We hear a lot about "victim blaming," Have you ever really heard anyone blame a rape victim for being raped?
Note: Is it ever right to "blame" an actual victim and to excuse the criminal? The question scarcely survives its statement. No rational person believes it's right to do that.
But "victim blaming" in the rape milieu is largely a myth. It's a frequent excuse posited by rape feminists
to explain away the fact that rape is reported so infrequently. It is one of the reasons they use to explain why most rape victims are supposedly afraid to come forward.
We have a legal term for such rationalization: horseshit.
The vast majority of so-called "victim blaming" (and it ain't that common, ladies) is of two types, neither of which are objectionable to any rational human being:
First: it's simply a manifestation of a belief that you have to be careful because there are criminals out there. Real controversial, right? It's the same kind of "victim blaming" my grandmother heaped on me for going into a bad neightborhood one night, and I got the shit kicked out of me. My grandmother would be the first to throttle the shit-kickers, but as she put ice on my eye, she yelled at me for being so stupid. And please, rape feminists, spare me the self-righteous blather about how men wouldn't understand: it is beyond dispute that innocent men are violently assaulted 150-200% more than women. It's innocent men who need to take back the night, not the rare female rape victim.
Second: The other kind of "victim blaming" occurs when the speaker -- almost always a woman, by the way -- doesn't really believe that a rape occurred. "She was dressed like that, she was drinking, and she went up to his room?! What did she expect?" Note that this statement doesn't evince a belief that the subject was actually raped; it evinces a belief that the subject's conduct likely manifested assent to consensual sex -- and that isn't rape, by any standard. So this one isn't "victim" blaming at all -- after all, there has to be a "victim" before there can be "victim blaming."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
19 comments:
You mean like what she was wearing, how much she drank, or why she went to that party, and thingsw like that? All of that is victim-blaming and that's why rape is under-reported. Law enforcement cannot force a victim to press charges.
"Law enforcement cannot force a victim to press charges."
The law enforcement should be able to force her to press charges,but also with that, it they would have to start charging false rape accusers.
As it stands..the new gender feminist perversion of our legal system tells law enforcement to simply "lose the paper trails" on false rape accusations. Or re-define what the meaning of is, is, so we can manufacture that only 2% of rape accusations are false (which is faulty and inflammatory misinformation that prejudices the public).
Break the gender feminist / law enforcement Alliance, it is a perversion and it is un-constitutional.
It is a perversion of our legal system to enable girls to make false rape accusations whenever they feel the whim.
I just read this comment elsewhere...
She helped turn those boys into men. It's a victimless crime unless the boys said "NO" or got a venereal disease from it.
or...
Are you serious? When I was 13 that girl(sic) could have done me till I chaffed. My teens years I couldn't think of anything else. Most young boys would do a knot in the fence if it felt good.
Male victims get blamed all the time.
"What did he do to make her do it?"
" . . . that's why rape is under-reported."
A recent law review article concluded that the "studies" showing underreporting are so politicized that no one can say if it exists and if so, to what extent.
The only "victim blaming" that goes on is when a man is blamed for being falsely accused of rape. That's why false accusations are so rarely prosecuted.
There is a pro-female mentality out there that pretends that we're living in the 1950's. We're not. Men are the underprivileged sex and have been for decades.
"The only "victim blaming" that goes on is when a man is blamed for being falsely accused of rape. That's why false accusations are so rarely prosecuted."
Agreed. That is the only actual victim blaming that happens.
"HAVE YOU EVER HEARD ANYONE BLAME THE VICTIM FOR BEING RAPED?"
I have to answer "yes" on this question; but...
I've only ever directly heard it from women saying it about other women. I have never heard such a thing come out of a man's mouth.
I've frequently seen such blaming of victims (by men) written about - again, primarily by women, who seem to infer that ALL men do so.
And, I have read the written (typed) words of some who were supposedly men [or, at least so they claimed]; yet, to reiterate, I've never actually heard such a view expressed by a man in my presence - I've only ever heard such things being said by women.
slwerner, come to think of it, you're right. Women say it about women, and I always figured it was because they have some secret inside information.
Archivist,
I think that they do.
Women tend to shame other women who are sexually promiscuous because traditionally women have tried to restrict or ration men's access to sex in order to encourage men to commit and preserve the value of women's 'currency'.
Women who sleep around a lot are seen as 'letting the side down'.
I don't have the evidence to back it up, but I recall reading elsewhere that women jurors in rape trials tend to be more judgmental about an alleged rape victim if she appears to be sexually promiscuous.
Nick: you're correct. Females are judgemental about other females who freely have sex but it's not out of any sense of morality but merely because she's giving something away that they want to keep the price of inflated. Sort of like the animosity that small businesses have against Walmart because Walmarts can deliever the goods at a cheaper price.
Yes, I have. It flies in the face of much of the MRA movement but it does happen. Hell, in Italy one judge ruled that a woman who was wearing jeans was obviously not a rape victim because the attacker could not have removed the jeans. It isn't such a stretch to think that these things happen, they are just far less common than we are lead to believe by the media.
Of course it happens. Is it ever right to "blame" an actual victim and to excuse the criminal? The question scarcely survives its statement. No rational person believes it's right to do that.
But "victim blaming" in the rape milieu is largely a myth. It's a frequent excuse posited by rape feminists to explain away the fact that rape is reported so infrequently. It is one of the reasons they use to explain why most rape victims are supposedly afraid to come forward.
We have a legal term for such rationalization: horseshit.
The vast majority of so-called "victim blaming" (and it ain't that common, ladies) is of two types, neither of which are objectionable to any rational human being:
First: it's simply a manifestation of a belief that you have to be careful because there are criminals out there. Real controversial, right? It's the same kind of "victim blaming" my grandmother heaped on me for going into a bad neightborhood one night, and I got the shit kicked out of me. My grandmother would be the first to throttle the shit-kickers, but as she put ice on my eye, she yelled at me for being so stupid. And please, rape feminists, spare me the self-righteous blather about how men wouldn't understand: it is beyond dispute that innocent men are violently assaulted 150-200% more than women. It's innocent men who need to take back the night, not the rare female rape victim.
Second: The other kind of "victim blaming" occurs when the speaker -- almost always a woman, by the way -- doesn't really believe that a rape occurred. "She was dressed like that, she was drinking, and she went up to his room?! What did she expect?" Note that this statement doesn't evince a belief that the subject was actually raped; it evinces a belief that the subject's conduct likely manifested assent to consensual sex -- and that isn't rape, by any standard. So this one isn't "victim" blaming at all -- after all, there has to be a "victim" before there can be "victim blaming."
It's not 'uncommon' at all. Rape victims are blamed as much as false rape victims are blamed. Murder victims get blamed. The Katrina victims were blamed.
There's never a shortage of blame by those not feeling the pain.
My carry on luggage was stolen from Chicago O'Hare last week as I sat at a deserted boarding gate. It literally vanished. The cop insisted I MUST have left it laying around somewhere, or someone took it getting to their flight.
It was like being caught in a John Candy/Steve Martin movie, the cops made me out to be a total idiot - until I suggested they check what happened on camera.
Then they got ugly and threatening.
Victim blaming about ANYTHING is common as dirt. Rape victims are no more protected from it than any other crime or diaster.
Archivist - "First: it's simply a manifestation of a belief that you have to be careful because there are criminals out there. Real controversial, right? It's the same kind of "victim blaming" my grandmother heaped on me for going into a bad neightborhood one night..."
I think that you draw an important distinction here. Much of what gender-feminist denounce as "victim blaming" amounts to nothing more than a restatement of the logic of how a given situation could have been avoided. Seldom is there any suggestion that the victim deserved the attack, but merely that it might well have been avoided in the first place.
Women (as well as men) routinely point out the errors men make that lead to misfortune befalling them. Of course, in those instances, it's seen as more of a "teaching moment".
Along those same lines, Ferdinand Bardamu posted this piece on his blog yesterday -
Only women can stop rape – by not putting themselves in situations where they might be raped
I specific note in the discussion thread was this this gem of a comment by snark to a woman who seems to be arguing that, in situations wherein a woman HAS put herself in a bad situation, that an even an FRA may be justified [she later backtracks quite a bit from her first post. Snark soundly refuted much of what she had to say, so, humorously, she responded with the all too predictable "that's not what I was saying".]
I see my links didn't translate correctly.
The URL's are:
www.inmalafide.com/2010/03/04/only-women-can-stop-rape-by-not-putting-themselves-in-situations-where-they-might-be-raped/ for Ferdinan's piece;
and www.inmalafide.com/2010/03/04/only-women-can-stop-rape-by-not-putting-themselves-in-situations-where-they-might-be-raped/#comment-10948 for snark's comment
slwerner, thanks for the info. We at FRS may be the leaders beating the drum about that issue since we've been doing it for some time now. We've made the point repeatedly that innocent men have far less ability than innocent women to stop women from being raped. We have often made this argument in response to these college shaming tactics that seek to make innocent young men "part of the solution." We wonder aloud, why aren't innocent young women asked to be part of the solution, since they have far greater ability to stop rape than innocent young men.
Do you see what their problem is? They lump all "men" together. And to bind us all, they talk about how we engage in male customs that supposedly lead to rape (their nasty rape continuums) and that we have a duty to stop our fellow males from engaging in these male things.
Keep posting stuff like this i really like it
Post a Comment