Unlearning: Victim-Blaming

While teaching a unit on gender-based violence, the students in my class got into a heated discussion about victim-blaming as it pertained to sexual violence. One student adamantly insisted, with anecdotes, that if a victim follows social rules, however stringent, she can remain safe. That a victim could have done nothing to prevent harm seemed an impossibility to her. 

A couple of years later, a man sexually harassed a colleague while she was out and about in Chittagong. Our small teaching team sat together to listen and comfort her. That night, a colleague and I continued to dissect the day’s event. Without irony and oblivious to my own hypocrisy, I said, “I don’t understand why she refused to wear a scarf. Doesn’t she realize she’s in Bangladesh?” My colleague sighed in relief: she’d been thinking the same thing and I’d just given her permission to voice it. We shifted our discussion to the matter of respecting local culture, feeling justified in believing that wearing a scarf could have prevented harm in a Muslim-majority country. That my colleague shouldn’t have been violated at all, that she deserved to be free of bodily harm regardless of dress, never crossed my mind. 

There is something about sexual violence that distorts responsibility. We immediately shift our focus to the victim. What was she wearing, drinking, doing? Why was she there in the first place (while disregarding that the ‘there’ in question might be her own home)? Why didn’t she say no, do something to stop it (never mind that she may have been incapacitated and unable to stop it; or that an absence of ‘no’ is not consent (an enthusiastic yes); that ‘no’ can take the shape of a flinch, a whimper, a stillness)? Even our language is passive: “she was raped” instead of “he raped her,” the perpetrator forever kept invisible in our speech and deliberations, and therefore shielded from accountability. 

We all do this. Regardless of how much I think I get it (as in the class discussion), I fall back into the trap of victim-blaming (as in with my colleague). Why?

I’ve ruminated on this question a lot. It’s a contradiction within myself, and like a sore tooth you can’t help but poke at, I find myself returning to it again and again. How can I argue in class that the victim isn’t to blame and couldn’t have done anything to prevent harm and then wonder why my colleague had refused to wear a scarf in a country where women are expected to wear scarves? How do we unlearn a pervasive, adaptable, and intelligent programming--a set of internalized beliefs--around sexual violence that we’ve been taught from day one? 

To unlearn victim-blaming means to find the outliers, the exception to the rules, so that we can expose the rules for falsehoods created by perpetrators to deflect blame. We are sold the story that if a person (typically a woman since male survivors are still largely invisible in this conversation) dresses and behaves in specific ways, if she stays inside or goes out in a particular way at a particular time, if she watches her drink or stays with a group, she will be safe. Yet this never holds true and the majority of sexual violence cases will contest them. 

A year after someone assaulted my colleague, I was out shopping. The tailor I frequented was on the third floor of a shopping complex in Chittagong. As I walked towards the stairs at the far end of the building, a man walked towards me. He was talking on the phone, and aside from being the only other person ahead of me, he was unremarkable. All around me, shops were open with shopkeepers able to directly look into the hallway from their registers; behind me were a light scattering of shoppers getting an early start to their day. It should have been safe, mundane. Yet, as the distance between us closed, the man reached out to grope my chest. I lifted my arm and blocked him. He never faltered, never broke stride, just kept walking and talking on the phone. He found me again on the stairs, this time at the opposite end of the complex on the side closest to the first floor exit. I blocked his second attempt; and again he kept walking up the stairs pretending that nothing had happened as I walked down, shaken, angry, afraid. I was wearing a scarf, but what did it matter?

Unlearning victim-blaming means to believe the stories of victim-survivors, a topic I’ve written about before. 

I read a story as a teenager that still haunts me. I don’t remember the title or the author; I can’t recall if it was a short story or a novel. I do recall that the story featured a problematic heroine who lied often, manipulated when she could, was hard and harsh. These characteristics were made stark by her foil, a seemingly perfect, angelic woman who was loved and supported by everyone. A stranger rapes the beloved character and everyone comes together in support of her. The story then follows the problematic heroine’s anger and bitterness over this treatment. What stands out most in my memory is this: In the arms of her lover, the heroine finally breaks down and asks, “Why didn’t anyone believe me?” In those few words, we learn that she too is a survivor, except that few believed her and those who believed said she brought it on herself. She was apparently unworthy of protection and support. 

I don’t think I had the metacognitive skills then to realize I had learned something new and valuable: that all survivors deserve to be heard and believed. By making the heroine sympathetic, I got to see her humanity instead of assigning tropes to deny and invalidate her. Perpetrators protect themselves by remaining silent and allowing you to write or apply discrediting narratives to survivors. They have you to do the hard work of defending them. But if you avoid the danger of the single story, to borrow Chimamanda Ngozie Adchie’s wise words, learn of the multitude of survivor stories, the reality of 1 in 3 women and 1 in 6 men in the United States surviving sexual violence at some point in their lives starts to expose the fallacy in logic that victim-survivors are at fault. How can 82 million people in America bring it on themselves?

To unlearn victim-blaming means to understand power. It’s easier to police victim-survivors than it is to hold perpetrators accountable. There is less risk involved because, typically, perpetrators have more power over us: they control resources, jobs, social status, and much more. Most perpetrators of sexual violence being men also possess gender privilege. Even when we have power, when we are removed from the direct line of fire, we face an internal battle, a strong resistance. The programming we carry within us fills us with dread, a sense of helplessness and isolation, as if the consequences of advocating for or believing survivors will bring on the inevitable backlash survivors face to our doors. The path of least internal resistance is to focus on the victim. In those moments, I’ve found that observing my thoughts is helpful. “Oh, that’s some resistance there.” Curiously holding my discomfort, I’ve turned to trusted friends for support, so that they too can help bear witness. 

To unlearn victim-blaming means to recognize the humanity of victim-survivors, to stop assigning worth. When you confront the fact that by insisting that victims could and should have done something, or some victims are worth believing while others are not, you’re insisting that some people deserve to be harmed (because they didn’t follow arbitrary and often-changing rules) and some people are not worthy of justice or protection or safety. This is probably the hardest to accept, and the programming is most complex here. It’ll come at you with all sorts of narratives, excuses, and rationales, but the only response I’ve found to work is to see the thoughts and arguments for what they are and say, no. No, I won’t entertain these thoughts. No, I will not dehumanize another person. No. 

I think about all of this now especially given the moment we are in. Tara Reade has accused former Vice President Joe Biden of sexual assault. This global pandemic has victims trapped at home with their abusers. The fallout, undoubtedly, will be unimaginable. And it’s going to require us to be ready to support victim-survivors, so that they--for fear of us and our reactions--aren’t silenced.