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"  God, I hate when people who are, by all accounts, total feminist bada*ses say something that&amp;#039;s more likely to come out of the mouth of a rape apologist. In an interview with Rolling Stone, tennis great Serena Williams, who&amp;#039;s just won the French open, weighed in on the Steubenville rape case with some less-than-savory quotes (via ESPN.com). A tip: Rethink what you&amp;#039;re about to say when it starts with &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not blaming the girl, but...&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not blaming the girl, but if you&amp;#039;re a 16-year-old and you&amp;#039;re drunk like that, your parents should teach you \u2014 don&amp;#039;t take drinks from other people. She&amp;#039;s 16, why was she that drunk where she doesn&amp;#039;t remember? It could have been much worse. She&amp;#039;s lucky. Obviously I don&amp;#039;t know, maybe she wasn&amp;#039;t a virgin, but she shouldn&amp;#039;t have put herself in that position, unless they slipped her something, then that&amp;#039;s different.&amp;quot; Not that I even need to point out the issues with this victim-blaming statement, but hey, whatever: Not only was Jane Doe completely unlucky, but whether or not she was a virgin is completely irrelevant. Naturally, the backlash to Williams&amp;#039; comments were immediate, and she backtracked with a statement this morning. It&amp;#039;s sort of a non-apology. What happened in Steubenville was a real shock for me. I was deeply saddened. For someone to be raped, and at only sixteen, is such a horrible tragedy! For both families involved \u2013 that of the rape victim and of the accused. I am currently reaching out to the girl&amp;#039;s family to let her know that I am deeply sorry for what was written in the Rolling Stone article. What was written \u2013 what I supposedly said \u2013 is insensitive and hurtful, and I by no means would say or insinuate that she was at all to blame. I have fought all of my career for women&amp;#039;s equality, women&amp;#039;s equal rights, respect in their fields \u2013 anything I could do to support women I have done. My prayers and support always goes out to the rape victim. In this case, most especially, to an innocent sixteen year old child. It&amp;#039;s pretty obvious that while she&amp;#039;s not admitting that the quotes came out of her mouth, she undeniably said them \u2014 undermining the journalist&amp;#039;s credibility is just a strategy employed by publicists in this situation. It would be really admirable if she&amp;#039;d copped to it and apologized instead of passing the buck. Follow Anna on Twitter. Image via Getty "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/news/a13438/serena-williams-steubenville-comments/>