois University, Carbondale Eric Swank, PhD Morehead State University, Kentucky Rape myths regularly admonish victims for supposedly provoking the violence done against them. While rape attitudes have been studied in national and urban samples, the support of rape myths in rural populations is seldom investigated. Furthermore, the few empirical studies on sexual coercion in Appalachia are mostly descriptive and rarely compare the sentiments of Appalachians and non-Appalachians. To address this gap, this study surveyed 512 college students at a public university in Eastern Kentucky. In testing an Appalachian distinctiveness question, this study revealed that Appalachian students were less likely to criticize rape victims. Students were also less inclined to condemn rape victims when they were victims themselves, came from egalitarian families, stayed in col- lege longer, rejected modern sexism, and felt little animosity toward women. Keywords: rape myths; victim blame; attitudes toward women; Appalachian status; traditional gender roles; modern sexism I t is estimated that one in every four women will be the victim of rape in their lifetime, and up to 45% of collegiate women have endured some form of sexual assault since leaving high school (Dekeseredy & Kelly, 1993). Victims of rape not only suffer from direct physical and psychological hardships of such violence but must deal with societal interpretations that blame them for their misery. This constellation of beliefs have come to be known as rape myths, or the “set of beliefs and narratives that explain why rapes occur in a fashion that absolves the perpetrator of guilt and rests the source of the problem on the victim” (Ward, 1988, p. 129). In essence, this narrative contends that rape can be traced to lapses in female judgments and morality. With a fixation on the victim’s demeanor, these accounts insist that women trigger stranger and date rapes by being too alluring, naïve, or dishonest. To adherents of this worldview, the solution to this problem is victim based; if women conform to a long list of proscribed rules, then rape would disappear. In addressing the issue of rape myths, this work primarily focuses on the “she deserved it” rationale. While national studies discover rape throughout the country, some works highlight apparent regional differences within the United States (Gagné, 1992; Shwaner & Keil, 2003; Websdale & Johnson, 1998). While Appalachian peoples are usually ignored by academic studies, the characterizations in movies, books, and cartoons regularly chide Appalachians for being simple-minded fools who are inarticulate, prone to violence,