I completely disagree. To the contrary, I'd suggest that cultural acceptance of victim-blaming type mentalities rather tends to reinforce in the minds of wrongdoers that their active wrongdoing involves less culpability than it truly does. Consider the treatment of women in countries like the United States where formal legal equality is for the most part the norm, and where we at least pay lip service to the notion that women who go to certain places or dress a certain way aren't "asking" to be raped. Where we don't pretend that wearing the "wrong" clothing constitutes assumption of the risk, women's freedoms and movements are relatively less restricted by cultural convention. Conversely, in countries that adhere to religious norms holding women responsible for their rapists' behavior, unsurprisingly, we see that women are mistreated in countless other contexts as well, and that they "choose" greater restrictions to their own freedoms essentially out of a self-preservation instinct.

Victim blaming -- and the attendant conflation of the distinct concepts of foreseeability and causation -- normalizes the wrongdoers and puts the cultural onus on those at risk to engage in ultimately impotent behaviors to protect themselves. Why impotent? You yourself noted that some amount of wrongdoing is inevitable. But now, on top of the unfortunate fact of wrongdoing, we've also created a culture in which innocent people are expected (and thereby de facto required) to restrict their own lifestyles and behavior, because we have decided to hold people responsible for avoiding their own inevitable victimization -- rather than do our part, collectively, to minimize its occurrence, we've opted for the psychological narcotic of shifting blame from perpetrators to victims, in order to ease our own uncomfortable feelings of vulnerability.

Even leaving untouched the host of unpalatable classist implications in your comment, exactly what has the second woman "sown"? And why on earth would you deem her undeserving of sympathy? Have you never done something unsafe in your life? And don't play the "I'd accept it if something unspeakable happened to me" card, because it's the rhetorical equivalent of a null hypothesis put forth as an affirmative factual statement in the absence of usable data.

If you've done something unsafe, unless you're an extremely irrational person (and if you are, there's no point in trying to have a discussion with you anyway), you did that unsafe thing because you performed a risk calculation in your head and concluded that the risk of [bad thing] occurring was sufficiently low as not to override the value to you of doing [unsafe thing]. Thus, you're in essence suggesting that, instead of encouraging us all to behave as rational actors, our culture ought instead to inculcate a fear of shame to override our rational impulses when the risk of certain kinds of victimization are thrown into the calculus. Why would you prefer to live in a society in which people make decisions based primarily on fear instead of logic?

LOL. You know what? Okay, let's try it your way. Let's see if your comment was actually about pointing out a factual inaccuracy because of your deep abiding loyalty to the Truth, having nothing whatsoever to do with any attempts to derail the conversation from my real point.

Okay. Ya got me. Mea culpa, I am ashamed, I apologize to my mother and all of my teachers who taught me better than this. You have caught me in a hyperbole, good sir, and we all deserve better than that. Thank you for your service to this community.

Yes, you are indeed correct that I cannot say with absolute certainty that literally no single person on the face of this planet refers to mere advice-giving as "victim-blaming." I made a sweeping statement, and I hang my head in shame at its presumptuous over-inclusive nature, to which you have expertly drawn attention. I shall rub ashes into my forehead if it will help to ameliorate the severe wrong I have done to you all with my false, fraudulent, misleading characterization.

Now that we've dealt with your thorough rhetorical lashing of my feeble overstatement, would you care to address any of the actual content of my comment? Or was that all you had to contribute?

If the point of a discussion is to apportion responsibility among various parties, though, it isn't irrelevant. The phrase "victim blaming" isn't exactly confusing. Most people would read that as a rather obvious objection to what they perceive as your blaming of persons when you seem to be saying that you actually aren't. Seems to me if you sincerely don't care about assigning blame you could really easily just say "I'm not concerned with who's at fault. Throw everyone in prison for all I care. Hackers and providers and victims alike. Just get rid of the whole lot of them and the problem will go away."

I mean, for that matter, let's just destroy the communications infrastructure that makes the internet possible. That'll stop the bad forms of hacking -- since you seem to think blame is irrelevant and the only thing that matters is solving a problem, and by definition no solution is susceptible to an objection that it unfairly places responsibility and/or undue restrictions on people who shouldn't have to bear them.

Because look guys, we're just being solutions-oriented. Why do you keep making us out to be bad guys? Do you hate solutions? Do you LIKE people being able to steal your identity? Then hey, by all means, keep the internet. But don't complain when people use it to steal your stuff.

So why bother arguing with anyone about anything? Someone will always disagree with you. For that matter, why bother doing anything at all, or trying to effect any change of any kind?

I'm glad there are people like you in the world to make sure we all focus on the truly important parts of meaningful dialogue. Without useful contributions like yours, people might see forests instead of trees, or fresh, youthful faces instead of a small pimple. Thank you, brave soldier!

... railed the Anonymous Coward.

Good to see you've got your priorities straight, responsible citizen.

How refreshing to read a comment demonstrating the capability to separate actual arguments from straw men.

Come now, let's not be PC. You don't need to say "certain neighborhoods." We all know you mean neighborhoods with "those people."

When you make a point about the relative liabilities of human beings in relation to one another by resort to an analogy about non-human animals, I wonder: is it intended as an insult to some of the humans whose actions you're characterizing, or is it merely an implicit admission that you don't have a solid grasp on ethical/legal concepts like comparative liability?

You must not have noticed the top reply, which does exactly what you seem to be denying is a thing that people do: it purports to distinguish between a victim and someone who emails a list of passwords to herself.

Is it okay to advise people to take smart precautions about their passwords? Of course it is, and it's a straw man to suggest anyone is saying "don't tell people to take precautions." No one says that. No one.

What's NOT okay is the superiority complex many seem to have about failure to take (or even be aware of) such mitigating steps. If you believe that making a careless mistake means forfeiting victim's rights upon being taken advantage of, then I look forward to laughing at you when someone finds the glass side of YOUR house.

It's more attenuated than that. Employers aren't required to pay for birth control. Insurance companies are. The employers aren't buying birth control for anyone. What they're fighting for is the right to affirmatively put barriers in the way of their employees getting access to birth control through basic health insurance. In fact, by providing contraceptive coverage they would actually REDUCE their costs; so what they're trying to do is the opposite of what they claim. They're not trying to avoid purchasing something. They are trying to actively purchase more specifically to prevent their female employees from having convenient access to birth control. The actuarial tables on this are clear. Providing birth control actually makes an individual woman statistically CHEAPER to insure, since she's less likely to become pregnant and thereby incur pregnancy-related costs (both medical costs and costs to her employer, e.g., from missing work, etc.):

From a review of existing research on HHS's website

That's an objection to the employer mandate generally, though; not to having coverage of specific things. This debate specifically centers around the particulars of coverage. It is not an objection to being required to provide health insurance to their employees.

Also, throwing around the word "fascism" so cavalierly isn't doing your argument any favors.

Fitting, I guess, in light of the fact that they're related to an article about an incredibly useful piece of technology with all kinds of implications for stress monitoring (stress, of course, being a major cause of and/or contributor to all manner of physical and mental health problems) that's being used to ... help keep women skinny.

I can't decide whether to shake my head or hit it repeatedly on a desk.

Hmmm. Any chance you have a handy source I could refer to before I call them to explain that I'm requesting the software because someone on the internet told me I'm entitled to it? ;-) No disrespect whatsoever intended, I certainly do appreciate the well-intentioned info.

My Air is new as of July, updated to Mavericks last week. I assume that isn't new enough, as I have none of the referenced software, and the App store wants to charge me for them.