Victim Blaming- Officially Not Cool
Trigger warning for discussion of rape and victim blaming, where i try not to pull any punches.
A woman is suing a Stamford CT Marriott for not adequately preventing her rape. According to the complaint, hotel staff had seen the assailant hanging around the hotel and didn't do anything about it. Marriott claims, as part of its defense, that the woman and her children didn't take adequate safety precautions.
This blatant victim blaming actually does not surprise me. Marriott is obviously grasping at straws, trying to put the blame on anyone else in order to avoid taking any responsibility for the situation and potentially having to pay the woman a shitload of money.
What does surprise me are the reactions within the news story itself. Watch the video. Note the tone of the story, and the after-story comments from the anchors. Everyone is disgusted that a company would blame a woman for her own assault. But that's what the media and society does every day to women assaulted under different circumstances. No one is arguing that this woman "asked for it," no one is saying, "hey, maybe the hotel has a point." Which is great, but weird. I mean, this is the same media that tells women who drink or wear "provocative" clothes or are in the wrong part of town, or are the wrong color, or are a sex worker, that they are to blame for their own assault. I mean, they should have known better, right?
It seems that general consensus is that a middle aged woman with 2 kids who's assaulted at gunpoint in broad daylight is officially Not To Blame. Fabulous, glad she's getting media/society support. But what if she were a young woman with 2 kids? Single mom with 2 kids? Woman with no kids? What if it had been night? What if she had been coming back from the gym, and dressed in spanky pants and a sports bra? What if she had been coming back from a club? What if she had had a few drinks? What if her rapist wasn't a stranger, but an ex? Or her current boyfriend? Where do you put the line between "what a terrible crime" and "if she hadn't done x, maybe she wouldn't have gotten herself raped?" When does it become Her Fault (TM)?
OH. WAIT.
It doesn't. You know who's responsible for rape? Rapists. Want to stop rape? Stop raping people. Make enthusiastic consent the norm, the legal standard. Why should a woman have to prove that she said no for it to be "real" rape? And while we're at it, let's stop talking about "real" rape, or "brutal" rape, or "grey" rape. Every time we (media, society, whatever) make these distinctions, draw these lines that aren't there, it starts to look like there need to be certain conditions for a sexual assault to be "real," namely that the rapist was unknown to the victim, the rapist had a weapon or beat up the victim, and that the victim fought back so hard she broke fingernails or something, we create more rapists. Every time we say or imply that it's not rape to assault your wife or your girlfriend, or get a girl drunk, or drug her, or whine and beg all night until she relents, we create more rapists.
Also, see Fugitivus' post on how society tells women not to fight back then, when they're assaulted, asks why they didn't fight back.
ETA: Yay for responsive companies! Marriott backs off from victim blaming
A woman is suing a Stamford CT Marriott for not adequately preventing her rape. According to the complaint, hotel staff had seen the assailant hanging around the hotel and didn't do anything about it. Marriott claims, as part of its defense, that the woman and her children didn't take adequate safety precautions.
This blatant victim blaming actually does not surprise me. Marriott is obviously grasping at straws, trying to put the blame on anyone else in order to avoid taking any responsibility for the situation and potentially having to pay the woman a shitload of money.
What does surprise me are the reactions within the news story itself. Watch the video. Note the tone of the story, and the after-story comments from the anchors. Everyone is disgusted that a company would blame a woman for her own assault. But that's what the media and society does every day to women assaulted under different circumstances. No one is arguing that this woman "asked for it," no one is saying, "hey, maybe the hotel has a point." Which is great, but weird. I mean, this is the same media that tells women who drink or wear "provocative" clothes or are in the wrong part of town, or are the wrong color, or are a sex worker, that they are to blame for their own assault. I mean, they should have known better, right?
It seems that general consensus is that a middle aged woman with 2 kids who's assaulted at gunpoint in broad daylight is officially Not To Blame. Fabulous, glad she's getting media/society support. But what if she were a young woman with 2 kids? Single mom with 2 kids? Woman with no kids? What if it had been night? What if she had been coming back from the gym, and dressed in spanky pants and a sports bra? What if she had been coming back from a club? What if she had had a few drinks? What if her rapist wasn't a stranger, but an ex? Or her current boyfriend? Where do you put the line between "what a terrible crime" and "if she hadn't done x, maybe she wouldn't have gotten herself raped?" When does it become Her Fault (TM)?
OH. WAIT.
It doesn't. You know who's responsible for rape? Rapists. Want to stop rape? Stop raping people. Make enthusiastic consent the norm, the legal standard. Why should a woman have to prove that she said no for it to be "real" rape? And while we're at it, let's stop talking about "real" rape, or "brutal" rape, or "grey" rape. Every time we (media, society, whatever) make these distinctions, draw these lines that aren't there, it starts to look like there need to be certain conditions for a sexual assault to be "real," namely that the rapist was unknown to the victim, the rapist had a weapon or beat up the victim, and that the victim fought back so hard she broke fingernails or something, we create more rapists. Every time we say or imply that it's not rape to assault your wife or your girlfriend, or get a girl drunk, or drug her, or whine and beg all night until she relents, we create more rapists.
Also, see Fugitivus' post on how society tells women not to fight back then, when they're assaulted, asks why they didn't fight back.
ETA: Yay for responsive companies! Marriott backs off from victim blaming