Victim blaming

Victim blaming occurs when the victim of a crime or any wrongful act is held entirely or partially responsible for the harm that befell them.[1] The study of victimology seeks to mitigate the perception of victims as responsible.[2] There is a greater tendency to blame victims of rape than victims of robbery if victims and perpetrators know each other.[3]

Coining of the phrase; racism

William Ryan coined the phrase "blaming the victim" in his 1971 book Blaming the Victim.[4][5][6][7][8] In the book, Ryan described victim blaming as an ideology used to justify racism and social injustice against black people in the United States.[7] Ryan wrote the book to refute Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1965 work The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (usually simply referred to as the Moynihan Report).[9]

Moynihan had concluded that three centuries of horrible treatment at the hands of whites, and in particular the uniquely cruel structure of American slavery as opposed to its Latin American counterparts, had created a long series of chaotic disruptions within the black family structure which, at the time of the report, manifested itself in high rates of unwed births, absent fathers, and single mother households in black families. Moynihan then correlated these familial outcomes, which he considered undesirable, to the relatively poorer rates of employment, educational achievement, and financial success found among the black population. Moynihan advocated the implementation of government programs designed to strengthen the black nuclear family.

Ryan objected that Moynihan then located the proximate cause of the plight of black Americans in the prevalence of a family structure in which the father was often sporadically, if at all, present, and the mother was often dependent on government aid to feed, clothe, and provide medical care for her children. Ryan's critique cast the Moynihan theories as attempts to divert responsibility for poverty from social structural factors to the behaviors and cultural patterns of the poor.[10][11]

History

Although Ryan popularized the phrase, other scholars had identified the phenomenon of victim blaming.[12] In 1947 Theodor W. Adorno defined what would be later called "blaming the victim," as "one of the most sinister features of the Fascist character".[13][14] Shortly thereafter Adorno and three other professors at the University of California, Berkeley formulated their influential and highly debated F-scale (F for fascist), published in The Authoritarian Personality (1950), which included among the fascist traits of the scale the "contempt for everything discriminated against or weak."[15] A typical expression of victim blaming is the "asking for it" idiom, e.g. "she was asking for it" said of a victim of violence or sexual assault.[16]

Secondary victimization of sexual assault victims

Secondary victimization is the re-traumatization of the sexual assault, abuse, or rape victim through the responses of individuals and institutions. Types of secondary victimization include victim blaming, disbelieving the victim's story, minimizing the severity of the attack, and inappropriate post-assault treatment by medical personnel or other organizations.[17] Secondary victimization is especially common in cases of drug-facilitated, acquaintance, military sexual trauma and statutory rape.

Sexual assault victims experience stigmatization based on rape myths.[18] A female rape victim is especially stigmatized in patrilineal cultures with strong customs and taboos regarding sex and sexuality. For example, a society may view a female rape victim (especially one who was previously a virgin) as "damaged". Victims in these cultures may suffer isolation, physical and psychological abuse, slut-shaming, public humiliation rituals, be disowned by friends and family, be prohibited from marrying, be divorced if already married, or even be killed.[19] However, even in many developed countries, including some sectors of United States Society, misogyny remains culturally ingrained.[20][21][22]

One example of a sexism-based allegation against female victims of sexual assault is that wearing provocative clothing stimulates sexual aggression in men who believe that women wearing body-revealing clothes are actively trying to seduce a sexual partner. Such accusations against victims stem from the assumption that sexually revealing clothing conveys consent for sexual actions, irrespective of willful verbal consent. Research has yet to prove that attire is a significant causal factor in determining who is assaulted.[23][24]

Victim blaming is also exemplified when a victim of sexual assault is faulted for performing actions which reduce the victim's ability to resist, or refuse consent, such as consuming alcohol.[25] Victims advocacy groups and medical professionals are educating young adults on the definition of consent, and the importance of refraining from victim blaming. Most institutions have adopted the concept of affirmative consent and that refraining from sexual activity while under the influence, is the safest choice.[26]

Findings on Rape Myth Acceptance have supported feminist claims that sexism is at the root of female rape victim blaming.[27]

A 2009 study in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence surveys on male victims of sexual assault states that male rape victim blaming is usually done so because of social constructs of masculinity. The article quotes "A man who fails to physically overcome his attacker is likewise seen as contributing to his own victimization; he must have secretly wanted it." [28] Some effects of these kind of rape cases include a loss of masculinity, confusion about their sexual orientation, and a sense of failure in behaving as men should.[29]

Victims of an unwanted sexual encounter usually develop psychological problems such as depression or sexual violence specific PTSD known as Rape Trauma Syndrome.[30][31]

Global perspective

Societal attitudes towards victim blaming are not universal. Many different cultures across the globe have formulated different degrees of victim blaming for different scenarios such as rape, hate crimes, and domestic abuse. In western culture victim blaming has been largely recognized as a problematic way to view a situation, however this does not exempt westerners from being guilty of the action. A recent example of western victim blaming would be a civil trial held in 2013 where The Los Angeles School District blamed a 14-year-old girl for the sexual abuse she endured from her middle school teacher. The Districts’ lawyer argued that the minor was responsible for the prevention of the abuse, putting the entire fault on the victim and exempting the perpetrator of any responsibility. Despite his efforts to convince the court that the victim must be blamed, the ruling stated that no minor student that has been sexually assaulted by his or her teacher is responsible for the prevention of that sexual assault.[32]

In other parts of the world, victim blaming is much more widely accepted. In some cultures victims are seen as deserving of their suffering because of that cultures perception of what is right and wrong. This is especially true in cultures where it is socially acceptable and advised to treat certain groups of people as lesser. For example, in Somalia victims of sexual abuse consistently endure social ostracization and harassment. One specific example is the kidnapping and rape of 14-year old Fatima. When the police arrived, both Fatima and her rapist were arrested. Instead of detaining the offender, the officers held Fatima captive and continually raped her for a month.[33] Another example of the effects of global victim blaming would be the acid attacks on Indian women. People will throw acid on women in an attempt to punish them for their perceived wrongdoings. For instance, in New Delhi in 2005, a group of men threw acid on a 16-year-old girl because they believed she provoked the advances of a man.[34]

Opposing views

Roy Baumeister, a social and personality psychologist, argued that blaming the victim is not necessarily always fallacious. He argued that showing the victim's possible role in an altercation may be contrary to typical explanations of violence and cruelty, which incorporate the trope of the innocent victim. According to Baumeister, in the classic telling of "the myth of pure evil," the innocent, well-meaning victims are going about their business when they are suddenly assaulted by wicked, malicious evildoers. Baumeister describes the situation as a possible distortion by both the perpetrator and the victim; the perpetrator may minimize the offense while the victim maximizes it, and so accounts of the incident shouldn't be immediately taken as objective truths.

In context, Baumeister refers to the common behavior of the aggressor seeing themselves as more of the "victim" than the abused, justifying a horrific act by way of their "moral complexity". This usually stems from an "excessive sensitivity" to insults, which he finds as a consistent pattern in abusive husbands. Essentially, the abuse the perpetrator administers is generally excessive, in comparison to the act/acts that they claim as to have provoked them.[35]

Examples

Leigh Leigh, born Leigh Rennea Mears, was a 14-year-old girl from Fern Bay on the east coast of Australia, who was murdered on November 3, 1989. While attending a 16-year-old boy's birthday party at Stockton Beach, Leigh was assaulted by a group of boys after she returned distressed from a sexual encounter on the beach that a reviewing judge later called non-consensual. After being kicked and spat on by the group, Leigh left the party. Her naked body was found in the sand dunes nearby the following morning, with severe genital damage and a crushed skull. Leigh's murder received considerable attention in the media. Initially focusing on her sexual assault and murder, media attention later concentrated more on the lack of parental supervision and the drugs and alcohol at the party, and on Leigh's sexuality. The media coverage of the murder has been cited as an example of victim blaming.

In a case that became infamous in 2011, an 11-year-old female rape victim who suffered repeated gang rapes in Cleveland, Texas, was accused by a defense attorney of being a seductress who lured men to their doom.[36] "Like the spider and the fly. Wasn't she saying, 'Come into my parlor', said the spider to the fly?", he asked a witness.[36] The New York Times ran an article uncritically reporting on the way many in the community blamed the victim, for which the newspaper later apologized.[36][37]

In a case that attracted worldwide coverage, when a woman was raped and killed in India in December 2012, some Indian government officials and political leaders blamed the victim for various things, mostly based in conjecture. Many of the people involved later apologized.[38]

In 2016, in the wake of New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Germany, the mayor of Cologne Henriette Reker came under heavy criticism, as her response appeared to blame the victims. She called for women to follow a "code of conduct," including staying at an "arm's length" from strangers.[39] By the evening of January 5, #einearmlänge ("an arm's length") became one of Germany's top-trending hashtags on Twitter.[40] Reker called a crisis meeting with the police in response to the incidents.[41][42] Reker called it "completely improper" to link the perpetrators to refugees.[43]

In covering the Steubenville High School rape case where two high school boys raped a 16-year-old girl, CNN portrayed the boys as “very good students” with “promising futures.” The news anchor even went so far as to say that it will “haunt them for the rest of their lives.” The way CNN presented the rape made is seem like the victim was the one in the wrong and the two boys did not deserve the punishment for their crime. When covering the same case, ABC News tried to rationalize the rape by saying that the rapist was in a “celebratory mood.” ABC also focused more on how awful it was that the rape was caught on video rather than the actual rape itself. NBC News also concentrated on the “promising football careers” of the rapists and how it will not look good that they are now registered sex offenders. Yahoo News described the victim as “an intoxicated 16-year-old girl” who forced the town into an emotional situation.[44]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ http://crcvc.ca/docs/victim_blaming.pdf
  2. ↑ Fox, K. A.; Cook, C. L. (2011). "Is Knowledge Power? The Effects of a Victimology Course on Victim Blaming". Journal of Interpersonal Violence 26: 3407–3427. doi:10.1177/0886260511403752.
  3. ↑ Bieneck, S.; Krahe, B. (2010). "Blaming the Victim and Exonerating the Perpetrator in Cases of Rape and Robbery: Is There a Double Standard?". Journal of Interpersonal Violence 26 (9): 1785–97. doi:10.1177/0886260510372945. PMID 20587449.
  4. ↑ ISBN 9780394417264
  5. ↑ Cole (2007) pp.111, 149, 213
  6. ↑ Downs (1998) p. 24
  7. 1 2 Kirkpatrick (1987) p. 219
  8. ↑ Kent (2003)
  9. ↑ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Lu0G3TaZ4KoJ:www.blackpast.org/primary/moynihan-report-1965+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
  10. ↑ Illinois state U. archives.
  11. ↑ Ryan, William (1976). Blaming the Victim. Vintage. ISBN 0-394-72226-4.
  12. ↑ Robinson (2002) p.141
  13. ↑ Adorno, TW (1947) Wagner, Nietzsche and Hitler in Kenyon Review Vol.ix (1), p. 158
  14. ↑ James Martin Harding (1997) Adorno and "A writing of the ruins": essays on modern aesthetics and Anglo-American literature and culture, p.143 quotation: "The mechanisms of this ideological affinity between Baraka and Wagner can be seen in a short critique of Wagner that Adorno wrote directly after the Second World War—at a time when Adorno was perhaps his most direct in singling out the proto-fascist tendencies in Wagner's corpus and character. Adorno criticizes Wagner's having bated his conductor Herman Levi so that he would seem to bear the responsibility for Wagner's subsequent insulting dismissal of him. This, for Adorno, is a classic example of blaming the victim. The anti-Semitic sub-text to the dismissal, viz., that as a Jew Levi supposedly desired and brought the dismissal upon himself, "bears witness to the existence of one of the most sinister features of the Fascist character even in Wagner's time: the paranoid tendency of projecting upon others one's own violent aggressiveness and then indicting, on the basis of this projection, those whom one endows with pernicious qualities" (Adorno "Wagner, Nietzsche and Hitler" 158)."
  15. ↑ Adorno and the political By Espen Hammer p.63
  16. ↑ Nicky Ali Jackson (22 February 2007). Encyclopedia of Domestic Violence. Taylor & Francis. pp. 715–. ISBN 978-0-203-94221-5. Retrieved 11 May 2013.
  17. ↑ Campbell, R.; Raja, S. (1999). "Secondary victimization of rape victims: insights from mental health professionals who treat survivors of violence". Violence and Victims 14 (3): 261–275. PMID 10606433.
  18. ↑ "Rape Myths and Facts | wellwvu | West Virginia University". well.wvu.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-16.
  19. ↑ "Factsheets: Trauma of Victimization – Secondary Injuries". Svfreenyc.org. 21 August 2012. Retrieved 27 August 2012.
  20. ↑ "Power in Structured Misogyny: Implications for the Politics... : Advances in Nursing Science". LWW. Retrieved 2015-11-16.
  21. ↑ "Male Hegemony through Education: Construction of Gendered Identities". hipatiapress.info. Retrieved 2015-11-16.
  22. ↑ Jeffreys, Sheila (2014-12-03). Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West. Routledge. ISBN 9781317675440.
  23. ↑ Moor, Abigail (2010). "She Dresses to Attract, He Perceives Seduction: A Gender Gap in Attribution of Intent to Women’s Revealing Style of Dress and its Relation to Blaming the Victims of Sexual Violence". Journal of International Women’s Studies 11 (4): 115–127.
  24. ↑ Beiner, Theresa (2007). "Sexy Dressing Revisited: Does Target Dress Play a Part in Sexual Harassment Cases?". Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy 14: 125–152.
  25. ↑ Whitaker, Matthew. "Don't blame women's drinking for rape". CNN Opinion. Retrieved 11 September 2015.
  26. ↑ "Myths and Facts About Sexual Assault and Consent". Sexual Trauma Services of the Midlands. Retrieved 2015-11-16.
  27. ↑ Suarez, E.; Gadalla, T. M. "Stop Blaming the Victim: A Meta-Analysis on Rape Myths". Journal of Interpersonal Violence 25 (11): 2010–2035. doi:10.1177/0886260509354503.
  28. ↑ "Male Rape Victim and Perpetrator Blaming". Sage Journal of Interpersonal Violence. Sage Journal Publications. Retrieved 23 July 2015.
  29. ↑ Davies, Michelle; Austen, Kerry; Rogers, Paul (2011). "Sexual Preference, Gender, and Blame Attributions in Adolescent Sexual Assault". Journal of Social Psychology (151.5): 592–607.
  30. ↑ Davies, Michelle; Austen, Kerry; Rogers, Paul (2011). "Sexual Preference, Gender, and Blame Attributions in Adolescent Sexual Assault". Journal of Social Psychology (151.5): 592–607.
  31. ↑ Cling, B. J. (2004-01-01). Sexualized Violence Against Women and Children: A Psychology and Law Perspective. Guilford Press. ISBN 9781593850616.
  32. ↑ "JUDGE: School district ‘wrong’ to blame student for having sex with teacher EAGnews.org". eagnews.org. Retrieved December 2015.
  33. ↑ "Rape victims are still being blamed for sexual violence in Somalia". The Independent. Retrieved 2015-12-09.
  34. ↑ Laxmi. "Laxmi's Story". Acid Survivors Foundation India. Acid Survivors Foundation India. Retrieved December 2015.
  35. ↑ Baumeister, Roy (1999). Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty. Holt. ISBN 0-8050-7165-2.
  36. 1 2 3 Adams, Sam (29 November 2012). "Cleveland, Texas rape case: Defense attorney calls pre-teen victim a spider, but that's his job". Slate. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  37. ↑ "NY Times Defends Victim Blaming Coverage of Child Rape Case". Mediabistro.com. 10 March 2011. Archived from the original on 13 September 2011. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  38. ↑ "Amid rape fiasco, India’s leaders keep up insensitive remarks". Washington Post. 4 January 2013. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  39. ↑ "Mayor of Cologne says women should have code of conduct to prevent future assault". Retrieved 5 January 2016.
  40. ↑ "Twitter storm as Cologne mayor suggests women stay at 'arm's length' from strangers". Retrieved 5 January 2016.
  41. ↑ "Stoning victim 'begged for mercy'". BBC News. November 4, 2008. Retrieved September 2, 2013.
  42. ↑ "A 'new dimension' of sexual assault in Cologne". Retrieved 5 January 2016.
  43. ↑ "Cologne sex attacks: Merkel disgust at New Year gang assaults". BBC News. 5 January 2016. Retrieved 5 January 2016.
  44. ↑ "How The Media Took Sides In The Steubenville Rape Case". ThinkProgress. Retrieved 2015-12-08.

References

Further reading

External links

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