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Guys who think women have it too easy speaks to how far things have come in a generation or two. Some don't understand how second class citizen their mothers & grandmothers were in their time.
If you think 50% of the country not being kept as second class citizens has negatively impacted your ability to make it in life, please look in the mirror and reflect on your own failings.
Example: I recall my grandmother opining that women who were assaulted were to blame for their assault, because of how they dressed. That's a hot take even Fox News is staying away from today.
As a counter to your position, imagine a well-dressed man with diamond and gold jewelry, a very expensive watch, and money spilling from his pockets, casually strolling into a slum known for its violence, and all the while thinking quite airily "It's not my fault if anything bad happens to me. No, not my fault at all."
I drive with my seatbelt on not because it's the law, and not because I'm afraid of my causing an accident. I drive with a seatbelt on because I have a duty to myself to take precautionary action against the inevitable irresponsible and potentially life threatening actions of others. Regardless of who's at fault, ignoring consequences does not diminish personal blame for suffering the outcome.
There's a massive difference between taking special precautions while "casually strolling into a slum known for its violence" and being expected to take special precautions everywhere you go all of the time.
Even in the case where someone's freedom to wear a nice watch out in public is threatened by lawlessness steps should be taken to secure the ability for men to walk those streets without fear of being assaulted and robbed. Similarly, a woman's ability to dress herself how she likes should also be protected. If a place exists where someone should reasonably expect watches to be stolen or women to be assaulted that shows a failure of law enforcement. If you want to apportion blame the order is: criminals > law enforcement > victim
Please also don't straw man me again by taking my point to a "massively different" scenario.
And lastly, thank you for silently accepting my point that there are cases, such as the man irresponsibly going into a violent slum, where a person should take special precautions. Perhaps if you can see the need for men to take special precautions then you can take sexism out of the equation and see the need for women doing the same.
Trying to put the focus on the victim's actions and not the criminal's actions is called, "blaming the victim" and it's not an appropriate attitude for people in law enforcement especially to have. And yet - these sorts of stories where reports are dismissed for various reasons (including how someone was dressed) are still pretty pervasive, and the conviction rate still quite low for SA.
The context for my reasoned perspective is certainly there in my post. It's beyond the pale to suggest from it that I'm endorsing or otherwise promoting or supporting a rationale for police inaction and a low conviction rate for SA.
Look, there are reasons companies go through stringent interview processes and background checks for their new hires. There are reasons parents follow up on references for a baby sitter. There are reasons everywhere for people to make responsible efforts to limit potential hurts and damages from other people's purposeful bad actions.
The guy should do the same by not traipsing into a slum. It's a matter of personal responsibility because he personally suffers from the reasonable eventuality of doing so.
When I said this:
> Trying to put the focus on the victim's actions and not the criminal's actions is called, "blaming the victim"
That's exactly what you're doing here - shifting the focus of debate to be about the victim's actions and not that of the perpetrator:
> From your perspective it may reflexively seem that women carry zero responsibility for other people's actions in the example you give. Yet at the same time a woman most certainly has a responsibility to herself, her future self who would have to live with the trauma...the many types of trauma...for knowingly going to an environment expected to harbor severe threats from other people.
I think you'd probably agree that regardless of the actions of the victim, the perpetrator of the crime owns most or all of the blame. Right? To be clear, there's no scenario where you think the victim deserves most of the blame and not the attacker, right?
If all that is true, why die on this hill? Why are you making this conversation about how women choose to dress? Unless it's not true. You tell me.
The history of these things is that something changes to allow them or everyone discovers that they're advantageous, e.g. the industrial revolution happens and for a few years employers try having workers put in 80 hour weeks but then discover that burn out increases errors and turnover and it's better to hire more people for fewer hours. Then politicians rush to take credit for the thing everyone was by then starting to do anyway by passing a law mandating it.
Also notice that the way these things are implemented in the law are asinine, e.g. if you work for more than 40 hours for one employer then you have to be paid overtime, but if you work 40 hours each for two employers then neither of them does. So then employers cap your hours even if you're willing or otherwise have a need to work more to make more money and those people still end up working 80 hours with no overtime, but now they have two jobs with two commutes and two bosses they have to convince to take vacation at the same time etc.
But the alternative mandates (e.g. individuals are effectively or entirely banned from working over 40 hours) are pretty obviously unreasonable to people who are trying to save up for something or start a side business or get out of debt. So instead you have a law which is essentially useless when it isn't actively counterproductive, but that sounds good and therefore allows politicians to pretend they're helping you.
See also employer-provided healthcare incentives, social security forcing everyone to de facto invest their retirement savings in low-yielding government bonds rather than diversified investments, healthcare corporations capturing regulators to limit competition through the law, etc.