SILENTIO
There are many phenomena in society that we condemn—both as individuals and through legislation. Yet there remains a vast gap between what people consider wrong in theory and what actually happens in practice when such wrongdoing takes place.
When it comes to sexual harassment and violence, people far too often start looking for faults and causes in the victim rather than in the perpetrator. This victim-blaming attitude creates a fertile ground for violence to persist and makes the victim’s suffering even more unbearable.
I’ve often wondered where all this cruelty and malice in people come from—the urge to blame and ridicule someone who has already gone through something horrific.
I don’t know how it is for boys, but almost every woman and girl has probably, as a child, been warned at least once: “Don’t take candy from strangers” or “Don’t go with a stranger.”
Yet statistics show that the majority of sexual crimes are committed not by strangers, but by acquaintances, friends, or relatives. Still, children are only ever warned about the “candy man” strangers.
I’m not saying one should go off with strangers—but isn’t this one-sided warning part of the reason why sexual violence remains so surrounded by taboo, misunderstanding, and victim-blaming?
Perhaps it’s like so many other things in society—we avoid it, we look the other way, hoping it won’t bite us. Because once we admit that a respectable family man might have done vile things to his own children, or that a polite young man raped his classmate, we’re forced to acknowledge that such things could happen to us too. And the illusion that “this doesn’t happen to decent women” quickly falls apart.