It is Natural to Blame the Victim.

When the discussion revolves around society's attitude towards 'rape victims' society blames the victim. It sounds very barbaric and horrific. How can society blame the victim and not the criminal! It was victim's fault - why did they wear the clothes they wore, why were they at a particular location, why were they not more cautious, why were they not aware that it is a bad world. No such scrutiny over criminal, he was just doing what he should be doing!

 

Think why will a social animal like Human with very developed form of society do that? If we put this attitude of society to test we will find - it is not a one off thing at all. In fact this is how humans naturally behave every time.

Let's take a few examples -

1. Parents blame the kid for not doing homework, or excelling at whatever they are supposed to excel at. They don't delve into the reasons. No kid really wants to get in trouble, or enjoys the negative attention they get being a bad student. They are victim of the system and surroundings they are in.
2. Alcoholic is blamed for his alcoholism - though it is known fact that any addiction is hard to break and needs a lot of help. Similarly Obesity, even diseases are blamed on the person who is the victim.
3. In fact even death is blamed on the Victim. Blame is assigned where there is none needed. The responsibility falls on the victim, either the deceased himself or the ones affected by it the most. Why was he hiking? Why was he driving carelessly? He never took care of his health. He was negligent. The family were ignorant etc.
4. Most victims of terrorism are Muslims but they are blamed anyway for it. Similarly - races and castes and sects are blamed for unfortunate twists they find themselves in. Poverty is blamed on poor people, un-employed are blamed to have not taken care of their skills.
5. Even in fun things - Like Sports and Movies, society blames the victim, sportsmen are blamed for their character traits or not able to win. Twitter is the best example of it, hiding behind a mob people throw spit balls at victims.
6. Let's get personal - your looks are blamed on you, your characteristics are blamed on you. Your Origin and sexual orientation is blamed on you.

It is pretty clear that if you lose, it is you to be blamed, at least according to society. This sounds really horrible! but why is it so? The only reason I can come up is - this is a self defense mechanism that kicks in. If it is not the victim then at some level others are responsible and then society has to face the insecurity of either accepting the blame or accepting the fact that they can go through the same fate.

Unless we are vigilante (which as a society we are) we will fall for 'Blame the Victim' society. But as history shows humans take the unnatural way and rectify their knee jerk reaction and keep progressing once they identify the problem, but it takes enough victims for society to notice!

Obviously this is a 'user friendly' blog, so I don't mean to ask you to change the society, my original intent is to check within yourself, it happens everyday. the moment you blame something / somebody, put this theory to test, 9 out of 10 times you will be blaming the victim. It is easy to do so!