[WikiEN-l] The Second Rape: Victim-Blaming (was Re: Self-sensorship, how far should it go?)

[Steve Summit]

Dang.  I knew the "blaming the victim" card was going to be played
soon enough, but I didn't imagine we'd be getting rape analogies	
already.	
	
It won't do a particle of good, but I'd like to encourage people
*not* to march inexorably down his road.  The analogy is
fundamentally flawed, and to have brought it up at all is to
distort the discussion just about as badly as mention of Nazis
famously does.

We are not putting Slim on trial.  We are not denying her all
reasonable support.  What we are doing is questioning the
propriety of *inappropriate* forms of support, forms which
seem to be continuously requested/demanded/imposed by Slim's
too-fervent supporters.  We are wondering whether those forms of
alleged support are (a) effective at all, and (b) perhaps more
damaging to the project than the damages they seek to address.

To pursue the analogy I just suggested was a bad idea: it's
one thing if a rape victim is herself put on trial, or blamed
(explicitly or implicitly) for having "asked for it".  That's
reprehensible and wrong.

But suppose the rape victim insists that the name of her rapist
never be mentioned by anyone in any context.  Suppose she insists
that the name of the clubs of which her rapist is a member also
never be mentioned.  Suppose she insists that no one else be
allowed to join those clubs.  Suppose that when someone
questions the necessity or practicality or effectiveness of
these increasingly extreme "remedies", that the victim and her
sycophants accuse the questioner of failing to properly support
the victim.  Suppose that when someone asks, "Was she raped?",
the question is stricken from the public record as if it had
never been asked.

If every demand (no matter what) of the victim must be acceded
to, if to question any of them is grounds for being branded as
callous or unsupportive, where does it end?

I'm sure I'll be accused of being viciously unsympathetic for
having asked these questions at all.  I will assert (not that it
will do any good) that I am not trying to blame the victim here,
and that I would like to give the victim all due sympathy for the
grievous wrongs she has indeed suffered.  But my sympathy is not
irrational.  Being sympathetic does not mean that the victim gets
to place arbitrary demands on the entire rest of the world and
expect them to be accepted as reasonable and appropriate
recompense for her injuries.  Being sympathetic does not mean
knee-jerk agreement that in any dispute over the appropriateness
of a remedy, the victim is always right and anyone who disagrees
is automatically an unsympathetic victim-blaming jerk.  Being
sympathetic does not mean encouraging the victim to continue to
play the victim forever.  Healthy victims put their tragedies
behind them, and truly sympathetic people encourage and help them
to do this.