Re this article. It’s terrible they were assaulted, but going into a stranger’s hotel room pretty much pegs the retard-o-meter IMO.
Do rape victims that do things like this bear any moral responsibility for putting themsleves in harms way through extraordinarily foolish behavior, or is the act of rape morally seperate from whatever the victims may have done to place themselves in a potentially perilous situation?
Assuming that these accusations are true, the victims bear no moral responsibility. However, they deserve criticism from, e.g., their parents, for behaving imprudently. The girls acted irresponsibly, but not imorally irresponsibly.*
I wonder about this too. This particular situation sounds like the girls were quite naive and probably drunk (“after partying together…”)
It doesn’t mean they deserve to be raped though. The penalty for drunkenness and stupidilty certianly isn’t rape.
But if I walk down an alley at night in a high crime area, while flipping through my wallet crammed with cash, isn’t it partially my fault when I get robed?
Again, maybe I don’t deserve to get robbed, the penalty for walking with lots of obvious cash shouldn’t be a mugging.
However, there is an issue of personal responsibility here.
Well, rephrase it to say simply “beat the crap out of” instead of “raped” and see how it plays.
Rape is a crime of hostility, same as having the crap beaten out of you. If you get into a car with a stranger and he punches you and breaks your nose, is it your fault? If you go to a stranger’s hotel room with him and he breaks your arm and kicks you in the stomach, is it your fault?
Granted, it was dumb to go to a bar and pick up guys and then go to their hotel room. But if a stranger decides to behave like a violent animal, is it your fault?
One vote here for “no”.
I’ve made a chart that might help determine the distribution of culpability.
Rapists Girls
Make bad decisions? yes yes
Actions stupid? yes yes
Commit a crime? yes no
The question, as people note, is whether causation is equivalent to responsibility. Having had this speculative conversation once or twice, I recall that many women are hostile to the idea that the girl is responsible in any way, because they attach to that statement a component that isn’t there. To say one is responsible for an outcome is not to say, as noted above, that one deserved the outcome or is morally at fault. So I don’t find the assertion particularly threatening when fully understood.
I would say the girls’ behaviour is one cause among many. Pretty much everything they did that day is a “but-for” cause, as in “but for arriving at the restaurant at the right time to meet these guys, the rape would not have occured.” I doubt that “but for” is sufficient for “responsibility” in the sense used here. The actions of many people who encountered the girls that day might all have been “but for” causes. “But for” the cab company’s mechanic being skilled, the cab the girls rode to their destination in might have broken down and the girls never would have encountered the rapists. So blame Latka from the TV show Taxi? Probably not.
I guess the question in my mind is whether the girls’ actions were a proximate cause of the outcome. Was the outcome forseeable and sufficiently related to the cause? I suppose the answer is “yes” in this situation. If varioius “Rape awareness” groups have accomplished anything, it’s to inform women of story after story after story about a situation that turned into a rape. To disregard those cautionary examples (along with pretty much every scrap of common sense most people have about strangers and big cities)…well, that strikes me as reckless.
For that matter, it would be reckless if the outcome were a beating rather than a rape (to follow Duck Duck Goose’s analogy.) It is forseeable that something nasty has a pretty good chance to occur. Missing a chance to meet Eminem (the “burden of precautions”, i.e. what it would have cost them to decline the invite) pales in comparision to the possibility of harm and the gravity of the harm threatened.
I would conclude that the girls are “factually” responsible for the rape. Since I don’t believe in morality, I won’t draw a conclusion there, though I could hardly imagine they could be held morally responsible, as I don’t see any frequently noted moral rule broken by their actions.
Well, I have spent quite some time posting to this thread on a very related topic which is how can women best protect themselves from being raped and, as is often the case when someone says women should be careful, a lot of people jump in to say women should not have to protect themselves and guys should just not rape. Which is fine and well in an ideal world but unfortunately not in the real world we live in.
Regarding the OP, there is no doubt that the men committed a crime for which they are entirely responsible. Just like if they had beat the crap out of the women or stolen their money. I do not think anybody is going to argue otherwise. They commited a crime and belong in jail.
The OP now asks “Do rape victims bear any responsibility for stupid decisions that endanger them?”
This question is far from clear. Responsibility in what sense and to whom? They were clearly foolish to put themselves in such situation and they have suffered the consequences but “consequences” and “responsibility” are slightly different things. People do foolish things all the time and often suffer the consequences. They drive their cars into flooded roads and are washed away. Are they “responsible”? I do not know how you can answer that but the fact is they were imprudent or ignorant and they suffered the consequences. This case is no different. Life is a game of consequences. You do foolish things and you pay the consequences. There does not have to be any moral responsibility.
The fact that you could impute responsibility to the victims in no way diminishes the responsibility of the criminal. The criminal is responsible for what he did but the victim can also be responsible for putting herself in harm’s way. They are entirely separate issues.
If I drive into a flooded road and I am washed away with my car, there is no responsibility for the flood but I have put myself in harm’s way and suffer the foreseeable consequences.
Hmm…I’ve been thinking about this a lot, actually. I was just at this seminar they gave at orientation about sexaul assault. What they said is basically it’s never anyone’s fault if they are raped. The thing to do, however, is to be able to see if you’re at a risk of it or not.
In other words, there are things you can do or not do, but sometimes you engage in a risk taking activity, because that’s life. In this case, however, it was a choice, and a risk that could have been avoided. So basically, my view is that even though one should try to reduce risky behavior, it’s ultimately always the fault of the person who commits the rape.
I think the real question of the OP is whether or not the rapist’s responsibility for their actions is mitigated by the actions of the girls: in other words, are the rapists less responsible because the girls made it so easy?
No, not at all. Rape is wrong because of the quality of the act, not the circumstances contributing to its execution.
I also would draw a distinction between “responsible” in a factual sense (meaning your actions contributed to the event occurring) and "responsible in a moral sense, and the OP asks specifically about morality.
I don’t think anyone is ever morally responsible for an act committed upon them without their consent and possibly (probably) after their resistance has been forcibly overcome.
Can a woman be partially responsible in a factual sense? Sure. If she goes in the room/gets in the car/leaves alone drunk from a bar, then she by her actions contributes to a scenario under which she is more likely to be assaulted. BUT – and this is a big, important but – that doesn’t carry any moral baggage, IMO. Nor does it carry any legal baggage, because no action on the part of the woman can in any way mitigate the crime of rape: It doesn’t matter how she acts, what she wears, or where she goes; a man still does not get to rape her.
sailor what I objected to in that thread was the assertion that ‘smart’ women would reduce their risks, but when it was pointed out that ‘risky behavior’ could include going on a date and getting into their car, or drinking anything, you merely seemed to agree that these were ‘risks’. So, I’ll ask you again.
Should a ‘smart’ woman refuse to drink anything on dates or get into a car w/her date, so as to reduce her risk of rape? At what point would you suggest that she could dine out/drive with a date? After marriage? (of course post marriage rape is not unheard of, either).
I agree that there’s a continuum of actions from ‘almost assuradly completely safe’ to ‘unbelieveably stupidly risky’ but that the absolute responsability for a criminal action lies with the criminal.
So, for the OP, I agree that the actions taken by the young women was not the smartest thing they’d done. The criminal actions of others, however did not require their stupidity. So, no, I lay the blame on the rapists.
>> I think the real question of the OP is whether or not the rapist’s responsibility for their actions is mitigated by the actions of the girls: in other words, are the rapists less responsible because the girls made it so easy?
I do not see that question in the Op at all. We agree that the the responsibility of a criminal is not mitigated in any way by the fact that the victim made it easy. But that is not the question in the OP. The question is whether the victims bear responsibility for foolishly putting themselves in a situation where a reasonable person would see the danger. the fact that the danger was caused by another person is irrelevant. It could be caused by an animal or by an object or by circumstances. Would a resonable person realise he was getting into an unsafe situation? I say the answer is “yes” and so the girls acted recklessly and negligently. That in no way affects or diminishes the responsibility of the criminal.
WRING, you are talking about legal responsibility, and SAILOR is talking about factual responsibility (contributing to the factual circumstances under which the crime took place). I think you’re both right. But the OP asked about a third thing: moral responsibility. Again, IMO, it is the forcible and nonconsensual nature of rape that means the victim is (or should be) completely free of moral responsibility.
I don’t think any victim is morally responsible for the commission of the crime.
That’s a pretty good summation of the various kinds of responsibility we can talk about, Jodi. Gotta agree there.
This is a big issue in my city. Two or three times a year, on certain holidays, the college students party all over downtown, drinking a lot. Every time, there are accounts afterwards of not a few girls who got very very drunk and put themselves into vulnerable positions–such as leaving each other alone in strange apartments or on the street, going off with strangers, or what have you. Lots of them do it, and the ones who make the papers are the ones who are unlucky.
Of course its the criminals’ fault. But the girls could have avoided trouble had they been more careful. Sadly, they’ve learned their lesson in a very harsh way.
I agree w/you Jodi - what I’m trying to get from sailor is where that ‘risk’ line should be drawn. He seemed (in the other thread) to agree that for a woman to go out on a date and get into his car was a degree of risk.
And I’m interested in where he’d be willing to say “no, that’s not risk, that’s living one’s life”, because I am not willing to say “a smart woman, in order to reduce her risk of rape, will refrain from risky behavior which includes going out on dates, eating or drinking anything in public, getting into a car w/ a man, walking past an alley, walking past a doorway” etc. (since any of these things can be considered ‘risk’, and amount to some of the ‘factual’ issues leading up to the criminal act.
Ok, the general consensus here seems to be that the victims of violent crime are not responsible for what happened to them. I agree.
Why then, does not the same logic apply to the Israeli university student sitting in a cafeteria, or the American janitor cleaning the men’s room on the 79th floor of the WTC?
Criticizing a rape victim (which to be clear I would never do) is verboten, but condemning Jews or Americans is acceptable? Why is that?
wring, I am not making any judgments as to particular situations. What I am saying is that the fact that a criminal bears 100% responsibility for the crime he commits does not mean the victim cannot bear the responsibility and the consequences of having taken a certain risk. I do not know whay you keep insisting that if the victim bears any responsibility it must detract from the responsibility of the criminal. It is not so and they are very independent things. If you drive across a flooded road you run a risk of being washed away and yet there is no crime committed. You assume a risk and sometimes you pay the consequence. it is not that I like it or not. It is the way life is and pretending otherwise is unrealistic. So, IMHO the women mentioned in the OP were very foolish and they would have done a foolish thing even if they had been lucky and nothing happened. If a woman goes out with a guy and takes all reasonable precautions like not getting drunk and not going to a lonely place until she knows him well etc, then she is taking a much smaller risk and her chances of becoming a victim are so much smaller. Yes, I understand nothing in life is 100% risk free. What do you want me to do about it? Yes, we all know the guy who never smoked and died of lung cancer and the guy who smoked two packs a day and lived to be 85. Great. I am talking of diminishing the odds and the girls in the Op were not taking any care to diminish the odds and they paid a price. That does not diminish the responsibility of the criminals but the fact that the damage was caused by persons rather than by nature or other causes does not diminish the recklessness of their conduct by putting themselves at risk. The fact that the risk was caused by other humans is irrelevant.
Gee, MILROYJ, do you always carry a great big can o’ worms around with you? 
Respectfully, no one here has said or even suggested that “criticizing a rap viction is verboten, but condemning Jews or Americans is acceptable.”
I think that’s the subject of another thread, if there’s anyone around who thinks it hasn’t been done to death repeatedly before.
sailor - my question (still unanswered) to you is/has been:
At what point do you stop calling it ‘assuming a risk’ and start calling it ‘living one’s life’?
I agreed, on the continuum of idiotic behavior the girls in the OP were way up there, that it didn’t diminish the criminal responsability.
HOwever, you’ve not been willing to draw the other line, where you’d agree that the woman was not taking a risk.
I would contend that a woman going out on a date with a casual acquaintence, riding in the same car to the destination, dining out, should not be considered to be taking ‘risky’ behavior. That inviting a stranger into her home would be ‘risky’.
I apologize for the hijack, but I think my point is valid. Pretty much everyone would agree that rape victims are not responsible for being attacked, factually, morally, or otherwise.
Yet, some people claim that the victims of terrorism, namely Israelis and Americans, somehow caused the violence.
That’s just wrong.