Objectifying women

[Dotard]

Whole buncha psyco-babble

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What is Victim Blaming? It's when you hold the person who had a crime perpetrated against that responsible, or at least partially responsible for the crime. As Wikipedia says:

Victim blaming (or blaming the victim) is holding the victims of a crime, an accident, or any type of abusive maltreatment to be entirely or partially responsible for the unfortunate incident that has occurred in their life. Historically victim-blaming is the trait most often exhibited by the criminally insane and has traditionally emerged in racist and sexist forms.[1] It is also about blaming individuals for their personal distress or for social difficulties, rather than the other parties involved or the overarching social system in place

It's interesting to get behind why people blame victims to understand why it is wrong and should not be done to rape victims. There are two theories that feed into victim blaming is the Just World Theory and Assumptive World Theory.

The just-world phenomenon, also called the just-world theory, just-world fallacy, just-world effect, or just-world hypothesis, refers to the tendency for people to want to believe that the world is just so strongly that when they witness an otherwise inexplicable injustice they will rationalize it by searching for things that the victim might have done to deserve it. This deflects their anxiety, and lets them continue to believe the world is a just place, but often at the expense of blaming victims for things that were not, objectively, their fault.

Essentially, it's the idea common belief that good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people, so a rape victim must have done something to get raped. This also feeds into the idea that people can do "common sense" things to avoid bad things happen to them. They can lock their doors, dress appropriately, etc... to avoid having crimes perpetrated against them. This feeds into the Assumptive World Theory.

Rape victims are a glaring reminder of our own vulnerability. No one likes to think they could lose control over their own body or life. By deciding a rape victim did something concrete to deserve the assault the observer creates a false sense of safety. If they can avoid doing that particular thing or action then they create the illusion of invulnerability for themselves. Creating a firm boundary between ourselves and accussers or rape victims (us v/s them) also creates the illusion of invulnerability.

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