Hypotheses derived from two competing versions of attribution theory, defensive attribution and need for control, were tested to explore the effects of gender, past female sexual victimization, past male sexual aggression, nonsexual crime victimization, and risk taking on rape myth acceptance. Four hypotheses were specifically tested: (1) females will attribute less rape victim responsibility than males; (2) females who have experienced sexual victimization will attribute less victim responsibility than females who have not; (3) males who have committed acts of sexual aggression will attribute greater victim responsibility than males who have not; and (4) males and females who have been victims of nonsexual crimes will attribute less responsibility to rape victims than those who have not. Rape victim blame was measured with an eight-item scale of commonly held rape myths. Results showed that females were substantially less likely to blame rape victims. For the female subsample, risk taking and rape victim blame were negatively associated. Among males, past sexual aggression and risk taking were positively related to victim blaming, and male experience with nonsexual victimization was negatively related to victim blaming. Most of the hypotheses were at least partially confirmed. As anticipated, gender was the most powerful predictor of rape victim blaming, with females substantially less likely to accept rape myths. An appendix contains the questionnaire items for the rape myth acceptance index, the risk taking index, and sexual victimization. 16 references and 4 tables