CMV: "Ownership" Explains Some Victim Blaming-Adjacent Behavior

I had this thought while reading the wikipedia page on victim blaming. The part on "the ideal victim" is fairly interesting, I suggest checking it out! Anyway, here we go.

A common dynamic you see in male-female relationships is that the man is generally expected to take radical ownership of a lot of things. Consider a road trip, if there's an emergency mechanical problem with the car, in a typical relationship, the woman might panic and get scared and it'd fall to the man to somehow remain stoic and good-humored while safing the situation and finding a mechanic, or better yet, fixing it himself. Or, if there are plans to go and get dinner somewhere but traffic is bad or it ends up being too crowded or booked up, whose fault is that? Obviously, the man's. He should have known, foreseen and mitigated, yelled and been bossy/intimidating until accommodated, had a plan b, etc etc etc.

Step up, man up, even if it's well beyond your capability or comfort zone, and if you don't display a facade of competence and competence, you're not even a real man. Applies to general household finances and lifestyles, too, and certain emergency situations: the man is expected to somehow take control and be responsible for the outcome, even in situations where he really doesn't have power.

(To be clear, this dynamic obviously isn't 100% accurate and there are plenty of relationships where the woman takes a more ownership role. Furthermore, in the context of chores and things like that, obviously women generally own that with men providing a supporting role, if that. Another counter example is that men don't always seem to be expected to take ownership of their emotional or violent outbursts. So definitely not a dynamic that holds 100% of the time!)

Now here's where things are going to get interesting and probably very controversial. So first, to be clear, victim blaming is unacceptable. No one should ever be sexually harassed or assaulted, no matter the time of day or night, no matter how sober or drunk, no matter how dressed or undressed.

But here's the thing... as a man, you're often expected to take radical ownership of situations well beyond your control, and certainly you're expected to take ownership of the safety of others, especially women, including women you've never seen before in your life, otherwise you're not a real man/gentleman/etc.

This results in what you could call victim blaming-adjacent behaviors. One cannot control the actions of others, but if one is expected to take ownership of outcomes, one must take all precautions required to avoid undesired outcomes. So statements like what I made:

No one should ever be sexually harassed or assaulted, no matter the time of day or night, no matter how sober or drunk, no matter how dressed or undressed.

... simply don't make that much sense if you're taking radical ownership of things. Fundamentally, we must all take ownership of our own safety and security and we cannot control the actions of others. The question might not be, how much are you to blame for the unacceptable event that happened to you, it might be, what did you do or fail to do to mitigate the risk?

Let me make another analogy. I think a man who is drunk late at night in a bad neighborhood, flashing cash and expensive jewelry, all alone, is not really going to get any empathy if/when he's robbed. Not many people might blame him for being robbed, but I bet that most people would think that he was very stupid and should have behaved differently and made different decisions in order to lessen his risk of being robbed.

This is honestly a very good analogy that illustrates the idea of ownership that I'm discussing. It may not be his fault, but as the Man (tm) who is responsible for his own safety, it was up to him to have made decisions and choices, and to live with the consequences of those decisions and choices. I think if you were to apply similar logic or standards to a female victim of sexual assault in similar circumstances, you'd definitely be considered to be victim blaming, when maybe that is not really the intent.

TL;DR: I take the position that the kind of ownership that many men are used to taking for many situations explains some victim blaming-adjacent behavior. Change my view!