Victim Blaming when women are assaulted

First of all, please let me express what a tragedy I find this sort of story to be. No one should ever end up murdered like this woman was.

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The reason I posted this though - was the gist of the story, which is an idea, promoted by the media, that can lead to a hazardous disassociation between a persons rights, and reality.

There are some neighbourhoods in some cities where it is dangerous for (one of the following depending on the neighbourhood) people to go, especially by themselves:
- a wealthy person to go
- police to go
- white people to go
- black people to go
- it is dangerous to walk alone at night

This is just reality in some areas. Men, women, police, people of particular colour, all (usually) acknowledge this reality.

Meanwhile, the right of every single person, is to be safe wherever they choose to go. In this situation however, The reality (not being safe), and the persons rights (being safe), do not match up.

Ingoring the reality will make us less safe, regardless of our rights. This, is reality.
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So when any person, male, female, police etc consider entering an area they consider dangerous, they adopt behaviours to make themselves safer, including:
- going with multiple people
- going at a particular time of day
- staying for the shortest time possible
- etc
This behaviour is completely contrary to their right to be safe, but completely in line with reality.

This is the principle that it seems most people were commenting on in the news article.
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The issue in the above article, and some of the social media posts, is that people saying this is victim blaming (and sometimes it is) as a blanket response to criticism, are implying that a persons rights to safety & reality, are one and the same - they aren't.

When such an idea is promoted enough in the media, it can lead to people putting themselves in unsafe situations...or not considering their safety when they make choices.
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Also, there is a vast difference between blame (which I don't think should exist), and:
- holding people responsible for their own decisions, while
- acknowledging contributing circumstances.

Once we acknowledge / understand contributing factors, we make choices how to make ourselves safer.

When we blame, don't acknowledge/understand contributing factors, and treat our rights as reality...we can make choices that make ourselves less safe.

The perp needs to go to prison. The family of the victim need consoling / support, and we shouldn't be looking to blame (rather, hold the perp responsible & send him to prison), nor should we be promote ignoring reality...we should be promoting safety consciousness.

These are emotive issues, because we naturally want someone to blame. And we can hold someone responsible (and send them to prison), even while promoting safety consciousness. They aren't polar opposites.

Interesting reader comment (after article) along the same lines - in a related article.

http://www.couriermail.com.au/rendezview/karina-vetrano-did-nothing-wrong-but-for-a-moment-i-blamed-her/news-story/6e5a48ff53fe054101c49da158069d90

Isn't this cherry picking a single story to make a tortured point that doesn't need to be made.


There are millions of men and women who run at night without getting killed. If you look at the actual statistics from the Bureau of Justice, random attacks on women are pretty low. I believe a man is more likely to be killed by a stranger than a woman.



source: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/vvcs9310.pdf

If there is a story here is about gender it is this. Why are women portrayed as being in danger when in fact (in the US at least) they are not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victim_blaming

There are books, an entire field of study (called victimology) devoted to it, organisations dedicated to stopping it, and I just typed into google 'victim blaming' and stopped at page 18 with dedicated posts to this subject.

The posts I linked, were two different stories, in the same newspaper, on the same subject. Obviously, it's a source of interest to people - or there wouldn't be a second story, specifically on victim blaming.

My point was simple - make sure that victim blaming is actually victim blaming, and that your behaviour in trying to reduce victim blaming, doesn't actually lead people to not consider behaviours that make themself safer.

A fair enough observation. My guess is - because we as a society wish to protect the vulnerable.

You miss the point. Men are more likely to be assaulted or killed by strangers then women. Why do you say it is women who are vulnerable?

Not at all - I've made the point myself that crime statistics show men are much more likely to be assaulted by a stranger than women (last I heard it was about 85% male victims).

The issue of course, is about perception, which doesn't necessarily have much to do with statistics. And it's also about size/strength differences.

Well yeah. Shark attacks and lightening strikes still get more publicity than auto accidents.

That they do. Rarer, and much more dramatic.

Costa Rica sends out missing children notifications by SMS to every phone in the country, and they used to link to the agency's facebook page with photos of the missing child and the comments were always full of idiotic victim blaming, saying things like the fact that a 13-year old is wearing makeup is probably to blame for her abduction etc, "where are the parents?" and blaming abductions on kids growing up too fast these days.

People who post that are probably not being mean spirited and may have genuine concern for the victims but the victim blaming was just ridiculously prevalent. I spent a bit of time refuting them and pointing out the cruelty of posting these random speculations about the parenting of the missing child on a post trying to find the child and kept it up till they quit linking to Facebook altogether and started putting up the photos on their site, without the comments.

I can't stand that kind of thinking, even though I understand and sympathize with some of the motivations behind it.

Yep, I agree that victim blaming can be quite prevalent.

In my own workplace, when we had 3 young aboriginal children (8-10yrs) hit by a train (story here), people were also asking 'where were the parents'. While they were quite young, I found myself to be one of the few saying 'hold on a moment, parents need to give their children some responsibility and freedom in order for them to grow and learn'...then again - I came from a childhood where I grew up in a smallish town (120k), had a bicycle, rode kilometres to school, and was allowed my freedom to ride around as well. These comments came from people who had grown up in large cities.

My point was never that victim blaming isn't a problem (and to me, it's a worse problem when victims of domestic violence blame themselves)

It is not that simple Robert. What do you do in cases where "victim blaming" actually works to lower the amount of crime?

The only rape prevention program that has been shown scientifically to actually reduce the prevalence of rape on college campuses is targeted toward teaching women how to not be raped. (see https://thinkprogress.org/how-to-effectively-prevent-rape-according-to-a-controversial-new-scientific-study-2e35e64cc0a6#.6wqu9towq).

This quite controversial since it focuses on the behavior of the potential victims, rather than on the perpetrators. But it is the only strategy that has been shown to actually work.

Do you go with what works? Or do you go with what is politically popular?

That line of thought wasn't victim blaming - it was training and awareness to avoid sexual assault. It is baffling that there are academics arguing against it when:

- Police train in conflict management, communication, tactical skills to keep themselves safe.
-firefighters train in safe behaviours around fires
- health professionals train in hygiene behaviours (to both keep themselves from catching a contagious disease, and to prevent spread to patients of diseases)
- schools teach kids road safety
- courses teach 'defensive driving'
- governments have workplace health & safety laws, to mandate safe behaviours at work
- trades run safety courses
- construction, mining, and many other industries require the wearing of PPE
- airlines do safety checks before flights
- cars get roadworthy's before sale
- buildings get smoke alarms / fire systems

Everyone thinks this sort of thing is normal. Safety (increasing) behaviour is almost universally accepted in just about every area of society...

....except womens safety.

Hold perpertrators responsible, and always adopt safety conscious behaviours.

I thought this was particularly pertinent from that article: