Re: well...

You write, “So if he wasn’t justified, and she didn’t do anything, the how can she possibly deserve it? This wasn’t about value to me at all.”

This really brought clarity to all of this. You stuck to your guns and restated things in a way that really lights up the landscape. You’re right, this is not really about value; we are speaking within a rights-based system, and, perhaps, we can avoid talking about value altogether. You really make this point well and in rather short order. You’ve helped me to reorganize my thoughts on your tramp illustration. As I start re-reflecting on this, I think that Snowdog may have been on to something in his original thoughts on the issue. I think that she may indeed “deserve” what was dealt to her in a certain, rather qualified sense. Let me explain.

So, again, we are evoking a system of rights. And the tramp dresser has a right to her own property, her body in this case. She has a right to do what she wants with it and to defend it to the best of her ability. However, this right-based system also presupposes freedom, and one can relinquish his rights by the power of consent. What makes the rapist a “criminal” is his taking or infringing on the woman’s rights without her consent (“criminal” in the eye of the State, in the eye of nature? This is fecund; we can bracket it and set it aside).

Sometimes, consent is explicit as it is when we say something like “this was mine, now it’s yours, I want you to have it.” At other times, it is tacit. To use John Locke’s example, we give over our right to persecute our own justice against those who infringe on our property to the State by tacit consent. Here consent is tacit in the sense that the forfeiture of our rights is implied by our participation in our systems of law and justice, but without any kind of direct endorsement.

With this said, I suggest that what has been awkwardly put forth by me in the above threads as “desert” is not dichotomous or bivalent; it’s not simply “yes or no.” It’s more a matter of degree, a continuum. To what degree does the woman’s behavior imply some kind of tacit, or, even, explicit consent? Maybe, there is a certain spot on the continuum at which some kind of consent was implied by her behavior. I think that his overlays nicely over your words when you write, “I’m not saying that there’s anything that would, but the way you dress I not it.”

Now, the issue here is how she dressed and this relates to Snow’s notion of “foolishness.” What was the quality of this foolishness? What if she was completely aware of what happens on Rapists’ Alley when women dress that way and stroll its corridors-- yet did it anyway? Given the assumption that she is a rational being, and capable of dealing with probability on its most primitive level, would her behavior not constitute some kind of tacit consent? Maybe not, but the issue has taken on a new shape all the same.