Thoughts on victim blaming
Jim Hines posted today about media coverage of rape. How it too often sensationalizes and fantasizes rape. How it far too often blames the victims. The latter is what I want to talk about. Please don't read further if you don't want to read about it.
Victim blaming is far too prevalent in our culture. I have met people who work in the system that is supposed to protect victims who engage in victim blaming. No wonder sexual crimes are under-reported. There is something seriously flawed with our system. It's fucked up and sickening.
But it's not the system I'm thinking about today. Today, what I can't get out of my head is that everyone who victim blames is just a person. And I believe that the majority of people are good people.* Ordinary people, with families, loved ones, lives. I think especially in Internet-land it's all too easy to forget that. Take the article that Jim Hines tears apart in his post: I'm sure that the journalist who wrote it, the editor who approved it, all the other people whose hands it passed through on its way to press, are not bad people.
But that doesn't mean words don't have power. Quite the opposite.
Rape is a horrible crime. It's awful to contemplate. Obviously you hope it never happens to you or someone close to you.
But I wonder if victim blaming arises at least in part from something more than that. A feeling that something so dreadful could never happen to *me*. Like the immortality of youth: sure, people die, but not me. I'm young and strong and invincible.
Here's my confession: I have victim blamed. I didn't mean to, but the words came out of my mouth and so I have to own up to them. Some friends and I were talking about rape (specifically the crappy way the system deals with its victims), and I made some comment to the effect that if I were raped, I probably wouldn't report it, but not that I think it will ever come up.**
Well, yes. And I don't expect to be the victim of a robbery either. You don't expect disasters, tragedies, accidents, crimes.
But the implication in what I said was that I am somehow above being sexually assaulted. Which means victims incite it, bring it upon themselves. And there we are again, blaming the victims. This is not what I think at all, this is not what I believe, this is not what I know to be the case from descriptions told to me. But it is what came out of my mouth in a moment of frustration with the system, a moment of helpless anger on behalf of the people who went to the authorities for help and support only to find themselves told it was their fault.
I am not a bad person. I spoke without realizing the full effect of my words. Now I try to be even more aware of what I'm saying, try to avoid anything that directly or indirectly pulls the fault away from the person who committed the crime.
No one wants a crime of any sort to happen to them. It's all too easy to think it would never happen to you, but when you say that, you are telling the people it did happen to that they did something wrong. And they didn't.
Words have power. Watch how you use them.
*This post could probably be summed up by two simple statements: I believe that people are fundamentally good. And I believe that nothing can change without awareness.
**I went on. "... because x, y, z..." The specifics get too, well, specific to post. But it doesn't matter. No one should have to curtail their life, e.g. not have a fun night out with friends, not go where your job takes you, out of fear for their body.
Victim blaming is far too prevalent in our culture. I have met people who work in the system that is supposed to protect victims who engage in victim blaming. No wonder sexual crimes are under-reported. There is something seriously flawed with our system. It's fucked up and sickening.
But it's not the system I'm thinking about today. Today, what I can't get out of my head is that everyone who victim blames is just a person. And I believe that the majority of people are good people.* Ordinary people, with families, loved ones, lives. I think especially in Internet-land it's all too easy to forget that. Take the article that Jim Hines tears apart in his post: I'm sure that the journalist who wrote it, the editor who approved it, all the other people whose hands it passed through on its way to press, are not bad people.
But that doesn't mean words don't have power. Quite the opposite.
Rape is a horrible crime. It's awful to contemplate. Obviously you hope it never happens to you or someone close to you.
But I wonder if victim blaming arises at least in part from something more than that. A feeling that something so dreadful could never happen to *me*. Like the immortality of youth: sure, people die, but not me. I'm young and strong and invincible.
Here's my confession: I have victim blamed. I didn't mean to, but the words came out of my mouth and so I have to own up to them. Some friends and I were talking about rape (specifically the crappy way the system deals with its victims), and I made some comment to the effect that if I were raped, I probably wouldn't report it, but not that I think it will ever come up.**
Well, yes. And I don't expect to be the victim of a robbery either. You don't expect disasters, tragedies, accidents, crimes.
But the implication in what I said was that I am somehow above being sexually assaulted. Which means victims incite it, bring it upon themselves. And there we are again, blaming the victims. This is not what I think at all, this is not what I believe, this is not what I know to be the case from descriptions told to me. But it is what came out of my mouth in a moment of frustration with the system, a moment of helpless anger on behalf of the people who went to the authorities for help and support only to find themselves told it was their fault.
I am not a bad person. I spoke without realizing the full effect of my words. Now I try to be even more aware of what I'm saying, try to avoid anything that directly or indirectly pulls the fault away from the person who committed the crime.
No one wants a crime of any sort to happen to them. It's all too easy to think it would never happen to you, but when you say that, you are telling the people it did happen to that they did something wrong. And they didn't.
Words have power. Watch how you use them.
*This post could probably be summed up by two simple statements: I believe that people are fundamentally good. And I believe that nothing can change without awareness.
**I went on. "... because x, y, z..." The specifics get too, well, specific to post. But it doesn't matter. No one should have to curtail their life, e.g. not have a fun night out with friends, not go where your job takes you, out of fear for their body.