Is Texas Running Out of Prisons, or A Grain of Truth in an Ocean of Fail

The Chief of Police of Dallas, Texas, on the subject of date rape:

“We’re needing to create a message to the victims of this type of crime, related to, you know, someone you don’t know that well, you having a little bit too much to drink,” explains Chief Brown, suggesting women, “have your friends watch you” if you intend to drink in front of a man.

There is a tad bit of truth in what the chief said. Unfortunately, that bit of truth is drowned by the blowback of women's reaction to a larger truth and that is this: Women get blamed for what men do to them and have been throughout history and across cultures. It has only been within living memory that the reaction to hearing about a wife-beating has changed from "she must have been asking for it" to "what sort of a brutal pig would do that". Everywhere you find a tradition of women wearing body-obscuring garments, the stated reason is along the lines of "men cannot control themselves". In "honor killings", you may have noted that they almost never touch a hair on the head of the man involved "because he was a good man led astray by feminine wiles..." or nonsense such as that.

Blaming the victim is very common in both sexual assaults and sexual harassment. Even in the sex worker trade, it is noteworthy to read of cases where the cops put in the work to arrest the customers.[1] It is less widely spoken of in other crimes. Carjacking is treated as a serious crime with little regard to why the victim was driving where he or she was driving at the time. About the only time a mugging victim is ever blamed for being mugged is if he was staggering down the sidewalk, nearly blind drunk, at the time he was relieved of his wallet.

(One columnist mentioned that the cops take burglary less seriously if, say, stuff is taken from an open garage. Which overlooks the point that if the garage is open, it's probably not burglary, just theft.[2])

The real truth, though, is that life requires a degree of situational awareness. As much as it offends people to take precautions to avoid being a victim, that's life.[3] Rohypnol is out there, date rapists can get their hands on it, and women need to be as aware of that fact as medieval kings were aware of the possibility of their food being poisoned.

So let's be careful out there, shall we?

[1]Case in point: Eliot Spitzer.
[2]In classic law, burglary requires "breaking" to get into the building. If the door is wide open, there is no "breaking".
[3]CCW. I rest my case.