Why Victim Blaming Makes Sense

Alright, let’s get this out of the way in the first sentence: When I say that victim blaming “makes sense” I do not mean that it is right, or morally justified, or anything like that. What I mean is the behaviors associated with victim blaming follow a logic that is widely accepted and taught to our children. To make that argument, I don’t need to go into the nitty gritty of individual events in which victim blaming occurs. Quite the opposite. What I need to do is to outline a cultural context in which this type of behavior is considered acceptable… and it won’t be the context most people expect.

Let’s start by giving some examples of victim blaming, starting with the context most people associate with that term:

• A woman comes into a police station to report a sexual assault. She is greeted with questions about where she was, what she was wearing, what she did or did not do to resist. She gets the feeling―not always accurate, but accurate often enough that it is a serious problem―that she is being blamed for what happened to her. Why, she thinks, isn’t more of the focus on my assailant, and why he thought it was ok to do what he did?
• The police arrive at the scene of an accident in which someone ran a red light and side-swiped another car. Looking through the victim’s car, someone is heard to ask “Why wasn’t he wearing a seatbelt?” Another person states plainly “He should have gotten his headlights fixed.” No one sticks up for the victim by calling out those comments; the bystanders just let it slide.
• A bank owner calls the police to report a robbery. When the police arrive they ask all sorts of questions about bank security. “The bank down the street has security glass, did you think of getting security glass?” “Why wasn’t there a guard on duty?” “You know that sign out front saying ‘More deposits daily than any other bank is Springfield’? Don’t you think you were just asking to be robbed?” Though there is some speculation about who did the crime, no one bothers to ask how someone could be so confused as to thinking bank robbery was right.
• If it was a club that got robbed instead of a bank, the owner can expect even more embarrassment: “What did you expect, opening a club in a neighborhood like this?” “You should have a gun to protect yourself in the future.” “Maybe you should post a bouncer at the front door, or at the register. A big guy can help deter this type of thing.”
• A father is watching a kid when a kidnapping happens. Isn’t someone going to ask him why he didn’t watch his child more closely?
• The victim of identity theft is asked why they didn’t use a more secure password, why he clicked on that link, why he gave his personal information to someone over the phone.  
• The victim of arson might be asked why so many flammable things were lying around, and why the doors weren’t locked.
• It is pointed out that the victim of trespassing did not post signs saying that trespassing was not allowed.
• Someone beaten up in a bar fight is asked “What did you say to him before he punched you?”
• The victim of an auto theft will be asked if her car was unlocked.
• The victim of a hit-and-run will be asked what he was doing in the middle of the street, or why he wasn’t paying more attention.

In many of the above scenarios, the victim does not just gets asked awkward questions; it might well be that the perpetrator is viewed, in the eyes of society and in the eyes of the law, as less guilty depending on how the victim was acting. If you are injured in an accident when you are not wearing a seatbelt, the person in the other car will be held less responsible for your injuries. That’s kind of strange, when you think about it. Why would we care about what you were doing? The only answer I can think of, is that people think you are partially at fault, because they think you could have easily avoided some of your injuries by behaving differently. Victim blaming, pure and simple. Why shouldn’t the focus be purely on what the perpetrator did? 

To keep repeating it: I am NOT in any way, saying that victim blaming is a good thing. The question at the end of the last paragraph was entirely serious. My point is that “victim blaming” is a ridiculously common occurrence, which is in no way limited to issues of gender. The types of behaviors commonly criticized in the context of discussions about sexual-assault-related victim blaming are almost universally accepted as logical in the case of other crimes. 

If I am correct then those who wish to stop victim blaming in the context of sexual assault have a much bigger problem than they think. Sure, sex-based and gender-based biases are at play, and we should be making efforts to stop those, but all evidence is that society is making rapid progress in that regard: We have not yet fully fixed the problem of gender bias, but we will probably continue to experience rapid change in the right direction simply by continuing what we are already doing.

However, even if we could magically snap our finders and completely remove all the sex-based and gender-based bias in the world, we should still expect the behaviors associated with “victim blaming” to be as common in the case of sexual assault as they are in the case of others crimes…. which is pretty common. 

So, here is what I promised at the beginning: It makes sense that we see behaviors associated with victim blaming in the case of sexual assaults, because such behaviors are generally accepted in our society with regards to most criminal activities. It also makes sense that people who seem otherwise very sensitive to gender issues would occasionally show these types of tendencies… and that some of those people will not understand what is going on when they are accused of being insensitive… because some of the time their behavior will be completely unrelated to the gender of the victim or the nature of the crime in question. Freeing the world of gender bias will not be enough to stop crime victims from being asked emotionally damaging questions, nor from being treated as if they are at least partially responsible for the crimes against them.