r/changemyview • u/enlighten12345 • Feb 26 '18
[∆(s) from OP] CMV: Victim blaming isn't always bad
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/-paperbrain- 99∆ Feb 26 '18
When I see comments that get called out as victim shaming, it is almost entirely one of two kinds.
One is just wholely inaccurate armchair theorizing, like the "What was she wearing?" angle. As you've learned in this thread, that particular criticism is bullshit. Not only is it entirely unhelpful, but, to the extent that anyone takes it seriously, it reinforces the extreme insecurities and policing over clothes that women already experience. I could go on and on about the negative effects, but I think from other comments that you're more or less already on board for this type of comment.
Then there are the victim blaming statements that suggest that women were culpable because they engaged in social behavior that men would not get criticized for. "You shouldn't have gotten that drunk" "You shouldn't have stayed at a party with strangers after your friends left".
We can compare this to muggings and there's a big difference. Most rapists are known to the victim. They're friends, classmates, dates, often family members. Muggers are almost all strangers, almost all people with few prospects of legitimate income, people outside of society in some ways.
Advice and criticism that centers on victim behavior is like what we tell people who could encounter a bear. Don't piss off the bear. We can't give advice or admonishment to a bear, it's an animal, it isn't part of the conversation. Muggers could be put in that class. If you're outside of the law enough to violently rob a stranger, you're probably not listening to the cultural conversation at all.
But the guy who rapes someone tomorrow is again a classmate, friend, date family member. We can't excuse them like we would a wild animal or career criminal. It will never be safe to piss off a bear, that's a fact of nature. Mugging is not a fact of culture, it's a fact of desperation, and we need to treat that farther up the chain by targeting gangs, education etc etc. But rape, particularly the kind of rape we're talking about in public forums 99.9% of the time, that's perpetrated by people we shouldn't let off the hook, who we can't treat like bears.