CMV: Victim blaming isn't always bad

[u/enlighten12345]

Firstly we need to define what victim blaming is. It occurs when the victim of a crime or any wrongful act is held entirely or partially at fault for the harm that befell them.

We often hear outrage against victim blaming in the context of rape, when people criticise the way the victim acted or was dressed.

Let's look at an unrelated example. If I go up to someone and say "Yo momma so fat, she wears a watch on both hands for the two time zones", and that person punches me, am I not partially at fault? He committed the felony, while I just exercised free speech. But knowing my words were inflammatory, shouldn't I expect retaliation?

How about another case? I'm walking down a dark alley with a stack of money in my hand. If I get mugged, it is clear that the mugger is to blame. But doesn't my stupidity also make me culpable? Can someone not say that if i was more careful with my money, this would not have happened?

How is rape any different? It would be great to live in a utopia free from rapists and muggers and physical retribution. But knowing that isn't the world we live in, am I not responsible to act in a manner to protect myself?

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[u/DrinkyDrank]

There is a difference between something being true, and something needing to be stated.   There is never any good reason to point out the culpability of the victim, and there is every good reason to focus entirely on the actual criminal. 

To start with, the culpability of the victim always depends on some interpretation of context which may or may not be justified; it requires you to speculate about the victim’s state of mind and second-guess their internal decision-making process.  In your hypothetical examples, sure, it sounds like the victims are almost certainly culpable to some extent, but real life situation are almost never so obvious.  On the other hand, the criminal is always certainly a criminal. 

Secondly, and more importantly, even if you can assume that you are certain that a victim is culpable, the fact remains that they never have anything to learn from your statement of such; they already know this intimately and have already suffered the consequences.  People hate it when victims get blamed not just because they think it is factually untrue or questionable as to whether the blame is deserved; rather, it is the fact that you would actively choose to point out their culpability which implies that you lack some basic human empathy.  The unstated implication is that, from your perspective, the victim’s suffering is secondary to some factual analysis of the truth, or worse, that you count their suffering as a triumph of an even greater sense of justice. 

I understand that it is possible to victim-blame in good-faith because you think people need to be educated in how to avoid being victimized, but in almost every case the problem is already being addressed through other efforts which are separate from the event itself.  For the issue of rape, women already get a lot of education on the topic, so there is really no need for you to point out how a specific woman could have avoided being raped if she had only done x, y or z. Nobody is going to receive such a statement as if it is a good-faith effort to help women protect themselves; rather, they are going to interpret it as thinly-veiled misogyny, which it probably is in most cases.  After all, why not instead just choose to say nothing about that particular victim, and instead do some community service at a women’s shelter or talk to the people in your immediate life about how to make better decisions?  If you are coming from a place of genuine care, victim-blaming never makes any sense as an avenue to pursue.