The definition of "victim blaming," according to
wikipedia, is:
"Victim blaming
occurs when the victim of a crime or any wrongful act is held entirely or
partially responsible for the harm that befell them."
This post is going to be about victim blaming and how one
can reach the age of reason of how stupid it is....
----
"She was asking
for it...."
Rape or sexual assault seems to be the only violent crime
where the attorney for the attacker can actually get away with asking the
victim, "how short / tight / low-cut / etc was your dress that
night?"
Think about that for a moment.
How can a woman be asking to be assaulted simply because she
was wearing something that made her feel sexy for a night out?
I'll turn to someone that a biology major said, I kid you
not:
"Humans are animals, and just like other species have
ways to indicate that they are 'in heat' and looking for a mate. When a woman dresses in provocative,
skin-revealing clothing, it means she is 'in heat' and she doesn't know it but
her primal urges have taken over her subconscious to look for a potential mate
by wearing something that will attract one."
I'm sorry but when you having a fucking biology major saying shit like that, it's no wonder that people
will look at a woman who was assaulted and say "she was asking for
it."
He's essentially saying: If a woman puts on, say, a sexy
dress with a plunging neckline and short skirt she is looking to get fucked
that night.
What the biology major was getting at was that the sight of
a woman in something skin-revealing can trigger a man's subconscious primal
urge to be sexually aggressive as he feels that "hey, if she's wearing
something like that she must be wanting to get some."
Um.... no. Because
there are women, that believe it or not, wear skin revealing clothing because
they want to feel sexy and beautiful, not because they are looking to have sex.
Ready for it?
The whole "she dressed like that because she was
looking to fuck bla bla bla" is total bullshit. This one sentence from wikipedia explains it
all:
"Research has yet to prove that attire is a significant
causal factor in determining who is assaulted."
That whole sentence explains a lot more than it lets on, and
that's how I'm going to end this section before moving on....
A woman's attire has nothing to do with it AT ALL when she
is attacked. Also, it has nothing to do
with a man "succumbing to his subconscious primal urges." If it was, the only women being raped would
be attractive teens and 20-somethings leaving the club wearing something short
/ tight / low-cut / whatever by men who seriously and wrongly mistook the
women's clothing as a sign they wanted to have sex that night.
NO. It is not. Rape is an act of pure violence that is
designed for the man to have control and power over his victims, plain and
simple. If the above was the case, why
are women who are covered up in winter gear raped? Also, many rape victims are over 60. How do you explain that? Because, again, rape is not about subconscious
primal urges. It's about power and
control.
----
"She put herself
in that position."
A couple of years ago, in Steubenville Ohio a 16 year old
girl passed out on a couch after drinking a little too much at a party full of
teenage boys. She was sexually assaulted
multiple times by multiple boys, some of which were the stars of the high
school football team.* To make matters
worse, some of the boys even bragged about it on social media, and even some
who were not involved did nothing to stop it but watched instead.
*That's an important detail, because in Steubenville the
high school football team is HUGE. Even
though the poor girl was put through a horrific act, this incident in this
small town made the national news because many of its residents were afraid
that if the guys who played on the team where charged with a crime and
punished, the team's chances at winning may suffer. Oh my god, the horror! *sarcasm.*
Eventually, the boys who committed the assault did get
punished - as juveniles. When one of
them was sentenced, a resident of the town had the nerve to say, "his life
is ruined because of this." Wait, what?
There are no words to describe how idiotic that was.
Now while many commentators noted that it was a good thing
the boys who committed the crime were punished, one comment stood out:
"It's great that
the boys who raped her were punished, but maybe she'll learn not to put herself
in that position next time."
Yeah, like how dare she expect to be safe and not be raped
by a bunch of pervy guys, the nerve of her! *Sarcasm again.*
Should she have drunk to the point of being passed out? That's a tough question, because we all do
things we are not supposed to do in our youth.
I'm not going to blame her because she had a brain fart.
I do blame the boys who decided to commit an act of violence
on her, but I also blame the people who witnessed it and did nothing but watch.
So what do you do if you're at a party and you see that a
girl is passed out on the couch?
You do something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sOXN_80ohM
In other words, you don't inappropriately touch her (That's
means no copping a boob feel either!) or do anything else, you let her.... you
know.... rest!
Note: I just realized that tennis star Serena Williams also
said the girl "Shouldn't Have Put Herself In That Position." Shame on her, you would think she would know
better.
But victim blaming doesn't just happen with sex crimes. It can happen to other instances as well....
----
"Take a picture,
it'll last longer!"
Or maybe if it makes you come off as a creep, don't.
This is what happened to a woman that was riding the MAX
train in Portland, OR. Here is a link: http://www.kgw.com/story/news/2014/07/26/12633254/
Apparently, she was wearing a very low cut sundress and a
man tried to take pictures of her cleavage with his smartphone. She tried to have the guy arrested, but as he
didn't do anything technically illegal, the cops couldn't do anything.
Now because the MAX train is considered a public place, there is no expectation of privacy, as such the guy couldn't have been charged with anything. That I will agree with.
However, when someone shared this story on his facebook page
I had to share it myself, but I also added this commentary:
"Besides the fact that what he did wasn't illegal (no
expectation of privacy in a public place), if she doesn't want an enterprising
soul with a smartphone to take pictures of her then maybe she should cover up
and not be wearing a dress where half her boobs are hanging out! Simples!"
No less than 1 hour later, I got this message in my inbox:
"Yeah, let's
blame the woman for the guy being a creep. A woman has the right to wear what
she wants without some asshole taking pictures of her without her permission just
because his phone has a camera on it.
You're right that it wasn't illegal as it was in a public space, but
just because can you do something because it's not against the law, doesn't
mean you should. Maybe instead of
telling a woman she should 'cover up' we
should tell guys that just because they have a phone with a camera on it
doesn't mean it gives them the mentality to be a creepy pervy asshole."
You know what? This
person was correct. She took the virtual
clue-by-four and proverbially hit me over the head with it.
It took that to get me to reach the age of reason, but here
it is in a nutshell: Guys, I know smart phones with good-quality cameras make
taking pictures easy and convenient, but I don't care what she is wearing:
Unless you're doing street photography and she is simply part of the
foreground, purposely zooming in on a woman to take a picture of her without
her permission is creepy. I know you
want to respond "but if it's in a public space it's legal!" Yes, but still creepy....
Moving on....
----
Instead of educating
young guys that girls aren't sexual objects, places like schools ban certain
clothes.
....Or worse, make them put on something that is
embarrassing for violating a "dress code."
Case in point? A girl
who had to wear a "shame suit" that was meant to embarrass her: http://gawker.com/new-girl-at-school-had-to-wear-shame-suit-after-dress-1631115657
Back to the clothes banning....
Many schools, even if they don't have a specific "dress
code," have banned girls from wearing tank or halter tops, especially ones
with spaghetti straps.
Their reason? It's
because they "cause too much distraction in the male students" and in
one case I read, "may cause impure thoughts that could lead to a possible
incident like groping or forms of assault."
Yes, I know that teenage boys are girl-crazy. I myself loved seeing the cuties in my school
in tank tops! But here is the
difference.... I knew better than to inappropriately touch them just because
they were wearing something that shows a
little skin!
Now that leads me back to the girl who was forced to wear
that "shame suit." I'm
paraphrasing what she said because I cannot find it now, but here it is:
"Instead of
punishing young women for wearing certain clothes because it may distract young
boys or give them thoughts of doing something inappropriate, how about we start
educating young boys that women are not objects to be leered at, starred,
groped, assaulted etc just because she may be wearing something that shows a
little skin. In other words, treat women
with respect no matter what they are wearing and stop blaming the girls and
banning their clothes because boys are not taught to control themselves and be
respectful."
Couldn't have said it any better.
But it gets worse....
I have read that some
schools are banning any sort of top or dress that is strapless. Why?
Because they are worried that girls wearing such outfits would encourage
guys to engage in "top sharking."
For those that don't know, top sharking is when a person
secretly films a woman wearing a strapless top (or dress) and someone else quickly
runs up to her and pulls her top down, exposing her breasts.
Okay, not only is this incredibly humiliating to a girl, but it's also a CRIME (Yes, exposing a woman like that is sexual assault).
But instead of these schools educating young guys that
committing a felony that is also humiliating to the person is wrong and just
shouldn't be done, they essentially say that the girls are to blame for wearing
said tops / dresses and thus those types of outfits need to be banned. See the problem here?
Moving on....
----
She shouldn't have
gone to his hotel room at 2AM!
I'm sure you've all heard the stories when a certain athlete
/ celeb / whoever goes accused of rape by a woman who went to his hotel room
during the midnight hours.
Which leads to this commentary that an unfortunately large
amount of people have:
"Why the hell was
she going to his hotel room at 1/2AM for?
It's easy to see from the man's perspective that she wasn't there to
discuss his touchdown numbers or whatever, if she purposely went there at that
hour she was looking to get fucked and it's easy to misinterpret that!"
I once had this mentality as well, until someone, like the
creepy picture subject, took the virtual clue-by-four and proverbially hit me
over the head with it:
"People like you are the reason why so many rape victims are afraid to come forward, because they'll just assume that people will accuse them of lying about it. What if she just got into town and she didn't want to wait until after sunrise to see him? What if she actually did go over there just to talk to the guy about any subject and not expect to want to have sex? What if she was going there because he forgot something and was going there to drop it off to him and didn't want to wait until sunrise? By your mentality, you should just assume she wants sex and rape her then! Oh my god, you're so right! *sarcasm*"
And you know what?
She is correct. It took that
talking-to, but it made me realize that my previous mentality is not only dangerous
to women, it's dangerous to men as well.
One should never assume that a
woman wants sex just because of the timeframe that she knocked on your door and
act accordingly.
----
Why did she put her
nude photos in the cloud, she's asking for them to get stolen!
As a techie myself, I can tell you right away that anything
that has inbound and outbound access to the internet - like a cloud storage
system - has the susceptibility to be hacked.
However, when you put something personal on a cloud system,
you also expect that the cloud storage company
took measures to ensure a hack doesn't
happen.
I'm sure everyone remembers the nude celeb photo hack and
leak of 2014, where a bunch of celebrities' iCloud accounts were hacked and had
their photos stolen and leaked, many of which were nudes.
Many people had the same reaction:
"Why did she put
them on a cloud account? Can't she store
those photos on a local storage medium like a flash drive or external hard
drive? She was asking for those photos
to be stolen one day!"
Yeah I also had that thought process, and I again got hit
with the virtual clue-by-four again, and rightfully so....
However, very few people blamed the hacker for his actions,
and that is wrong. As I stated before,
these women had a certain expectation of privacy and security and not only was
that violated but also exploited for the world to see.
One of those celebrities stated on the record that the laws
should be changed to make stealing and leaking nude photos a sex crime. I wouldn't go that far, but it should be a
harsher punishment than say if a hacker steals and leaks someone's word documents.
Moving on....
----
It's not just the
above incidents where victim blaming takes place....
Cases in point?
1. Wifi leeching.
Unless it's a free public hotspot, if you decide to leech
off someone else's wireless network what you are doing is essentially the same
as stealing cable. You might also be
causing financial damage as well: if that person is on a metered service that
charges overages, you could be causing him to face a huge bill at the end of
the month. A common victim blame here
is, "Well if they don't want me leeching off their network they should
secure it with a password!" While
it makes overall sense for them to do so, how about you stop being a cheapskate
and get your own damn internet service!
2. Purse snatching.
You've all seen it: News footage of a woman's purse being
snatched away by some crook. Are most of
the responses, "What an asshole he is for taking her purse!"? No, it's almost always "What an idiot
she is why have your purse right there in the open!" Yeah, like how dare she expect to have a
reasonable expectation that a crook is not going to rob her when she goes out
in public, the nerve of her! *sarcasm.*
3. Break-ins /
thefts.
Have you ever noticed that whenever there is a news story
about a break-in, you never really hear anybody blaming the people that do the
crime, but the homeowners instead?
"Should have invested in a security system," and/or
"That's what they get for living in a so-so area" are some of the
most common I heard. First off, security
systems like the ones you see constantly advertize on TV are useless because by
the time they send the cops to your house, the crooks are long gone! Secondly, I have seen very rich areas getting
robbed, so that is just a dumb thing to say.
The point is, people should be focusing the blame on the crooks, not the
people that they robbed.
---
In conclusion....
Victim blaming is not only stupid, but dangerous. While there are woman that fabricate a rape
story (The Kobe Bryant incident, for instance), pointing the blame on the
victim instead of the person who carried out the attack only makes a legit victim
afraid to come forward because she will be afraid that everyone will accuse her
of lying about it or that she somehow "was asking for it." It shouldn't be like that. No one deserves to be violated and/or
assaulted, no matter what she is wearing, what time she knocks on a person's
door, or if she is passed out on the couch.
Maybe then we'll get to the point where it will be easier to
try and convict the attacker instead of asking the victim, "how short /
tight / low-cut / etc was your dress that night?," "Why did you knock
on his door at 2AM?" or "How much did you have to drink?" Or in the case of the nude photo fiasco,
"Why didn't you put them on a flash drive or external hard drive?"
Have a good night.
