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How can we tackle victim-blaming?

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When it comes to sex-related cases, victim-blaming is endemicNo one bothers to name and shame the men in the diverse cases that hit the headlines.

Following the blatant public victim-blaming in the last few weeks, we need a serious discussion on how to tackle what is now an endemic problem.

Take the example of the so-called ‘Magaluf girl’ who was filmed performing oral sex on 24 men in a ‘mamading’ game in a bar in the popular party destination of Magaluf.

‘Mamading’ is the charming practice of encouraging/coercing young women in bars to perform sex acts in return for free alcohol.

In this case, a young woman, ostensibly from Northern Ireland, was reportedly promised a ‘holiday’ for performing the sex acts, goaded on by the pub crawl organisers, Carnage Magaluf.

It turned out the ‘holiday’ was a three-euro cocktail. The film of the young woman made by staff from Carnage Magaluf went viral and was picked up by the tabloids.

Since then the media has exploded with celebrities and newspapers all chipping in their opinions on the young women’s actions – predominantly slut-shaming by tabloid headlines and celebrities like singer Nicole Scherzinger.

The footage has widely been described as the young woman ‘degrading herself’ and taking events to a ‘new low’, placing the onus on her actions rather than the coercion and contribution of the men in the video.

Scherzinger publicly told the young woman that she is the reason “why guys be talking about ‘bitches and hos’ and all these things”, effectively blaming her for an entire culture of sexism and rape.

The publicity from the video is even apparently being used to promote Carnage Magaluf’s pub crawls, as the organisers claim the young woman in question ‘enjoyed it’ so much she booked herself on another of Carnage’s events the day after the incident.

This sort of language is horribly evocative of the idea that women ‘ask for it’, ‘want it’ and ‘love it’ when they are sexually assaulted.

In this case it is almost impossible to know the true extent of the young woman’s consent, which was likely blurred by the alcohol, the jeering and coercion, the public pressure and ‘game’ mentality, but one thing is for certain – according to social and digital media, the young woman is much more to blame than the bar organisers or the 24 men she fellated.

Only a few public figures, including former Apprentice contender Luisa Zissman, have pointed out that there were many other people involved in the incident who shared responsibility.

‘No one has bothered to name and shame them [the men in the video], [and] even if they were, I’m sure they wouldn’t be ridiculed in the same way and may even be celebrated,’ Zissman wrote in her column in the Daily Star.

In the same week, television presenter Vanessa Feltz came forward to publically declare that she had been sexually assaulted by Rolf Harris in 1996.

Whilst she was not alone in revealing the level of Harris’s abuse of young women in the media world, Feltz has been particularly targeted in social media as she has become the subject of a deluge of Twitter responses effectively blaming her for the incident.

Ranging from the idea that she was enjoying playing the ‘victim card’ to the idea that she should have reported the abuse at the time and not retrospectively, the responses have placed the blame squarely on Feltz’s shoulders.

Many have even suggested that her claims cannot be true as she is ‘too ugly’ to be the victim of a sexual assault, evoking that old well-worn myth that a woman can control whether or not she gets attacked by altering how she looks.

But as Laura Bates wrote in the Guardian: ‘The reaction Feltz received is precisely the reason why coming forward is not “perfectly simple” at all – it’s a terrifying decision fraught with risk and the prospect of being re-victimised, blamed and labelled for ever.’

In both these cases the level of blame placed on the women is evident in the public ridicule expressed via digital media, exposing our society’s enduring belief that in sex-related cases, the women are almost always at fault in some way.

A contributor to everydayvictimblaming.com pointed out the double standards applied to men and women in these cases: ‘A man receives a sexual act in a bar, he’s somehow passive, certainly blameless. A woman performs sexual acts in a bar she’s a “slag”, a “whore”, her life is ruined which is what she “deserves”.’

Bates highlights just how damaging these double standards and public trials are to victims of abuse, coercion and control: ‘As victims fight to be believed and face a barrage of abuse for coming forward, powerful men continue to perpetuate the victim-blaming myths and misconceptions that make reporting so hard in the first place.’

However, it is not only powerful men who perpetuate these myths, but a wide and stubborn culture of victim-blaming and public humiliation which in turn ensures that 85 per cent of women and girls who experience sexual violence feel unable to report it to the police.

It’s not just the Twitter campaigns and the tabloid headlines we need to confront, but the broader and endemic culture of victim-blaming digital media allows us to see the full extent of – a culture which pervades the judiciary and wider society.

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