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Victimization: Stop Pointing Fingers In The Wrong Direction!

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Victimization: Stop Pointing Fingers In The Wrong Direction!

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“You reap what you sow”, common statement that we made if news about assault come out in the news. That is the sign of victim blaming. Based on the article “Why People Blame On the Victim?” by David B.Feldman on Psychology Today web page, I disagree on these victim blaming phenomenon because I believe we can change the world to the better future. The government should increase the justice in law, the empathy in the community and media’s role in telling the truth.

Victim blaming happen due to lacking of justice in today’s law. Most of the cases where the perpetrators get away from punishment but get the victim charged of the assault instead. This situation is occurring all around us without knowing especially in rape cases. The tendency for the victim to be blamed is greater in rape cases if both victims and perpetrators know each other, (Bieneck, S.; Krahe, B.(2010)). For example, the kidnapping and rape of 14-year old Fatima: when the police arrived, both Fatima and her rapist were arrested. While they did not detain the offender for long, the officers held Fatima captive for a month and a prison guard continually raped her during that time, “Rape victims are still being blamed for sexual violence in Somalia”. The Independent. Retrieved 16 May 2019.

This shows the law that we have today is not fair and victim blaming. The government should do something to improve the law. Perpetrators should be punish and victims should be save and protect. Thus, we can make our future better.

Psychological trauma is a type of damage to the mind that occurs as a result of a distressing event. Trauma is often the result of an overwhelming amount of stress that exceeds one's ability to cope, or integrate the emotions involved with that experience, from “Trauma Definition”. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Retrieved 16 May 2019. That is what the victims feel after the unforgettable events that they have been through. What we as community can do is supporting them, believe in them and make them feel safe around us. We need to have an empathy. We have to be in their shoes instead of condemning on how they are look, what dress are they wearing, why they did not protect themselves and others. Moral supports can help them boost their confidence to strive forward and believe in themselves that there is nothing can stop them from moving on.

Media is the main source of news to the community. Before, there is only newspapers and television but nowadays there is internet where you can access it easily. it does bring us benefits as we get to know what happened around us and globally however it also can be the virus that spread the negativity in the community. For example, 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, “NY Times Defends Victim Blaming Coverage of Child Rape Case”. Mediabistro.com. 10 March 2011. Retrieved on 16 May 2019.

One false news can affect the whole community, media should be reporting the truth instead of looking for some ratings on the articles by giving out the false news to the community. It is the role of media to spread some awareness about victim blaming and positivity to the community. Therefore, we can make our world a better place.

Do we want the victim blaming phenomenon to happen again? Let’s work together as a team to stop victim blaming and make world a better place to live in. Everyone deserve to be happy and successful in their life and the bad guys deserve to be punish.

References :

1. Feldman, David B., (2018)., Why Do People Blame the Victim?., Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/onApril2019

2. “Victim Blaming”.Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime. Retrieved 16 May 2019 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victim_blaming

3. Bieneck, S.; Krahe, B. (2010). “Blaming the Victim and Exonerating the Perpetrator in Cases of Rap and Robber: Is There a Double Standard?”. Journal of Interpersonal Violence. 26 (9): 1785-97

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The Lack of Credence in Male Abuse Victims

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The Lack of Credence in Male Abuse Victims

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Abuse of men? The first reaction upon hearing about the topic of battered men or in other words male abuse victims, for a lot of people is that of incredulity. Although feminism has opened many eyes about the existence of domestic violence and newspaper reports often include incidents of abuse of women, the topic on abuse of men is a rarely discussed issue. Abuse is a lack of control by a person who believes they can exercise dominance through humiliating, manipulating, and controlling other people to get them to fear them or respect them. There is a growing concern of increased number of male victims of domestic abuse. Abuse of men happens far more often than you might expect (Robinson & Segal, 2019). Depending on the nature of a relationship, men can be abused by a female or male partner. It can be either physical, emotional or mental abuse and anyone can be a victim. Thus, abuse of men happens often but society always turn a blind eye to this issue and society should acknowledge this issue even though it may seem very minor but it may happen to our loved ones.

Same as domestic abuse to women, it can take form of physical violence, emotional, verbal, sexual abuse or any other way that a partner can control the victim. For abused men, they can face a shortage of resources to turn for help, a lack of understanding from friends and family, legal obstacles especially if the victim wanted to gain custody on their children from an abusive mother. An abusive partner may hit, kick, bite, punch, spit, throw things and destroy the victim possession (Robinson & Segal, 2019). If the victim tries to fight back through strength, the perpetrator may attack the victims back when the victims is not aware of their surroundings. The perpetrator may use weapons to strike the victims, abuse or threaten victim’s children or pets. The abuse of male victim is not limited to violence. Abuse of men can also be through emotional and verbal as it is as damaging. For example, the perpetrator may be possessive, act jealous or harass the victims with accusations of being unfaithful.

Sometimes it made us wonder why does men do not leave their abusive relationship? This is because, to end a relationship especially an abusive one are not easy especially it will become harder if you are isolated from friends and family, threatened, manipulated or physically and emotionally beaten down. They fear appearing unmanly, shame, embarrassment, and a failure to live up to masculine ideals (Rees, 2019). For example, their role as a male, husband or a father. Another reason why men do not leave any of this bad relationships are due to they are in denial that their relationship has a problem and think that they may prolong the abuse and they would rather keep the issue to themselves. Also, the men believe by staying in the relationship, it will help to protect their children. They believe, if they leave, the spouse will harm the child or prevent the victim to have access to them. Obtaining custody of children is always challenging for fathers. Even if the victim has the confident that they can do so, they may still feel overwhelmed at the thought of raising a kid alone.

We as a society should support a man or boy who discloses to us that he has experienced sexual assault or abuse because it can be hard to tell someone about the issue as they may fear that they will face judgement or not be believed. Some men and boys have questions about their sexuality after surviving an assault or abuse, (“Sexual Assault of Men and Boys,” n.d.) We can support the victims through listening. A lot of people in crisis feel as though no one understands them and that they are not taken seriously. We can show them they are important by not being prejudiced and giving them undivided attention.  We can also help to understand and overcome their feelings. Avoid making overly positive statements like “It will get better” or trying to manage their emotions like “Snap out of it.” Make statements like “That sounds like a really hard thing to go through.” Then, we can help the victims by not asking about the details of their assault or abuse but through expressing your concern and tell them in a direct way that you care about them and say to the victims “It is okay. I am here for you.”

In conclusion, I believed that the society plays a role in giving a lot more attention to this issue as the victims or survivors may struggle with upsetting emotions or feel numb, disconnected and unable to trust people. After the trauma of an abusive relationship, it can take a while to get over the pain and bad memories but we can help them heal and move on.

REFERENCES

Rees, J. (2019, March 01). Male domestic abuse victims ‘suffering in silence’. BBC News.

Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/uk-wales-47252756.

Robinson, L. & Segal, J. (February, 2019). Help for Men Who Are Being Abused. Retrieved

from https://www.helpguide.org/articles/abuse/help-for-men-who-are-being-abused.htm/.

Sexual Assault of Men and Boys. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.rainn.org/articles/sexual-assault-men-and-boys.

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FACTORS CONTRIBUTE ON VICTIM BLAMING IN SOCIETY

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FACTORS CONTRIBUTE ON VICTIM BLAMING IN SOCIETY

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It is easy to judge and blame. It is more difficult to understand. Understanding requires compassion, patience and a willingness to believe that good hearts sometimes choose poor methods. ‘If only’ phrase is always commonly use by people who have the counterfactual thinking if things could happen differently. In gender stereotyping context, victim blaming is getting normalized. Victim blaming is a devaluing act where the victim of a crime or any abusive treatment is held as wholly or partially responsible for the wrongful action committed against them. “You are in part responsible for what happened, because you put yourself in a compromising situation. . . . .Actions have consequences” (Feldman, 2014; Niemi & Young, 2014). This is one of the example culture of victim blaming in action. The victim is always the one who is interrogated instead of the perpetrator when unfortunate situation happens. The mindset of people that perceive that good things happen to good people and bad things bad people. This typical mindset should be clear out. 🤬 and abusive treatment is never the victim fault.

Many cases of victim blaming especially 🤬 is being feared by women due to stereotypical view of victim among society where many have found that these victims are often blamed for their own tragedy. From the very young age, they have been taught on how to reduce and avoid any circumstances and actions that associate with 🤬 as the society is prone to victim blaming. There are numerous factors that contribute that influence the level of victim blaming occurs which include victim characteristics, observer’s belief and situational factors (Horgan & Reeder, 1986),which shows how society undoubtedly have this typical mindset. One of the massive factors is 🤬 myth acceptance. 🤬 myths are believed to vary across cultures and societies, but constantly follow a trend by which the victim is blamed and includes claims where a disbelief of 🤬 is expressed; perpetrator is exonerated and posit that particular women are raped (Lonsway & Fitzgerald, 1994; Bohner & Siebler, 2007). These claims were then sub-categorized into seven female 🤬 myth domain which include “He did not mean to”, “🤬 is trivial”, “She asked for it”, “🤬 is a deviant event”, “It was not really 🤬”, “She likes it”, and lastly “She wanted it” (Payne, Lonsway & Fitzgerald, 1999). By having these thought, it is most likely for the society to always allow the victim to be partially responsible for what had happened. In addition, these victim blaming ideologies have brought many consequences towards the victim especially a huge impact on decision made by prosecutors which they are likely less inclined to take on a 🤬 case if the victim somehow is forcefully to admit that she is being flirted with the perpetrator beforehand which are described by 🤬 myth ideologies that are associated with victim blaming due to the victim’s behavior.

Just world bias is the situation where society prone to rationalize why bad things happened. The just world bias can be described as the tendency to believe that the world is just giving back what the people have done and what they deserve. By swallowing this  perception, the society tend to find reasons or rationalize away injustice for the misfortune when the victim does not even has any control over the situation that happened to them. Society’s mind tend to crave predictability and for that reason, we tend tend to blame the victim of unfairness rather than reject the perfect theory of the world suggesting that good will be rewarded and the evil will be punished. There are several explanations that have been suggested to explain this phenomenon to be happened. First, the fear of facing vulnerability. People are less likely to place themselves that they also can be the victim. Thus, when they confront with these kind of situation such as assault, 🤬 or abuse, they certainly have the urge to assign the blame for the situation on the victim’s behavior. This conclude that the society believe the situation is avoidable if the victim is not acting in that particular way. Next, a desire to minimize anxiety. Society wants to believe that the world is being fine and fair if we work hard towards it and acting good will definitely rewarding. Plus, the society want to reduce the anxiety that is caused by the world’s injustice. By believing that the victim is partially or completely responsible toward their misfortune, society able to carry on believing that the world is doing safe and sound.

Lastly, the perpetrator characteristics also contribute to the factor of victim blaming. Vignette methodology is conducted by Strömwall et al (2014) to examine the effect of perpetrators previous conviction and age, the participants’ “belief in a just world” and gender on the attribution of blame. The main findings shows that females are less likely to put a blame to the victim when the perpetrator is having criminal convictions beforehand while males showing opposite results. However, prior study (Mitchell et al., 2009) has revealed that when the perpetrator was driven by violence compared to sexual needs, the males and females are mostly put the blame on the perpetrator. In conclusion, females and males are having vary insight of the victim blaming due to the information provided about the perpetrator but evidence for more replicable findings is needed before robust conclusions can be made (Strömwall et al., 2014).

In conclusion, the victim should not be blamed for the situation befallen on them. It is never the victim mistake even though their behavior is not as nice as the society perceived as the behavior should not be one of the reasons it is the victim fault. The need to alter this behavior is at alarming rate to ensure that the victim are given the support they needed. Furthermore, due to the complicated and unclear nature of 🤬, it surely difficult to efficiently understand all the factors that influence the victim blaming. Further research and study could be taken in place to investigate and understand the factors as they intertwine with each other.

Reference :

1. S, Maia. (2018) Why We Are Psychologically Hardwired To Blame The Victim, Organization from The Guardian, Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com on May 2019.

2. Nisha Veerd. What Influences Victim Blaming in 🤬?,United Kingdom,The University of Nottingham.

3. Niemi L & Young L, (2016). When and Why We See Victims As Responsible: The Impact of Ideology on Attitudes Toward Victims, Boston, Boston College.