The Folly of “She was asking for it”
Taking risk is not a crime.
“I’m not saying that rape is okay. It’s not. But I do think that sometimes the victim isn’t completely innocent either.”
“You mean she was asking for it.”
“Yeah, basically.”
Victim-blaming is not new, here in 2019, but the sentiment behind it seems to be riding a new high. Rape survivors, #metoo accusers, victims of sexual harassment — these and other people attract skepticism and criticism (from some directions) for their circumstances. For putting themselves at risk in the first place — of becoming the victim of whatever tragic outcome we’re discussing. That young woman in India who was chased and nearly kidnapped — Why was she out on the streets after midnight? That new intern at work — What was she wearing at the office? Skin tight leggings?
This is the sentiment of the conversation recapped above, which I encountered just last month, as if resurrected from my 1980’s childhood. You’ve heard the argument: She welcomed, even invited his advances. She let him buy her another drink, knowing what he might want after. She deserves a share of the blame. She knew the risk.
I disagree, for a lot of reasons, but for now I want to focus on one very simple reason. Taking a risk is not a crime.
Risking exposure to harassment is not the same thing as harassing. Walking home late at night is not the same thing as stalking. You get the point. Blaming the victim presupposes the perpetrator’s crime, takes that for granted, and then asks the victim to choose. Given that women are harassed on the street at night, why choose to walk alone after dark? But this approach deprives the perpetrator of free will, and shifts it all to the victim. If the perpetrator can’t change his or her behavior, why assume the victim can?
Taking risk is a very personal choice, which makes it hard to judge from afar. For example, consider the recent college grad in a tight miniskirt, flirting with a stranger at the bar. Let’s assume for the moment that by behaving this way, she is increasing the risk that she’ll suffer an assault (though this assumption may be false). But maybe that possibility is worth the risk to her. Maybe she trains hard at the gym and is proud of her toned legs. Maybe stepping out at night builds her self-esteem. Maybe she’s carrying some other burden at home — an eating disorder, a sick family member, a past trauma — and a drink at the bar is her escape, where she can enjoy small talk with complete strangers, little samples of other lives. Maybe it just makes her feel good.
Whatever the story, the point is there’s a tradeoff involved. Asking her to change her behavior, to reduce the risk of harassment, means asking her to bear some other risk instead. Resentment, isolation, depression, perceived injustice, the stress of living with sustained long-term cognitive dissonance. And we’re asking her to do that — to change her non-criminal behavior — why? Because there’s a risk that someone else may commit a crime.
This is something I think most people misunderstand about risk: It’s impossible to avoid. Staying at home on a Friday night to avoid drunk drivers will reduce your risk of a car wreck. But if you live at home with an abusive partner, it may increase your risk of injury. Removing all alcohol from your diet may reduce your risk of cancer — unless you replace your drinks with cigarettes. Declining to take lessons in sky-diving may increase your odds of survival — that is, unless the lack of thrill in your life leads you to thoughts of suicide.
Behaving differently at the bar may reduce your risk of harassment, but my question is — at what cost?
Avoiding one risk in your life means taking another. You can aim to reduce the risk in your life, but not to eliminate it completely. This is true at the individual level as well as for our entire society.
I’m not convinced that reducing risk is an inherently worthy goal anyway. I’m not here to live the safest life I can. I want my life to be rich and rewarding and compelling. The best things we humans accomplish in our ridiculously short lives are sometimes the most dangerous.
So stop suggesting she was asking for it. She wasn’t. She was balancing the risks in her life, and you can’t see both sides of that equation. Instead of questioning her math, maybe we should look around at the other terms in that equation — the ones we can see — and ask ourselves what we could do to improve them.
