Hypocrite PC-zealots and their strawmen.

The BBQ Pit
141

The reason it’s clearly victim blaming is because the moment you say “If she’d worn something more modest, it may not have happened” you’ve apportioned partial responsibility for the incident on the victim. This is not a tricky concept. If you want a fucking appalling example of how that logic blames the victim, consider the 2006 case where a rapist in Manitoba was given no jail time after the judge commented she was wearing “tube tops with no bra, high heels and plenty of makeup”, that by doing this she had indicated she “wanted to party”, leading him to conclude “This is a case of misunderstood signals and inconsiderate behavior.”

But you argue it’s not victim blaming? Please. It’s slut shaming, and it’s used by bigots to support their stance. When Missouri say a rise in reports of increasing sexual harassment in the workplace, one of the first responses was a plan to enforce more modest dress codes*.

Of course bigots these days are media savvy enough that they can’t just come out and say “Bitches were asking for it, what’s a red blooded man gonna do”, so we see shit awful Appeal to Common Sense fallacies. An example of this (I’m not calling you a bigot, btw) is the whole “Well you lock your doors/use a seat belt”. It’s the work of seconds to find reams of research showing that wearing a seat belt reduces the risk of injury. It’s similarly easy to find piles of evidence showing many acts of theft are opportunistic.

So, now all you have to do is find similarly compelling evidence showing that incidents of sexual assault have a correlation to choice of dress. And yes, the onus is on you to prove your case, rather than a piss poor attempt to shift the burden of evidence to me, and worse than that asking me to prove a negative. Fuck me, what do they teach in schools these days? You’re the one claiming there’s a link between clothing and incidents of sexual assault, you put forward the stats. And while you’re at it, you might want to find some evidence showing that overall levels of sexual assault go down with modest dress codes, because otherwise what you’re suggesting is that women engage in an arms race of increasing modesty, just to make sure they’re the least likely to be assaulted.

Finally, I’d like you to consider just what such diversionary arguments actually result in. It results in not sorting the actual problem, because you’re directing attention away from the actual cause. Have a look at the huge surge in groping on Japanese trains, mostly on women who are wearing full office attire. What’s your suggestion for dress code there? Or should women instead give up travelling in crowded public transport.

Or maybe, just maybe, we should stop conversations about what women are wearing, and look at just how men become sexual predators? Just a thought, but maybe that’ll actually improve things.

142

A couple posters did the exact same thing to me. They somehow read that I was advocating dressing conservatively when I never wrote anything of the sort. You think that realizing that (“I attacked someone for something I now realize he never wrote” or “I attacked someone for something despite quoting him saying the exact opposite”) would at some point switch a light and make them realize that there’s something wrong in their approach, but no.

143

True, but there’s not nearly as much societal baggage associated with it. Also, you have that flipped. It should be “Why was your door so attractively open? Why was your stuff so enticing? If you had just made your door look plain and hidden your stuff, none of this would have happened.”

You’re wrong about this. If someone robs a place, whether the doors are open, or they have the security of Fort Knox, there is NEVER any question about fault. It is always the fault of the burglar. With sexual assault, the world and society operate differently and it is disingenuous to pretend otherwise.

Pot, kettle.

144

I don’t recall this happening with you before, so it may come down to a heated topic. I will keep an eye out for it. With Octopus, he sticks to his script and doesn’t deviate. It doesn’t matter what any of us say to him, so most of us don’t bother to try and have a serious conversation at this point.

145

It’s clearly victim blaming because the moment you say “if he had locked his door, it might not have happened” you’ve apportioned partial responsibility for the incident on the victim.

Now tell me why this sentence is wrong while the sentence you wrote is right. I’m really curious to know how exactly you justify that in your mind.

For the rest :

I specifically wrote that it’s not a matter of being right or wrong. If I’m wrong, a correct answer is “you’re wrong”. It’s not “you obviously support criminals, want to make women wear burkas, and are 100% supportive of groppers, you bigot”. And the lenght of women dresses isn’t the topic of this thread.

I first posted in the other thread when someone mentioned the woman’s clothing and was answered by “how dare you saying it’s the woman’s fault?” Which isn’t what the poster had said at all. And my post in turn was attacked because supposedly I was saying that women should dress conservatively. Which I also hadn’t said. Here, I read that thinking that scantily dressed women are more likely to be gropped is the same as supporting groppers 100%.

Are these strawmen or not? Because that’s what this thread is about.

146

shrug if your position is a woman who is scantily clad is more likely to be groped, then a woman who does dress scantily must therefore bear some fraction of the blame. She put on clothing that increased her risk, if clothing is a significant factor in being groped. The more clothes, the lesser the risk of being groped, right? I don’t see how one can blame a victim’s clothing without blaming the victim.

147

The myth of how the hijab protects women against sexual assault

Muslim women speak out about sexual assault in Mecca

We talked to hijabis about sexual harassment, and yes it happens to them too

Hijab or Not, Sexual Harassment Has Nothing to Do With Dress Codes

148

Strongly disagree.

Smart people make calculated risks regarding the amount of home security they want. The optimal amount of home safety isn’t 100%, just as the optimal amount of pollution isn’t actually zero percent. Whether or not clothing in practice affects the probability of being groped and to what extent has nothing to do with the moral responsibility involved in the crime.

Note that the evidence indicates effects of provocative clothing on grope risk tends to be overestimated. Whether there’s an effect at all is unclear to me, though I argue in the other thread that other factors are far more important.

I suppose that somebody is blameworthy for reckless behavior, just as free agents are responsible for optimizing behavior and calculated risks. But that’s really a separate argument than who is responsible for a crime. I say the criminal is, though I am willing to listen to criminal coddling conservatives who disagree. Free expression, you know.
ETA: Great post running coach.

149

My post was absolutely not accepting blame for sexual assault, whether or not I waltz down the street in a gold bikini or a burka. Some people who do want to blame clothing don’t seem to understand why that’s infuriating, or why it’s blaming the victim. My post was meant to explain to those who blame the clothing that they are in fact blaming the victim, and if you disagree with that, that’s fine. I can tell you, though, that if you tell me that part of the reason I got groped is due to what I put on this morning, I sure as hell feel like you are directly saying I am partly to blame.

150

Not edited to add: and if you tell me that when someone blames my clothing choices, they are not blaming me, I must respectfully disagree.

151

As I pointed out earlier in this thread, this analogy depends on a blatant false equivalence.

A door lock is a simple and basically universal standard security precaution which is clearly demonstrated to be significantly (though not perfectly) effective in deterring theft. It has no other purpose than as a security precaution.

So-called “modest” clothing on women, on the other hand, has absolutely no demonstrated effectiveness in preventing or discouraging unwanted sexual touching by men. Moreover, it’s a nebulous and indefinable concept that constantly changes according to cultural context and social mores. Women’s clothing that is initially accepted as socially appropriate in the context where it’s worn is often arbitrarily redefined as somehow “insufficiently modest” if its wearer gets groped. At the same time, women’s clothing is required to serve a whole other bunch of social purposes unrelated to its alleged magical protective power against groping.

A more honest analogy would be to say about the theft victim something like “Well, if his home didn’t look so ostentatiously expensive, it might not have happened”. I.e., a snotty-nosed insinuation that he was responsible for making some kind of unspecified improvement in the “modesty” of his practical/aesthetic choices about the appearance of his home that would allegedly (although completely unsupported by any actual evidence) make him less likely to be a victim of theft.

Yes, that is victim-blaming. And yes, it is quite closely analogous to strictures about “modest” clothing or behavior for victims of groping. And no, it is not at all closely analogous to pointing out the obvious security advantages of using door locks.

152

Thank you: couch this in terms of diplomacy, politeness, or general decency and it’s a damn fine point.

In the other thread a poster opined that the waitress should not have been forced to wear scanty clothing by management, if indeed she was so forced. There’s a labor rights issue. He also included explicit disclaimers. I didn’t think he was blaming the vic, and I thought a few others jumped the gun.

As for myself, you have to go pretty far outside of general expectations for me to have a problem with your clothing choices. But within that wide range, I interpret clothing decisions and style as a matter of judgment, where one relevant consideration is what others will think of you. Given the evidence, groping risk isn’t typically a first or second tier consideration.

Great analogy - this is what I was looking for in the other thread.

I’m a total geek, so I then think, “Well maybe there is a relationship between swimming pool installation and burglary risk. I wonder whether that could be teased out from the data.” I actually believe that. I also think that it’s a dubious crime management strategy. And if a relationship was found, I’d think of it as one consideration among many for prospective pool purchasers.

Personally I think gropers need counseling and therapy. In prison. Breaking rocks.

153

And there’s nothing wrong with thinking that, or with trying to figure out a statistically valid way of analyzing potential connections between swimming pool installation and burglary risk.

Unless you let your attempts at analyzing this very specific issue blind you to the fact that most burglaries are committed in non-ostentatiously-expensive-looking homes. Or that a vaguely defined concept like “ostentatiously expensive-looking” can’t be reduced to any single specific feature such as “having a swimming pool”.

Likewise, the vast majority of groping victims aren’t people wearing so-called “provocative” clothing, and there’s no straightforward objective way to define what “provocative clothing” means in any case.

154

I’m sorry you didn’t feel my point was adequately couched in “diplomacy, politeness, or general decency.” I have heard, my entire life, that my clothing choices impact whether or not I am personally at fault for sexual assault. Do i get sick hearing it’s my own fault that some dude couldn’t keep his hands to himself? Yeah, a little bit. Perhaps that means that I am too close to the issue to be… Um… Generally decent.

I’m just sick unto death of being told it’s my own fault that some dude got handsy. I really am. Maybe that makes me impolite, or not diplomatic, or what have you. Comparing my body to swimming pool installation? I am horrified that comparison would even occur.

155

Perhaps I should simply bow out and let cooler heads prevail.

156

I am hopeful that I simply misunderstood your point.

157

Yeah, IAN M4M and cannot speak for yadda yadda yadda, but my impression of his comment was that he was saying that you made a good point by rephrasing an ostensibly impersonal remark along the lines of “I’m merely pointing out that incidence of groping may not be completely independent of external factors such as what the victim was wearing” as its directly personal equivalent in the form of “part of the reason you got groped is due to what you put on this morning”.

In other words, according to my impression, M4M’s point was that your exposure of the subtext of such a remark as an implied personal criticism successfully made clear its intrinsic offensiveness “in terms of diplomacy, politeness, or general decency”.

158

Thank you, I happen to be drinking tonight and I’m grateful to read that I simply reacted badly. That’s on me, and I’m happy to reread both your clarification and M4M’s original remark with a more charitable, and accurate, reading.

159

Then, again, the same reasoning applies to locking a door. Or being alone at midnight in a dark alley in the bad part of the town. Or driving a car instead of commuting by train. Or swimming instead of staying safely on the beach. The less you swim, the lesser the risk of drowing, right?

Here, you have people reading “driving is more dangerous than riding a train” and answering : “Why do you want to ban cars?” and “Why are you supporting drunk driving?” And nobody is willing to aknowledge that themselves or others are using strawmen and putting words in the mouth of others in order to be able to demonize them. Once again, what fun is there in saying “you’re wrong about driving being more dangerous” when you can instead clamor “you’re an horrible person who wants people to be killed on the road”?

I do believe this is ideological conformism, this one dressed in “progressive” clothes, but no different from any other social, political or religious ideological conformism. Touting the “party line” (“victim blaming”, “cultural appropriation”, “privileges”) whether it’s an appropriate, sensible or relevant answer or not, and demonizing the opposition, defined as anybody who depart from this official line of thought (“you’re blaming the victims and supporting rapists”, “people voted for Trump only because they’re racist”, or in a recent thread here, plainly : “they aren’t humans, they’re animals”) is pretty typical of it. And of course all the while siding confortably with the safe, trendy and popular side (because I believe that people with this “ideological conformism” mindset who, say, clamor their support for homosexual rights in the 2010s when it gets them brownie points wouldn’t have said a word about it in the 1980s when it was controversial and would have vehemently proclaimed their abhorence of it in the 1950s when supporting gays was about as popular as supporting pedophiles is now).

160

I think maybe you’d have a reasonable point if there wasn’t this long history of blaming victims of sexual assault, and retraumatizing them, and all the other horrible things that society routinely does to victims of sexual assault. But this history exist, and therefore attitudes like yours just add a little bit onto that gigantic pile of shit that society throws at victims of sexual assault and related crimes. Any possible good it could do is enormously outweighed by that harm, IMO.