When I was an undergraduate, there were a series of crimes on and around campus mostly revolving around robberies and petty theft. The adminstrators sent out an alert informing us that a student had been robbed the previous evening. He was sitting on a bench in an outdoor area where he was approached by a few young men who threatened violence if they didn’t give him the laptop he was using. Nobody was injured. I was talking to another student about it when he said, “That’s what he gets for being stupid enough to use his laptop outside like that.”
Generally speaking, I don’t blame the victim of any sort of crime be it violent or fraudulent in nature. Even when I don’t understand how someone could be fooled by a scam, I try not to blame them. As smart as I think I am, you tell me the right con at the right time and I might very well be fooled. I’m not infallible. And if I take my phone out to see I have any messages, is it my fault if someone uses that as an opportunity to rob me? Of course not.
Buuuuut…there are times when I think the victim put themselves in that situation. And this is where I’m treading on thin ice because this kind of thinking removes blame from the perpetrator. How did she expect to be treated while wearing that outfit? How much did she have to drink? What did she think was going to happen when she went up to his apartment? We’ve all heard those kinds of inappropriate questions when it comes to the victims of sexual assault.
What brought this on was reading about the situation with Truth Social and that some investors are likely to take a bath. I don’t feel sorry for them. Anyone who got into bed with Truth Social should have known better. Is it wrong for me to assign them some blame? Is it ever right to blame the victim, even a little?
IMHO there’s two ways to interpret the question. There’s the matter of being morally to blame, and then there’s the factual question of whether or not the victim in question contributed to the circumstances surrounding the crime. While I would never assign moral blame to a victim (assuming they weren’t the perpetrator in some other associated crime), I do think it can be helpful in some situations to point out that a victim did something to contribute to their being victimized. One reason for doing so would be so that other people can take a lesson in how to avoid becoming a crime victim, such as the proverbial “don’t walk around a bad neighborhood with money sticking out of your pockets while not paying attention to your surroundings” type situation.
There may he movies about this very topic. I think that in the case of signing a contract you don’t understand you could say someone’s a victim who could also be blamed. In many cases like that the law catches up to change that which may be to say there’s no victimhood but you could still blame them on some level. There’s sometimes a lot of grey area in disputes and this may be insurmountable, which could hold host to something more specific that OP may be asking more for
Divorce courts are full of victims that only have themselves to blame. Many country songs are all about people being victims of thier own problems. Everyone told you about him/her is the theme.
Yes, I think this is an important distinction. Saying “That wouldn’t have happened if you had…” is not “blaming the victim” in the sense of assigning moral blame. You’re accusing the victim of doing something foolish or inadvisable or imprudent, but that in no way implies that the victim did anything morally or ethically wrong, nor that there was any less moral blame to the perpetrator’s actions.
But it can still be tricky sometimes to assign legal and moral responsibility for bad things that happen. What if I use my laptop outside and it gets rained on and ruined? I may not be morally blameworthy, but still, any responsibility for my laptop’s being ruined is on me.
What if I habitally leave my car unlocked with the keys in the ignition, and one day somebody steals it? The person who stole it is still morally blameworthy, but do I bear any responsibility, and if so, how much?
Some years ago we had a regular poster who was a Saudi native. He found the idea of our levels of street crime almost unthinkable. In his telling, if somebody dropped a wallet full of cash on the street in Riyadh, it’s be sitting there untouched 6 hours later when he retraced his steps to find it. We all know that would not happen in your or my hometown.
A metaphor for the moral blame vs logistical blame difference might be talking about traffic right of way. As an old traffic safety ad had it: “You can be in the right, and also dead right. Pay attention and yield if you must.”
It’s be nice if other people never ran stop signs and never mugged anyone. Until that time we face the choice of pretending we live in that world, and therefore running avoidable risks, or taking steps to reduce those risks a priori.
Here’s another tack. The law is full of the “reasonable person” standard. IOW, what a sensible calm average person might do in whatever circumstance. The assumption is the reasonable person has roughly the same perception of risks, rewards, and tradeoffs as everyone else. Living in urban / suburban USA and taking exactly zero precaution doesn’t IMO meet the “reasonable person” standard. Neither does carrying a gun and lots of ammo then shooting anyone who gets within 30 feet of you “just in case.” The reasonable standard is in the middle someplace. And from a totally non-moral, just logistical / legal perspective, failing to take reasonable care to personal safety & security is contributory to whatever adverse thing happens next.
Now morally the victim should almost always be viewed as blameless. I say “almost” to account for the old saying “You can’t cheat an honest man.” If somebody buys a TV that “fell off the truck” or bought a scammy investment on ironclad promises of 10,000% returns, well that person was planning to be complicit in a crime to their own benefit. At which point their angelic halo of victimhood gains a lot of tarnish.
Last point and I’ll shut up.
A lot of victim blaming is connected to sexual assault of women. And much of that blame is simply more of the tired old meme that “women should be sexually controlled by their man, and locked in a closet at all other times.” How dare she be out in public in those shorts; the hussy got what she deserved! Of course that line of thinking is garbage, but highly popular garbage with certain segments of the male (and even some of the female) public. Bastards.
When the whole Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme collapsed it certainly seemed there were a LOT of people who should have known better but turned a blind eye because they got really good returns. When the whole thing finally collapsed their shock and outrage seemed a bit weak to me.
Were they victims with no blame? I am not so sure.
Personal, physical loss, as in a women being sexually assaulted is one kind of victimization. Loss of property or money is another thing.
Of course they are not equal. Disturbing yes. But physical assault is worse. The victim is clear.
Now traffic accidents involving drunk drivers. The drunk driver maybe be injured horribly. My lack of sympathy loses steam if they chose to drive drunk and injured themselves. The true victim is the innocent person in the other car. And the drunk drivers family.
I don’t like to admit it but I have short sympathy for incarcerated individuals. They may have a terrible life. May age to very old and suffer with diseases of the elderly. I kinda don’t care. I’m sorry.
I agree with a legal system; a social system that unequivocally sees those who prey upon their fellow human beings as culpable, and those who act in good faith no matter how naively as blameless.
But there’s a paradox, because I agree with Hemingway that if you’re going to of any use at all in this world you need to accept that everything that happens to you is your own damn fault.
Or, as my daughter works to get her clients to wrap their heads around: you’re unhappiness isn’t at all your fault, but your happiness is entirely your responsibility.
I tell my girls all the time, If you’re gonna walk down Boogieman St. At 11pm in a bikini and high heels, alone, nothing is likely to happen. But if it does, don’t be a victim of poor planning.
Be aware of your surroundings , be with a group, have a weapon you feel safe to use. And scream alot.
I dropped a wallet on the street of a small town I’d just moved to, years ago.
When I realized it was missing I went frantically up and down the street asking at stores, hoping somebody had at least dropped it off with my drivers’ licence etc. still in it. At about the fourth or fifth store, the person at the counter said ‘Oh yes, here it is.’ And there it was indeed; with the money still in it.
I remarked on how relieved I was that even the money was still there. And the person at the counter looked at me in genuine shock. “I know the person who turned it in! She would never have taken your money!”
I decided that I’d moved to the right place.
I don’t know whether it’s still like that; I moved some years ago. But I’ve had people leave their bags or wallets at the farmers’ market stand. They got them back – cash and cards intact. If they didn’t come back before the market closed, I’d leave them at a store on the street, with no worry at all that the clerks would run off with the cash.
I mean, sometimes? Timothy Treadwell, the Grizzly Man, is a life lesson in screw around and find out. He got mauled to death and eaten and I can’t help but think he was mostly to blame.
Agreed. Vics are not morally to blame, but prudent people put thought into avoiding victimization.
Too many people think that the imprudent automatically deserve what they get.
But there are also some who ascribe discussions regarding prevention as victim-blaming, when it is not. There are others who offer unsolicited advice without self-awareness or care about how such advice will be received. Those advancing a culture of prudence should be mindful of time, place, and the limits of their knowledge.
Doing dumb shit sometimes leads to awful consequences. Not doing dumb shit sometimes leads to awful consequences. Just existing sometimes leads to awful consequences. People are gonna people which means whether it’s appropriate or not, our minds are gonna make judgments about a whole lotta things that frequently end up being expressed to others. Being more mindful and judicious about what one expresses to others is doable but the mind is gonna think what it thinks.
The US State Department strongly advises against US citizens traveling to certain countries. I believe Somalia is one such. The US State Department advises you prepare yourself for being kidnapped or killed.
If you go anyway and are kidnapped/killed when visiting Somalia are you to blame?
Sometimes you have to make decisions based on knowledge and thought. If you don’t then maybe you have done a dumb thing and put yourself in danger. That doesn’t make you less of a victim. Just a less than brilliant one.
Right- I was castigated on Reddit for suggesting that some dumb-ass Nashville frat boy who got drugged and got $13k stolen from their checking account may have been somewhat insulated from the ways of the world, if he’s the sort that would have $13k in their checking account as a college student.
I wasn’t victim blaming, just pointing out that the kid may not have been operating in the same world as the rest of us, and may not have taken the obvious precautions against flashing money, being overly spendy, etc…
I mean, you can’t peel a c-note off a wad out of your wallet/pocket to pay for your bar tab, and NOT have people notice. Probably not a wise thing to do in a Nashville bar.
Bears lack moral agency. Treadwell was morally and practically fully to blame.
IMO until you, the questioner, address the moral vs practical distinction you have asked a loaded unanswerable dual question. And when did you stop beating your wife?
