blaming the victim

The Mainstream Feminist Case For Not Tolerating Castration Jokes in the Catherine Kieu Becker Case

Posted by figleaf on Sat, 2011-07-16 08:40

Ok, so this is fairly long post inspired by a NSWATM post. It's about the question of whether someone who thinks him or herself a feminist could ever imagine there could ever be a circumstance where Becker's actions could be justified in contemporary, non-fringe feminist terms. The answer isn't just no in humanitarian terms, nor is it just no in never-blame-the-victim terms. It's no in terms of 40 years of feminist activism!

While pondering the problem of blaming the victim in response to limited but loud reactions to the Catherine Kieu Becker, DoctorMindBeam said

You might’ve heard about Catherine Kieu Becker, the woman who recently attacked and mutilated her husband, apparently without provocation. If you haven’t, here’s the short version of the story: They were estranged, and he had filed for divorce. She drugged him, tied him up, waited for him to wake up, cut off his penis, turned on the garbage disposal, and threw it in.

...

We talk a lot about not blaming the victims of rape, sexual harassment, assault, etc. So why is it suddenly acceptable to assume that this guy cheated on her or did something else to provoke it? Not even mentioning that even then, this action is heinous and indefensible. But why are people making that assumption?

It started for me on Facebook. I wrote about the story, briefly, and one of my friends said something to the effect of, “Why do I think that he did something to provoke this?” This morning, it spread over to The Pursuit of Harpyness. Now, I want to don kid gloves for this section. I discovered the blog because they recently gave [NSWATM] props, and so I don’t want to assume ill intent and slap them in the face. But ladies, seriously…

The victim reportedly told the police that her husband—who had initiated divorce proceedings—”deserved it.” Maybe. Maude knows, I’ve been keeping a list of men I think deserve it for some time now (yeah, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, you’re at the top).

No. Just, fucking, no. No one deserves to have their genitals brutally mutilated.

Source: No Seriously, What About Teh Menz?

First of all this is an obvious point: no blaming victims, m'kay?  No speculating about why they should be blamed.  No assuming the victim must have done something to deserve it.

Secondly, as DMB points out, in civil society no individual acting alone has the right to render another person unconscious and then mutilate them even if their victim really is a very bad person.

But third of all?  Almost no matter how you look at it, even if you could construct a case where Becker's husband "deserved" it, in contemporary non-fringe feminist terms Becker's assault is no cause at all for feminist celebration.  In fact quite the opposite!

A few years ago I took a continuing-ed course that included a feminism 101 section (the other two were sex education and communications. Best non-degree course I've ever taken!)

Anyway, at one point the women's studies professor brought up the Lorena Bobbett castration case and pointed out that contrary to popular imagination and conservative Senator's wive's bravado (“I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary,” Wendy Vitter told Newhouse News. “If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.”) most actual feminists were horrified by Bobbett's act. Here's why, here's why this is relevant to the Becker case, and here's why anyone who claims to be a feminist yet celebrates rather than abhors husband castration is a really bad feminist.

My professor pointed out, correctly, that instead of trying to escape an abusive relationship by cutting off her husband's dick she instead could have contacted a number of hotlines, agencies, support groups, and shelters, and relied on a huge array of policies, procedures, and laws that were available and well-publicized in her area.

Instead, in keeping with her deeply religiously-conservative upbringing she didn't initiate divorce proceedings against her husband the first time he came home after sleeping with prostitutes. Or the second. Or the Nth. Because of her upbringing she didn't dial 9-1-1 the first time he physically assaulted her. Or the second. Or the Nth.

In fact, when she'd gotten literally to the end of her rope and began contemplating, and then fantasizing, and then resolving to violently disable her husband in hopes of being able to get away she didn't instead contact one of the many public or private resources that could have helped her non-violently divorce her husband. She didn't try to locate of the shelters that would have helped her quietly establish a new life.

Instead she took it upon herself to wait till her husband had incapacitated himself with alcohol, cut off his dick with a kitchen knife, jumped in the car with some belongings, and drove... not really all that far because she didn't have a plan, didn't have resources, and just plain had no idea there was any real way out to begin with!

In other words, said my professor, there were multiple points where a feminist would have decided she wasn't going to put up with her husband's shit, there were multiple points where a feminist would have known she didn't have to put up with his shit, and there were multiple resources that a feminist would have known she could have taken advantage of rather than put up with his shit, and multiple resources that a feminist would have resorted to long, long, long before.

In other words, Lorena Bobbett did was a triumph of anti-feminism and not a feminist act at all.

Now this long digression is relevant to this post for two reasons:

First, it invalidates any hypothetical assumptions that Catherine Kieu Becker's actions could somehow be "justifiable." Thanks to the hard legal cases, legislative action, social activism, and educational outreach of mainstream feminists the answer is no. Even if there was any substance to speculations or assumptions about abuse (so far at least there isn't) then Becker could, and should, have made use of any of those legal, accepted, and entirely non-violent ways to exit her relationship and protect herself from her husband. Instead her decision not use any of those resources but instead to commit violence invalidates any possible justification within a feminist framework.

Second, any actual feminist who imagines Becker or Bobbett's in terms of "delightful as the thought is of some particularly loathsome men having their junk cut off…” is at best alienated from or ignorant of the achievements of contemporary feminism, or, at worst completely contemptuous of it.

So!

Even if there was ever any justification for blaming the victim of a violent crime Bobbett or Becker's actions would still be a repudiation of feminism rather than a feminist act. Consequently anyone who entertains fantasies of justifiable castration rather than speculating instead about the long chain of missed opportunities to avail one's self of feminist resources is just looking at these cases from at least a pre-feminist and possibly an anti-feminist perspective.

I mean, let's go waaay back up to the top of this too-long comment to that quote I pulled from Sen. David Vitter's arch-conservative wife Wendy Vitter:

I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary,” Wendy Vitter told Newhouse News. “If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.

That's not feminism talking.

Bottom line: do not ever assume that someone who either commits castration (or other violent assaults) on her husband is a feminist. Don't ever assume that someone who approves of such an act is a critically-conscious feminist either. For the most part the clowns and asshats we see on The View and elsewhere around the cable networks are going to have a lot more in common with Wendy Vitter than Shulamith Firestone. And not to put too fine a point on it but the trolls and "harpies" around the blogosphere who've been nodding approvingly have far, far more in common with Spearhead-style MRAs than they ever have or ever will have with mainstream feminism.


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Because Evidently Sometimes "Little Footie Pajamas With Elmo on Them" Constitutes "Dressing Like a Slut"

Posted by figleaf on Mon, 2011-06-06 23:02

Holly has just knocked another one out of the park re. the imputed "intention" of SlutWalk to somehow recruit "sluts."

[Q] Are you encouraging women to act like sluts?

[A] Nope! We're just saying it's an acceptable option.

Lots of people at the Slutwalk were dressed very modestly, and I personally know that some of them were monogamous or celibate. Absolutely nobody was telling these people that they needed to be sluttier to fit in. Slutwalk is not an event to recruit sluts, but to defend sluts.

Source: The Pervocracy

And that's not, incidentally, to defend sluts from rapists (it's about defending everybody from rapists. Instead its to defend against the idea, again somehow shared by rapists, law enforcement, the general public, and and anti-SlutWalkers, that if someone actually happens to be a "slut" then she's got it coming to her because men are either a) unable to control their animal natures or else b) socially sanctioned enforcers of the bogus Two Rules of Desire and don't you forget it.

[Q] What is the message of Slutwalk?

[A] The message of Slutwalk is that SOMEONE BEING A SLUT DOES NOT EXCUSE SHAMING, HARASSMENT, OR SEXUAL ASSAULT.

In other words, if you see someone looking or acting like oh my god such a slut, you let her go on her merry way. You have no more right to abuse, mock, harass, or assault her than you do any other person. And if a slut is abused or assaulted, she did not want it and did not deserve it, and the people victimizing her are every bit as guilty as if they did it to a non-slut.

And meanwhile, there's the issue of what the fuck exactly does it mean to "dress like a slut" in the first place? (Emphasis mine)

[Q] But isn't it safer for women to dress modestly?

[A] Yeah. That's the problem.

Actually, there aren't any statistics on clothing and sexual assault, but there doesn't seem to be much connection. Sexual assault isn't a matter of "she aroused me so much I just couldn't stand it;" it's an act of deliberate violence. The majority of assaults are committed by people who already know the victims. Often the assaults take place at home. Speaking anecdotally from three years of experience as an EMT and an ER worker, most of the sexual assault victims I've seen were wearing jeans, sweatpants, pajamas, even hijab. (Or little footie pajamas with Elmo on them.)

It's that last little bit that keeps me coming back, and back, and back to this topic.

There's more though. And you really should to go read the rest of her post (actually if you're not already then you should immediately subscribe to Holly's RSS feed. In fact if you've only got time to read one blog a day maybe you should stop reading this one and go read her. And I don't say that lightly.)

But one of the points Holly keeps coming back to over and over is the near-uniform failure to distinguish the intense loathing so many people -- conservatives, liberals, libertines, prudes, feminists, and MRAs alike -- feel for women who look or, worse, act like their definition of a "slut" and the little matter that even if someone does offend you to the core it's still not ok for someone to rape them for you.


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A SlutWalk in New Orleans by Another, Locally-Appropriate Name, Might Sound Even Sweeter... And More Spontaneous

Posted by figleaf on Mon, 2011-06-06 18:09

Having defended SlutWalk Toronto and its successor demonstrations with all the curmudgenliness I can muster I want to touch on a dissenting point. It's something that’s really been overlooked by too many people who’ve been looking at the Toronto thing as a ready made template for social action.

Specifically, I thought Aura Blogando’s well-reposted dissent was off the mark in one regard: there’s no way the best response for women in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to take against an asshat Toronto police officer’s aspersions about Toronto women’s attire would be to organize a protest in New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.A.

But she is on the mark that what was probably 100% appropriate for protestors in Toronto would not be appropriate for a similar protest in New Orleans. In fact even the name, which was perfect for circumstances in Toronto (where the word the cop used, “slut,” does not have such deep-rooted historical connotations in race, class, and legal proceedings) would be a disaster in New Orleans (where the word “slut” absolutely does have those connotations and according to Blogando, quite a few more!)

But where I think she, and a lot of other people, got their wheel in a rut is over the expectation that any initiative in one location must be a complete, branded template for every other location. On the planet. Or, worse, that one quickly-spun website in Canada should become the clearing house for all future local initiatives along those same lines.

It would just be a mistake if Blogando were the only one to make it, but she isn’t — since maybe the early 1980s rubber-stamped protests have been the norm not just in feminist circles but most progressive-left ones. (Nowadays it's protesters on the right who at least seem the most spontaneous, motivated, and self-organizing.)

But here’s the thing I think is important, which I think everyone else who’s enthusiastic thinks is important too: it sounds like a “well-intentioned” New Orleans cop would have used a different word to pre-emptively blame and shame rape victims. But it would have still been the same implication and so even using different word than “slut” it would have been just as major an insult. And so there’s pretty much 100% likelihood that flashmob-like initiators in New Orleans (who would not have been primarily white, Asian, east-Asian, and first-peoples Canadians but instead would be white, African-American, mixed-race, creole, central- and South-American, Caribbean, and southeast Asian) would have named their initiative after the word their local asshat cop used instead. Even if that word either had odd or irritating connotations elsewhere in the world.

And the point, which I think is more important than almost anything else, is that that’s what everyone could be doing! Responding in local parlance to local events taking local conditions into consideration in order to produce the highest local impact!

Out of context “SlutWalk” is a dumb name. And I think it’s kind of silly that everyone else is kind of reflexively imitating it title and all. And heck, if as Blogando and others suggest the word “slut” doesn’t have the same resonance in New Orleans or elsewhere then not only does it annoy some people it also isn’t going to resonate with local authorities who’ve been getting away with trafficking the same victim-blaming “advice” for years. So, yeah, in that case rubber-stamping the same name isn’t just uncreative it’s counterproductive.

Which raises the question: how can Blogando and others pioneer real, local initiatives that do will work where it’s needed most?

Because, yeah, why should anyone feel obliged to use terms in their protests that might have worked in the original location but have zero, or even negative meanings locally?

I haven’t been working on Slutwalk in part because I don’t like the name and I'm not sure I have anything to offer anyway that would offset the minor point that I'm a six foot four inch tall man. But I’d be the first person to get behind a more visibly decentralized movement the minute someone starts one near me. And I’ll be the first to get behind a public initiative you or Blogando initiate near you. Because name notwithstanding that’s what I think it exciting about the Toronto event and it’s successors.


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Hey, Now Maybe Ed Schultz Can Interview Gail Dines About Those Dirty SlutWalkers!

Posted by figleaf on Mon, 2011-06-06 16:55

Talking Points Memo says

MSNBC announces Ed Schultz's "triumphant return" to the airwaves after all that 'slut' unfortunateness.

Source: Talking Points Memo

Wouldn't it be interesting if progressive and human-potential activists (feminist and otherwise) spent a tenth of the time slamming MSNBC's decision to "triumphantly" reinstate Schultz, who used the word "slut" in it's usual sense, than they've spent slamming the founders and imitators of SlutWalk Toronto, who organized their protests because they deplore use of the word "slut?"

Because Great Sticks of Butter there's a lot of heated opposition to SlutWalk.  And meanwhile, of all things, MSNBC executives have been more publicly demonstrative against Schultz!

And by that I don't mean that MSNBC execs have been all that great shakes.  Just that too many of the people* who might otherwise have sent testy letters to the network have been otherwise distracted.

I mean, not everyone's been thrilled with the name (I'm not thrilled with it) but you know what?  A lot of people have been thrilled by its spontaneous, non-organized emergence from a single online protest into a very wide-spread, frustration-fueled cluster of independent public actions.

For instance via Jill Filipovic, Jessica Valenti has written

[T]he success of SlutWalks does herald a new day in feminist organizing. One when women’s anger begins online but takes to the street, when a local step makes global waves and when one feminist action can spark debate, controversy and activism that will have lasting effects on the movement.

Source: The Washington Post

Yeah, this is definitely important for a lot of reasons.  Almost none of which have anything to do with the name itself.

Could the organizers in Toronto have come up with a title that was less offensive to collar buttoners of left and right? Sure, if they’d formed a committee and made an org chart and focus-grouped it and recruited Significant Board Members from Around the World and waited for the same brigade of professional-left activists and assholes to show up offering logistical support in exchange for including speakers for their laundry list of unrelated outrages that have diluted every other attempted march and demonstration for the last 20 years. And if they’d known or cared their rump outburst of irritation at a specific word uttered by a specific cop in a specific city in Canada was going to spread to 75 cities and counting then they might have done so.

But they didn’t because, um, they were too busy taking direct action against a direct insult by someone who was so “well-intentioned” but wrong he didn’t even know he had his head up his ass.

And dear sweet mother of pearl, that something like that should take off spontaneously? That it should have bypassed a bunch of amen choir members who’s “activism” consists mainly of leaving gotchas in other bloggers comments? Horrors!

I’m not a huge fan of “reclaim the word X” initiatives (almost 40 years after appreciating a friend’s “That’s Mister Faggot to you” button the word “fag” has lost only a little bit of its sting) I appreciate SlutWalk not just because their intention is more about deploring then word than celebrating it. Because, yeah, it’s pretty much always been a slur and in this instance the Toronto cop’s intention was pure unadulterated anticipatory victim-blaming.  But because they're actually doing something!

It's not that it's the first it’s the first spontaneous mass feminist demonstration ever (heh, um, no.)   Instead it’s the first in North America to originate and translate from the internet to civic action.

I mean yes, yes, the 1970s were a wonderful time for women’s marches! I remember hitch-hiking along with friends to rallies between in Boston and D.C. And goodness knows the sacrifices and successes women made 150 years ago, and 100 years ago, and 50 years ago.

But in the last 20 years though? Well, there was the million-women march (ooh, wonderful giant puppets and always good to see those Free Tibet signs!) And there have been some excellent hyper-local Take Back the Night events.  But otherwise? Not so much. Which is why, at least to me, this is so promising. Because, yeah, we really, really do need to see more activism that's not managed, and not arranged by professionals, and not so routine that the press already knows where to setup their cameras.

But as my dad used to say “you can’t steer a parked car.” I think instead of trying to put the brakes on Slutwalk it might be cool to start crowd-sourcing new points for real-world activism. I mean, wouldn’t it be cool to be able to get a rally going before the mainstreamers, t-shirt vendors, and the YSA “volunteers” and PETA demonstrators sign-waivers could set up for the cameras and otherwise get in the way? I say yes. Too many other people are saying no way… because a handful of non-professional organizers were too focused to pick the “right” name.

Who knows?  Maybe Ed Schultz will to a segment knocking SlutWalk.  To make "amends."

$%!#@y

* By which I mean people on the left: since Schultz used the word to label a conservative wingnut the right-wing noise machine was on it instantly.  Which is probably why MSNBC suspended him at all.


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NCBI Study on Jurors' Perception of Criminals and Facial Hair: Might it Reveal an Appearance-Based "Absolve the Accused" Bias?

Posted by figleaf on Fri, 2011-05-13 13:39

Note: This post started out as a fairly light-hearted entry on the myriad assumptions we make about other people's body hair, but the more I thought about it the more I started wondering if there might be an appearance-based "absolve the accused" reflex similar to the better known "blame the victim" one.

According to the NCBI ROFL curators at Discoblogs

Mock jurors’ perceptions of facial hair on criminal offenders.

“Two studies were conducted to measure whether mock jurors would stereotype criminal offenders as having facial hair. In Study 1, participants were asked which photograph belonged to a defendant in a rape case and which photograph belonged to a plaintiff in a head-injury case after they were “accidentally” dropped. The photographs were similar in appearance except one had facial hair. 78% of 63 participants (or 49) identified the photograph with facial hair as being involved in the rape case. In Study 2, 371 participants were asked to sketch the face of a criminal offender. 82% of the sketches (or 249) contained some form of facial hair. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that criminal defendants are perceived as having facial hair.”

Source: Discover Blogs

I know I keep bringing up stuff like this but the anthropology of body and facial hair is totally fascinating. We just have so many assumptions, prohibitions, mandates, biases, fetishes, and stereotypes related to class, race, religion, sexuality, and, evidently, criminality. All of which, of course, vary from country to country and sometimes year to year.

To be honest, though, this one surprised me. Poorly-shaven faces have been a stock icon for criminality in America for decades, of course, and that in turn has derived from ethnic and class stereotypes. E.g. "the poor" have always been assumed to look shabby and to be criminal; 19th Century WASPs believed Mediterranean immigrants had a propensity for five o'clock shadows and criminal violence; 20th Century America was deeply suspicious of communists, beatniks, and hippies, all of whom were believed to have beards and, once again, to be inclined towards both crime and violence; and here in the 21st Century pop-culture America seems to associate beards with both Islamic and American-loonie violence. So that's not the surprising part.

What is surprising about the study's results, at least to me, is that bearded men would be associated not just with crime in general, or even violent crime in general but violent sexual crime.  (Remember, the research subjects were asked to guess which violent crimes were committed based on photos of men they believed had all been accused of crimes of violence.

Meanwhile if you look at the demographics of the people who really are most likely to commit rape they have a decided tendency to blend in very smoothly with the rest of the male population.

Hmm... You know, as always, that studies, and especially small-scale ones, are best taken with grains of salt at least until corroborated with further, more substantial studies.  But to the extent this study suggests implicit but substantially incorrect assumptions about rapists I wonder if there there might be a social "perpetrator absolving" reflex very similar to the "she must have asked for it somehow" victim-blaming reflex where not only are victims judged on their superficial appearance but so are the accused.

It's not at all cool to assume that a victim "deserved" sexual assault based on something she wore.  It would be equally uncool if it turned out that similar assumptions were made based on the appearance of the accused.

Might be a good question to ask Constable Michael Sanguinetti


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Free-Range Feminist On the Another, Possibly More Important Side of the SlutWalk Message

Posted by figleaf on Sun, 2011-05-01 13:23

Speaking of slut-shaming and victim blaming, I just stumbled across the Tumblr blog Free-Range Feminist. And a few pages in I stumbled across the following image, which is both graphically elegant and absolutely to the point...

Image via Free-Range Feminist Cached as a bandwidth-conserving courtesy
Image via Free-Range Femnist.

But! What I really loved was FRF's comment, about an element I think is just hugely, hugely overlooked.

Or for the police and judges to dismiss the charges.

When you think about it, the main thing that distinguishes rape and sexual assault from virtually* all other forms of assault and battery is that whole "well, she must have been asking for it" mentality. Whole books, blogs, dissertations, and conferences have been held to analyze and discuss the phenomenon of victim blaming. But I don't think I've ever heard anyone mention the elephant-like presence in the room of those who dismiss the charges rather than take them seriously.

Nice to see someone naming names that way: a miniskirt really isn't an excuse -- not to commit rape, obviously, but not to effectively condone it either.

* But see also gay bashing, trans bashing, and xeno-bashing. --fl


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Why "Dressing Like Prostitutes" Simply Doesn't Explain Why an 11-Year-Old Was Raped

Posted by figleaf on Tue, 2011-03-22 12:03

Screen Capture via Sociological Images. Cached as a bandwidth-conserving courtesy
Screen capture of push-up bras for 7-year-olds via Sociological Images.

Sex-work advocate Suzyhooker says

A Florida GOP Rep has jumped on the victim blaming bandwagon by saying that an 11 year old gang rape survivor was dressed like a “prostitute.”

Source: Tits and Sass

I've seen several variations on this story from various predictable suspects and I'm a little confused.

Couple of rhetorical but pointed questions:  Are actual prostitutes (who sort of by definition "dress like prostitutes") are criminally sexually assaulted by approximately 18 assailants in numbers sufficient to warrant Kathleen Passidomo, Bill O'Reilly, and others' allegations that attire was the immediate cause in this case of assault of a child? Second, are non-prostitutes who nevertheless "dress like prostitutes" gang raped in sufficient numbers to warrant the same confidence?

No.

In fact I'm pretty sure that for all the talk on the right, left, and center there's little if any evidence whatsoever that "provocatively" dressed women are any more or less likely to be sexually assaulted than non-provocatively dressed ones.  It's a crime of power, people, not one of lust.  It's also far, far more accurate to call rape a crime of opportunity, not one of "provocation."

I'll just go one step further and say that to the extent actual prostitutes are made targets of violence (and Gary Ridgeway's remarks if nothing else would be sufficient to satisfy my assertion) then to the extent they actually do "dress like prostitutes" it's other factors such as vulnerability, isolation related to the need to avoid arrest that makes them easy targets, not what they're wearing.  (That and, as Ridgeway explained when asked how he was able to murder more than 60 subsistence prostitutes, prostitutes are good victims because society really doesn't care what happens to them.)  Point being that even when prostitutes are attacked it's not because "they're dressed like prostitutes."

So, back to the 'winger lament that the motive for a massive sexual assault on an 11 year old is an open and shut case.

Remember, we're talking about responses to descriptions of the victim.  Pretty much no one who's casting these stones would have had access to direct information.  They just heard something like "halter top" or "short skirt," or allegations by community factions,* added preexisting biases, and just let their flights of fancy take it from there.

Nor should this be a surprise, of course.  For way too many people the single statement that there has been an assault is all the data they need to "know" the victim did something to cause it.

See also:

* The case has allegedly widened divisions in the affected community with the result that it's not clear how much of what we know is spin and how much is actual evidence.


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On the Structural Advantage Held by Predators Vs Victims Who Are Prostitutes or Other Illegal Sex Workers

Posted by figleaf on Mon, 2010-12-27 16:20

Her context is slightly different but while enumerating sometimes-spurious points raised in Manassas, Virginia, in opposition to opening a proposed sex-toy shop, Amanda Hess of TBD identifies one of the entirely impersonal, structural reasons prostitutes -- of all sexes, identities, and bodies -- are so often victimized:

"The author sometimes asks participants in training sessions, 'If your cell phone was stolen at Target, would you report the theft?' 'If the same phone were stolen at a strip club, would you report the theft?' Many people who say 'yes' to the first question demur to the second."

Source: Amanda Hess

Now consider the case of two street/subsistence people of equal evident presence of mind and physical ability, one a panhandler and the other a streetwalker. A mugger assessing the risks while deciding who to rob is going to naturally gravitate towards... which? The one who can file a complaint with the police or the one who can't afford the risk?

Now in the eyes of a conservative Republican on the one hand and in the eyes of Jesus of Nazareth on the other, there might be little difference between a street beggar and a streetwalker. But for too many others, from crusading anti-feminist anti-prostitute activists to serial killers like Gary Ridgeway, the differences are and should remain stark: working prostitutes should always, always be kept sufficiently worried about afraid of arrest that they remain properly vulnerable to robbery, rape, roughing up, murder, or extortion of sex by police.

As always, one needn't approve of prostitution to be appalled by the collateral, non-moral, non-sex-related impact of its criminalization.


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A Way to Think About Blaming the Offender

Posted by figleaf on Tue, 2009-03-24 00:16

Matthew Yglesias creates what might be an accessible, and therefore brilliant, general analogy for the specific tendency to blame the victim for sexual harassment and/or assault. (Emphasis mine.)

To echo Dave Alpert’s concern I think it’s deplorable that this is the standard way of describing what happens when illegal driving kills people:

Four people ranging in age from 19 to 21 were killed early yesterday in Culpeper County, Va., when their car collided with a vehicle that was going the wrong way, Virginia State Police said.

Nobody would ever write “four people ranging in age from 19 to 21 were killed early yesterday in Culpepper County, Va., when their heads collided with bullets that were flying in the wrong direction.

Cars and trucks are, obviously, useful ways of getting around and I expect that people will continue to use them regularly for a long time to come. But equally obviously, fast-moving heavy metal objects are extremely dangerous. The people piloting them have a responsible to be careful with what they’re doing. And people who aren’t careful—especially those people whose carelessly leads to deaths and serious injuries—deserve to be subjected to strong implicit and explicit moral criticism. The common rhetoric of “accidents” the use of the passive voice serve to obscure what’s happening and where the responsibility lies.

Read the quote in context here.

To be honest I tend to avoid driving at particular times of the day, especially on particular days of the year. But I don’t do it because I think it would be my fault if I “collided with a car going the wrong way.” Nor would/do I hold victims at fault for being on the road when cars could be going the wrong way. Instead I don’t go out at those times because there are a bunch of people on the road at certain times who generally because they’ve chosen to render themselves toxicologically incapable of driving their cars the right way should, sorry, be in jail instead of out driving.

My (perhaps egregiously) harsh reaction might have parallels in demographic slices where, oh, say, it’s not safe to exist — let alone attempt to enjoy one’s self — outside… or even inside… without a lot of protective social, logistical, and physical infrastructure. That similarly harsh reaction might be exacerbated by wall to wall, channel to channel assertions that if one does come to harm for existing, let alone attempting to lead a normal life, it is one’s own fault. When, in fact, no small part of the problem is not one’s own behavior, location, or intention but that of one’s would-be or real assailants. And when, in fact, the rest of the problem is apologists for assailants.

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