:shrug: Three nice, explicit and in-context quotes? I've read through, and I've seen some things one might use rhetorically, but I don't recall any substantive victim-blaming as you make out. Still, I'm a busy fellow and maybe I missed it. Just three quotes that can't miss your position on the 'other camp'. Even two, maybe. Shit, if they're bad enough, I'll berate them too.
And that kind of denial of ordinary reason and betrayal of good faith, not any "divorce from evidence", is a problem on this thread.
Well, I've seen quuite a bit of the betrayal of good faith argument on SF in my time. If I might paraphrase Loony Tunes - where all social ordeals are rounded up with the simple claim to gumption and good luck - "Betrayal of good faith? I'm a
victim of it!" And the whole "rape advocate" issue feeds into that same problem: betrayal of good faith, decent discussion and fair dealing. I don’t think it was they that started that, but again, if you have quotes, by all means post them.
Look, I appreciate as much as anyone that people have social agendas of one form or another. We all have something good with which to cure the world, and there's only so much computer time, because Ma has her TMZ ter look at this afternoon. But that doesn't mean we can start sacrificing good people on the altar of our progress, in whichever direction it happens to point. But are these people really evil? Co-opt rather than crucify.
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Uh, really? The answer is "no", and if you think this thread is some kind of complex knot I predict you remain as twisted up as before by that or any other answer.
Well, the linguistics alone are a little more complex than you give them credit for, seemingly, without even touching on the scanty ethics. For instance,
responsibility carries several meanings.
re·spon·si·bil·i·ty
rəˌspänsəˈbilədē/
noun
noun:
responsibility
- the state or fact of having a duty to deal with something or of having control over someone.
"women bear children and
take responsibility for child care"
synonyms:
authority,
control,
power,
leadership
"a job with greater responsibility"
- the state or fact of being accountable or to blame for something.
"the group has claimed responsibility for a string of murders"
synonyms:
blame,
fault,
guilt,
culpability,
liability
"they denied responsibility for the bomb attack"
- the opportunity or ability to act independently and make decisions without authorization.
"we would expect individuals lower down the organization to take on more responsibility"
So there are two errant dichotomies here.
The first is linguistic: one can be responsible
to oneself or
for oneself without being responsible
for the consequences when those consequences are the result of the deliberate, malicious actions of another. That boundary is certainly crossed at the benchmark of reasonability: even in the case of the former ("responsibility
to oneself"), there are reasonability thresholds to the specific issue of personal protection, much as law itself holds up "reasonable doubt" without establishing a numerical or statistical limit, since that would be impractical. Each limitation is essentially – one of Tiassa’s favourite words here - aesthetic. Obviously, no woman is responsible for sexual assault on her person. How could it possibly be otherwise, and who would make such an argument? A defense on this basis is inconceivable. (Then again, I am not a lawyer, and lawyerism does mean that all ethical bets are off.) I believe this is the sense the ‘preventionist’ camp is attempting to convey.
That being said, the counter-argument asserts without statement that
people exist who will take advantage of another person in any given situation. Thus, one has a 'responsibility' to (protect) oneself. That is actually statistically true: there are such people fucking
everywhere. The world is essentially an evil place. Regarding the two camps of thought in the thread, the ‘protectionist’ approach appears to consider the existence of such people as an incidental risk factor without relation to their individuality. The ‘criminalist’ approach seems to regard people as separate individuals, without respect of any inherent risk they might carry. As such, one might just as easily call the two camps ‘incidental risk’ and ‘individualist’, though with a more derived explanation.
So: which is correct? Does the existence of people and society confer an inherent risk rate, against which it is prudent or ‘responsible’ to protect oneself? Well… of course. It would be absurd to argue otherwise. Populations almost always carry a substantial number of such advantage-takers; ESS analysis demonstrates that this must be a sure thing. Each society will vary as to the actual number of such aggressors, but almost all societies will have
some of them – and hence there is a (heterogenous) need for door-locking and caution-taking. I don’t wish to deviate much here, but Tiassa demands elsewhere whether it is just or fair that we consider that any man might rape – or for that matter, murder or steal, which doesn’t come up. Of
course it is fair: as a citizen user in the system, every person has the right to evaluate the relative risk in any other person or situation. Any person might indeed do us harm. Any male might indeed rape. Who can say where the behavioural breakpoint lies? It is not an all-or-nothing evaluation: ethics – again, in a lawyer vacuum – dictates that we use reasoned, socially responsible elements in deciding on our own safety.
Next, is it the attacker or the victim that is responsible for crime? Well, the attacker, of course. These are questions so clear that the answer is almost tautological: there is no mitigating factor that I can think of that would make sexual assault the fault of any other person but the attacker. This answer is a little shorter than the above, clearly: but frankly requires much less explanation and so its a little more difficult to lengthen it. Let's put a test here: if anyone cites this and has read thus far, begin your response post with the word 'blargh'. I'll be checking the next sets of posts and responses to see if anyone did indeed read that far, or just scanned it to fish out phrases to misappropriate. Frankly, I suspect the latter will be more common. But, back on the track of the discussion, it is impossible to imagine any other conclusion but that the attacker is guilty of his or her own crime. Period.
And so ultimately both elements are true: one has an unavoidable responsibility to the self (and I would argue, to others), and one is not responsible for the crimes committed against the self, all other elements being equal.
The dichotomy is errant.
Done.
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We have evidence, from surveys and documentaries and so forth (and my relatives, but hey) that a higher percentage of Canadians leave their front doors unlocked - even in higher crime big cities such as where Michael Moore devoted an entire segment of his gun doc "Bowling For Columbine" to walking up to people's front doors and finding them unlocked (Toronto, iirc). And a lower percentage suffer sexual assault. As do the people in the low crime suburbs around Minneapolis, even when expecting deliveries, where I worked.