After the suspected assassin was arrested, the experts initially said all the right things

When I was in college, there was this campaign against what was being called “slut shaming.”

I remember seeing fliers around campus saying that women should be able to wear anything we wanted, say anything we wanted, and go anywhere we wanted without fear of being attacked at the end of a night out would.

This was common sense, if somewhat naive.

I remember thinking at the time that no one deserved to be a victim, but that responsibility was important.

If you've been drinking too much and hanging out with people you've just met, you don't deserve to be attacked. But forewarned and completely sober, he was prepared.

But even with that Catholic sentiment of “Be a good girl and nothing will happen to you,” I still had some gut feeling that people shouldn't be punished for poor judgment to a degree disproportionate to social faux pas.

In other words, there was no set number of inches above the knee that a skirt could fit a woman into the open-target category.

Of course, as I matured and became more politically aware, I also realized that there are double standards that have nothing to do with gender.

When a liberal woman found herself the center of salacious public attention, the media typically responded with outrage. How dare they – “they” are conservative pundits – suggest that a woman who “owns” her sexuality should be subjected to such insults and disrespectful treatment? The nerve!

When Sarah Palin came along, the whole paradigm collapsed.

She was shamed, blamed and vilified for everything she said, did or didn't do. I don't need to go through the litany of attacks on the former vice presidential nominee to prove that no one in the history of politics has been more enthusiastic than Palin.

And when it was pointed out, commentators and a depressingly large group of Democrats shrugged their shoulders and basically said she deserved it.

It is wrong not to condemn this double standard. I made that mistake myself when Democrats attacked the admittedly repugnant Laura Loomer, a woman whose views are anathema to decent people, and accused her of sleeping with Donald Trump after they saw her step off his plane last week .

I didn't defend her. I tweeted that you actually have to have a good reputation to be defamed. I was legally right, morally wrong. Slut-shaming is just as disgusting as Loomer himself.

Which finally brings me to the former president.

Recently, Trump was almost assassinated for the second time.

After the initial, expected comments expressing relief that he wasn't injured, the experts concluded: He brought it on himself.

Many on the left have revisited their old “Palin asked for it” rhetoric, claiming that if you act like Hitler, you deserve everything that comes to you, including an assassin's bullet.

After the assassination, Never Trumper expert David Frum posted this on

And?

Does this mean that attacking the former president is justified? That he caused it himself?

And that was just a drop in the bucket of vile suggestions that Trump's tongue will dig his own grave. In other words, his skirt is too short.

No victim bears his or her own victimization. The skirt is not too short. The makeup is not too heavy. The relationship is not too familiar. And the words are not too harsh unless they are used to dehumanize a person.

After the latest assassination attempt against Trump and how pathetic it is that I can even write that sentence, I wrote that the ongoing attacks on the former president have the power to fuel a dangerous level of anger against him, a level that could trigger repeat incidents.

I warned Trump's critics to hold back. I'm not proud of having had foresight.

My critics said words don't matter.

Then they discovered the power of lies about pet-eating immigrants and concluded that words matter, as long as they can be used against the right target.

No matter what a woman wears, she doesn't deserve to be attacked.

No matter what anyone says, they don't deserve to be killed.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times and can be reached at [email protected].

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