Feminists

That isn't actually an entirely reasonable thing to say. Our society does concern itself with fault. All human societies always have. We have laws and we punish lawbreakers. We assign blame and consequences.

It is reasonable, I agree, to help people protect themselves. If anybody had sat me down and somehow managed to get it across to me that the world was not all like me, that hitchhiking around the country wasn't a matter of just exposing one's self to random "bad rides" and the low odds of encountering them -- that there were real bad people out there looking for me (which was what did happen) -- I might have thought twice.

Same thing for many risks we are subject to. If kids were actually talked to about what the risk of unwanted pregnancy is and means, rather than just being told not to have sex, or told to be careful, they might be more successful at avoiding unwanted pregnancy. Equipping people with knowledge and strategies to avoid risks is not a bad thing. It's a good thing.

It needs to be accompanied by the lesson that failing to avoid a risk is not grounds for feeling shame. I've said this about unwanted pregnancies a lot: that what women feel now, when they have an unintended pregnancy, is stupid and unworthy. The same applies to women who are sexually assaulted (who of course may also suffer the shame often imposed on women who engage in sexual activity at all, even coerced). They failed to avoid a risk they could have avoided if they had only ..., and this makes them to blame for what happened to them, because a more intelligent, more worthy person would have avoided it.

Myself, I was excessively smart, but also young, naive and obstinate. And broke; never forget that women don't always have better choices available than the one that led to the problematic event. It would have taken a fair bit of work to persuade me that the risks involved in hitchhiking on a lovely sunny August day with a male friend in peaceful southwestern Ontario on a well-travelled highway, rather than spending the cigarette budget on a bus ticket to visit my parents hours from where I lived, outweighed the benefits.

The lesson I did need was to trust my instincts. That's a really important one for women to get. My male friend wasn't going as far as I was, I didn't like the ride because he was dull and had already given off a slightly creepy vibe, I was going to get out where my friend did and pick up another ride before my route veered off from what the ride had said his direction was a couple of hours farther down the road, my friend said it was a good ride and why not stay with it, and I did. My gut sent me increasingly stronger messages after that, but it was too late.

Give people the knowledge they need in order for their instincts to work, help them devise strategies for avoiding risk and dealing with situations when it materializes. Help them to be agents, to direct their own destinies. In all imaginable ways.

But if they don't manage to acquire those skills, or fail to apply them in some given circumstance, and that is the time someone else victimizes them, never ever let them accept blame, let alone use any discourse of blame in talking about it. Help them to learn lessons from the experience, about themself and about the world.

And acknowledge that no matter how savvy a woman is, there are situations where her strategies will not succeed. Women do not always have alternatives; some women have to work late at night, some women have to live alone without adequate security measures. And all women just have to go out into the world all the time and cannot predict who else is going to be there and cross their path. And women do have to trust other people, and misplaced trust is not always a personal failing.

I'm saying all this because I think it is really important to focus on women's ability to protect themselves, rather than on the normative discourse of how women should protect themselves or are responsible for protecting themselves (and not saying it directly in response to the post above). Given information and help to strategize, that ability will be enhanced. Just saying women oughta do it will not necessarily help them to avoid risks, and it may lead to further self-blaming by women.