Caiti Voltaire said:I agree, I honestly do. But if there are steps a person can take to protect themselves, and they choose not to take them, there's a lesson in that too.Trolldor said:Speaking as a man how a woman dresses is irrelevant to how she ought to be treated by a man, and in no way does her manner of dress excuse the behaviour of boys.
It's like knowing you're going in a live fire area and refusing to wear kevlar body armour: its not your fault if someone else shoots you, but you still bear some responsibility for not having properly protected yourself.
I think we as a society needs to change how we view women as being victims of crimes. The onus is on women to "protect themselves" always...despite the fact that men are actually more like to be victims of most violent crimes except rape: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States
Yet, we don't teach men to dress in a way that 'protects' them from attack. We don't teach men to always walk with friends, or to not drink at night.
And let's take this one step farther - let's envision a society in which we don't teach women to protect themselves from rape, but we teach men to protect themselves from RAPING WOMEN. Statistics show that men who are under the influence of drugs or alcohol are more likely to rape. So let's change the script to "men, don't drink or do drugs, you may be more likely to rape someone."
Our society is very much a reactive society to rape. We need to be more preventative. The responsibility to prevent rape should NOT be put on the victims of rape.
That's not to say that women should not take self-defense or prepare herself for situations. I'm not naive to think that. But it saddens me that we only look at rape prevention from a potential victim's point of view.
(this isn't necessarily a rant against you, but your point provided a good segue)