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Whenever the subject of feminist narratives comes up on this forum, one of the recurring arguments is that feminist messaging is ineffective, self-defeating even, the usual reason being given that it doesn’t reach the men it’s supposed to reach, and only reaches men who don’t need feminist messages in the first place because they’re pretty much acculturated in a feminist milieu anyway. (I know all this doesn’t necessarily sound fair or unbiased, but let’s ignore that for a moment.)
The most fitting example of this that is usually mentioned is the message that “we need to teach men not to rape”, which is supposedly a favorite of feminist activists on college campuses, corporate HR boards and elsewhere. Apparently they promote essentially the same idea as a great tool to combat sexual assault and harassment.
I don’t think I need to explain in detail why this argument sounds so dumb to the average man. Even when I come up with the most benevolent interpretation of this tactic that I can think of, it still seems misguided and, well, dumb. But then it occurred to me: the message makes 100% sense if we start from the assumption that modern feminists, eager to right cultural wrongs of the past that they perceive, really want to make sure their messaging never ever entails even a hint of the notion that women need to exercise any level of agency in order to avoid rape, assault or harassment of any type i.e. avoid bad men, because in all cases that would be “victim blaming” and horrific etc.
From that perspective, it all makes sense, sort of. Am I correct, or is there something else going on as well?
Why is "victim blaming" in quotes? You're actually blaming the victim. This is the second post I've seen this morning asking women to have more agency over being raped or assaulted.
You shouldn't have to actively cover your drink at a bar or avoid walking through a busy park in broad daylight because you may be forced into a portapotty and raped by a vagrant, or not take the subway becauss you mignt get groped.
Don't rape messaging isn't going to reach the criminals perpetrating these acts. But if you're correct in that is about avoiding putting blame on the victims, it is clearly still needed.
There must be some distinction to be drawn between "victim blaming" and "victim warning" though right? If a woman is raped, it would be victim blaming to tell her "well that's too bad, maybe you shouldn't have walked through the park", but the idea that teaching women to avoid walking alone in a park in a bad part of town is victim blaming and must be avoided at all costs just seems like an overextension of the concept to me.
There are signs all over San Francisco warning people not to leave valuables inside their cars, but this is never presented as some awful example of victim blaming. The only time this over-extension of the concept seems to take place is when anyone is asking women to have any agency over their own safety.
Crime can typically be thought of as a supply and demand problem and the best way to prevent crime is to attack both sides of the problem.
Yeah, the difference between victim blaming and victim warning is whether you think public policy and social norms should be shaped to protect victims as much as possible.
You can want that and also warn victims, or you can 'warn' victims as an alternative to doing that.
OP seems to be pretty explicitly saying that those things should be shaped to protect victims less, and place the burden of self-defense on the victims instead. That's not 'warning.'
I'm not sure I understand your view here. Warning victims seems like it would fall pretty squarely under protecting victims as much as possible, even if it isn't the only thing that would fall under that heading.
Maybe this is an example of two movies on one screen, but I didn't get that impression from the OP at all. OP isn't saying that public policy and social norms shouldn't be shaped to protect victims, but rather that the current attempts to do that are not very effective and are needlessly narrow in scope.
IANAL, but I think in legal terms I would be referring to mens rea.
Basically, you cannot distinguish whether or not someone is victim blaming from the simple fact of 'they mentioned something women could do to be safer'; that is an act that both victim-blamers and victim-defenders might do. What determines it is how that warning falls into their larger worldview on the topic, and what they are intending to accomplish with the warning.
If your view is 'society as a whole needs to do everything it can to protect potential victims, and giving them important knowledge about how to avoid danger is one part of that effort', you're not a victim-blamer and your warnings are fine and good.
If your view is 'people need to take individual responsibility for their own safety, we should educate them about the dangers but if they don't protect themselves after that then it's on their own heads,' then you are a victim-blamer, and your warnings are kind of sinister and instrumentally harmful.
Is it confusing that the same action can be good or bad depending on the intent behind it and the larger framework it is embedded in? Yeah, it sure confuses the shit out of me all the time! But that's unfortunately just true sometimes in the highly complicated realms of society and culture and politics, and us high-decouplers just have to acknowledge that reality and do the hard work of thinking about it.
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