Premises: We all know how vitriolic modern feminists act towards any mention of victim blaming. The rape victim is NEVER at fault, end of story. You're a shitlord for daring to suggest otherwise. I've been thinking about the origin of this militant attitude for a while, especially since a number of convincing and logical arguments can be made against the idea. What makes it so abhorrent about the point that some women, by engaging in high risk activities and behavior, are responsible for endangering themselves and thereby getting sexually assaulted?

So I did some data gathering and a little research. Here's a perfectly civil thread I posted to TwoXChrom to get a general response from women about my ideas, which I'll paste below because it's interesting content anyway :D

I recently came across the self defence site http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com. The site heavily advocates the use of common sense and diplomacy to avoid and deescalate violent situations, and only resorting to physical action as a last resort against violence. Wonderful advice.

They also happen to talk about the prevention of rape and that's where things get controversial. There's been countless back and forth arguments between rape victim advocates and the victim blamers, and it often boils down to "women have the right to live without being in fear of rape" vs "if women don't want to be raped, they shouldn't do risky things".

I think the site makes very good points about the difference between blame and personal responsibility when it comes to the subject of rape and crime in general. It might be controversial since it doesn't tow the same line as what the radical feminists advocate, but I believe it's worth reading and discussing since it makes very valid arguments. Below are some links to the relevant sections.

Blame vs responsibility: http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/blame_responsibility.html

Deconstructing the rage agenda: http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/RapeAgenda.htm

Overall hub on rape prevention: http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/rape.html

Bottom line: it's your own responsibility to minimize risks to yourself since you are responsible for your own safety. This doesn't have much to do with assigning blame to rape victims, but rather, there are consequences in engaging in high risk behaviour. Here's how to avoid them because it's a choice you can make and that means you have the responsibility to make the right choices.

As a side note, the site also has some pretty neat articles on 'alpha-ness', being assertive vs aggressive, and controlling/deescalating tense situations and confrontations. Maybe worth another post later.

Observation: The comments were hilariously pointless. No one addressed my main point. Yes the perpetrator of any sexual assault is fully responsible for committing the act itself, and of course the victim isn't responsible for the perpetrator's actions. However, that doesn't absolve the victim of responsibility either, since in most cases, the victim had the agency to avoid high risk situations that would've put them into contact with the perpetrator and given him/her the opportunity to act. Here's a pretty indicative comment:

You are responsible for getting drunk and for whatever you do while drunk. You are not responsible for what someone else chooses to do to you whether you're drunk or not. Your comment is still victim blaming nonsense.

But are you not also responsible for where, when and with who you choose to get drunk? You have agency in all these choices, and with agency comes responsibility. (No reply to that except downvotes. Damn, the hamster ran off.)

Feminists focus on the first part to the exclusion of everything else while the second part completely flies over their heads. It's apparently all victim blaming, even when I deliberately headed off that argument to start with. In under an hour, the thread was deleted, despite me not breaking any particular rule.

Assuming the activity on the thread in the short time it was alive is reflective of the opinion of women and feminists in general (a good assumption considering the echo chamber and mod reaction), what does this tell us? I think it's pretty easy to draw the conclusion that women don't want to take responsibility. My observations firmly resound with the TRP sentiment that women should be treated like children, especially this comment that was made in the thread on this topic -

Having agency means having personal responsibility over one's own condition. Women claim to not have agency. They say they are victims. They do it because they want to use guilt as a means to increase their privilege.

Conclusion: Women will never accept the fact that their actions could possibly have consequences against them, perhaps a symptom of their solipsism. In her self centered view of the world, nothing bad could possibly happen to her. That sort of stuff happens to other people. When they go get themselves drunk and fall unconscious in a room full of dubious strangers, it's their prerogative to do so and it's certainly not their responsibility that they put themselves in such a compromising situation. When the risk finally catches up, they need to spin those hamsters and assign blame to everyone and everything except themselves.

To finish up, here's another gem one of the more 'civil' commenters dropped:

[...] the website comes across as victim blamey and it is not the most mature discussion or presentation. It seems victim blamey because they spend much more time giving nonspecific advice regarding behavior and common sense and much less time giving concrete advice. The concrete advice they give is actually pretty good, but I didn't see any instances where they came out and said that being raped is not the fault of the victim, nor did they give advice about how to help educate perpetrators so they don't rape, or advice to bystanders to help correct and diffuse a rapey situation.

Thanks for missing the point.

The bottom line is that in a better world, nobody should have to worry about being raped. We should work towards making that world a reality [...]

It's a nice dream for sure, but if you managed to stop rape, you'd have solved the problem of crime at the same time. Coincidentally, I wonder if this should be achieved by more privilege for the poor oppressed women!