Comment by nstents | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nstents | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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.

> 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."

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

I have to take issue with your excising the context of my post, especially where the need for seatbelts is concerned: they're needed everywhere you drive. And even though steps are taken to assure we can drive the streets and roads without fear, yet I am personally to blame for not being cautious in protecting myself. Not because of the law, not because of a lack of societal effort to protect me, but because I ignored the need for personally limiting the consequences of bad actors acting badly. Please don't take this to a reductio ad absurdum argument.

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.

> From your perspective it may reflexively seem that women carry zero responsibility for other people's actions in the example you give

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.

I'm not sure I see the rationale behind your response. Could you please let me know where I victim blamed, rather than endorsed personal responsibility for one's own wellbeing? Is there no case to be made against the well dressed, well adorned man, leaking money from his pockets going into a violent slum? Has he zero responsibility for not metaphorically fastening his seat belt against the bad drivers?

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.

I can help explain.

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.

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