Victim-blaming and Politics

Watch that PSA.

Innocuous enough message, right?

Wrong.

Victim-blaming is common everywhere, but it is only in our sophisticated, first-world country that we have raised it to an art form. This simple message which seems to advocate concern and responsbility really says: "If you post information publicly, you implicitly authorize people to act on that information, even in ways that are fundamentally inappropriate."

If somebody posts compromising information regarding themselves online, and people use that information in a way that is criminal, it's still a crime. If I paste my credit card number all over the internet and people use it fraudulently, they've still committed fraud. If a woman posts pictures of herself publicly, and people use those pictures as means to harass her or stalk her, they're still harassing or stalking her. The impact isn't lessened because the information is readily available, it's still wrong.

How, may you ask, does an issue of law and justice (or, in some cases, of simple personal respect) end up on a blog that is ostensibly about politics?

Well, for one thing, I'm pre-occupied with law and justice, and my concern with politics is almost entirely entangled with the practice of sane law and justice. The Social Order as self-enforced by people on themselves is not a concern of mine in politics.

But the other is that these issues of law and justice demonstrate a systemic bias in the political system and in the social consciousness of the population.

We, as a culture, have developed this idea that there is some set of actions which justifies a breach of personal integrity; that "they deserved it" is acceptable. This is not an acceptable way to live. This is not a culture I can be proud of. Any sentence which starts with: "This could have been avoided if the victim had..." is a sentence not worth starting, a sentence not even worth thinking.

I hate to be a religious pundit. I really do. I haven't much choice here. It apalls me that in a country where so many people claim to see the light of a savior, one barely has a choice but to wonder how those same people have fallen so far. How one can say that anybody who has suffered violence or indignity; who has been demeaned and victimized deserved what they got is beyond me.

Dear America,

I have been avoiding your phone calls because you have confused your priorities. Do not call back until you have gotten them straightened out, and can treat all of your citizens with respect.

The Only Sensible Man Alive