Sure, I agree it’s irrelevant to the discussion of the wrongness of rape (though not to discussions of specific strategies for avoiding rape or catcalls) - which is why in a grand-cousin-nephew-great-aunt of this subthread I was telling MixedNuts to stop paying attention to “stupid” feminist arguments, and focus on the strong ones.
Note though that this discussion didn’t start from a discussion of the wrongness of rape, but from a discussion of what kind of dress triggered catcalls—so that point isn’t completely irrelevant! (though not very interesting)
If in a discussion of the wrongness of rape someone brings up the question of sexy skirts, my reaction wouldn’t be to tell them that it’s a shifty strategy, it would be to say “okay, let’s assume for argument’s sake that girls with sexy skirts are more likely to get raped—now what?”—because I don’t think any important disagreements actually hinge on that fact (unless the discussion is the tactics of rape-avoidance).
Sure, I agree it’s irrelevant to the discussion of the wrongness of rape (though not to discussions of specific strategies for avoiding rape or catcalls) - which is why in a grand-cousin-nephew-great-aunt of this subthread I was telling MixedNuts to stop paying attention to “stupid” feminist arguments, and focus on the strong ones.
Note though that this discussion didn’t start from a discussion of the wrongness of rape, but from a discussion of what kind of dress triggered catcalls—so that point isn’t completely irrelevant! (though not very interesting)
If in a discussion of the wrongness of rape someone brings up the question of sexy skirts, my reaction wouldn’t be to tell them that it’s a shifty strategy, it would be to say “okay, let’s assume for argument’s sake that girls with sexy skirts are more likely to get raped—now what?”—because I don’t think any important disagreements actually hinge on that fact (unless the discussion is the tactics of rape-avoidance).