Victim blaming

Victim blaming is holding the victim of a crime responsible for that crime. Starting in the 1970s, the term was commonly used in the United States.

In 1947 Theodor W. Adorno defined what would be later called "blaming the victim," as "one of the most sinister features of the Fascist character". Shortly after, Adorno and three other professors at the University of California, Berkeley created their influential and highly debated F-scale (F for fascist), published in The Authoritarian Personality (1950), which included among the fascist traits of the scale the "contempt for everything discriminated against or weak." A common example of victim blaming is the "asking for it" idiom, e.g. "she was asking for it" said of a victim of violence or sexual assault.

Opposing views

Roy Baumeister, a social and personality psychologist, argued that blaming the victim is not always wrong. According to him, it can lead to new ideas that show that the victim was at least partly responsible for the act. Baumeister argues that the common explanations of violence and cruelty are not helpful because they say that the victim was innocent. According to him, in the classic telling of "the myth of pure evil," the innocent, well-meaning victims are going about their business when they are suddenly assaulted by terrible villains. The situation, however, is not this simple; In most cases, the victim has done something to either anger the offender, or to help the offender's actions. In spite of this, the actions that follow may be more important than the "victim's" first offense.

Examples

In 2005, Australian Muslim preacher Feiz Mohammad gave a speech in Australia in which he blamed women for being victims. He said: "A victim of every minute somewhere in the world. Why? No one to blame but herself. She displayed her beauty to the entire world... Strapless, backless, sleeveless, showing their legs, nothing but satanic skirts, slit skirts, translucent blouses, miniskirts, tight jeans: all this to tease man and appeal to his carnal nature.

In a case that became famous in 2011, an eleven-year-old victim of repeated gang s in Cleveland, Texas, was accused by the defense attorney of sexually attracting men on purpose so that they would try to her. "Like the spider and the fly. Wasn't she saying, 'Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly?' ", he asked a witness. The New York Times ran an article uncritically reporting on the way many in the community blamed the victim, for which the newspaper later apologized.

In a case that attracted worldwide coverage, when a woman was d and killed in India in December 2012, some Indian government officials and political leaders blamed the victim for her outfit and being out late at night.