It is easy to witness a phenomenon,
say a person being blamed for their own rape, and say to yourself, that is just
awful, how can people do that, I would never act like that. And this, my
friends, is one of the biggest problems of victim blaming. Not that people
think it’s awful, but that people can’t conceive of other’s doing it.
Now some cases are black and white.
No one is blaming the person killed in the 9/11 attacks on the world trade
center for his own death. “He really brought it upon himself, I mean what did
he expect when he decided to go into work that day?” No, the justifications
usually come in when the perpetrator is humanized. Clearly the man sitting in
his office on floor 63 tapping away at his keyboard had done nothing to
antagonize the plane that struck the building. And no one short of an
extremist, is justifying the extremist measures of the parties responsible for
organizing and carrying out the attacks for the sole intention of taking lives
and inciting fear. But that rapist, you played football with him in high
school. He seemed like such a nice guy. There is no way that he could actually
do that to someone.
Enter the good guy. The guy that has
faith in humanity. The guy that lends you money for gas because maybe you do
have a family emergency and are down to your last dollar with 40 miles yet to
go. This is the guy that cannot conceive of another human actually committing
such atrocities. I admire this guy. Sometimes I am this guy. But sometimes, this
guy’s faith in humanity is shaken when someone breaks the rules of basic human
conduct.
Our brains are made to organize the world into
neat little boxes. And when something doesn’t fit into one of the boxes, we
change the thing so that it does. It’s much easier than going out and getting a
new box. So, when I am unable to fit the rapist into my box of expected human
behavior because they are simply to vile, I try to change them. I try to change
the rapist into something else, something that fits nicely.
Maybe the rapist was under the assumption
the sex was consensual, maybe the victim did not make clear enough, their
discontent with how the night was progressing. Maybe these things fit better
with my perceptions of humanity. After all, people can be overzealous at times,
and there are plenty of examples from my own experiences of someone falsely
believing, that their hints were clear as day, even to someone as oblivious as
myself.
So, let’s fix this and stop the victim
blaming. I guess by crushing everyone’s faith in common decency. No, that doesn’t
sound right. Oh! I know, let’s just all be commonly decent people. It’s great
in theory, but that plan never seems to work on the implementation side.
How about some real advice in lieu of a
real solution? While we can’t completely eliminate victim blaming any more than
we can eliminate trusting people or cynics, we can at least offer support. For
most of the people reading this, you are neither a cop, lawyer, nor judge.
Victims of crimes, don’t need you to be either, that is what cops, lawyers, and
judges are for. So, if someone comes to you as a victim, don’t worry about teasing
out their story, trying to see the other person’s side, or even giving them
unsolicited advice, no matter how useful you might think it is. You can do all
of that on your own time. This, however, is their time, and what they need is
someone to listen and support, and you can do all of that without ever making a
decision about who is really to blame.
-AMS
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