Shifting blame to the victim

Hi everyone!

I may well be citing a well documented fallacy here but I was having a discussion with someone who used an appalling argument to justify the consumption of animal products and I wondered if there was a name for the fallacy he used.

His argument was "if animals weren't made of food, they wouldn't be eaten"

I chose to explain how similar that sounded to people blaming women who are sexually attacked for wearing revealing clothing.

What is the name of this fallacy? It sounds like it would be something to do with shifting the blame from the victim to the oppressor but that's not very snappy!

Any ideas anyone?

Thanks!

That's pretty circular

Why do you eat animals? Because they are made of food.

What is food? Something which is eaten. 

So because people eat animals you can describe them as food.  Which is then given as the justification. 

This breaks down to: 

It's okay to eat animals because people eat animals. 

This is devoid of any actual justification and instead is sophistry. It is also a particular form of circular reasoning known as begging the question  where the argument's premise assumes the conclusion rather than support it i.e. it is assumed that animals are food, therefore it's okay to eat them. 

if animals weren't made of food, they wouldn't be eaten

Honestly, this sounds like a joke. At least I found it funny. Jokes are often purposely fallacious. Equivocation is a popular comedic tool. My guess is that the person who made this "argument" is not attempting to make a serious argument. Assuming this is the case, the best response is one of humor as well that also demonstrates your logical wisdom:

If you weren't a idiot, you wouldn't say such idiotic things.

Assuming the person was serious, you can explain that the category "food" refers to (some) animals because we eat them, not that we eat them because they are part of the category "food." But let's be charitable and change "made of food" to "edible." The argument would be

If it is edible, then we should eat it.

When in fact,

If it is edible, then we can (are capable of) eat(ing) it.

They have moved from an "is" to an "ought," committing the Naturalistic Fallacy .

The way this argument is worded, it is an obvious truth - the vast majority, nearly 100%, of people only eat food. So the argument is true on its face. The problem is that it defines animals as "made of food". I can think of several fallacies that fit to some extent, about the premise. 

Appeal to Common Belief - that animals are universally considered to be made of food;
Appeal to Self-evident Belief - that it is self-evident that animals are made of food
Appeal to Stupidity - convince the other side that animals are made of food
False Conversion - do people eat animals because they are made of food, or are cows considered to be food because people eat them?

But it seems to me the most clear fallacy is the Definist fallacy:  "Defining a term in such a way that makes one’s position much easier to defend". The arguer is defining animals as made of food, and claiming that something defined as made of food will be eaten. But animals can also be sources of food (milk) without being eaten, they can be farm labor animals , they can be pets . This doesn't happen with something that is only food. On the other hand, anything living is potentially "made of food". Just about any animal or bird or insect or plant is "food" to some other creature. Humans are made of food to polar bears. But humans do not eat humans (for the most part), even though they are made of food in some contexts.

Your second case is a bit different, I think. This seems to me to be primarily an Oversimplified Cause fallacy. While wearing revealing clothing may be a contributing factor, it is not a cause at all because the wearer is not the perpetrator of the assault, or as you say, the wearer is the victim, not the cause.

This is a Circular Reasoning Fallacy. 

Logical Form:

X is true because of Y.

Y is true because of X.

Its true that we eat animals because they are food.

Its true that animals are food because we eat them.