Victim blaming comes in a variety of different forms and is
not limited to sexual assault but also cases of murder, kidnapping, theft and other
crimes. Convincing ourselves that the only way something tragic has happened to
someone else, is because of something they have done wrong helps us to feel
safe in the illusion that the same thing would not happen to us. This can be
attributed to a person’s actions, class, gender, dress sense and career choice.
There is a certain narrative that many people feel an individual should follow
in order to be treated as a victim and it seems that someone who has fame,
wealth and strength within their career does not fall into this narrative.
Just as high profile figures such as Emma Thompson, Ryan
Gosling and Julia Roberts spoke
out to condemn Weinstein’s behaviour, a vast amount of the general public
also spoke out, this time questioning why the actresses did not come forward
sooner, as well as pointing out certain privileges in the women’s lives that
they feel eliminates their status as a victim.
Victims should be vulnerable in almost every aspect of their
life, they should not be wealthy as we tend to associate money with power and
if someone has power they can’t possibly be a victim. At the same time, they
should also not be poverty stricken as we saw with the kidnapping of Shannon
Matthews and the stark comparison between her and Madeline McCann’s case –
Shannon being from a council house in a deprived working class area, while the McCann
family had their "respectable" careers in medicine. The socioeconomic
differences between the two are widely
acknowledged as the reason for the vast difference in funds raised for each
case - within two weeks of Madeleine's disappearance the rewards totalled £2.6m
while those for Shannon amounted to £25,500 (including £20,000 from The Sun).
The way that a victim should present themselves is
a huge issue that is often discussed in the media. Big Bang Theory actress
Mayim Bialik recently wrote in an op-ed:
“In a perfect world, women should be free to act however they want. But our
world isn’t perfect…Nothing — absolutely nothing — excuses men for assaulting
or abusing women. But we can’t be naïve about the culture we live in.” She
wrote that she still makes choices that she considers to be “self-protecting
and wise” and that her “sexual self is best reserved for private situations
with those I am most intimate with. I dress modestly. I don’t act flirtatiously
with men as a policy.” Although Bialik is a self-professed feminist, the
opinion that the way that a women presents herself can tip the
odds of her being sexually assaulted is not only extremely damaging but also just wrong. It suggests that sexual assault is a product of sexual desire when
actually it is usually linked to feelings of power belonging to the abuser.
In the case of the late Hugh Hefner, we can
see how a woman’s career choice can have a huge impact on whether people will
see them as a victim. Former Playboy Bunny, Holly Madison, wrote a tell-all
book sharing her experiences of her time at the Playboy Mansion. Madison
spoke about her “disconnected” sexual encounters with Hefner that were expected
from all of the girls. She said: “I felt stuck in my life, trying to make ends
meet…I lost the lease on my apartment. I felt like I'd already thrown myself to
the wolves, so I might as well reap the rewards and not just be one more slut who
walked through those doors.”
Madison suffered with depression during her time at the
mansion, however, Hefner would not let her see a psychiatrist, fearing the
doctor would just tell her to leave. When these stories resurfaced after Hefner’s
death on 27 September 2017, we saw comments from the public who believed
that because the girls were given £1,000 “allowance” per week, they could only
be considered as victims “of their own greed”, with people firing the question;
“if it was that terrible then why did they not leave?” Bear in mind that
the number
one reason that domestic violence survivors stay or return to the abusive
relationship is because the abuser controls their money supply, leaving them
with no financial resources to break free.
Central to victim blaming for sexual assault is the
assumption that as soon as a person is assaulted they automatically hold the
responsibility of bringing down their abuser. Throughout the Weinstein case we
have seen people condemning Angelina Jolie and the other women that have come
forward for not speaking out sooner. First of all, this not true – Former New
York Times reporter, Sharon Waxman recalled trying to file a story in 2004
about Weinstein’s sexual misdeeds, only to see it killed
by editors. It is also a completely backwards way of placing blame. The idea that an abusers future assaults are the direct responsibility
of a previous victim is absurd. We have to consider the fact that in cases like
Weinstein’s, abusers are often people in positions of power and victims run the
risk of being shut down as soon as they speak out. Just take a look at what happened to Rose McGowen - after using Twitter to speak about the scandal the
actress has now been banned from the social media platform. Compare this to the
multitude of misogynistic
and racist abuse given to MP, Dianne Abbot, via Twitter earlier this year
which was left public for the world to see.
To put our current rape culture into perspective, we only
need to think as far back as Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in which he
was literally recorded speaking about “grabbing a woman by the p***y” and just months
later was elected POTUS. What message does this send to victims who are
suffering in silence?
When Hefner died, stars such as Kim Kardashian praised him as
“legendary” and we were flooded with articles about how he played a vital part
in the movement of feminism. This is a man who once said:
“It's the attraction between the sexes that makes the world go 'round. That's
why women wear lipstick and short skirts" and "Several girlfriends
are easier to handle than one wife." He also wrote: “These chicks
[feminists] are our natural enemy. It is time to do battle with them,” in a
secret memo leaked to feminists by secretaries at Playboy. “It is time we do
battle with them... What I want is a devastating piece that takes the militant
feminists apart.”
It would perhaps be a wise idea to spend less time
condemning victims for not coming forward and more time exploring why they don’t
feel safe to in the first place. How can we take the moral high ground of demanding they should have come forward sooner when we carry the exact attitudes that stopped them from doing it in the first place? The sad truth is that no one is immune to
assault, crime or murder and while blaming victims for their tragedy may help us
to deny this, all it is really doing is making it easier for the abusers to get
away with their actions and remain in their positions of power.
We have to fight this epidemic of abuse and to do so we need to hold the abuser to account, not their victims.
