Victim blaming

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Coining of the phrase; Racism[edit]

William Ryan coined the phrase "blaming the victim" in his 1971 book Blaming the Victim.^{[3][4][5][6][7]} In the book, Ryan described victim blaming as an ideology used to justify racism and social injustice against black people in the United States.^[6] 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).^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]}

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.^[8][9]

The phrase "blaming the victim" was quickly adopted by advocates for crime victims, in particular rape victims accused of abetting their victimization (see Victimology), although this usage is conceptually distinct from the sociological critique developed by Ryan.^{[citation needed]}

History[edit]

Although Ryan popularized the phrase, the phenomenon of victim blaming is well established in human psychology and history;^[10] for instance there are plenty of examples in the Old Testament in which tragedies and catastrophes are justified and blamed on the victims for their faults as sinners.^[10]

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".^[11][12] 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."^[13] 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.^[14]

Opposing views[edit]

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.^[15]

Secondary victimization of sexual assault victims[edit]

A rape victim is especially stigmatized in cultures with strong customs and taboos regarding sex and sexuality. For example, a society may view a rape victim (especially one who was previously a virgin) as "damaged". Victims in these cultures may suffer isolation, be disowned by friends and family, be prohibited from marrying, be divorced if already married, or even be killed.^[16]

In the United States, one of the most prevalent allegations against female victims of sexual assault is that wearing provocative dress stimulates sexual aggression in men who believe that women clothed in body-revealing dress are actively trying to seduce a sexual partner. Accusations against victims wrongly assume that provocative clothing conveys consent for sexual actions and that the only women who are targets of sexual assault are those who wear attention grabbing revealing clothing. Research has yet to prove that attire is a significant causal factor in determining who is assaulted.^[17][18] There is some evidence that suggests that women who wear more body-concealing clothing are actually at greater risk than women who dress provocatively.^{[citation needed]} It has been found that rapists look for signs of passiveness and submissiveness in their victims. These traits are more often found in women who wear more conservative clothing. By dressing provocatively and exhibiting a degree of confidence, women may be less vulnerable to victimization.^[18]

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 and inappropriate post-assault behavior or language by medical personnel or other organizations with which the victim has contact.^[19] Secondary victimization is especially common in cases of drug-facilitated, acquaintance, military sexual trauma and statutory rape.^{[citation needed]}

Rape shield laws[edit]

In the United States and Canada, rape is unique in that it is the only crime in which there are statutory protections designed in favor of the accuser. These were enacted in response to the common defense tactic of "putting the accuser on trial". Typical rape shield laws prohibit cross-examination of the accuser (alleged victim) with respect to certain issues, such as his or her prior sexual history, or the manner in which he or she was dressed at the time of the rape. Most states and the federal rules, however, provide exceptions to the rape shield law where evidence of prior sexual history is used to provide an alternative explanation for physical evidence, where the defendant and the alleged victim had a prior consensual sexual relationship, and where exclusion of evidence would violate the defendant's constitutional rights.^{[citation needed]}

Examples[edit]

In 2005, Australian Muslim preacher Feiz Mohammad gave a speech in Australia that was covered in Europe and the U.S.^{[citation needed]} in which he blamed women themselves for being rape victims.^[20][21] He said: "A victim of rape every minute somewhere in the world. Why? No one to blame but herself. She displayed her beauty to the entire world... Strapless, backless, sleeveless, showing their legs, nothing but satanic skirts, slit skirts, translucent blouses, miniskirts, tight jeans: all this to tease man and appeal to his carnal nature."^[22][23]

In a case that became famous 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.^[24] "Like the spider and the fly. Wasn't she saying, 'Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly?' ", he asked a witness.^[24] 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.^[24][25]

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 her outfit and being out late at night.^[26]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

• Cole, Alyson Manda (2007) The cult of true victimhood: from the war on welfare to the war on terror
• Downs, Donald Alexander (1998) More Than Victims: Battered Women, the Syndrome Society, and the Law
• George Kent (2003). "Blaming the Victim, Globally". UN Chronicle online (United Nations Department of Public Information) XL (3). Archived from the original on 24 Dec 2003. 
• Kirkpatrick, George R. and Katsiaficas, George N. and Kirkpatrick, Robert George and Emery, Mary Lou (1987) Introduction to critical sociology
• Robinson, Daniel N. (2002) Praise And Blame: Moral Realism and Its Applications

Further reading[edit]

• Durham, Meenakshi G. (February 2013). ""Vicious assault shakes Texas town": the politics of gender violence in The New York Times' coverage of a schoolgirl's gang rape". Journalism Studies (Taylor & Francis Online) 14 (1): 1–12. doi:10.1080/1461670X.2012.657907. 
• Janoffbulman, R (1985). "Cognitive biases in blaming the victim". Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 21 (2): 161–177. doi:10.1016/0022-1031(85)90013-7. 
• Maes, JüRgen (1994). "Blaming the victim: Belief in control or belief in justice?". Social Justice Research 7: 69–90. doi:10.1007/BF02333823. 
• McCaul, Kevin D.; Veltum, Lois G.; Boyechko, Vivian; Crawford, Jacqueline J. (1990). "Understanding Attributions of Victim Blame for Rape: Sex, Violence, and Foreseeability1". Journal of Applied Social Psychology 20: 1–26. doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.1990.tb00375.x. 
• Summers, Gertrude; Feldman, Nina S. (1984). "Blaming the Victim Versus Blaming the Perpetrator: An Attributional Analysis of Spouse Abuse". Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 2 (4): 339–47. doi:10.1521/jscp.1984.2.4.339. 

External links[edit]

• Ofer Zur – Rethinking 'Don't Blame the Victim': The Psychology of Victimhood
• Victim Blame and Sexual Assault