Why Rape Victims are Held Responsible for their Misfortune by Looking in to Various Authors Ideas About the Issue of Abortion

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Rape victim blaming
There is a new form of secondary victimization on rape victims where victims are blamed for their own misfortune. Sexually assaulted women are stigmatized and presumed to be liable to their own fate. Rape victims are not believed and they are held accountable by the society and their own families. This essay will investigate why rape victims are held responsible for their misfortune by looking in to various authors’ ideas about the issue of abortion (Ferrão and Goncalves47).
Ferrão and Goncalves discuss two theories, the theory of Just World and the theory of Defensive Attribution. The theory of Just World, talks about people getting what they deserve whereby, those who are good are rewarded and those who are not, are punished. The authors explain that in cases of rape, people who believe in the Just World theory would blame rape victims because they are assumed to have gotten what they deserved for not behaving accordingly. The defensive attribution theory states that, since women are perceived more as victims, they would use this as a defence mechanism in cases of rape therefore, people would assign blame to the female victim (Ferrão and Goncalves 48). There is further discussion about acquaintance rape, which is rape committed by someone known to the victim. In such a situation, the victim is blamed for provoking a rape incidence. Ferrão and Goncalves conclude their discussion by stating that men easily blame rape victims and that high acceptance of rape myths and low rape empathy adds up to the rape victim blaming (60).
The authors reasons for rape blaming are what the society perceives as right, but there is more to rape blaming than a theory, the rape victims need to be given the benefit of doubt before passing any judgements to them.
According to Ståhl, et al, social psychologists have blamed female victims in rape situations (240). Moreover, men would blame female victims more than women would. The authors’ study figures out why there is hostility by men towards female victims. The study also looks at the fact that system justification theory is another cause of blame on rape victims. Attributing blame to victims is understood as a threat to the current situation in a manner that, acquitted victims of rape, threaten normal views presented for men and women in the present-day society. These system justifications come up from the rape myths that are wildly upheld and have increased men’s aggression towards women. Therefore, justifying male sexual aggression and more blame passed to victims (Ståhl, et al 241). The authors’ insights are similar to those of Ferrão and Goncalves therefore adding to the reliability of the information on rape-blame that have be...