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Comment by CocaKoala | Hacker News Reader

Here's the way I've always thought about it.

If you're walking in a bad neighborhood at 3am and you get mugged, should you have chosen your path more wisely? Maybe. But would anybody say that _because you chose to walk in a bad neighborhood and you got mugged, the mugger isn't at fault and shouldn't be prosecuted for the crime they committed_?

No, probably not. Mugging is a crime, and just because you put yourself in a situation where you're more likely to get mugged doesn't make it less of one.

Why does the same not apply to sexual assault?

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It's not either/or, it's both/and.

Yes, the mugger is morally and legally at fault. Absolutely.

And by walking in that neighborhood at 3 AM you at least increased your probability of being mugged. Morally, people in that neighborhood shouldn't be like that. But they are like that, and you knew it, and you walked there anyway. Morally, it isn't your fault, and yet what you did was definitely unwise. In an ideal world, it shouldn't make any difference where you walk. But this isn't an ideal world, and in the world we've got, with the people we've got, you need to pay some attention to where and when you walk.

Nobody is saying that the mugger/rapist aren't guilty.

But, are you not going to tell your kids, "don't walk in dangerous dark streets at night" and "scream if someone tries to mug you"? No, of course not, because it would be idiotic not to, it's just common sense! Then why wouldn't you tell women (well, people in general), "don't be alone with people you don't trust" and "scream 'no' if someone tries to rape you"? It's common sense!

You can (and I suspect people DO) tell women "don't be alone with people you don't trust". That's not in contention.

Victim blaming is when you say "Well, if you hadn't been alone with somebody you didn't trust, you wouldn't have been raped"; it's technically a true statement, but it puts the onus on the woman (why was she alone with somebody she didn't trust, something she's been told not to do?) as opposed to on the rapist (why did they rape somebody?).

While it's valuable to give people tools to avoid situations that might go bad, it's still important to recognize that the person at fault for the situation going bad is the person who commits the crime, and not the person who ended up in a bad situation.

I don't interpret that as shifting fault or blame, just as I don't interpret "well, if you wore a seat belt, you wouldn't be tetraplegic". Every person's primary responsibility is to protect themselves, and after each incident the most you can do to prevent another one, is to analyse what more you could have done, or you could do in the future.

> after each incident the most you can do to prevent another one, is to analyse what more you could have done, or you could do in the future.

Sure. Which is why, in addition to telling people to wear seat belts, we also make people take Driver's Ed so that they can demonstrate that they at least nominally know the rules of the road and can drive safely.

What's the Driver's Ed version of teaching people not to commit rape or sexual assault? When I was in college, there was a freshman orientation activity that talked about consent, but it wasn't mandatory, not all colleges have it, and not all people go to college. Who's teaching high schoolers about the nuances of consent and what it means to sexually assault somebody?

Maybe, although I think those do more harm than good. Personally, I don't like the idea of requiring "explicit verbal consent" and those that suggest it don't really explain what should happen if two people just have sex (i.e. who should go to jail - most would default to the man but that's just sexist and what about lesbians?). But in any case, that's just a small proportion of alleged rape cases, all of which are much more easily and uncontroversially resolved by urging women/victims to say "no" loud and clear. The rest of the cases (i.e when someone wants to rape), I don't think can be resolved by courses or such, just like you don't resolve robberies by "teaching criminals not to steal".

> just like you don't resolve robberies by "teaching criminals not to steal"

Do you tell banks that they shouldn't have kept so much money in the vaults if they didn't want to get robbed?

Pretty much, yes, if they are careless.

Well, it becomes a meme of some sort, with everybody making fun of the bank. For example: there is over a million dollars in cash, the bank is near multiple good escape routes, the bank's cameras and alarms are broken, the "vault" has a hollow interior door, etc.

Banks are responsible to keep my money safe - by moving it to a safer place, deploying guards, alarms and mechanisms, insuring it...

> Personally, I don't like the idea of requiring "explicit verbal consent"

Why not? When two people don't have the presumption of consent, what's the harm in checking to make sure "hey, is this something you want to do?"

Besides the problem I outlined above, saying "no explicit consent is rape" would mean I'm accusing all my ex lovers to be rapists, which I will definitely never do.

The goal of "get an enthusiastic yes" is not to criminalize sex without explicit consent, but rather to normalize the idea that if you _don't_ have explicit consent, then you shouldn't have sex.

Yeah I agree with “enthusiastic consent” - that’s how sex should be (although IMO it doesn’t need to be verbal). We just need to ensure it won’t be used in court, like “what was she wearing” shouldn’t be. Combine that with encouraging women/people to say “no” and we’re very close to a solution!

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