Victim shaming is creating more victims

Earlier this week, actress Bella Thorne made headlines fighting against hackers. After receiving messages from said hackers who were threatening to post personal provocative pictures online, Bella took matters into her own hands and posted them herself.

Along with the photos, Bella posted a note explaining her reasons behind posting the photos, saying: “For the last 24 hours, I have been threatened with my own nudes, ” she wrote. “I feel gross, I feel watched, I feel someone has taken something from me that I only wanted one special person to see. He has sent me multiple nude photos of other celebs, he won’t stop with me or them, he’ll just keep going.”

Now, the situation has become even more controversial as fellow female, Whoopi Goldberg decided to share her thoughts on the matter. The View host shamed Bella for taking the photos in the first place, saying, “if you’re famous, I don’t care how old you are — you don’t take nude photos of yourself. When they are hacking you, they’re hacking all of your stuff, whether it’s one picture or a million pictures. Once you take that picture, it goes into the cloud and it’s available to any hacker who wants it.”

Whoopi also added, “And if you don’t know that in 2019 that this is an issue, I’m sorry, your age does not — you don’t get to do that.”

Bella responded to the comments via her Instagram Story, saying they made her “feel disgusting.”

This is probably one of the most terrifying trends we have in our society – victim shaming. Victim shaming (or blaming) is the act of condemning someone who has experienced an injustice that is either physical or emotional, for their contribution for the occurrence. Basically, “you brought it on yourself.”

Frankly, we need to cut this out. Big time.

Victim blaming absolves the person who has committed the crime in the first place, by insinuating that they had no choice but to “react” in such a way. It’s a horrific mentality that the assailant cannot be held accountable for their actions. If the person who committed the crime is not to blame, how will we justify punishment? Apart from anything, it is an insult to the human race (statistically, predominantly men) to say that they are so weak, that they are uncontrollable to the point of losing all sense of morality.

Violations on any level are an action, not a reaction.

It stems from a horrifying idea that victims’ are “asking” to be victimised – whether it is through actions, clothing or even how we behave in private settings, this is rape culture. They are not.

A month ago, a video went viral in which a woman in India began harassing young girls in a shopping mall for wearing dresses, and calling upon the men in the store to “rape” them. I mean, I didn’t even know where to start with that because it’s just inconceivable on many levels. It’s a hugely disrespectful thing to insinuate that men’s sole purpose is to assault women, that they are biologically programmed that way, they cannot help but be compelled to do so. As women, it is not our jobs to create a society where we have to curb the urges of men by dressing a certain way or acting a certain way.

Because this is not how men work, they can control themselves, but when we create these narratives, we’re just telling them they can’t. We’re saying that men who do assault women, could not help themselves and when women blame other women for how they dress, we’re saying “well, we understand that.” We don’t.

Whilst scrolling through the comments on the video, I stumbled across one which said “women need to wear modest clothes to protect themselves from rape.” Now, if the word “modest” been replaced by “electrical,” this is something I’d probably agree with. But the fact is, your clothes will never protect you from anything, they are just that: modest. And a woman has the right to dress as modestly or immodestly as she feels comfortable, but it will never act as a suit of armour. The only thing that can protect a woman is changing the mentality that clothing has any impact on assault. It does not.

The more we, as a society, turn our focus to the victims and try to decipher what they did to “make themselves” victims, the more we make excuses for their attackers. If we make excuses for attackers, they make them for themselves. We’re encouraging it.