The fact that this seems to have become the norm (or at least the perception therein), and thus one could be wearing such clothing out of a desire to conform rather than to invite nonconsensual sex. Or perhaps she is seeking a bed partner, but of a different sort. You can want a one-night stand without begging for rape, you know. There is a difference between consensual and nonconsensual.Originally Posted by Paladin_Hammer
That does happen (though it's reported even less often than man-rapes-woman out of both absolute and relative values, just because culturally, the man is "supposed" to be the stronger even in these enlightened times), and no, I wouldn't say the man was guilty of asking for rape, either.
If a car comes out of nowhere and slams into me, it's not my fault. Unless I should never have been driving a car in the first place, or should not have been driving on that particular road at that particular time, and thus it is my fault for not being completely clairvoyant.
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And whether or not I should be driving is not at issue here; the above is merely carrying the analogy further, to the point malice brought it originally. Even so, I still disagree with him regarding placing blame on the woman. A person should take responsibility for actions they directly committed, and not every action committed by other people that affects them in any way. If a man decides to rape a woman, the woman didn't have any say in the matter. If I killed everyone who bothered me, are those people to blame because they were the ones who intentionally annoyed me? If someone works hard, earns a lot of money, and I break into their house and steal everything they own, is that their fault for actively working towards success?
Reduce, but not eliminate, and many predators who deliberately seek out women may go after women presenting themselves more, but will take advantage of what they can get.
Frankly, the whole 'blaming the victim' thing smacks of the just world fallacy. An interesting note about this unfortunately-frequent phenomenon in its original experimental confirmation:
Directly relevant to this, but from Wikipedia...[Melvin Lerner] was unable to disillusion [medical professionals] with statistics and rhetoric, and took to the laboratory to devise an experiment.
"Tom" and "Bill" performed the mundane task of assembling anagrams while their coworkers looked on. At the end of the task, one of the two was awarded a large sum of money for his efforts. The other received nothing. It was made quite clear to everyone before work commenced that the award would be made randomly, without reference to the workers� performances. After they had observed Tom and Bill�s efforts this admonition was repeated: the subjects were again reminded that the prize would be assigned at random. The onlookers invariably thought that the man who walked away with the money was more productive, creative, and industrious than his penniless companion. These people, after seeing the money handed out, thought they remembered seeing the unlucky worker deserve his poor fortune.
One study gave women what appeared to be painful electric shocks while working on a difficult memory problem. Those who observed the experiment appeared to blame the victim for her fate, praised the experiment, and rated her as being less physically attractive than those who had seen her but not the experiment.
In another study, subjects were told two versions of a story about an interaction between a woman and a man. Both variations were exactly the same, except at the very end the man raped the woman in one and in the other he proposed marriage. In both conditions, subjects viewed the woman's (identical) actions as inevitably leading to the (very different) results.
At least that's what one might assume from your post...? 
