just for the record, it is posts like these that gets habsy calling you a misogynist. cause you're pretty much victim blaming.
I mean, I would never send a nude myself. I don't think it's a good idea. that doesn't mean it is the women's fault for doing so and having a jackass publicize them.
I'm advocating for responsible victimhood. I want all people; men, women, whatever, to own their bullshit.
It comes down to the difference between fault and responsibility, which to my mind are two distinct things. My question is at what point is someone at least partially responsible for the consequences of their own stupidity? Like I said in my original post, it doesn't excuse what the guy did to them, not for one second, but the victims need to be smarter too. Or maybe being stupid is part and parcel of being victimized. I don't know. But I do know that it's not specific to women. In this case, sure, a lot of women seem to get stupid when it comes to this online romance stuff (not that some guys don't also get cat-fished) but men are stupid about other things that get them into trouble and I've no patience for their stupidity either.
This is essentially the Logan Mailloux affair all over again: fault vs. responsibility. Mailloux did something that was both stupid and illegal. The girl did something stupid that wasn't illegal but it was still stupid. What he did with those photos isn't her fault, but she is still at least partly responsible for exercising poor judgement. Mailloux, we should also bear in mind, was only punished because what he did was against the law. He was not actually punished for being a dumbass, which he also certainly was.
You should never get a free pass for something that wouldn't have happened to you if you first hadn't done something stupid. Being stupid doesn't excuse anyone else from guilt if they take advantage of you, especially if taking advantage of you involves breaking the law, but you still have to own your stupidity otherwise you'll think nothing of being stupid in the future. Having to own your own stupid shit is how you learn to not keep doing stupid shit.
For example, a player who delivers dangerous, blindside hits should get fined and suspended (unless the victim is a Habs player, of course, in which case it is dismissed as a "hockey play", but I digress) but the player who skates around the rink with his head down needs to have a chat with himself too, because what he is doing is not smart and is potentially very dangerous. If a player's disregard for their own safety leads to them being concussed, does it really matter that the perpetrator is punished? It doesn't take the concussion away so the player who likes to skate with his head down has a responsibility to himself to be smarter, doesn't he?
My folks taught me to assume that every stranger I interacted with was potentially out to victimize me in some way. The defense mechanism against that threat was to not put myself in a position where I could be easily victimized. Even then, it didn't always work. Sometimes you get scammed despite your best efforts because at some point you let your guard down and trust someone you shouldn't. And I can see that if we're talking about someone you have met in person but someone you only know online? Sorry, that's just dumb. And as the article states, this clown gave these women all the red flags anyone should ever need and they still decided to ignore them. And the guy who was doing all this to them? Turns out he wasn't hard to find at all because he's not that bright. He's not getting a Netflix documentary made about him because he's just an unemployed shlub living in his mom's basement, not some master con artist like the Tinder swindler. And it's not like he did one thing and then left. He played them for months and years at a time before the light finally went on inside their heads.
If you want to label me a victim blamer, fine, but just know that I'm an equal opportunity victim blamer. I don't care if it's a man, a woman, gay, straight, trans or otherwise. It's about the stupidity, not the gender. I just don't have the patience for suffering morons like I used to have. Stupidity is what got us Donald Trump, Doug Ford and guys wearing pants that are three inches too short with dress shoes and no socks. People need to smarten the fuck up.
www.theguardian.com
