Advising women to take reasonable precautions in their dress -- like in crossing the street -- is not "blaiming the victim". It's blaming the vicim when the "reasonable precautions" turn out to be "any woman who dresses less modesty than I approve of".
It is blaming the victim when:
- that point is made just to support his canned talking points about political solutions vs wild-west everyone takes care of himself, complete with caricatural anecdotes of people leaving the door open and expecting society to protect them from burglars. I'm sorry, I don't care how much he's itching to rehash his canned talking points, he can have the decency to not use a violent gang rape as a soapbox. And especially when "political solutions" mean protection from violent rape, not, say, extra welfare, it seems pretty callous to preach about how foolish it is to want that.
- if he's digging that deep for something to blame on the victim as using a dress she wore at a whole other time and place, in fact half-way across the globe, as what made those guys rape her. Complete with such BS as, "
And if you want to be taken seriously as a journalist, don’t pose for pictures that emphasize your cleavage. " Funny, I thought I take journalists seriously by the quality of their writing and sources. And when he needs to ignore what actually happened at that gang-rape, and that it had nothing to do with that dress. It had to do with someone in the crowd shouting that she's a Jew, and a bunch of idiot Arabs taking it upon themselves to teach the Jew a lesson. (Incidentally, she ain't.) I'm sorry, that's not analysing an incident and giving self-defense advice, it's going the extra mile to find
something to blame on the victim.
It's like if I went to some guy who's been beat up by skinheads for being a black, and telling him, "see, that's why you shouldn't count your money when exiting the bank if you don't want to get mugged."
- it's phrased as insultingly as "Earth to liberated women"
- it's basically depending on a condition as impossible to fulfil as not giving someone an idea that you want to get laid.
"
Earth to liberated women: When you display legs, thighs or cleavage, some liberated men will see it as a sign that you feel good about yourself and your sexuality. But most men will see it as a sign that you want to get laid. "
Earth to preachy idiot journalist: in ages and places when women didn't show legs, thighs or cleavage, things that got seen as a sign that a woman totally needs some dick included: showing wrists or ankles or face or hair (Saudi religious police actually beat some schoolgirls fleeing a burning school and shoved them back in a burning building for not having their scarf, 'cause, you know, showing some hair is seriously slutty and provocative clothing), reading, eating chocolate, smoking, asthma or any breathing trouble (in fact, it was the original definition of 'hysteria'), frigidity (Freud made it the same as nymphomania), lesbianism (see, 'corrective rape' based on the belief that she totally actually needs some dick), or even not doing anything at all, whether as just lazy, depressed or even catatonic ('hysteria' again.) If his defense is based on all women not giving such "signs", that's a condition impossible to fulfil, because in a world where even explicitly not liking sex is taken as a sign that someone really wants to get laid, really, anything can be taken as that sign.
And I'm pretty sure it's just blaming the victim when it's about not doing something impossible.
- he has data even in his lifetime, and indeed within his fourty years of journalism, that it doesn't work that way. Skirt lengths steadily reduced through the 60's and early 70's, until really they couldn't go any shorter, and then there was a sudden return into fashion of midi and maxi skirts. There is a point where within a year or two, a lot less women showed thighs. If there were an objective correlation between that and rape, you'd expect to see a dip in the DOJ statistics about forcible rape. They're actually public, so he doesn't even need some journalistic privileges to look. Where is that dip? I've actually looked through the data for a dozen states or so yesterday, and I'm not seeing even an inflection, much less a dip. The reported rapes per capita climb steadily until the '90's, when it starts taking a nose-dive.
- he stretches it as far as ending up making statements like, "
If you take a job as a masseuse, don’t be shocked if your male customers think you’re a prostitute."
