They 'might' do just about anything if you tell them to stop. (including stop)

The point is if you don't try, they have already shown what they plan to do. And in a group of people with two people you know some of the risk is mitigated.

Now I think she handled a bad situation quite politely, and she has no obligation to put effort into making that particular situation better.

However I believe that in making the blog post she is showing herself to be a person who both wants to and is brave enough to make the situation better. But as mentioned by the gp the people who read these types of blog posts are largely the type of people who believe we should treat everyone like a person. As such helping out further by informing the person or group of people of their unwelcome and in this case inappropriate behavior could further that goal of improving the situation for everyone.

Edit: I am a privileged white male who realizes I might have huge misconceptions about what it is exactly like to live as one who is treated with less privilege, so would welcome criticism of my view point. So if my above comment smacks of 'of course you think that you've never had to deal with....' I would like to know.

Unfortunately many women simply don't feel safe enough to fight back and instead will remove themselves from a situation like that. If the space itself feels unsafe (instead of it just being a 'bad person in a good place' situation), that's going to make it seem like a much better idea to leave.

After all, it's not as if these are unusual occurrences. They're all too common.

This whole HN thread has been a huge volley of victim blaming. It's quite disappointing but not at all surprising.

Last year, I was on a train back to visit my parents place—a little village in quiet commuter-land suburbia. It was late. I had drunk a small amount before getting on the train but wasn't drunk.

A tall drunk man started shouting at me about how he wanted me to suck his dick. I obviously didn't do a good enough impression of a disgusted homophobe by shouting "eww, no". He twigged that I was actually gay and started shouting abuse at me.

He was there with a friend who was leering and laughing along. There were no third parties in the nearby vicinity. So, what did I do? I let the abuse continue and didn't put up a fight. I was surprised this was happening - these were grown men, this was a train line going mostly out to quiet middle-class suburbia. There were two of them and one of me—they were bigger and stronger while I have the body of a lifelong sedentary computer programmer; if there were a physical altercation, I'd come out worse for it. I don't want to end up in the emergency room.

Should I have stood up to them and told them to stop? To give as good as I get? Yes. It might stop them next time. I certainly want to make the situation better. But in the moment when you are being picked on and attacked, the calculation you make isn't the same calculation you'd make after the event. The flipside is I have seen other examples of homophobic abuse of others and been ready and prepared to step in (hasn't been needed).

There's a sort of frozen moment of panic when you are abused. I've had friends who have had very bad sexist abuse who have said the same thing. I have one friend who is trans and a sexual abuse survivior who goes through far more abuse and manage to stand up to it and live their life. I have great admiration for them, but I don't think it is anyone's job to go around policing the reactions of victims when faced with discrimination and abuse.

Perhaps this is where self-defense comes into play?

If your options are 1) say something and make the aggressor more aggressive, or 2) distance yourself and hope they don't press the situation further, at some point you should have a backup plan.

She shouldn't need self-defense.

I'm a male, pretty scrawny, middle aged. But if I'm in a group of men, and a female comes by, and one of the men is groping her, and she tells him to back off, and he won't, I'm going to get in his grill. (Think of it as self-policing for the male community.) I strongly suspect that I won't be alone, but if I am, I'll do it alone.

My mother got a master's degree in math in the 1950s. She had to put up with a professor telling her that women don't belong in math. No woman should have to put up with that crap in 2014.

>She shouldn't need self-defense

I agree that she shouldn't have to worry about this sort of situation, but that doesn't mean that she doesn't need to worry about it.

Why is that women have to prepare themselves to deal with aggressive behavior and/or pretend nothing happened and hope someone doesn't violate their personal space again? That squarely puts the blame on women for the harassing behavior of others and makes it their problem, when the reality is that the problem is with the harasser and people need to speak up.

You're reading too much into what I'm saying.

I didn't say that this is the woman's fault. I didn't say that the man is blameless. I said that if you cannot defend yourself, you are at the mercy of forces beyond your control. Period. This isn't a life philosophy or a political position, this is a fact of reality.

In an ideal world, she wouldn't have to worry about defending herself, but we aren't living in CandyLand. If you cannot rely on yourself, who can you rely on?

So, the woman is dumb for leaving the home without having a plan to deal with people who physically assualt her in a public space?

Is that what you're saying?

I don't think I actually said that, so I'm not sure where the hostility comes from, but... maybe?

Sure, she shouldn't have to be competent at self-defense just to leave the house and meet-up with some fellow Bitcoiners (or any other hobbyists), but I think that if you don't have some sort of backup plan, you're basically at the will of whatever you meet along the way.

It seems that you disagree. Care to talk about it (civilly)?

Other people came to a similar conusion to me. So, being charitable, your post wasn't as clear as it could be. That's me being civil. If you agree that I misread your post you can stop reading here because the rest of this post is less civil and not relevant.

On the other hand maybe you really do think that women should learn self defence or somesuch because they could be the victims of violent crime.

Except this wasn't some mugger trying to rob her. The appropriate response is not to say "that sucks, but it would have sucked less if you learnt self defence". The appropriate response is to say "that sucked, and it sucked that noone steps up to tell him he was wrong".

People blame the victims of crime all the time and it fucking sucks.

"Contributory Negligence" (Attila the Stockbroker) was written in 1985. It's baffling why people still think that when a woman is groped in public it's somehow up to her to have a backup plan, with everyone else there getting a pass to just ignore it.

The really fucking baffling thing is that these abhorant views ("she deserved it") aren't going away.

http://www.newstatesman.com/glosswitch/2013/09/there-no-grea...

Well, people love a good disagreement, don't they?

Do I think that people should learn self-defense because they could be victims of violent crime? That's one reason to do so, yes. As women tend to be a particularly vulnerable subset of "people", this applies to them in particular.

What does it matter if this scenario was not that of a particular type of violent crime? I don't see where you're going with the mugging comparison. Violent crime is violent crime.

That I didn't immediately chastise the aggressor doesn't mean that I don't blame the aggressor, but the fact is (and I've said this in another comment) if you cannot defend yourself, you are at the mercy of forces beyond your control. This is not a life philosophy or a political position, but a piece of advice based on fact of reality. Call it "victim blaming" if you want to (and I know that you do), I call it living in the real world.

If I'm caught in a mugging, it isn't necessarily my fault (even if I could have taken steps to prevent such a situation) and I probably didn't choose to get mugged, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't have some sort of self-defense plan in-place to mitigate risk.

This isn't about right and wrong. This is about surviving in a world that many of us forget is still very often hostile to our existence.

Some people, and I'm obviously one of them, think that a flag is raised when someone mentions things like self defence or other victim behaviours before condemning the attacker.

Whether you like that or not you need to be aware of it because you will meet people who are very much less civil than I am if you discuss this.

You don't need to warn me that people can be unkind when they get riled up in argumentation. I'm well aware of that (and in fact you've already demonstrated it).

And frankly, I don't really care if you think there is something wrong with me because I've focused on precaution and mitigation strategies on the part of the victim. I see no purpose in condemnation here. I'd rather focus on giving advice to the (hopefully) more rational of the parties involved in the situation.