Blaming the victim is an evil in culture that benefits not only the blamer of the victim, but also the perpetrator, and all at the victim’s expense. When we blame the victim, we are wittingly or unwittingly creating an environment where evil can flourish. Essentially we are sending a message that implies that people can do evil and not have to worry about being held responsible. Instead, the victims will be responsible. Such a message may as well permit evildoers to have a field day where they can give into their evil desires, and in the aftermath, the focus will be on the victim.
If a prospective victim is doing something stupid at the time, most likely due to some lapse in judgment, then the bad guys will especially get a free pass to do whatever they want; and they can rest assured that the victim will be blamed instead.
Victim blamers may not want to admit these implications of their message, but let’s just say that when they blame the victim for the wrong done against him/her, one thing they are not necessarily thinking about is the willful act of evil of the perpetrator. Victim blamers also do not give as much thought into what punitive measures should be taken against the perpetrator to obtain justice.
The American Psychological Association defines “blaming the victim” as the following:
a social psychological phenomenon in which individuals or groups attempt to cope with the bad things that have happened to others by assigning blame to the victim of the trauma or tragedy. Victim blaming serves to create psychological distance between the blamer and the victim, may rationalize a failure to intervene if the blamer was a bystander, and creates a psychological defense for the blamer against feelings of vulnerability
Victim blaming happens for a variety of reasons. The excerpt above gives three reasons for victim blaming. One reason is to create a psychological distance between the victim blamer and the victim. This psychological distancing may help the victim blamer to cope with a tragedy that has occurred. Alternatively, a person may blame the victim in order to rationalize his/her failure to intervene. In this way, the inactive bystander feels less responsible for the harm and suffering that has occurred. The third reason is an unwillingness to acknowledge one’s own vulnerabilities. In some instances, such as in the case of rape, women like to blame the rape victim because they do not want to face the reality of their own vulnerabilities. Deep down, they know that this rape victim could have been them. By blaming the victim, they can deny their own vulnerability.
When the perpetrator blames the victim
Let us say that a woman named Sally works in an office setting where George is her supervisor. Throughout the few years that Sally has worked at this place, George has bullied Sally. George does not have very much respect for Sally, and as such, he likes to belittle Sally sometimes just for the sake of amusing himself. George does not take Sally’s opinions seriously, and sometimes George questions Sally’s competency in front of Sally’s colleagues, even though George has no reason to believe that Sally is incompetent. Sometimes, George pushes Sally into working long hours, often when such long hours are unnecessary for getting things done on time. George just likes to overwork Sally because it makes him feel like he is a “hard-core boss”.
One day Sally decides to explain to George that if he continues to be mean to her, she is going to quit. George’s response? “Well Sally, you should have spoken up!” Here, George is explaining to Sally that when he or anyone else is being mean to her, it is her responsibility to let the other person know that they are being mean and to tell them to stop. Because Sally went all that time without standing up to George, George believes that his disrespectful behavior towards Sally was not wrong, and continues to not be wrong until Sally speaks up.
While speaking up is the right thing to do when someone is being mean to you, a failure to speak up does not excuse the mean behavior. By saying that Sally is at fault for not speaking up, we are implying that Sally is responsible for George’s bad behavior. Indeed, in many contexts, blaming the victim implies that the victim is responsible for the perpetrator’s behavior, and thus the perpetrator is no longer responsible for his/her own behavior.
There are some cases where a person offends another person as an honest mistake. For example, say Todd likes to give a thumbs up to his colleague Akshad. Akshad is offended because in his culture, a thumbs up has the same meaning as the middle finger in Western culture. Is Todd or Akshad at fault when Akshad is offended? In this case, neither individual is at fault. Todd had no idea that in Akshad’s culture, a thumbs up has a derogatory meaning. Akshad would have to speak up, or else Todd may keep giving a thumbs up.
In the case of George and Sally, George’s meanness and disrespect towards Sally was done with bad intentions. George knows how to act nice. Even preschoolers learn how to act nice. George is just choosing to be mean. However, by blaming Sally for “not speaking up”, George has relieved himself of responsibility for his actions. The responsibility is on Sally. Indeed, the perpetrator’s blaming his victim qualifies as additional victimization.
Other examples of the perpetrator blaming the victim
Once again, victim blaming is convenient for the perpetrator because it gives the perpetrator a way out of responsibility for his/her actions. Perpetrators can blame victims in a variety of contexts.
For example, say an older woman is consistently treating her teen-age niece with disrespect. Her teen-age niece does not like this treatment and speaks up. Others seem to notice this woman’s disrespectful treatment of her niece as well. In response, the older woman claims that she finds difficulty respecting her niece because her niece is an air-headed silly-heart. The older woman may even say that her niece is unworthy of respect altogether. Here, the older woman is not admitting to any wrongdoing. She is deflecting blame onto her victim for being “too hard to respect”. By deflecting blame onto her victim, she can put on a facade of blamelessness.
In some circles of people, there is the fetish for female self-sacrifice, where the women are expected to be self-sacrificing and are called horrible people whenever do anything in their own interests. Such a circle of people likes to have their female victims in a state of mind where they feel guilty if they even so much as go out to the hairdresser salon and get a hair cut. A young man within such a circle of people may try to coerce and manipulate the women into bending over backwards to meet his greedy desires; but then later on he may make the claim that these women are sacrificing themselves because it is in their nature. They are women. It is just what women are like. Such a claim is a form of blaming the victim. In this context, the female victims are being blamed for being slaves in their own homes.
Another example: Jane is cooking the holiday meal for some relatives. She puts dairy into the food even though Bob, one of the relatives, told Jane that he cannot tolerate dairy. He gets sick afterwards and spends the afternoon in the bathroom. What is Jane’s response? Jane exclaims that Bob is just a delicate flower. So many things just seem to make him get sick. Here, Jane is blaming her victim for getting sick. She is claiming that the victim got harmed, not because of anything wrong she did, but rather because of the victim’s own personal defect.
Blaming the rape victim
When people hear the phrase “blaming the victim”, the most common thought that comes to mind is rape. Rape victims are known for being blamed for the trauma that has befallen them. Sometimes it almost seems as if it is not only a crime to rape someone, but also a crime to get raped.
When people blame the rape victim, they will generally claim that the rape victim did something stupid that predisposed her to getting raped. For example, she drank too much, or she was dressed in sexually provocative attire. To some people, sexually provocative attire sends the message that the woman is calling for sexual attention. In their minds, the woman has no business complaining about unwanted sexual attention. However, what constitutes sexually provocative attire? The standards for what constitutes sexually provocative attire can vary from culture to culture.
In my opinion, a universal definition for sexually provocative attire is attire such that, when worn by a woman, causes a man to potentially be sexually aroused when he looks upon her. Certainly when a woman is wearing a mini skirt and a skimpy tank top, a man with a normal level of sex drive will become sexually aroused when he looks upon her. However, there are many other kinds of attire besides mini skirts and skimpy tank tops that are sexually provocative. The image below features a woman wearing a business suit. Note how the skirt and top reveal the outline of the woman’s figure. Certainly if a man were to look upon a woman in such attire, he would potentially become sexually aroused. Therefore, the women’s professional business suit would fit under this universal definition of sexually provocative attire.
The image below is another example of sexually provocative attire. Like the women’s business attire, the T-shirt and pants show the outline of the woman’s body.
So what outfit is not sexually provocative? The image below is an example. Here, the Saudi Arabian women have their entire bodies covered except for their eyes. Also important, the clothing hangs off of the body in such a way that the women’s figures are hidden. If a woman wanted to refrain from sexually arousing men in her vicinity, this outfit would be suitable.
As we can see, when people council women to refrain from dressing in sexually provocative attire, they are asking for a lot more than they think.
Blaming the rape victim causes additional harm to the rape victim. Many rape victims feel ashamed for having gotten raped, and I suspect that a major reason for these feelings of shame is the high prevalence of victim blaming. Victim blaming also causes more rapes to go unreported, and can prevent people from seeking justice.
Additional reasons for victim blaming
In this article, Dr. Feldman, a professor in the department of counseling psychology at Santa Clara University, discusses some reasons for why people blame the victim, even when they are not the perpetrator. Some reasons he mentions are “ignorance, meanness, or a smug sense of superiority”. A major reason he mentions is that people like to think that the world is more good and more just than it actually is. People do not like the idea of living in a world that is dangerous and unjust. It makes them feel scared, helpless, vulnerable, anxious, etc. As a psycho-protective mechanism, people try to maintain a delusion that the world is more good and more just than it is. They delude themselves into thinking that bad things only happen to bad people, or to people who are just being stupid. By distancing themselves from the victim, they no longer have to face the reality of their own vulnerability, or the reality that the same thing can happen to them at any time.
As discussed in the article, victim blaming is still wrong. It undermines the seriousness of the criminal’s wrongful act and it can cause additional trauma to the innocent victim. What I find to be ironic is that while people are blaming the victim in order to delude themselves into thinking the world is more good and just than it is, they are making themselves one of the reasons that the world is bad and unjust. Indeed, blaming the victim goes against justice. Justice dictates that the perpetrator be held responsible for the crime, and not the victim.
Dr. Feldman goes on to cite research showing that the most known protective measure against victim blaming is empathy. When we try to imagine ourselves in the shoes of the victim, we are much less likely to blame the victim for the harm that has befallen him/her. Conversely, those who have tendencies to blame victims tend to have less empathy for fellow human beings. What does this mean if you were to meet someone who always seems to blame the victim? In my opinion, this victim blaming is a red flag that the person is less likely to have empathy for fellow human beings, and may be a toxic person with whom to be in a relationship. While blaming the victim tends to indicate a reduced likelihood to be empathetic, lack of empathy make people more likely to be sociopaths and criminals. Many studies show a substantial link between lack of empathy and violent crimes. Indeed, if you do a search for “crime and lack of empathy”, you will get many results.