Blaming the victim

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{{cquote|Does one deserve to have [[evil]] done to her by consequence of putting herself where evil can reach her?|||Brandon Sanderson<ref>''The Way of Kings'' by Brandon Sanderson (2010) Tor. ISBN 978076532.</ref>{{rp|535}}}}
'''Blaming the victim''' describes the attempt to escape responsibility by placing the blame for the [[crime]] or other abuse at the hands of the victim. Classically, this is the [[Rape|rapist]] claiming their victim was "asking for it" by, for example, [[Slut|wearing a short skirt]]. Until recently, blaming the victim was largely how most rape victims experienced the investigation and litigation into claims of rape — often leading to women and men becoming unwilling to report it. It wasn't uncommon for a rape victim to face a defense attorney who asked them about their sexual history, sexual preferences, [[Alcohol|drinking]] habits, and even social status, all to demonstrate the victim's culpability and take the heat off of the responsible party. In 2013, a [[Montana]] judge said a 14-year-old rape victim seemed "older than her chronological age" and "as much in control of the situation" as the teacher who raped her,<ref>[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/montana-rape-case-protesters-call-for-resignation-of-judge-who-handed-down-30-day-sentence-to-teacher-in-rape-of-student-report-says/ Judge hands down 30-day sentence in rape case]</ref> a perfect example of blaming the victim.

'''[[Denialism|Denying]] the victim''' is similar, but has a slight difference in that the perpetrator attempts to assert that they are the ''real'' victim. Denying the victim is generally less of a one-on-one scenario, and more topical, e.g. "The real victims of the supposed 'mistreatment of [[women]]' are the [[children]] who have to grow up in homes where their mother wants to work instead of care for them." Denying the victims, in this sense, is often an attempt at [[historical revisionism]], to make those charged with the crimes look more or even totally innocent in light of modern [[society]].

Denial of the victim can also take the form of minimizing the number of victims or the severity of the offense. For example, the [[Roman Catholic Church]] played this game, when trying to claim the [[Child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church|systematic child abuse by some priests]] were simply isolated events both individually and by priests at large. They also pushed the issue that the boys should not be described as "[[children]]", but "young men" to minimize the sense of how horrific these rapes were. Both blaming the victim and denying the victim are specific instances of [[neutralization]].

==Examples==
[[File:Protecting gays is NOT persecuting Christians.png|210x550px|thumb|right|Denial of the victim in action, with a side of [[DARVO]].]]

*Certain ostensibly liberal figures, including [[Jimmy Carter]] and [[Germaine Greer]], accusing [[Salman Rushdie]] of having provoked the [[fatwa|attempts on his life]] during the [[Satanic Verses]] crisis for writing a "[[blasphemy|blasphemous]]" book.

*In 1966, a [[Virginia]] judge acquitted two men of kidnapping and sodomizing a young girl when the jury learned that she had gotten into the car with the two men willingly. One of the men acquitted, James "Mike" DeBardeleben, was later revealed to be a serial killer and sexual sadist who preyed on countless women nationwide over a twenty year period. A 1983 search of DeBardeleben's storage locker by the Secret Service (following an arrest for counterfeiting) revealed blood-stained undergarments, as well as tape recordings of women screaming and pictures of countless women being sexually abused. Many of the women photographed by DeBardeleben remain unidentified to this day.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Sy6yrAEjwdkC&lpg=PA135&ots=BUm_PcXz7n&dq=michael%20debardeleben%20born&pg=PA135#v=onepage&q=michael%20debardeleben%20born&f=false|title=Beyond Cruel|last=Michaud|first=Stephen G.|date=2007-06-26|publisher=Macmillan|isbn=9781429934510|language=en}}</ref>

*Representatives of the [[pope|Papacy]] have lashed out at ''The [[New York Times]]'' for its investigative [[journalism]] of the [[cover-up]] of the aforementioned [[pedophile]] priests. Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa even compared the anger directed at the [[Vatican]] in the pedophilia scandal to "[[Godwin's Law|the most shameful]] [[Not even wrong|aspects of anti-Semitism]]."<ref>http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/04/04/vatican.antisemitism.apology/?hpt=T2 News Report</ref>

*The [[Church of Scientology]] has acted similarly. Examples include their campaign against the {{wpl|Cult Awareness Network||,}}<ref>http://www.holysmoke.org/cos/blaming-the-victim.htm</ref> and their support for child rapist Gabriel Williams.<ref>http://www.xenu-directory.net/mirrors/www.whyaretheydead.net/childabuse/pedophile/Gabriel_Williams.html</ref>

*Blaming [[bullying]] and violence toward [[homosexuals|gay people]] on gay people themselves. For instance, several [[homophobic]] activists (including [[Bryan Fischer]]) have claimed that the [[murder]] of 15-year-old openly gay eighth grader Lawrence King<ref>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/23/us/23oxnard.html?_r=1</ref> must be blamed on King himself. In a column called "Who will protect straights from [[Heterophobia|homosexual bullies]]", Fischer alleged that King's killer was a victim of King's relentless "sexual harassment",<ref>http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/fischer-lawrence-kings-murder-was-real-victim</ref> and as a solution to anti-gay [[hate crime]]s, Fischer suggested "placing [[Censorship|reasonable curbs on the public expression of homosexual behavior]]."

*[[Breast ironing]]: the idea that preventing girls from developing breasts will also make them less likely to be raped, even though there is no [[evidence]] to prove this.

*One tactic of [[Holocaust denial]]ists is to claim the number of victims of the Holocaust has been exaggerated, a clear attempt at denying the victim.

*Speaking of the Holocaust, another particularly egregious example came from the mouth of children's author {{wpl|Roald Dahl||:}} "There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke [[Antisemitism|animosity]]; maybe it's a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews. I mean, there’s always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] didn't just pick on them for no reason. I mean, if you and I were in a line moving towards what we knew were [[Holocaust|gas chambers]], I'd rather have a go at taking one of the guards with me, but [[Judaism|they]] were always submissive."<ref>http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/roald-dahl-antisemitic-100-years-remembering-author-forgotten-past-a7254266.html</ref>

* In May of 2018, rapper [[Ye]] (then going by his birth name of Kanye West) garnered controversy for an incoherent comment on how "[[slavery]] for 400 years […] sounds like a choice." In context, the implication is that it was a choice on the ''slaves''' part.<ref>https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/may/01/kanye-west-on-slavery-for-400-years-that-sounds-like-a-choice</ref>

* [[Ward Churchill]] infamously got shitcanned from the University of Colorado at Boulder for characterising [[9/11]] victims as "little Eichmanns" who got what they deserved for not doing enough to oppose Uncle Sam's misdeeds.<ref>Ward Churchill, [http://cryptome.org/ward-churchill.htm "Some People Push Back" On the Justice of Roosting Chickens.] cryptome.org, 3 February 2005.</ref>

*[[Australia|Australian]] Prime Minister [[Malcolm Turnbull]] quipped that 60-year-old aged care workers struggling financially are "entitled to get a better job".<ref>https://www.agedcareinsite.com.au/2018/06/entitled-to-get-a-better-job-turnbull-on-hypothetical-aged-care-worker/</ref>

*[[China]] frequently blames the victims of the Uighur genocide as [[ISIS]] sympathizers or [[Not even wrong|colonists of Han territory]].{{fact}}

*After its members doxxed and swatted Keffals, [[Kiwi Farms]] put a header on her dedicated thread blaming said incidents on selling homemade estrogens.

==Motives==
One motive for victim blaming is that it is easier to see a victim as blameworthy than to give up the [[Just world hypothesis|belief that the world is fair and that people get what they deserve in life]]. The perceived alternative to victim blaming would be to believe that the world (and/or God) is unjust, unpredictable, and frightening.<ref>[http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02333823 Blaming the victim: Belief in control or belief in justice?] by Jürgen Maes (1994) ''Social Justice Research'' 7(1):69-90. "Whereas Just World Theory suggests that the belief in a just world is the decisive motive of increased attributions of responsibility, the Defensive Attribution Hypothesis assumes that these attributions are motivated by the need to believe in internal locus of control."</ref> Another motive, among those in positions of authority (such as school administrators), is that it's much easier to minimize and negate problems in your bailiwick than to actually buckle down and address them.

==Apologia==
Defenses of victim-blaming have notably manifested in two forms. One is that victims ''should'' be considered partly responsible, but no foundation for this belief has been presented. The other is that absolving the victim of responsibility discourages "behavioral victim-blaming" that has been claimed to be a predictor of healthy coping on the part of the victim. However, research shows that all types of self-blame for crimes such as rape are generally very toxic, and behavioral (i.e. "My behavior caused it.") vs. characterological (i.e. "It happened because I am a bad person.") is usually used as a [[not as bad as]] argument.<ref>[http://www.ibiblio.org/rcip/selfblameresearch.html#3types Self blame in rape victims: A bibliography], citing:Miller, Dale T., Simon Fraser U, Burnaby, Canada Porter, Carol A. (1983). Self-blame in victims of violence. Journal of Social Issues, 39(2) pp. 139-152.</ref> Neither type of self-blame is productive in cases of rape, and it operates from a feeling of inadequacy that is pushed by social norms against rape victims.

==Edge cases==

There are several situations that can be called "victim blaming", but are frequently necessary anyway; they may or may not overlap with actual "victim blaming" above, depending on how it's handled. Here are a few notable such situations:

* Warning to others: Importantly, if the victim did something wrong, either in terms of risky behavior or acting in [[ignorance]], their story can be used to warn others. In this situation, it's usually recommended that the description leave the victim non-identifiable, unless verification is so valued over the victim's dignity that it becomes necessary.
* Apportionment of blame: In some legal jurisdictions, it's required to figure out who is responsible for the incident, in order to figure out "who pays for what" (in the case of actual crime, if there's more than one victim and the victims had differing levels of warning and resources to prepare for such a situation). Unless this is your job (i.e., you are a lawyer, insurance adjuster, or something of the like), try to stay out of this; it can hinge on such small details that an uninformed opinion is dangerous.
* Victimology: In the field of behavior profiling of criminals and other predators, there exists a sub-study of looking at known victims to build a profile of the subject's ideal or preferred victim, in order to either form a plan of action ("which potential victims should we prioritize warning?") or find a pattern to deduce other factors.
* Alternate Suspects: A marginal case, but one that still has a strong thread of logical legitimacy: when the guilty party is non-obvious, but there is a leading suspect, the accused party or their defenders sometimes tries to shift or avoid blame by noting others who had means, opportunity, and most importantly for this discussion, motive. Since this often involves listing the reasons why the victim would be targeted by these alternate suspects, it can even more quickly and easily veer into victim blaming than any of the other situations mentioned in this section for rather obvious reasons.

==As a logical fallacy==

The term "Blaming the victim" is sometimes also referred to as a logical fallacy, semi-distinct from the above, even though, for the most part, "blaming the victim" is not actually a logical fallacy in and of itself. This is because while a lot of victim-blaming arguments are ''very'' fallacious for other reasons, there are at least a few non-fallacious cases where a purported "victim" bears most of the responsibility for their own suffering; to provide one non-controversial case, there exist many cases of animal attacks that involve some degree of provocation by the "victim".

If the argument actually is fallacious, it's usually a problem of the [[just world fallacy]] and/or some combination of [[Causality|false cause]], false equivalence, ad hominem against the victim, and various other fallacies.

Alternately, the phrase is used to refer to a special case of [[Causality|false cause]], where some outside party is actually responsible, and the argument in question conceals or ignores this party's responsibility.

==Further reading==
*Stanley Cohen. 2001. ''States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering''. Cambridge: Polity Press.  Pp. 96-97.

==See also==
*[[Just world hypothesis]]
*[[SlutWalk]]
*[[Essay:Elisions]]

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

{{logfal}}

[[Category:Ad hominem]]
[[Category:Denialism]]
[[Category:Fallacious arguments]]
[[Category:Scapegoating]]
[[Category:Social justice]]

Categories: Ad hominem, Denialism, Fallacious arguments, Scapegoating, Social justice