While the possibility to make that connection has hardly escaped my notice (especially given that elsewhere on the internet I've been following a discussion on victim blaming in cases of rape, assault and harassment for the past few days) I don't think that bringing that up is worthwhile or in any way helpful.VectorM wrote:By Mr_Cyberpunk's brilliant logic, women who dress "slutty" are all asking for rape.
Victim blaming is wrong because it is victim blaming. One does not need to point to the most grotesque examples victim blaming is used for to make that argument. It is wrong in and of itself.
Yes, it is true that any time someone makes the argument that someone brings violation on themselves by doing something they consider provocative and then not putting out, which was Mr. Cyberpunk's argument, it brings unpleasant associations of evil arguments past to mind. But I don't see the benefit in dragging them into the light. It risks trivializing the more serious violation and is more likely to provoke the kind of defensiveness that will make someone reinforce their position than it is to make them seriously reconsider what they are saying. In my opinion at least.
While it is certainly true the much the same argument has been used to claim that rape victims were responsible for being raped, it is also true that comparing not-at-all-rape things to rape has a net effect of making rape seem ... well, less evil. You can't compare software piracy to rape without comparing rape to software piracy, and treating the two as comparable is a very, very bad idea. Ideally you could make the connection without in any way normalizing rape or in anyway implying they were remotely on the same level, but in the real world human minds don't tend to work that way.
As such, a good rule is that if you're not talking about rape, don't talk about rape.
[Edit:]
In my opinion.
I make no claims to be an expert on how best to stop people from blaming rape victims. I really don't. It is just that it seems to me that this is not the best way to go about it. I could, obviously, be wrong.