Objectifying women

[gameslover]

Once again I feel obligated to remind our little flamefest that there is no such thing as being perfectly blameless and being perfectly responsible. However one plans to set the distribution, it is up to debate, but this whole victim blaming fiasco reeks of absolute morality.

Please refrain from making absolutist statements - it makes one look like a fool.

Criminality runs in many forms.

But it doesn't run in a vacuum.

Food for thought.

When it comes to certain things, such as rape, yes there is.

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What the PC brigade are doing, and which is astonishingly transparent, is putting the phrase "taking responsibility" and putting inverted commas arond it to imply and insinuate that anyone who uses the phrase actually means something else (ie that the woman is to blame).

Did you not read my message? That is the official definition of victim blaming, that is, holding the victims of a crime, an accident, or any type of abusive maltreatment to be entirely or partially responsible for the unfortunate incident that has occurred in their life.

How about Perpetrator : Victim :
Blame : 100% 0%
Responsibility : c. 100% c.0%

Listen-when it comes to rape, there is nothing you can do to "try to decrease risk" or "look after yourself"...except not exist, or maybe never go near any human being at all. That's how it works. And if you're talking about your safety in terms of rape, it does apply to the rapist, it means it's your fault for not controlling the rapist's actions.

No, you're not a fool. There's nothing you can do to minimize risk of rape. Period.

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Clearly there is a spectrum of culpability. On the one end, there is the (admittedly unlikely) scenario where a woman literally asks for it; she goes aound the back streets of the red light district with a big sign round her neck that shows an arrow pointing downwards and the words, 'Insert penis here.' I'd say that a woman who goes back drunk to a man's house and gets in his bed, whilst still having the right to say, 'No', would be more towards this end of the spectrum in terms of culpability. On the other end, there is someone who is dressed modestly, walking through a well populated central area, but still gets raped. All that she's contributed to her rape is the fact that she is outdoors, and nobody in their right mind would blame her for her rape in this situation. What I mean to say is that we can't make absolute judgements about whether a woman is culpable for her rape or not; it depends very much on the situation. We have to decide, then, whether wearing sexy clothing is on one end of the spectrum or the other, or somewhere in the middle.

Wearing sexy clothes is nowhere on the spectrum. Clothes have nothing to do with rape. It's been proven over and over again.

In the case of the drunk woman, it's still entirely the rapist's fault and responsibility. If someone passed out drunk in my house, I wouldn't rape them, I'd kick them out.

Also...being outdoors contributes to rape? Are you serious? Plenty of people get raped indoors, so I guess no one should ever be indoors or outdoors.

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Omnissiunt one -

You jumped from responsibility to blame. You said : "All that she's contributed to her rape is the fact that she is outdoors, and nobody in their right mind would blame her for her rape in this situation". No I wouldn't blame her. But, as you say, she contributed to her own rape n some way. Taking responsibility means ensuring, to the best of your ability and knowledge, that you're minimising risk. It doesn't mean getting it right, it just means acknowleding the fact that it's down to you to try. I know what you meant but I'm illustrating how the word "responsibility" can be taken to meansomething it doesn't.

No, she did not contribute. Being outdoors does not contribute to rape. Being indoors does not contribute to rape. I suggest you read the official definition of victim blaming again-responsibility does, in fact, mean blame.

There's no way to minimise risk.

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A friend of mine fell off a bridge today. Got busted up pretty bad.

He was walking on the handrail. "Well why was he walking on the railing?" people were asking. Some even had the nerve to suggest it was his fault for walking on the handrail. How dare they suggest it was his fault.

It was 100% gravitys fault. For anyone to suggest he shouldn't have been rail walking is blaming him. He has every right to walk where he wanted without fear of gravity pulling him to the ground causing him injury.

How dare they suggest handrail walking is what caused his injuries. Statistics show a majority of falls happen in the home so there is no corrolation that suggests handrail walking increases the risk of falling. To suggest he held any responsibility for his injuries would be bullshit as gravity is 100% responsible. Even if people never rail walked people would still be victimized by gravity as if they avoided falling, gravity would just find another to pull to the ground.

Later that day I saw a woman telling her children to stay off the handrail because they may fall, as if suggesting if they did fall it would be their fault. How could they suggest this?! If they fell, responsibility and blame would be 100% the fault of gravity. What did she expect them to do? Stay off of bridges? They have every right to use bridges and walk on the handrails if they wish to without any responsibility being assigned to them if they should fall.

Gravity will always be 100% reponsible and no blame be placed on the victim of falling under any circumstance.

This is why we should all advocate removal of those signs "Stay off the handrail" posted around bridges. It leads to victim blaming and suggests removing full responsibility from gravity and assigning it to the victim. It's fall culture at it finest to suggest handrail walking may increase the likelihood of falling.

If you disagree then that only means you are a gravity sympathizer and push people off bridges or fantasize about pushing people off bridges. How are they on the handrail when you fantasize about pushing them off the bridge?

You're joking right? That's the stupidest analogy I've ever heard. Gravity is not a human being with a conscience and free will that makes a decision to push someone off. A more accurate analogy would've been a human being who pushes another human being off a balcony or something, in which case everything would've been the "responsibility" of the person who did the pushing.

Also, walking on a handrail obviously does play a factor in falling off, but sexy clothes/being alone/whatever does not play any factor in rape. Studies show this. Statistics show this. Rape is not about sexual attraction. It is about power. If someone's gonna rape you, they're gonna rape you. No matter who you are or what you're doing.

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Nothing but sheer emotion behind this. Address my actual points or I'm done here.

There was an accurate analogy there you ignored.

but that example alone shows what nonsense that statement is.

How so?

And, do you claim that a group of friends walking together are just as likely to be raped as a single person?

Yes. Once again, one-the-street attacks from strangers are extremely rare, from what I hear it doesn't even make up 1% of rapes. There's a little thing called gang rape. Also, what if you don't have any friends to walk with you? You can't have groups of friends to walk with you on stand-by everytime you need to go somewhere.

And never going outside doesn't decreased rape risk either since so many people are raped indoors.

It has been proven over and over that all actions rape victims take have absolutely zero influence on the probability of their assault?

Have you read anything anyone said? Look at how often rape occurs in countries where women wear burkas and are never alone and-oh never mind. I guess I was doing something for my friend to rape me huh? Oh, it's my "responsibility" because I was a lesbian, if I wasn't a lesbian he wouldn't have felt the need to try to correct me.

Whether the victim's actions have any influence over the probability of being raped or not and whether it's the victim's 'fault' are two completely different things,

They are the same thing. Replace the word "fault" in "It's your fault" with "responsibility" and it means the exact same thing. The official definition of victim blaming is to place "responsibility" on the victim.[/quote]

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I really wonder why no one is warning women that they should consider living, working and travelling with women only, in order to prevent any possible future danger. It would be kind of unreasonable, wouldn't it?

That wouldn't decrease anything either since plenty of women get raped by other women. And men by women.

So I guess no one should ever go near a woman either, huh? It's your "responsibility" for getting raped by a woman, everyone knows not to go near them!

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Nevertheless, when we say "responsibility", that's what we mean.

If you sit here and say "oh, I'm not racist! I'm just saying black people are stupid and should stay away from us, that's not the same as being racist!" Um, yes it is.

"Its your fault!" and "It's your responsibility!" mean the same damn thing.

They see things in black and white.

Because some things ARE black and white.

As far as motorists go, reckless driving actually does play a part it causing accidents, whereas sexy clothes/whatever have no part is causing rape, so that's a useless analogy.

Be careless = accident.

Rape is not an accident. There's no comparison.

Read the definition of victim blaming again.

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I also believe that a woman (or man, whatever) can, in certain circumstances, take conscious steps to lower their own odds of becoming a victim of rape.

There aren't. Unless you're gonna kill yourself...but then people do have sex with corpses (necrophiles), so that wouldn't decrease risk either, and lol, it'd be your "responsibility" for being dead and you knew dead people attract necrophiles.

If your answer is yes, then you and I will never agree on this topic. I know that I do not blame rape victims for being raped.

No, you shoulder "responsibility" onto them which is soooo different, right?

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Again, In this mind has chosen to be very selective, and bolded the bits where it says the word "responsibility" or "responsible", whilst completely missing the point that those words do not mean blame, rather they are used within a context, in order to describe what the word "blame" means. Classic strawman. The word which should have been bolded was "fault", which is precisely what blame is all about. Responsibility isn't about fault or blame, it is about something quite different, which has been covered by quite a few posters already. Perhaps we should see a definition of the word "responsibility", and see what that says.

You're joking right? The wikipedia page for "responsibility" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility) says "See also: blame". They mean basically the same thing.

That was a dictionary definition put in front of you. If you can actually ignore that, then I don't know what else to tell you.

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I mean, I have said that the majority (yes, other people get raped too) of rapes happen to women in there teens and twenties, which is, in general, as I understand it, is when women are considered the most attractive.

Source? Where are you getting this information from?