After a year of MeToo, survey respondents have become more sceptical

This statement needs qualification. The majority of cases of sexual assault that my undergrad unversity's Title IX office handled consisted of cases where the accused believes sex was consensual. Such as not knowing that the accuser had taken drugs beforehand, the accuser claims to have withdrawn consent partway through but the accused reported that consent was never revoked, etc.

Granted, it could be possible that the types of sexual assault accusations that are reported to the Title IX office aren't the same types of assault reported to the police.

Advice is not irrelevant after the fact. First, there's always next time. Second, other people can learn by example. It's like the advice given alongside car crash pictures shown in driver education classes; this is useful even if the person in the crash is long dead. Learning from the mistakes of others is important.

Today, people are afraid to point out mistakes and give safety advice because it gets seen as "victim blaming". This is a problem.

If you insist on "asking what we can do" though, and you are honest about it, then you've really kicked a hornet's nest. Sexual assault rates vary around the world, and some places change suddenly when the population changes. Good luck having a productive discussion on the matter.

Counterexample: There was a recent episode of Vice titled Consent, which included a mediation between a man and a woman where the man had no conception that the woman hadn't consented.

It's not hard to see why this is common. When you have a power dynamic, even subtle and unofficial ones, someone who doesn't want to consent has an internal conflict. They neither want to participate nor want to harm their relationship with the other person.

Those types of situations are horrifying. If you signal refusal using overtly transparent methods (throw a drink in their face, scream, slap them), they'll get the message but at the cost of making a scene and potentially souring the relationship. If you try to be too subtle they won't get the hint. The middle ground exists, but with pressure on both sides, it's not the least bit surprising that sometimes someone errs too far on the side of not making a scene. I don't mean to blame the victim in a moral sense, but in a technical sense where sometimes the situation is hard and the right balance isn't clear.

In many of these cases it's still fair to blame the other person for not getting the message, but the failure can certainly be in perception rather than intent. In a sense it is very similar to when you hit a kid in the road because you weren't paying enough attention.

Yes, the mugger is morally and legally at fault. Absolutely.

And by walking in that neighborhood at 3 AM you at least increased your probability of being mugged. Morally, people in that neighborhood shouldn't be like that. But they are like that, and you knew it, and you walked there anyway. Morally, it isn't your fault, and yet what you did was definitely unwise. In an ideal world, it shouldn't make any difference where you walk. But this isn't an ideal world, and in the world we've got, with the people we've got, you need to pay some attention to where and when you walk.

But, are you not going to tell your kids, "don't walk in dangerous dark streets at night" and "scream if someone tries to mug you"? No, of course not, because it would be idiotic not to, it's just common sense! Then why wouldn't you tell women (well, people in general), "don't be alone with people you don't trust" and "scream 'no' if someone tries to rape you"? It's common sense!