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Another day. Another example of victim shaming.

That happened today during a heated conversation about Ravens running back Ray Rice knocking his girlfriend unconscious on ESPN’s First Take. Host Stephen A. Smith decided to give his own preventative measures for avoiding domestic violence, and it didn’t have anything to do with teaching men not to hit women.

His advice? Women should learn how not to provoke men. In short.

“But domestic violence or whatever the case may be, with men putting their hands on women, is obviously a very real, real issue in our society. And I think that just talking about what guys shouldn’t do, we got to also make sure that you can do your part to do whatever you can do to make, to try to make sure it doesn’t happen.

We know they’re wrong. We know they’re criminals. We know they probably deserve to be in jail. In Ray Rice’s case, he probably deserves more than a 2-game suspension which we both acknowledged. But at the same time, we also have to make sure that we learn as much as we can about elements of provocation.

Not that there’s real provocation, but the elements of provocation, you got to make sure that you address them, because we’ve got to do is do what we can to try to prevent the situation from happening in any way.”

You can watch Smith stick his foot in his mouth above…if you’re into that kind of victim-blaming.

Luckily for us, we don’t have to stop watching ESPN. ESPN staffer Michelle Beadle probably single-handedly gave us faith in the network again.

And she wasn’t alone. Smith’s comments set Twitter on fire, garnering both dissent and support. He took to Twitter later in the day to clear up any misconceptions:

Later he tweeted a “thought-out” statement, just in case we didn’t get the picture through his Twitter rant:

Lesson here? The only preventative measure for men not to hit women is just for men not to hit women. Sorry, but we’re not here for the direct or indirect victim shaming.

SOURCE: ESPN, Twitter