Victim blaming occurs when the victim of a crime or any wrongful act is held entirely or partially at fault for the harm done to them. There is historical and current prejudice against the victims of domestic violence and sex crimes, such as the greater tendency to blame victims of rape than victims of robbery if victims and perpetrators knew each other prior to the commission of the crime. The Gay Panic Defense has been characterized as a form of victim blaming.Holden, Alexandra (CRSJ Intern). (Summer 2019). 'The Gay/Trans Panic Defense: What It is, and How to End It'. American Bar Association.
Origin of the phrase Psychologist William Ryan popularized the phrase "blaming the victim" in the 1969 book Distress in the city, an anthology of essays which he edited. He contributed the final three essays to the anthology, the last of which is entitled Fretting About the Poor. His essay comprises two sections, Blaming the Victim and Money and Power. In the former section Ryan described blaming the victim as "an intellectual process whereby a social problem is analyzed in such a way that the causation is found to be in the qualities and characteristics of the victim rather than in any deficiencies or structural defects in his environment." He continued: In 1971, Ryan had published his book Blaming the victim to refute Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1965 work The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (usually simply referred to as the Moynihan Report).In the fall of 1965, Ryan first voiced his opposition to the report when he noted how it "seduces the reader into believing that it is not racism and discrimination but the weaknesses and defects of the Negro himself that account for the present status of inequality between Negro and white." . Ryan proposed that the ideology of blaming the victim comprises four stages:
Moynihan had concluded that three centuries of oppression of black people, and in particular with what he calls the uniquely cruel structure of American slavery as opposed to its Latin American counterparts, had created a long series of chaotic disruptions within the black family structure which, at the time of the report, manifested itself in high rates of unwed births, absent fathers, and single-mother households in black families. Moynihan then correlated these familial outcomes, which he considered undesirable, to the relatively poorer rates of employment, educational achievement, and financial success found among the black population. The black family structure is also being affected by media through the children. The Black family is usually portrayed as gang affiliated, single-parent or very violent. Aggression and violent behavior in children has been linked to television programming. Moynihan advocated the implementation of government programs designed to strengthen the black nuclear family.
Ryan objected that Moynihan then located the proximate cause of the plight of black Americans in the prevalence of a family structure in which the father was sporadically, if at all, present, and the mother was often dependent on government aid to feed, clothe, and provide medical care for her children.: "They [Moynihan et al.] say that 'conventional remedies' (ending discrimination, etc.) are, because of the breakdown in the Negro family, insufficient to achieve equality: that the supposed weakness of the Negro family is a cause of inequality, a barrier to achievement. Although Moynihan has subsequently equivocated on this point and has even denied making such a point, there can be little doubt, upon reading the report, that a causal role was being attributed to the 'breakdown' of the Negro family." Ryan's critique cast the Moynihan theory as an attempt to divert responsibility for poverty from social structural factors to the behaviors and cultural patterns of the poor. However, after he had retired, Ryan expressed his misgiving about his phrase Blaming the victim. He opined: "maybe it was an unfortunate phrase."
History
Although Ryan popularized the phrase, Robinson (2002) claimed that other scholars had identified the phenomenon of victim blaming. In 1947 Theodor W. Adorno defined what would be later called "blaming the victim," as "one of the most sinister features of the Fascist character".
Shortly thereafter, Adorno and three other professors at the University of California, Berkeley formulated their influential and highly debated F-scale (F for fascist), published in The Authoritarian Personality (1950), which included among the fascist traits of the scale the "contempt for everything discriminated against or weak." Typical expressions of victim blaming are the idiomatic statement "She was asking for it", or the question "Why didn't she leave?", said of a victim of violence or sexual assault.
The just-world fallacy is proposed as one explanation for victim blaming: it rejects the disquieting idea that bad things undeservedly happen to people; in its place is the more comforting notion that victims must have done something to deserve their fate. A corollary is that one can avoid becoming a victim by behaving correctly. Though an ancient idea, the just-world fallacy was revived by social psychology in the 1960s, beginning with Melvin J. Lerner.
Secondary victimization of sexual and other assault victims
Secondary victimization is the re-traumatization of a victim through the responses of individuals and institutions. Types of secondary victimization include victim blaming, disbelieving the victim's story, minimizing the severity of the attack, and inappropriate post-assault treatment by medical personnel or other organizations. Secondary victimization is especially common in cases of military sexual trauma and drug-facilitated, acquaintance, and statutory rape.
Sexual assault victims may experience stigmatization based on rape myths. A female rape victim is especially stigmatized in patrilineal cultures with strong customs and taboos regarding sex and sexuality. For example, a society may view a female rape victim (especially one who was previously a virgin) as "damaged". Victims in these cultures may suffer isolation, physical and psychological abuse, slut-shaming, public humiliation rituals, be disowned by friends and family, be prohibited from marrying, be divorced if already married, or even be killed. Even in many developed countries, including some sectors of United States society, misogyny remains culturally ingrained. A 2009 study in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence of male victims of sexual assault concludes that male rape victim blaming is usually done so because of social constructs of masculinity. Some effects of this kind of rape cases include a loss of masculinity, confusion about their sexual orientation, and a sense of failure in behaving as men should. Victims of an unwanted sexual encounter usually develop psychological problems such as depression or sexual violence specific PTSD known as rape trauma syndrome.
One example of an allegation against female victims of sexual assault is that they were wearing provocative clothing and thus actively trying to seduce a sexual partner. Such accusations against victims stem from the assumption that sexually revealing clothing conveys consent for sexual actions, irrespective of willful verbal consent. Research has yet to prove that attire is a significant causal factor in determining who is assaulted.
Victim blaming is also exemplified when a victim of sexual assault is found at fault for performing actions which reduce their ability to resist or refuse consent, such as consuming alcohol. Victim advocacy groups and medical professionals are educating young adults on the definition of consent, and the importance of refraining from victim blaming. Most institutions have adopted the concept of affirmative consent and that refraining from sexual activity while under the influence is the safest choice.
In efforts to discredit alleged sexual assault victims in court, a defense attorney may delve into an accuser's personal history, a common practice that also has the purposeful effect of making the victim so uncomfortable they choose not to proceed. This attack on character, especially one pointing out promiscuity, makes the argument that women who lead "high-risk" lifestyles (promiscuity, drug use) are not real victims of rape. Research on the acceptance of rape myths has shown that sexism is a significant factor in the blaming of female rape victims.
Ideal victim
An ideal victim is one who is afforded the status of victimhood due to unavoidable circumstances that put the individual at a disadvantage. One can apply this theory to any crime, including and especially sexual assault. Nils Christie, a Norwegian criminology professor, has theorized about the concept of the ideal victim since the 1980s. In his research he gives two examples: one of an old woman who is attacked on her way home from visiting her family and the other of a man who is attacked at a bar by someone he knew. He describes the old woman as an ideal victim because she could not avoid being in the location that she was, she did not know her attacker, and she could not fight off her attacker. The man, however, could have avoided being at a bar, knew his attacker, and should have been able to fight off his attacker, being younger and a man.
When applying the ideal victim theory to sexual assault victims, often judicial proceedings define an ideal victim as one who resists their attacker and exercises caution in risky situations, despite law reforms to extinguish these fallacious requirements. When victims are not ideal, they are at risk for being blamed for their attack because they are not considered real victims of rape.
A victim who is not considered an ideal, or real victim, is one who leads a "high-risk" lifestyle, partaking in drugs or alcohol, or is perceived as promiscuous. A victim who intimately knows their attacker is also not considered an ideal victim. An example of a sexual assault victim who is not ideal is a prostitute because they lead a high-risk lifestyle. The perception is that these behaviors discount the credibility of a sexual assault victim's claim or that the behaviors and associations create the mistaken assumption of consent. Some of or all of the blame of the assault is then placed on these victims, and so they are not worthy of having their case presented in court. These perceptions persist in court rulings despite a shift in laws favoring affirmative consent – meaning that the participants in a sexual activity give a verbal affirmation rather than one participant who neither answers negatively nor positively. In other words, affirmative consent is yes means yes, no means no and no verbal answer also means no.