A common trait among my social circle used to be that everyone shared an obsession with bicycles. Few of us had or even wanted a car in the city, and having everyone on two wheels made it much easier to roam down our house party itinerary. Between all of us we had a deep well of
essays I remember from the third wave of feminism covering victim blaming always addressed that, culturally, we didn't tell rapists not to rape, not really, and certainly not with the same vigor we used to police the behavior of young women. as a matter of fact, there was even a lot of media that tacitly approved of boundary pushing, disregarding consent, etc etc. this part of the talk has diminished as sexual assault got drummed out of comedy, cultural conversations around consent and men changed quite a bit, and on balance the changes may have left half of the victim blaming conversation standing a bit awkwardly by itself.
The amount of throat-clearing that even someone like Stock has to do to make an obvious commonsense point is what makes our culture so stultifying and exhausting.
I use the same analogy of bike lock and bike theft in my head whenever this topic comes up.
I can't really think of any other crime where the response is essentially "somebody should tell those rotten criminals to stop criming". Like, when mass shootings happen and there are renewed calls for more gun control, nobody is saying "that's just a distraction from the real issue which is that somebody needs to teach these (mostly) young (mostly) white (mostly) men that shooting up schools is *wrong*".
> even in forums dedicated specifically to grief, when someone posts about a COVID death, often the first thing people ask is whether the person was vaccinated.
In my opinion this urge comes from the fear/panic caused by imagining a horrible fate like dying of COVID (or being raped). I want to believe that this won't happen to me, so I start looking for differences in circumstances between myself and the victim. It doesn't even have to be something the victim chose. For example, when I read about the latest shooting victim in my city I may comfort myself by noting that it was not where I live. And I think that when a victim hears us asking these questions they can tell that part of the goal is to distance ourselves from them, to establish that they are the kind of person that this happens to, while we are not. So even if we do not say or imply that they "deserved" what happened, they may perceive a lack of empathy.
Having made a similar point as Stock back in 2019, only to go viral and be informed by thousands how wrong and awful I was, I fear that this excellent effort at analogy will still fail to make an obvious point clear. Of course there is no piece of advice that will end all rape. Of course the rapist, not the victim, is responsible for his conduct.
And yet, doing whatever one can to avoid the harm, even if that means the teaching the victim to defend herself if possible, promoting safe behaviors and taking the initiative to say "no" to anything she's not comfortable with, would reduce the incidence of rape. Isn't that the point, you ask? Not if it means placing any onus on the victim, no matter how small, easy or reasonable, as that would shift the burden off the rapist, no matter how slightly. And that is politically unacceptable. Better your bike be stolen than you be required to lock it up.
I get this and I do find it a good analogy for advising women on how to avoid rape, *but* I‘ve also recently noticed how many people will point out how a tragedy was avoidable and then conclude that they will therefore have *no empathy whatsoever* with the victims (one recent example would be the case of the imploded submarine).
Maybe this attitude is what people are thinking about when they detect victim blaming in practical advice.
I think one problem that the “don’t blame the victim” discourse is trying to address, which does not exist with bike thieves, is that most rapists are someone the survivor knows and who is in the broader social scene. There are a number of crimes like this and many of them have a similar profile to rape - people just commit the crimes and victims/ survivors will often just deal without even warning their friends or trying to get anything evened out within their social scene, because nobody wants to hear about it. It’s not like a bike theft where you are unlikely to know who stole the bike.
Whenever someone makes the argument that we need to teach criminals to stop doing crime, that Beach Boys song, Wouldn't it be Nice, starts going through my head. Sure, it would be great to live in a crime free utopia where you could leave an unlocked bike any old place and not worry about it. But we don't. And wishing won't make it so.
But I once left my bike unlocked and it didn't get stolen, plus I have a friend who knows a guy that got his locked bike stolen. And I'm sure some bike thieves are actually good people on hard times, its wrong to blame people for society's problems. And it is wrong to tell people its their fault for getting their bike stolen. And really moat people who own bikes are more privileged than the people who steal them, so they shouldn't complain. And actually it might be better to redistribute the wealth of bikes to the needy via bike theft. And the idea that most bike thefts are committed by POC means that complaining about bike thefts is contributing to a racist trope. And most bike thefts are non violent, should this even be a crime? Private property is nothing but a way for the rich to deny others the things they claim to own.
Some people, when venting about a calamity that allegedly happened to them, are not looking for a solution, but sympathy. So they’d rather hear things that soothe them rather than trying to avoid the situation next time. I feel like there’s some of this going on here.
Here’s the flip side- the threat of rape is used to actively corral women and curtail their public freedom. This is writ large in Muslim countries- never go anywhere without a relative male- but even outside Saudi, you realise that women from these communities are being effectively controlled by the implicit threat of rape if they go out alone, go for an unaccompanied walk, talk to someone their family doesn’t approve of.
It happens to a lesser extent with women from western countries. You think we don’t know? You think we don’t take measures to protect ourselves?? Of course we fucking do: that’s why we get pissed off when some dipshit gives their “advice”- we already live in ducking fear, what less do you want is to do now?
Saying you’ll step up and make public spaces safer never seems to be a possibility does it? Maybe we should just let women carry guns and have done with it.
essays I remember from the third wave of feminism covering victim blaming always addressed that, culturally, we didn't tell rapists not to rape, not really, and certainly not with the same vigor we used to police the behavior of young women. as a matter of fact, there was even a lot of media that tacitly approved of boundary pushing, disregarding consent, etc etc. this part of the talk has diminished as sexual assault got drummed out of comedy, cultural conversations around consent and men changed quite a bit, and on balance the changes may have left half of the victim blaming conversation standing a bit awkwardly by itself.
The amount of throat-clearing that even someone like Stock has to do to make an obvious commonsense point is what makes our culture so stultifying and exhausting.
I use the same analogy of bike lock and bike theft in my head whenever this topic comes up.
I can't really think of any other crime where the response is essentially "somebody should tell those rotten criminals to stop criming". Like, when mass shootings happen and there are renewed calls for more gun control, nobody is saying "that's just a distraction from the real issue which is that somebody needs to teach these (mostly) young (mostly) white (mostly) men that shooting up schools is *wrong*".
I think there is another aspect to this. Consider the recent example is unvaccinated people dying of COVID: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/01/unvaccinated-covid-deaths-secret-grief/621269/
> even in forums dedicated specifically to grief, when someone posts about a COVID death, often the first thing people ask is whether the person was vaccinated.
In my opinion this urge comes from the fear/panic caused by imagining a horrible fate like dying of COVID (or being raped). I want to believe that this won't happen to me, so I start looking for differences in circumstances between myself and the victim. It doesn't even have to be something the victim chose. For example, when I read about the latest shooting victim in my city I may comfort myself by noting that it was not where I live. And I think that when a victim hears us asking these questions they can tell that part of the goal is to distance ourselves from them, to establish that they are the kind of person that this happens to, while we are not. So even if we do not say or imply that they "deserved" what happened, they may perceive a lack of empathy.
Having made a similar point as Stock back in 2019, only to go viral and be informed by thousands how wrong and awful I was, I fear that this excellent effort at analogy will still fail to make an obvious point clear. Of course there is no piece of advice that will end all rape. Of course the rapist, not the victim, is responsible for his conduct.
And yet, doing whatever one can to avoid the harm, even if that means the teaching the victim to defend herself if possible, promoting safe behaviors and taking the initiative to say "no" to anything she's not comfortable with, would reduce the incidence of rape. Isn't that the point, you ask? Not if it means placing any onus on the victim, no matter how small, easy or reasonable, as that would shift the burden off the rapist, no matter how slightly. And that is politically unacceptable. Better your bike be stolen than you be required to lock it up.
„There was nothing sadistic about our inquiries.“
I get this and I do find it a good analogy for advising women on how to avoid rape, *but* I‘ve also recently noticed how many people will point out how a tragedy was avoidable and then conclude that they will therefore have *no empathy whatsoever* with the victims (one recent example would be the case of the imploded submarine).
Maybe this attitude is what people are thinking about when they detect victim blaming in practical advice.
I think one problem that the “don’t blame the victim” discourse is trying to address, which does not exist with bike thieves, is that most rapists are someone the survivor knows and who is in the broader social scene. There are a number of crimes like this and many of them have a similar profile to rape - people just commit the crimes and victims/ survivors will often just deal without even warning their friends or trying to get anything evened out within their social scene, because nobody wants to hear about it. It’s not like a bike theft where you are unlikely to know who stole the bike.
Whenever someone makes the argument that we need to teach criminals to stop doing crime, that Beach Boys song, Wouldn't it be Nice, starts going through my head. Sure, it would be great to live in a crime free utopia where you could leave an unlocked bike any old place and not worry about it. But we don't. And wishing won't make it so.
But I once left my bike unlocked and it didn't get stolen, plus I have a friend who knows a guy that got his locked bike stolen. And I'm sure some bike thieves are actually good people on hard times, its wrong to blame people for society's problems. And it is wrong to tell people its their fault for getting their bike stolen. And really moat people who own bikes are more privileged than the people who steal them, so they shouldn't complain. And actually it might be better to redistribute the wealth of bikes to the needy via bike theft. And the idea that most bike thefts are committed by POC means that complaining about bike thefts is contributing to a racist trope. And most bike thefts are non violent, should this even be a crime? Private property is nothing but a way for the rich to deny others the things they claim to own.
I'm sure I could go on... /s
Some people, when venting about a calamity that allegedly happened to them, are not looking for a solution, but sympathy. So they’d rather hear things that soothe them rather than trying to avoid the situation next time. I feel like there’s some of this going on here.
Here’s the flip side- the threat of rape is used to actively corral women and curtail their public freedom. This is writ large in Muslim countries- never go anywhere without a relative male- but even outside Saudi, you realise that women from these communities are being effectively controlled by the implicit threat of rape if they go out alone, go for an unaccompanied walk, talk to someone their family doesn’t approve of.
It happens to a lesser extent with women from western countries. You think we don’t know? You think we don’t take measures to protect ourselves?? Of course we fucking do: that’s why we get pissed off when some dipshit gives their “advice”- we already live in ducking fear, what less do you want is to do now?
Saying you’ll step up and make public spaces safer never seems to be a possibility does it? Maybe we should just let women carry guns and have done with it.
Was bill burr your inspiration for this text he said something similar