The Difference Is...

[woodwardiocom]

Three parallel situations:

• "You didn't have a bike lock? No wonder it got stolen, you doofus."
  
• "You walked through that part of town at midnight waving around an expensive cell phone? You idiot, no wonder you got mugged!"
  
• "You were dressed like that when you were sexually assaulted? You kinda asked for it."

My social circles regard the first two as appropriate replies, and the third as absolutely not. I agree with that, but on analysis, am having trouble articulating the relevant distinction.

Edit: Many thanks for the answers thus far. They've helped.

Comments

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

The juxtaposition of your two paragraphs is kinda funny.

I'm not obliged to give you "arguments against", because:

A) I don't have the background to make a factually-backed argument; I'd just be spouting uninformed opinions.
B) I'm not arguing with you in the first place. I declined to argue, see above.

Anyhow, I did some digging to see if there were any actual studies of the question at hand. The ones that came to a pro-gun conclusion were hosted on pro-gun websites, and the anti-gun ones were on flamingly liberal websites, so I took both with a huge grain of salt. It'd be nice to find something less biased.