I am not getting into this argument because it never gets resolved - FTR I am fully with the women on the board. We get warned from the day we’re born to be careful, and a lot of the advice is hella stupid.
I’m just here to reiterate a point someone made way ahead in the thread. I never got drunk, I never spend time alone with men I don’t know, I don’t walk alone, etc., etc.
I got molested even while following all of the “rules”. The rules are frankly, kind of jackshit. They don’t protect you from your own dad. I’m not sure what rules I could have followed in that case. Don’t ever be alone with your dad?
I didn’t write any of the comments I quoted and it was the victim who used the word fault, but I do think there is value in letting people know what kind of behaviors to avoid. I learned early on not to leave anything visible in my car, not even a few coins, is it victim blaming to let other people know why they should avoid that behavior?
I think people easily conflate two different things: Moral fault for a crime, and probability/likelihood of a crime happening.
Morally, the crook is at fault for a crime. Morally, it doesn’t matter if a car is left windows rolled down, keys in the ignition and doors unlocked in a dangerous neighborhood - a car thief is wrong for stealing the car, period.
But, as a matter of probability and likelihood, a car that is windows open, doors unlocked in a dangerous neighborhood is more likely to be stolen than one that is doors locked and kept in a locked garage.
But many people mix the two things together. A car owner *ought *to be able to leave his car doors unlocked and windows down and keys in the ignition any place, any time and not have it be stolen.
Did you think I thought you had written that? Or do you think I was answering your question?
It seems to me to be pretty damn obvious what’s happening in that exchange. One person says “something bad happened to me.” The second person points out that it was stupid for the first person to have done what they did. The first person says, yeah, it was my fault.
Your question was is that blame. Everyone in the conversation seemed to think so. I think so. Why don’t you think so?
More to the point, do you think that person who wasn’t you was in an ideal position in their lives to be told that something bad can happen if they leave something visible in their car? It seems to me they may have cottoned to that on their own without the helpful internet advice.
My point was that I wouldn’t have used the word fault, but I do think the victim behaved in a somewhat reckless manner that they then acknowledged. I didn’t seek this person out, he posted on a public website, opening himself up to comments.
More to the point, my question was “does that exchange constitute victim blaming?” If it is victim blaming, is it necessarily a bad thing? Maybe you getting your car broken robbed is just the reminder to the rest of us need.
What I’m saying is that it very clearly constitutes victim blaming to me, and I don’t see an argument how it isn’t literally that. If you hadn’t done X, which was stupid, then the bad thing would not have happened, therefore you are a person at fault in this scenario.
As I’ve said a few times in the thread already, if what we’re really saying is “sure, we’re blaming the victim some, but they deserve blame because they failed to protect themselves adequately,” then I don’t know why we don’t acknowledge it, because that’s a different conversation. That’s about whether or not victims deserve to be blamed for the good of society, and it might be a more honest conversation (because I’m prepared to list reasons why rape victims don’t deserve blame, which is irrelevant when the conversation is about how nobody is blaming them for anything). I don’t think up to this point, other than Habeed, anybody has been prepared to take that step, though.
In fact, I think you can take that one step further. If I loan something to you which has great sentimental value, and you leave it visible in your car in a bad neighborhood, and it gets stolen, I will not only think “oh, you acted in a way that increased the odds of a crime happening”, I will blame you, and hold you responsible, for its theft. Which doesn’t in any way decrease the level of criminality or responsibility of the actual thief, nor does it mean you were “asking for it” or “deserved it”.
Nobody disagrees that if you park a recent model Escalade with the windows rolled down and the engine running in a high crime area, the probability of someone swiping it for a joyride is incredibly high. That doesn’t make the individuals who took it less guilty of grand theft auto, or whatever the equivalent crime is if they intended to return the vehicle, but everyone involved will know the victim was asking for it.
If an attractive woman puts on a sexy nightgown and gets wasted in a frat house, most people would agree it’s comparable.
But then people will somehow get their panties in a twist, contorting themselves to say that we can’t even acknowledge reality, that we have to pretend that getting wasted in a frat house is a totally reasonable thing to do and that young women should be able to do this fearlessly and we shouldn’t even advise future women not to do it after the obvious happens because that’s “victim blaming”.
In what language would you like me to say that it is reasonable to talk about genuinely “risky” behavior with people as a means of preventing terrible things from happening, before they happen, so that you will fucking understand what the conversation is even about?
There is no such thing. Victims are never at fault. Men are all rapists. Let’s just lock em all up immediately the first time an accusation is even made - why bother to get evidence? They are probably guilty. That’s what the woman carrying the mattress was about - there wasn’t proof beyond a reasonable doubt, as it was just her testimony versus the alleged rapist, and so ultimately the authorities didn’t punish him.
That’s what is being called for. Allegedly, 30% of all women are raped. But the number of men in prison for rape is only a tiny fraction of men. So we need to lock up the difference.
How many men is it? I’ve seen different numbers, but it might be on the order of 10% of all men. (modern research is suggesting that instead of a few serial rapists, the rapes are being committed by a wide swath of the men. ) The women were always blameless, and their testimony alone with no evidence should be enough to lock up 5% of the entire population.
That’s ultimately what is being asked for, here. The current punishment for rape is several years of prison and a lifelong ban on employment or having a legal place to sleep. For our current system to be fair, that punishment needs to be extended to about 5% of the total population.
Once we do that, it’ll be safe and free for women to do whatever they like.
I’ve been thinking about this a bit more, and I’ve come up with one of the issues I find somewhat contradictory.
So plenty of very well meaning organizations, including college campuses, feminist advocacy groups, and concerned parents, give young women advice on ways to minimize the risk of rape.
Presumably they give this advice because they feel that the advice will reduce the number of rapes that occur (note that giving advice of this sort is not necessarily the ONLY thing they do…). If that reduction in fact happens, it implies that there are women who would be raped had the advice not been given who, due to the advice, will not be raped. Or alternatively, if there are two colleges, and one of them has a well thought out set of rape education materials and the other one doesn’t, and the policy reduces incidences of rape, then some of the women at the second college who were raped would not have been raped had they had access to (and presumably followed at least some of) the advice that the first college has.
The problem is… that formulation (those women would not have been raped if they had done X…) certainly falls into some of the wider definitions of “Blaming the victim”. But it’s a totally unavoidable consequence of the very idea of ever giving women advice on rape prevention to begin with. The only way to not at all be blaming any victim ever would be to NEVER say things like “make sure to cover your drink”, and things of that sort.
Here’s yet another angle on the same point: There’s a woman at a college. She is raped. She describes her experience to some women on that college’s rape prevention task force, who are all super-nice and not at all victim-blamey about it. They look at her experiences, and they think “Well, maybe we should put a little more emphasis on X in next year’s rape-prevention… that might have helped out in her situation”.
But now they’re caught in a no-win situation. If the next year’s rape prevention advice publication DOES include this new advice, then the original woman might read it, might recognize it as having been informed by her experience, and thus might feel like she is being victim-blamed. If it DOES NOT include this new advice, then they are withholding potentially useful advice from all the other students, and potentially increasing their risk of being raped.
First of all, it’s been pointed out many times, a woman’s attire—“sexy nightgown”? Are you looking at your grandma’s catalogues?—does not constitute a risk factor for rape.
Second, if you are seriously comparing a frat party to a neighborhood suffering from drug crime and violence, then what you shod be doing is banning frat parties.
It’s certainly interesting that a man has to be an out-of-control drunken criminal before he’s subjected to the same kinds of lecturing as women get just for being female.
For example:
This wasn’t directed at a specific woman with a history of excessive drinking, it was directed at women in general. But while there are certainly individual women with alcohol and other substance abuse problems, as a group we’re not especially prone to excessive drinking. We’re far less likely to binge drink than men are – according to the CDC, “The prevalence of binge drinking among men is twice the prevalence among women.”
I doubt that there are many women who’d say they thought it was a good idea to drink to excess, and I don’t see that anyone in this thread has tried to defend excessive drinking. I suspect there are even fewer women who’d say that it’s a good idea for a woman to go to a frat party and drink until she passes out (the specific scenario that’s been brought up again and again in this thread and others like it). There’s also a pretty narrow period of time in most women’s lives when they’d even consider going to a frat party, and yet there’s seemingly no end to the period when it’s considered appropriate to lecture women about the dangers of going to frat parties and drinking ourselves into a stupor.
“Victim-blaming” probably isn’t the best term for this sort of thing, as it happens to women regardless of our actual experiences. I don’t know if there is a term for treating women as though being female is a risky, even reckless, choice we’ve made and thus proof of our poor judgement, but if anyone can think of a catchy name for it then let me know.
I was also thinking that a name is needed for the tendency some have to jump to the thought that when a women is assaulted, she must have done *something *to provoke it. Even if that “something” was just “existing while female”.
I suppose it’s all part of the same mindset. Until someone comes up with more catchy terminology, I suppose “misogyny” covers it.
Possibly the word/phrase you are looking for is “using common sense”.
Adult men and women well beyond and outside of college socialize while drunk all the time and interestingly a good many do this who aren’t necessarily chronic problem drinkers outside of the partying context. Why you think this behavior is all frat centric (or that others think it’s mainly frat centric) is a puzzlement. Few people think this. Socially, the number of people in general, and women specifically, drinking to excess when they go out partying in nightclubs and other serving venues is orders of magnitude larger than that narrow cohort those patronizing frats.
No, I think “misogyny” was closer to the mark. It sure wasn’t through using common sense that you arrived at the conclusion that it is necessary or appropriate for you to warn the women here about the perils of alcohol.
I suspect that I actually drink less than you do – I’m a lifelong non-drinker, so I’m sure I don’t drink more than you – but I don’t go around lecturing men whose drinking habits are totally unknown to me about all the irresponsible drinking that I imagine they’re doing. I doubt it would go over well if I did. As you said yourself, men don’t normally get treated this way until they reach the barroom brawling/drunk driving level of problem drinking. But if you’re a woman, the whole world gets to give you patronizing advice, warnings, and lectures about all the things you need to be careful to avoid if you don’t want to be blamed for your own rape.
In day to day real life adults, male and female, are rarely directly lectured by their friends and peers about moderating their drinking *before *acting out. People are usually assumed to be responsible drinkers until they prove otherwise. Men and women *are *lectured or warned if they start getting sloppy enough in their drinking to make their peers concerned about them or to become socially obnoxious.
Other than teachers, parents, college administrators, or rape prevention outreach talks I’m not seeing a lot of real life in your face finger wagging at adult women by their peers telling them not to drink too much or rape will be the inevitable result. In college, maybe, out of college not so much. These warnings by their peers will certainly happen (and with good cause) if their demonstrated drinking habits are abusive and annoy or concern their peers or partying buds.
Re men confronting other men they drink with as buddies it doesn’t have to get to the level of actual bar fights or a DUI before someone will take you aside for a forceful chat. Sloppy adult drunks might be tolerated on a one off basis, but if it persists they are often shunned. No adult man wants to deal with that nonsense when he’s trying to have a good time socializing.
I’d ask where you earned your degree in what it’s like to be female, but I’m actually more curious as to where you got your evidence that the women in this thread are sloppy drunks. You have already lectured us at some length upon the subject, so you must have good reason to be concerned about our drinking habits. What exactly caused you to feel that it was necessary and appropriate to warn us that if we keep up the excessive drinking we’re going to be raped and it’ll be our own fault?
We can’t talk about genuinely risky behavior with people as a mean of preventing terrible things, because that is victim blaming.
How did a warning to women not to drink excessively turn into lecturing women just for being female?
Women who drink excessively.
If a woman does go to a frat party and drinks until she passes out, is she to blame for being raped? Is it possible to say that drinking until you pass out at a party with strangers is a bad idea without blaming the victim?
Or is it the case that when we say to women in general that it is a bad idea to drink until you pass out, we are blaming women in general?
That’s a tough one. I’ve never heard anyone say that being female is a reckless choice, but if I ever do, maybe I can come up with a name for it.
[Bolding, mine]
We all realize that there are places that have higher crime than others, and that walking through areas that have higher crime increases the risk for being a victim of crime. So if we were pals and I pointed that out, you would just shrug your shoulders and say “Well there really isn’t anything I can do about it,” or would you say “I’ll avoid that area if I can, and if I can’t, I realize my risk increases.”
[Snipped by me for brevity]
There is a big difference between before and after, when giving advice, for sure. I tell my 16 year old daughter to avoid risky behavior, but I’ve had her push back that I was “victim blaming”; nope, I’m saying that engaging in risky behavior could have awful consequences. After something happened to her, I would never say “Well, I told you so,” or “You shouldn’t have gotten yourself in that situation,” because I’m not an asshole. As for friends, I would also tell them not to engage in certain risky behaviors, but I wouldn’t tell a stranger, and I would understand if those friends choose to ignore my advice (like all advice). Giving unsolicited advice is fraught with misunderstanding and offense, IMO.
The big picture for me is that I want us to live in a world where there aren’t human predators out there, but that isn’t the world we live in. If I tell my daughter or son to avoid getting themselves in situations where they can be at risk for predation (getting drunk around strangers at a party, taking intoxicants from someone they may not trust, etc.), then I am dealing in reality. To ignore reality and tell my son, “You have the right to get drunk at a rock concert…everyone has done it,” (not yet - he’s 13), or “Walk through that high-crime area,” then I’m abdicating my responsibilities as a parent.