“Should,” “Does,” and Safety

[feotakahari]

 Let’s suppose you believe that men should protect and women should be protected. (You probably don’t believe that, if you’re reading my blog, but let’s keep this hypothetical for now.) In this world, there are men who did not protect and women who were not protected. It’s easy to decide what to do with the man: you shame him for being weak. But how do you evaluate the woman? And what do you say to other women who are afraid that if they don’t protect themselves, a man won’t protect them?

In practice, it seems you square this circle by creating rules and restrictions a woman must follow in order to make a man protect her. If a woman was not protected, you say that she must have violated one of those rules, and therefore brought it upon herself. You assure other women that they won’t break the rules, and that they will be protected. That’s why they’re caught off guard when they’re still not protected after following all of your rules.

I don’t know how best to argue with views like this. They tend to grow in directions that make them almost impossible to falsify, such that you could construct a plausible argument for why any victim must have broken a rule. The best I can advise is to keep a watchful eye on any system that claims the righteous are safe from harm.