So she was skimpily dressed. Did she deserve to be molested?
Being drunk (as a male and thus being excused from disrespectful behaviour) in itself is not a good enough excuse, especially if one voluntarily gets himself drunk with the knowledge that he might commit such acts. Perhaps it does mitigate the act to a certain degree, but it in no way absolves responsibility.
I do not think that a woman ever "deserves it" or "was asking for it". Unless she fully and unreservedly gives VERBAL consent, no man can claim that she had it coming. It is the responsibility of the man to ensure that she has given him full consent, and not the other way round where he 'assumes' that she wants it until she says 'no'. Simple reason: it's HER body, and he has no right to it unless she gives him permission.
Intoxication vitiates consent.
Therefore, it is not the responsibility or the fault of a woman that a man treats her badly, regardless of her dressing or behaviour. It might be tasteless and unbecoming but that does not warrant unwelcome physical contact. Women need to take responsibility - they need to claim ownership of their bodies, develop self-respect, respect men as creatures of sufficient mental capacity to make proper choices, and not tolerate such behaviour.
I think that the issue is that society tends to confuse guilt with foolishness. It is not a crime to be dumb, as it is not a crime to walk down a deserted back alley at night carrying a bag full of cash. It is a crime to mug, and the mugger can't say : "Oh well she happened to be there with a whole wad of cash" and expect to be let off. We need to address both issues: women need to smarten up and develop self-respect and violators need to be punished.
It more of an issue of respect for women and their bodies - we want to live in a world where women do not need to take the extra precaution to put themselves out of harm's way because the harm does not exist. It's like hoping to live in a world where the colour of your skin does not matter and does not fix you in a particular social class. It still does, but there is ample social awareness and effort taken to lessen the effects.
The gender issue is systemic and institutional, and social attitudes can change for the better. The burden on women to "keep themselves out of harm's way", while necessary for now, is not something that we should hope to keep.
Again, we need to work through both avenues, and women, really really need to learn to respect themselves and to take ownership of their own bodies: To be responsible for them, and to enjoy them.
3 comments:
Something to consider, although this does depend on the reaction to each scenario by each individual.
You gave the example of a woman doing something - whatever that might be, such as being dressed provocatively or whatever - and walking down a dark alley with a lot of cash. And you use this to analogize fault.
Having had the same "they deserved it" impulse to each, I think it's necessary to point out a few things:
1) I think that my reactions, and (if you probe deeper into those of others, even Justice McLung), you'd find that the unifying feature is personal responsibility, which rather vitiates the "sexual prejudice" response. If I believe a white male who walks down a dark alley with a wad of cash is somehow partly responsible for the consequences, as would be e.g. the girl involved in Ewanchuck, the gendered theory doesn't explain my reaction to why the white male deserved his consequences. Personal responsibility does.
2) That said, I must stress that you MUST NOT conflate criminality and culpability, and you make a fatal error in your argument by doing so. One CAN hold someone partially responsible for the consequences of their behaviour, even if you would not wish that on them. Take any example of people (always guys) on FailBlog tripping and falling or whatever. Or take a kid from my hometown who made a pipe bomb in school, then blew himself up when he set it off. I certainly wouldn't wish those consequences on them, and certainly not as a "punishment" even if we assume a crime has been committed. Which often isn't the case (see e.g. walking down a dark alleyway with a wad of cash).
In other words, you and I have the same conclusion but reach it different ways. You see society imposing guilt for foolishness, I see society attributing a portion of the blame. I don't think many people would say that a woman deserves to be raped for wearing a skirt anymore than a man deserves to be beaten up and mugged because he carries a wad of cash down an alley.
BUT, I think society (if we assume the existence of one) extends its collective protections on the assumption that people act responsibly within reason. That's why, to use an extreme example, while most of us would lynch a soda pop company that sold poisonous pop, most of us would have distinctly less sympathy for someone (of unimpaired capacity) who indiscrimiinately drinks from random bottles and then finds him (and it WOULD be a man!) -self poisoned.
And, I should add, the obvious rebuttal is that a woman dressing as she wants is perfectly appropriate as her right, and we should not be quick to judge the consequences that bafall her. Why blame the victim when there's a criminal on the loose?
For the same reason as why we blame the guy in the alleyway.
Certainly, you have a RIGHT to walk wherever you want, too, but that doesn't mean you can be completely excused from an obligation to consider the realities of human interaction, any more than your right to go outside in any weather does not mean you're absolved from responsibility because you refused to but on any clothes in the dead of an alpine winter.
Ah ha!!! 2 things!
1. I don't agree with your approach to apportioning the blame. I think there is a difference in quality to the contribution that both victim and perpetrator and apportioning blame seems to suggest that we're looking at the same blob of blame and we're divvying it up. It's not! Yes they contributed to the ultimate harm, but how they did so is not culpable. Finally, the harm (being mugged, being raped) is not contingent on their initial non-culpable contribution, and their initial non-culpable contribution is neither necessary nor required for the harm to materialize and should not be considered in the issue of 'blame'. I know you deal with that by stating that we should not conflate criminality and culpability, and I guess I agree with you in principle, i just don't think what they did was culpable because they are not responsible for what happened. That's from a legal perspective I guess.
2. But on that note, I agree that women need to be responsible for their safety. But it goes beyond dressing decently and not walking down dark alleys. Yes I shouldn't wander around dark alleys in my bra and miniskirt and if I do get into trouble, not amount of legal recourse will undo the harm. But being responsible isn't just staying out of trouble, it's about empowerment, and being active in removing trouble from the world. At the end of the day, women need to understand more then no means no, that yes means yes. ;)
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