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>> Granted these aren't stats about men or women experiencing retaliation in your cooked up, mythical scenario.

> What??? My scenario is "men harasses woman, someone else sees". Your stats are impeccable, but they are about victims reporting, and that is totally unrelated to my argument.

You've yet to explain why the third-party thing is important.

=== I'll leave the middle part for last. ===

>> 2. No one is morally obligated to solve a problem for which they are not responsible.

> Yep, I agree here, the question is about how to define 'responsible'.

Well google dictionary defines responsible as: "being the primary cause of something and so able to be blamed or credited for it".

>> 3. You can never fully ascertain risk, especially in these circumstances.

> Agreed that you can never be sure. This applies to everyone so it doesn't change my argument at all. It just changes where you draw lines, not if you draw lines.

This isn't merely a theoretical argument. When a woman steps in to stop harassment, there is a real threat of violence. There's no way to reasonably determine what the amount of risk is. Even if the woman reports the episode after the fact, there is always a chance of retaliation, either by the harasser or by the reporting woman's boss, or by prospective employers because she's been blacklisted. It's critical to understand that because of this, your scenario does not exist.

>> 4. It is grossly entitled for a system that oppresses women to ask women for support so it can stop oppressing them, labeling them as "part of the problem" if they refuse.

> It's entitled to do this to anyone who is not a harasser, but someone's gotta explain that it's not okay.

There are two issues with the argument you're making here:

1. The system oppresses women so it's unfair. The system doesn't oppress men (OK you can make a gender roles argument, but let's stipulate for now), in fact, white men built this system, so it's fair.

2. The issue with your argument that you make here is your phrase "to do". Women don't control the patriarchy, they can't direct society to force white men to police themselves. They obviously can't, because it's not happening. You're implying equality between white men and women when you say, "it's entitled to do this to anyone". It isn't, because women aren't responsible for the patriarchy, rape culture, and so on.

>> 5. Given the current situation, which simplified could be characterized as men having $10,000 to solve a problem and Women have $7,500 to solve a problem because the problem has already cost women $2,500, why are women obligated to spend any money at all to fix the problem? Hasn't the problem cost them enough already?

> This hits right at the core of how you and I disagree. I don't think unfair treatment should come before moral obligations. Moral obligations are there no matter how you've been treated.

I vehemently disagree with this. I have no obligation to treat someone who beats me with respect, for example. Or if I'm married and my partner cheats on me, my moral obligations change significantly. Do you disagree?

> But perhaps you say the obligation is for the rich to help first. That is totally valid! White straight guy has to help the most, because he had it easy. I can get behind that! But then Man Z, who only has $300 because life screwed him over, I don't think he's more obligated to help than the woman with $7,500 is.

This is where the analogy, like all analogies, breaks down. In the patriarchy, we deal in the currency of privilege, and privilege is relative. If a man has $300, there's a comparable woman with $225.

===

Now your bullet points.

>> * Do you disagree that it's not women's fault someone is being harassed?

> Depends on what 'fault' means. They have no direct fault, they share in societal fault.

I more or less mean "responsibility", which again is "being the primary cause of something". Therefore, even if I buy into the idea of societal fault (which I don't), women clearly have no responsibility for this. They're obviously not the primary cause of the patriarchy.

>> * Do you disagree that women are not responsible for the patriarchy?

> Women are partially responsible for the patriarchy. They are not slave-caste.

I actually feel like this is the root of our disagreement. Let's use actual slaves as an analogy. There were free blacks in the US during slavery. Did they bear any responsibility for slavery? Your argument says that they did, even if it's a small amount, because they had at least some power. But, of course, this is ridiculous. They didn't create slavery, and given its druthers, slavery would oppress them (if it hadn't already). Same thing goes for the patriarchy.

The oppressed are never responsible for the system that oppresses them. How could that even be the case?

It seems like you're implying that the patriarchy is a problem that affects us all and we're all in it together to dismantle it. But that's incorrect. The patriarchy was created by white men, and it benefits 1/3 of the population while oppressing the rest. The oppressed are not responsible for the system that oppresses them, therefore it's morally incumbent on those who benefit from the oppressive system to fix it.

>> * Do you disagree that women are far more likely to suffer the effects of retaliation compared to men, because they're far more likely to experience harassment?

> I agree that women are far more likely to suffer retaliation because they experience more harassment. However I am not convinced about retaliation unrelated to self-reporting. In particular I am not convinced that women trying to fix societal flaws are far more likely to suffer retaliation than men.

Again you've yet to explain why third-party is important. I will also clarify and say that regardless on the retaliation risk to men and women, men bear responsibility because it's our system, and because we know for a fact that women experience high levels of retaliation.

===

I'm not gonna quote all the junk for the last point and the final section, because HN isn't really equipped for these kinds of discussions. What I will say is that it boils down to this:

Women are not members of the patriarchy, any more than blacks were members of slavery, or any other oppressed group is a member of the system that oppresses them. Even if you argue that contemporary white men did not create the patriarchy, white men are the only ones that benefit from it. You cannot morally obligate the oppressed to fix the system that oppresses them. The only group left is the group unoppressed, and that's white men. This is why all men are responsible, and no women are responsible.