Serena Williams' comments on rape victim

marplots said:
Is this a general principle one can use to evaluate other crimes or is it limited to rape?

If I leave my car unlocked in a high crime area, do I bear some responsibility when I become a victim of theft, or is that out of bounds as well?
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Good question. A lot of people seem to have difficulty making the distinction between blaming the victim and offering sensible advice to avoid dangerous situations. If I tell you not to leave your car in a high crime area, that's simply good advice. If your car gets stolen or broken into in that neighborhood, it's not your fault, it's the fault of the criminals. Naturally, people shouldn't break into cars or steal them, but people do. It happens. So the advice is to not leave your car there. It's called watching out for oneself. It can't be blaming the victim if you haven't become a victim yet! Helping someone to not become a victim is not "blaming the victim."

The problems with things people say arise when someone attempts to state the "advice" after the fact. Saying, "It's your fault for leaving your car there," is blaming the victim. People also get into trouble when they make statements that straddle the line between advice and blame, such as "You should have expected that would happen." More than likely, they mean one thing but they're saying another, or expressing it badly. Unfortunately, there are too many public figures being quoted saying things like this and they don't seem to realize what they are really saying, and when they try to clarify it, it sounds like back-pedaling. Mind you, I'm making no apologies or excuses for the parade of congressman who have said some mind-numbingly stupid things about rape in the last year or so.
 
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Babbylonian said:
As a society, in our laws, the US has pretty much done away with the "she was asking for it" rapist excuse. The quoted comments indicate that Ms. Williams disagrees with that.
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People like you are the likely reason she put "what I supposedly said".
 
Babbylonian said:
No, the bad message is the victim-blaming inherent in a "what did she expect" comment. Reasonable people react poorly to that. The second quoted comment makes clear that she thinks a woman who is drugged isn't responsible but a woman who voluntarily gets drunk is - you see, "that's different."

As a society, in our laws, the US has pretty much done away with the "she was asking for it" rapist excuse. The quoted comments indicate that Ms. Williams disagrees with that.
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No. There is no such comment. There is an admonition not to put yourself in a bad situation. You can argue with how it was worded, but you must be looking for offense to find offense.
 
Psi Baba said:
Good question. A lot of people seem to have difficulty making the distinction between blaming the victim and offering sensible advice to avoid dangerous situations. If I tell you not to leave your car in a high crime area, that's simply good advice. If your car gets stolen or broken into in that neighborhood, it's not your fault, it's the fault of the criminals. Naturally, people shouldn't break into cars or steal them, but people do. It happens. So the advice is to not leave your car there. It's called watching out for oneself. It can't be blaming the victim if you haven't become a victim yet! Helping someone to not become a victim is not "blaming the victim."

The problems with things people say arise when someone attempts to state the "advice" after the fact. Saying, "It's your fault for leaving your car there," is blaming the victim. People also get into trouble when they make statements that straddle the line between advice and blame, such as "You should have expected that would happen." More than likely, they mean one thing but they're saying another, or expressing it badly. Unfortunately, there are too many public figures being quoted saying things like this and they don't seem to realize what they are really saying, and when they try to clarify it, it sounds like back-pedaling. Mind you, I'm making no apologies or excuses for the parade of congressman who have said some mind-numbingly stupid things about rape in the last year or so.
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I agree, and I grow tired of accusations of blaming-the-victim-for-the-crime when in fact what is happening is blaming-the-victim-for-not-managing-manageable-risk.

The rapists in Steubenville are 100% responsible for the rape. The girl bears no share of that responsibility. None at all. Get that clear.

That is not to say, however, that the victim bears no blame for anything at all.

You put yourself in a position in which the likelihood of being raped was greatly increased, and you did it for no reason other than you wanted to party.

That statement is absolutely not the same as:

The rape was partly your fault.

The statement also does not mean that I think there should be consequences of legal or civil sort for what I see as a shortcoming on the victim's part, nor does it mean that I think the consequences for the rapists should be reduced.

The victim did something stupid. The fact that she was raped as a result does not mean that the stupidity cannot be pointed out.
 
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There's a time and a place

Babbylonian, you get it, and thanks for your articulate comments in this thread.

Serena does too, now. And I'm glad she acknowledged the comments attributed to her are hurtful and insensitive.
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Garrette said:
I agree, and I grow tired of accusations of blaming-the-victim-for-the-crime when in fact what is happening is blaming-the-victim-for-not-managing-manageable-risk.

The rapists in Steubenville are 100% responsible for the rape. The girl bears no share of that responsibility. None at all. Get that clear.

That is not to say, however, that the victim bears no blame for anything at all.

You put yourself in a position in which the likelihood of being raped was greatly increased, and you did it for no reason other than you wanted to party.

That statement is absolutely not the same as:

The rape was partly your fault.

The statement also does not mean that I think there should be consequences of legal or civil sort for what I see as a shortcoming on the victim's part, nor does it mean that I think the consequences for the rapists should be reduced.

The victim did something stupid. The fact that she was raped as a result does not mean that the stupidity cannot be pointed out.
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Seconded.
 
Babbylonian said:
Okily dokily. Count me as over-sensitive then.
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Don't get me wrong. I have a teenage daughter, and if she were raped or assaulted in any form, I would probably physically attack anyone who came up to me or her and said something that was not entirely sympathetic, and if some celebrity made a comment like Serena Williams did, my emotional reaction would be unfavorable.

But this is not an emotional environment here, and even in the event of such a crime against my daughter, I do not want my emotional reactions to be the cause of wrongful condemnation of others.
 
I agree with those who are saying this is manufactured outrage. Still, it sure feels good to say, "How dare she say such and such a thing! How dare she...! How DARE she! HOW DARE SHE!"
 
I can't stand that. Either don't apologize, or actually apologize. A hedged apology like that is just an insulting way of saying "I'm sorry this has damaged my public image."
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Seconded.

Garrette said:
No. There is no such comment. There is an admonition not to put yourself in a bad situation.
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I can't believe this is so difficult for some people to understand.

One word: context.

Had the girl been hit by a drunk driver, everyone would've been outraged at the drunk driver. They wouldn't have started looking for things she could've done differently or scolded her for drinking too much or not crossing the road away from a zebra crossing or for wearing dark clothing or for reezing when she saw the speeding car bearing down on her instead of trying to jump away; they would've been furious at the drunk driver.

Had some stranger had emptied their drink over her head at a party, or thrown an unprovoked punch at her out of the blue, no one would've cared what she did -- how much she had to drink, what she was wearing, or how she reacted.

A classmate of mine was in a car accident once... her car was involved in a front-to-front collision (to translate directly from Norse :p ) with a car going at 120 km/h on a road with a speed limit of 60.
Sure, we could have admonished her for getting into a car to get from Point A to Point B even though she knew how dangerous it was, and interrogated her about all the things she could've done to avoid the accident from happening, but do you think anyone did?

You can argue with how it was worded, but you must be looking for offense to find offense.
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"Ida was going from Point A to Point B, and decided to get there by car, even though she knew how dangerous it is to drive cars. She then let her father drive, thus aggreviating her situation because as we know, men aren't nearly as safe drivers as women. They then decided to take a route that took them down a bend that was built wrong, so that speeding cars were far more likely to end up in the wrong lane. They probably talked in the car, too, even though they must have known conversations in cars can greatly increase the risk of an accident.

Surprise, surprise, a speeding car does comes around the bend, and it hits their car head on. Both vehicles are totalled, and everyone involved are badly injured.

I'm not saying what happened was her fault, I wouldn't dream of blaming the victim, I'm just saying it was incredibly idiotic of her and that she has to accept a lot of responsibilitiy for what happened because she put herself in that situation to begin with".

Here in Norway, female rape survivors go for an average of three years before telling anyone they've been assaulted. Three years.
I think maybe there's a reason for that.
 
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Toke said:
Sounds perfectly sensible to me, I mean if you go to a party and get too drunk to care for yourself you can expect to be taken advantage of.

It is not as if you could expect there to be any friends or just regular decent people present ensuring that inexperienced or unfortunate drinkers are cared for. :mad:
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This
 
and it's not like most people (especially the inexperienced) can predict their reaction or tolerance level.
 
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