The Blame Game
Why do we feel more comfortable blaming victims than abusers?
"Blame is the discharging of discomfort and pain. It has an inverse relationship with accountability. Blaming is a way we discharge anger." Brene Brown
This is a complex social and psychological issue with many layers and depths. The truth is it is undoubted more comfortable to blame the victims, or society at large or anyone really. In avoiding our own accountability we slide our shame, as well as the abusers shame onto the victim. It's tidy. The powerful stay powerful. The weak, get weaker and we can pretend it's out of our control (while controlling it).
Culturally we minimise, deflect and protect ourselves and those we care about from the ire of the powerful with silence and shame. Our silence and silencing victims. Our shame and the shame put on the victim.
We are programmed not to challenge authority, even when we know it's wrong. While looking for the psychological studies that prove exactly this point I found hundreds of blogs, articles and curriculum to teach children to "respect authority". School in particular teaches this blind obedience to our "betters". Stand in line! Do as you are told! I'm right, because I say so (even when I am wrong). We learn early and model our social groups around this power structure. It is exceptional difficult to break this kind of conditioning. Yet it is also vital to do so.
Psychologically we also prefer the narrative where we can imagine we and our loved ones are safe, even if it is an incredibly damaging lie. It gives us a control over events that are not within our power. The thought that only slutty, bad, stupid, silly, immoral, pretty, pushy, weak, and so on are victims is a way to insulate ourselves and loved ones from something terrible. It "protects" us from the horrid reality that anyone can be a victim. It seems too random. Too paralysing to be true.
This way of thinking is of just as traumatic as the abuse itself.
It also leads people to minimise abuse to be able to hold themselves and those they care about within those careful place holder's in their mind.
"My daughter is a good girl, good girls don't get raped, so she can't have been."
This added trauma of trying to twist our ideas of victimhood about ourselves and others and our own narrative can pull and push so hard it breaks people.
We see abuse victims try and "make themselves ugly" or "be too strong to be a victim" only to fall fowl of abuser or abuse again because the truth, which is so much more scary, is that it is not in the control of the victims at all.
If you were mauled by a wild bear, that happened to stumble into where you work, no-one would blame you for not wearing a safer clothing option. It wouldn't be a moral judgement placed on you, it would be an outrage that the bear was allowed to roam around hurting people.
The truth is that predators walk amongst us. That they can and do wear human faces. That they can be charming or bullying. They understand power and gather power to aid their ability to get away with hurting and harming their "prey" (that's us by the way).
You can learn to defend yourself. Make yourself look like a troublesome target. Yet if the predator wants to attack you, they will usually find a way. The only way to stop this is for those who see what has happened to speak up. To alarm and alert that there is a predator and to remove it. Whether it is firing them, putting them in prison or something else.
I know it's hard. I know it goes against much of our conditioning but we must begin to see the problem is the abuser. That anyone can be a victim. Our silence is deafening and it's deadly.
