You can’t blame a tiger
if you walk into its hunting grounds and it eats you. It has no moral culpability. It is acting as its nature dictates.
But humans aren’t animals. I think we as a species like to put those who perpetrate violent or criminal acts into the category of blameless wild animal. We look for somebody to blame and we find the actions taken by the victim, or by the victim’s neighbor. We blame them instead.
But ultimately, the only people to blame for subway trains blowing up are those who placed the explosive device. Not the provider of maps, not the provider of statistics, not even the security guard.
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Sometimes I have mixed feelings about this, I admit. Sometimes I’m willing to reduce the share of blame a literal perpetrator has. I believe that situations can get out of control, that social pressure is hard to resist, that not everybody is a leader, that pain can be blinding, that honor is a tough old bitch. I have compassion. It is rarely the same as forgiveness. And the share of blame lost travels up the chain to the decider, whom I also condemn.
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But in any case, the fault, the blame, the causation is all in those who decided to make the act happen. It is heroic that we attempt to thwart those deciders after they have decided. But I hope someday we as a people can shift our condemnation from those who choose to do right thing to those who have done the wrong thing.
Michelle is discussing.
Michelle 4:10 pm on July 13, 2006 Permalink
I don’t think it’s that the perp has no moral culpability but that victims are supposed to ‘know better’.
This is especially seen in rape/kidnapping cases, as near as I can tell. ‘Oh, no, she shouldn’t have left with those guys!’ ‘She shouldn’t have let him in the house, especially if she was by herself!’ ‘Don’t talk to strangers!’ ‘Don’t give your credit card number out!’ (Many of these ignore the fact that such crimes are usually done by people the victim knows)
One blog I read was talking about it as an observers way of trying to figure out how to stop the crime. Some people are going to commit crimes so we must figure out what to do to keep them from hurting us/the people we love. That they didn’t really intend to engage in victim blaming but that is essentially what they’re doing.
And, of course, not even realizing that these ‘rules’ would just be impossible to follow.
What I’ve found interesting, in the case of sexual crimes, is that what is being said is that men can’t control themselves. That they’re sociopaths who will do anything for sex if they think they can get away with it. And this is being said by men, who otherwise don’t seem to be rapists in training. And they accuse feminists of being man-haters.