Telling women to be careful gets men off the hook
"Women should be free to talk to whomever they choose and go wherever they want without threat of assault. Men have the choice to either create this freedom, or uphold the threat." The thing is that it feels like everybody needs to be guarded and vigilant but it's only women who seem to get berated with that message, mostly by men, which is funny because the stats are pretty clear. Whenever I feel defensive about this -- you know, I wouldn't walk through town on my own in the middle of the night, there's threat around every corner, whatever -- I have to catch myself and remember that it really is worse for women. I still think anyone who gets so shit-faced drunk that they have no idea what they're getting into is fucking stupid, because we clearly don't live in a perfect world where we can do that without blundering into danger we would otherwise avoid. But that often turns straight into victim blaming -- especially when the victim is a woman -- which immediately clouds the issue and is so damaging because, let's face it, the bastards who take advantage of these situations are the only ones to blame. The onus shouldn't be on the victim when the one perpetrating the crime -- any crime -- could choose not to do it. #link