The Victim Narrative

As a result of the New York Times bringing to light the allegations of sexual harassment in the case of Harvey Weinstein, the general public has been given a chance to see into the dark side of Hollywood. Sadly these stories caused a domino effect that rippled across the Western world, in which modern day rape culture rears its ugly head and we are surrounded by hostility towards victims of sexual assault.

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.