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by BobaFloutist 1190 days ago
Teaching your kid not to play in busy streets wouldn't be victim blaming, it would be victim blaming if your kid got hit by a speeding car and people immediately started questioning how well you taught him street safety. The problem with victim blaming isn't that it seeks to teach people to avoid becoming victimized, the problem is that it gets brought up when people have already been harmed, making it insensitive, unhelpful (something something barn door), and, often, deflecting blame from the actual bad actor.
1 comments

We should agree on some time frame when it's acceptable to talk about what you could do to avoid being a victim then. It's perfectly fine to say "maybe not now" while the victim is still getting stitches, but having to wait 10 years is also pretty useless because it'll be forgotten.

When something happens is usually the best time to talk to others about that same thing. A bank exploded? Hey, have you heard that there are ways to spread the risk over multiple banks? A hospital got all their files encrypted and needs to pay a ransom? Let's talk about backup strategies and how to secure infrastructure because that could be your organization.

I don't think people discussing strategies seek to deflect blame from a potential bad actor (it doesn't need to be about crime, accidents happen all the time, and there are plenty of things you can do to lower your risk), they just want it not to happen again, or at least less frequently.