Comment by choeger
4 years ago
Responsibility is the wrong word. There is a difference between good advice and victim blaming. Just because the victim was careless doesn't make them in any form responsible for the crime. Nevertheless, I would certainly advise my daughter against getting drunk in such a situation.
>> But does a person not have some responsibility here to not >> get so intoxicated when alone with a member of the opposite >> sex in a private space? > > Responsibility is the wrong word.
It's not a responsibility in ethical sense yet it is street smart behaviour.
A less amplified example: if you walk into a biker bar, insult that the regulars are assholes whose bikes you just kicked over outside, they have no moral justification to hurt you just as people are ethically bound to not sexually abuse intoxicated persons in our society. But there's some chance the guys in the biker bar won't just call the police and politely retain you until they arrive and, instead, you get beaten into some half-liquid state of matter.
The reason for that is because the regulars likely follow their own rules and not yours or the greater society's. Similarly, predator-type people don't follow the morals that we recognize. If all you can resort to is morals, you will lose with people who don't play by your rules. If someone doesn't see a moral problem in the sexual abuse of a passed out person it won't help to merely remind this person of just that: the abuser simply doesn't give a shit but plays a whole different game.
This is where the society could step in with its justice system and link the abusive behaviour to something the abuser does actually mind, like a harsh enough conviction to make the abusive behaviour less inviting. But society also has to be fair so as to not give harsh convictions to people who have not abused anyone despite being accused of doing that, and then the waters get muddy again. In many cases there's no objective verdict to be reached because no third party can ultimately tell what the heck happened, even if actual abuse did take place.
This leads to the bizarre but common pattern where the potential victims have to become proactive in taking measures to not actually become victims, and in doing so limit their choices and decisions of what to do, where to go and with whom. The onus somehow gets transferred to the person who shouldn't have to use time and energy to prevent these things from happening. The potential victims are the only party in the game who follow the society's rules and they have that losing stance because of that.
They shouldn't have to have -- and they don't have -- a moral responsibility to prepare for the worst: the moral responsibility single-handedly falls on the perpetrator -- the one who doesn't ever consider morals! So, the result is that the potential victims are imposed by purely practical concerns to limit their choices in order to secure themselves against wrongdoings, just in case. It's not right but it's also smart -- that's the big dilemma.