I think one of my issues with the comparison between the precautions you take to protect yourself against property crime vs against rape is that the former have virtually no impact on your life. Locking your door while leaving the house? You'd be leaving the house anyway, so you take literally two extra seconds to turn the key. Carrying your wallet in an inside pocket rather than the back pocket of your jeans? You're taking your wallet with you anyway, you're literally just putting it in a different pocket. Putting your laptop in the boot of your car instead of leaving it on the back seat? Same sort of thing. You live your life exactly as you would, with the "precautions" taking less than a few seconds to enact as part of your usual routine. You do those things and you reduce your chances of being a victim of crime by a massive percentage, because you've made it that much harder for the criminal.
But with rape, to reduce my chances of being a victim by the same percentage - and to try to ensure that if I get it wrong, my behaviour will have been "exemplary" by the standards against which rape victims are judged - the sort of precautions I'd need to take are hugely impactful on how I would have to live my life. Take going for a night out, as that's the focus of the judge's remarks. I was going to wear that dress, but it's a bit short so I'd better wear trousers instead. High heels? What if I have to run away from a rapist? Better make it flats. Look, it's happy hour, cocktails are two for one. No, I need to be sober with my wits about me so just an orange juice for me. I need the loo. Better not leave my drink in case it's spiked, so I'll take it with me and hope there's a surface to stand it on. Now the really tricky part...getting home. Should I leave earlier and get the last bus? But no one else wants to leave yet and there's that dark bit you have to walk through to get to the bus stop, so I'd better stay until one of my friends is ready to leave. Here's a taxi. Should I sit in the front? What if the driver tries to touch me? I'll get in the back...and so it goes on and on and on. And yes, any one of those actions in itself isn't much different to the comparisons above but it's the fact that it's so endless. And then I could do all that and still end up being raped by a colleague because I was engrossed in work and didn't realise he and I were the last two in the office, and my sensible business suit and lack of make up and buttoned up blouse weren't enough to deter him.
I hate it, and I resent it even as I do some of it because I've been conditioned to. I hate the fact that I'm weighing up your husbands and sons and brothers to try to assess in a split second how likely they are to rape me. That taxi driver? Lovely man, father of two little girls, volunteers at the local animal rescue on his shifts off. But until I'm safely through my front door, he's a potential rapist. And I fucking hate it.