No, my stance is that deliberately focusing on criticizing women for not taking precautions that no man would ever have to worry about rather than focusing on the actual bad conduct, PLUS deliberately minimizing demeaning, disrespectful conduct towards women as not being "genuine harassment" has the effect of justifying and/or normalizing sexual assault and/or harassment.

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'But very bright were the stars upon the margin of the world, when at times the clouds about the West were drawn aside.'

Well, the thing about the "Women who don't take certain precautions are foolish" statement is it comes with a hefty side helping of "She deserved it because she didn't take certain precautions" and all fine variations thereof. And that also begs the question of what are the appropriate precautions. I was left with the distinct impression a few pages ago that while I didn't deserve the unwelcome touching I was subjected to in grad school I would totally deserve whatever might happen if someone were lurking in my car because I don't check before I get in (and never even knew that was a thing before this thread happened). This leaves me thinking that the certain precautions required to be an undeserving victim are more ritualistic than anything else - in most cases of sexual misconduct and assault, the attacker was not a stranger. Getting pounced on while jogging or getting into one's car is much less common than getting pounced on by a colleague or supervisor or date or relative or alleged friend (which doesn't mean horrible things don't happen to women at the hands of complete strangers...only that most people who've had something horrible happen already knew the perpetrator). It ends up boiling down to real vs. perceived risks...and apparently, in the case of sexual assault, if you don't observe all the rituals that are biased towards the perceived risks, you deserve what happened when the rare events occur.* Which is sort of like saying the victims of a school shooter are at fault because they failed to wear body armor to class that day.

*An interesting follow-on is a conversation that broke out in Bag End a year or two ago in which one board member was accused of being over-cautious and protective when she gave her daughter some practical advice on how not to end up in a situation where she could be assaulted by her date.

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When you can do nothing what can you do?

And... you honestly think this is what Al is talking about when he referred to "another side"?

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I wanna love somebody but I don't know how
I wanna throw my body in the river and drown
-The Decemberists

I honestly don't know what Al means, because as others have pointed out, he has not clearly stated what it is. However, I do believe that is the effect of what he and others have said in this thread, yes.

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'But very bright were the stars upon the margin of the world, when at times the clouds about the West were drawn aside.'

So you don't know what Al means but still felt like you could say that whatever it was was terribly sad and wrong? You surely see the problem there, no?

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I wanna love somebody but I don't know how
I wanna throw my body in the river and drown
-The Decemberists

But, Yov - V is not saying that Al's purpose is sad and wrong; he is talking about the effect of these discussions w.r.t. women and saying the effect of those is sad and wrong.

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*title copyright: Teremia

'You just said "your getting shorter": you've obviously been drinking too much ent-draught and not enough Prim's.' - Jude (as Merry)

I agree, that is the question Al asked in his first post.

And what was the man’s crime? In my view, his crime was a badly worded query as to why women insist on engaging in behavior that puts them at risk for being sexually assaulted. I also wouldn’t mind an answer to that question. But as the incident demonstrated, that is not a question one is allowed to ask in a public forum.


That isn’t true. It is foolish, imo, to jump into waters you know are shark infested. However, jumping into waters you know are shark infested doesn’t mean you deserve to lose a leg. It does mean that it is less likely you would have lost a leg at that point in your life, had you not knowingly jumped into shark infested waters. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with a person acknowledging that to themselves or to others. Understanding and acknowledging that fact might just preserve their other leg at some future time.


No. You do not deserve to be attacked because you didn’t check your car. But you would have had a better chance of escaping the attack had you checked your car. To understand and acknowledge that might spare you an attack in the future. Has thinking really become so crude that people cannot distinguish between these two ideas?

No one in this thread has suggested that anyone deserves to be assaulted. Continuing to state otherwise is just flat out dishonest (or indicates an inability to comprehend plain English).


And being disallowed from talking about women taking precautions will almost certainly result in more women being sexually assaulted and having their lives ruined. I know which effect I am more immediately concerned about.

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Avatar photo by Richard Lykes, used with permission.

Well, until he clarifies his meaning, I can only go on what he sounded like.

Let's try this:

A. "X area became a site of multiple attacks against black individuals. Police are investigating but in the meantime, caution may be advisable."

vs.

B. "Look, we know that black men are getting attacked in X area. Sure, it's not ok to beat up people because they are black, but don't these men bear some responsibility? A black guy goes to X, and is then surprised to be beaten to a pulp?"

Statement A can be described as being concerned with public safety. Statement B is a blatant defense of racist violence. Yes / no?

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“It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.”

- Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

Yes, I did here:

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A and B are not materially different. A is a warning, and B is a reaction to the results of that warning being ignored. It implies the question, with a degree of frustration -- why did he go there in spite of the warning?! What did he expect would happen?! I don't see how it can be interpreted as a defense of violence. It's more of a lament about the warning being ignored, and the suffering that could have been avoided had the advised caution been exercised.

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Avatar photo by Richard Lykes, used with permission.

B can be read as a reaction to the results; but it can also be read as (and used as) a warning that black guys had better not go to X, or else. In other words, it serves the purposes of the people who are making the attacks: to keep black guys from going to X.

Or to keep women from feeling safe and respected in the workplace.

In other words, these are facts, and they cannot be altered. Those who harm the black men who go to X are not responsible. It's the black men who dare to go there, or the women who dare to work where men rightly work, who must adapt.

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“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

I see a problem, but not the one that you see. I stayed out of the discussion when it was just about the comments of the broadcaster and the subsequent exchange about blaming the women for not taking precautions, though I found it disturbing. But the comments about "not genuine harassment" were ultimately too much for me to disregard, because whatever the intention the clear implication was to minimize the impact of demeaning treatment of women. And I do believe that is terribly sad and wrong.

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'But very bright were the stars upon the margin of the world, when at times the clouds about the West were drawn aside.'

I couldn't possibly say without doing a full review of the circumstances, the guy's employment history, and a lot of other information that only his (former) employers possess. It's certainly worth something that the people who have access to all that info decided firing was in order, but in the current climate, it's difficult for me to just assume the evaluation was done fairly.

Here's a less controversial example, and one I continue to stew over since it hits so close to home:
https://techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/a-don ... f-control/
In brief: a (fellow) male computer programmer made your standard stupid "dongle" joke to his buddy while they were sitting at a tech conference waiting for a talk to begin. A woman in front of them overheard and got offended. Instead of confronting them, she took their picture and used it to twitter-shame them. Both men were subsequently fired from their jobs for the crime of laughing about dongles within earshot of a woman.* Can we agree that this is absurd, and that these sorts of actions, if taken regularly, lead to a climate of paranoia that benefits no one?

* For what it's worth, the woman was later fired by her own employer for defaming colleagues on social media

Yes. I agree that getting shamed and fired over dongle jokes in that context is dumb. Massive over-reaction by those engineers employers and massive over-reaction by the Twitter-shamer as well. Constant filth in the workplace could turn into a hostile environment, but that's not what was happening here. If I'd been there, I would have simply rolled my eyes or, if there was anything actually clever about the dongle jokes, joined in.

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When you can do nothing what can you do?

After reading the article, and while the whole sequence of events was a fustercluck, it's a bit more complicated than it appears on the surface.

First, personally, if my coworker made that joke, I would have thought it was funny. But I'm a manager. If I say, "hey, not cool," staff has to listen. There were a few times when I had to tell both male and female coworkers that something they said was against company policy (usually it was the use of profanity, which is a no-no in the office). Point is, I am in the position of power and can afford to be amused.

Second... I will have to come back.

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“It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.”

- Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

As opposed to a regular person who has to what; pay for the privilege of hearing a joke?

No. As opposed to the person who has no power to tell the jokers to stop.

Bonus points for the Pratchett quote.

I probably should have waited until I had the time to finish typing the entire post, and I apologize as it appears to have preemptively upset you.

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“It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.”

- Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

No, not upset. I get what you mean. I wasn't there and I don't know exactly what happened, but it sounds like one of the two people fired did nothing worse than laugh at the joke his coworker told, so that's sort of a dark example of someone who couldn't afford to be amused. But you meant something different.

Yeah, like I said, I should have waited until I could explain my points. Sorry.

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“It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.”

- Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

Power dynamics at a conference are a little different. In that particular setting it would have been perfectly okay for her to turn around and tell the jokers to knock it off.

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When you can do nothing what can you do?