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Notes -
"Did you lock it?"
A common trait among my social circle used to be that everyone shared an obsession with bicycles. Few of us had or even wanted a car in the city, and having everyone on two wheels made it much easier to roam down our house party itinerary. Between all of us we had a deep well of metis to draw from; everything from which wheels to buy to the easiest way to make derailleur adjustments. We were naturally attached to our steeds and none of us wanted our bicycles to pull a disappearing act, and so we discussed ways to keep safe.
U-locks were ubiquitous and we'd warn each other of the brands that were still susceptible to the infamous pen trick. Some of us of the more paranoid variety installed locking skewers to keep expensive saddles or wheels latched in place. We'd even caution each other to check bolts anchoring bike racks to the ground, since the U-lock was useless if the whole setup could be lifted away. It wasn't possible to reach full immunity but you never need to be the fastest gazelle to escape the cheetah, just faster than the slowest one.
Naturally, if anyone ever suffered the ultimate calamity of having their ride stolen, we would ask if it was locked and how. There was nothing sadistic about our inquiries. Our questions were problem-solving endeavors saturated with sympathy; we wanted to know what went wrong precisely to help others avoid the same fate. Maybe the local thieves discovered some new exploit in our standard security apparatus, or maybe this was just an opportunistic snatch while they left their bike unlocked outside during a quick peek inside.
"If you do X, you're likely to get Y" is the format to an unremarkable factual observation. "If you leave your bike outside unlocked, you're likely to have it stolen" is just reality and, on its own, is a statement that carries no moral judgment. If the victim wasn't previously aware of this correlation, they are now, and are better equipped to evade a rerun.
The parallels to my actual point are probably getting obvious by now.
Kathleen Stock charges right into deconstructing the surprisingly enduring ritual of affixing the "victim-blaming" reprimand to any advice aimed at reducing the risk of sexual assault. Now, in case anyone needs the clarification: I believe that rape is way worse than bicycle theft. Nevertheless the principles at play here remain the same:
Consider the victim of the unattended bike snatch again. Imparting wisdom on the implacable chain of consequences is about the most compassionate thing you could do. They can choose to accept that advice, and if it is sound then they'll be met with the disastrous outcome of...not having their bike stolen. Or they can choose to reject that advice and adhere to the mantra that instead of putting the onus on cyclists not to have their bikes stolen, we should teach thieves not to thieve. In which case, best of luck with completely overhauling the nature of man; here's hoping their bicycle budget rivals the GDP of a small country to withstand the inevitable and wholly predictable hits.
If your dad or friend tells you to cover your drink at parties to avoid being raped, they are looking out for you and are a good ally.
If the chief of police responds to questions about a rise in sexual assault rates in the city and says 'women should be covering their drinks at bars' and then does nothing else to address the problem through their office, they are blaming victims instead of doing their job.
The difference, as often happens in culture war issues, is between individual-level advice and society-levels policies.
The types of accusations of 'victim blaming' that you are talking about here, tend to happen when one person thinks it's their responsibility to give individual-level advice, and someone else thinks they had a duty to make societal-level policy proposals (or implementations) instead.
There is a whole range of responses that range from "modern women are sluts that first jump into men's beds and then sober up and cry rape" to "while we do our best to investigate every reported case of sexual assault and put the perpetrators behind bars, there are still first-time offenders. Knowing what situations are more likely to lead to sexual assault and what actions or behaviors can identify a rapist preparing to commit his vile deed can help you protect yourself and people close to you" that all can be called "blaming the victim" and yet this range is huuge.
I am also getting strong "red button vs blue button" vibe from this discourse. Teaching women how to avoid sexual assault is teaching them to press the red button. "Don't do this, and your chances of being sexually assaulted are minuscule." And yet there will still remain some women whose literal job is wearing skimpy clothes in front of horny men and flirting with them to get them to buy them a drink. Some of these women will also have no choice but to walk home through sketchy alleys at 1am after their shift. They get raped, everyone says, "well, what did she expect".
Team blue button thinks that if they can get the majority of women to stop self-policing their behavior, we can just clog the meatgrinder. Sexual assault happens to median women, they go to the police, the perpetrator is convicted, everyone is horrified, the moral barometer inevitably edges towards the new equilibrium, soon everyone is watching out for someone trying to sneak a roofie into their date's drink and bros don't let other bros be rapey creeps. Yes, there's still a chance you might get sexually assaulted, but it's shared equitably by everyone.
Do strippers have a notably high rate of getting raped in alleys? They probably have a high rate of being sexually assaulted while actually working(either as a side gig or while on the clock), but it would surprise me if the rate of getting raped in alleys was elevated(I mean it would also surprise me if they were recognizably the same person both on and off the clock).
I mean I agree with your point, we can tell young women ‘don’t go get drunk at his place if you’re not going to sleep with him’ and some idiot teenager will do it anyways. Just seems like a dumb example.
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Or more to the point - does an individual woman following all the advice decrease the total number of sexual assaults by one, or does it just drive their potential assailant to find a different victim that night?
My strongman for the blue button take is that telling women to police their behavior will push the assaults down the chain towards the most vulnerable targets, but does nothing to decrease the overall number of assaults, because it doesn't decrease the number or incentives of potential assailants and it will never be sufficient to actually make it impossible for them to find any victim at all.
If you are a concerned father and actually would prefer that someone else get raped instead of your daughter, give her that advice for sure. But if you're in a position that has a responsibility to society in general, you should be pursuing avenues that decrease teh total number of assaults, and telling women to police their behavior doesn't accomplish that.
Of course, that take can't be 100% true, there is some marginal effect where if a large enough percentage of women police all of their behavior strictly enough at all times it would actually leave few enough opportunities that rates would go down. But the question is whether that means 'everyone has to war burkas all the time and can never be in public unless escorted by a male relative', or if you get meaningful effects at very mild levels of self-policing.
My intuition is no, until you get to really debilitating and universal self-policing the criminals will still find plenty of opportunities and overall rates won't be affected much. And requiring that level of restrictions on women's behavior is holding them responsible for preventing their own victimization (instead of trying to solve it with like law enforcement or w/e), which is semi-reasonably labeled 'victim blaming'.
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