Responsibility

[andrewducker]

This is inspired by the comment here, where ladysysiphus says "If you have consumed enough alcohol to impair your judgement, I believe you then have to take at least some responsibility for putting yourself in a position where something like this might happen."

[Poll #619684]

Comments

[andrewducker]

re-commented, as the original lost the formatting somewhere...

but any assault occurs because of the evil intent of the mugger/rapist. It's their responsibility.

That's what I said.

If they can plausibly claim that they wouldn't have attacked you without such provocation, then the blame is shared to some extent.

"Well, I wouldn't have raped her if she hadn't been wearing that skimpy miniskirt. It was clearly designed to provoke sexual thoughts your honour."

And you seem to be focussing on the law a lot. By and large I consider the law to be useful, but I certainly don't defer to it as the final answer on matters philosophical, moral and suchlike.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

"Well, I wouldn't have raped her if she hadn't been wearing that skimpy miniskirt. It was clearly designed to provoke sexual thoughts your honour."

Not a valid analogy, because it reflects only on the internal state of mind of the attacker, who is clearly deluded if they think it's an invitation.

For it to be a valid analogy (with the walk-into-a-pub-and-say-something-provocative situation) your hypothetical skimpily clad female would also have to actually invite the other party to get intimate with her. (Then it gets a bit closer.)

[andrewducker]

Aaah, but many women _do_ wear clothes in order to provoke sexual thoughts.

And it doesn't matter what someone says, hitting someone is still fully the responsibility of the person hitting them. No words short of "Please hit me." are justification for violence - and the Operation Spanner results showed that legally speaking, not even then.