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Notes -
Is this a full blown victim blaming in the most influential printed medium by decorated feminist? Or am I overreacting?
nytimes.com: https://archive.ph/tZn3B#selection-457.82-457.95
How is this different from "You’ve put yourself in a dangerous situation because you’ve done a foolish thing by flirting with that guy wearing that dress"?
The motte of the feminist complaint about "Victim Blaming" type methods as a rape-prevention strategy for women, is that they are being asked to not do very basic things. People accused of Victim Blaming are often telling women not to dress in such and such a way, to go to such and such a place, to never drink to excess, to never trust a strange man, to never trust her boss, to never put herself in a position where a man might have leverage over her, at some point to never leave the house without male escort.
Men, here, are being asked to not fuck crazy, drunk, sluts. There are plenty of happy, relatively sober sluts to fuck instead.
To be fair, I cosign both forms of advice, within reason.
I agree, there are reasonable and unreasonable frames for each form of ‘victim blaming’ (ie advice on precautions).
Stuff like “don’t go into your boss’ hotel room” is reasonable, “don’t drink around men you’re not related to” isn’t always if you’re in many normal environments. On the other hand “don’t leave home without a male chaperone” would be good advice in Afghanistan but would be considered an unfair burden in modern day America. People are always going to have different risk profiles, I’ve had friends who at 17 would walk halfway across Manhattan, drunk, by themselves in the middle of the night home from parties. They were lucky, some people aren’t.
“Accept all possible risks if you decide to deal with women” is an unfair burden on men. “Promiscuity can have negative consequences by making you vulnerable to the kind of damaged women who disproportionately (it’s not only them, as you say, but it is disproportionately them) have lots of casual sex” isn’t an unfair burden, but a fair precaution.
How is the man supposed to carefully screen out "damaged" women though? Where is he supposed to gain that knowledge and experience? From whom and where?
Well, that takes you back to the custom of tradition and the ways people usually met. You can’t know anything with absolute certainty, but that was why you trusted your network of family, friends and community; and why neither party had unrestricted license to behave as they wished.
The abandonment or outright and ill-advised disavowal of that, is what makes the sexual and dating arena as anarchic as it is today. Nobody has a reliable frame of reference for making sound determinations. It’s winner-take-all and everyone for themselves. It’s a situation that can’t sustain itself indefinitely, and will ultimately be replaced by a traditional restoration of one kind or another.
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