“Can such a relation exist in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan?”
The question was reportedly asked during the cross-examination of Shaukat Ali Mukadam regarding the alleged relationship of his daughter, who had been brutally murdered in June last year, with the defendant who stood on trial for the murder.
Victim blaming or insinuations that victims of gender-based violence are wholly or partially responsible for the abuse they suffer is neither novel nor limited to Pakistan. The Just-World Hypothesis is a theory coined by social psychologists to explain the phenomenon of rationalising human suffering by assuming that in a fair world, our actions will have morally fitting consequences. This cognitive bias assumes that people “get what they deserve” and therefore provides the illogical conclusion that those who suffer must have done something to deserve that suffering. Journalist Imran Riaz Khan’s argument is a classic example where he says that by being in an allegedly intimate relationship, Noor Mukadam committed a religious sin, therefore, was raped and murdered.
Another mental fallacy that explains victim-blaming is Hindsight Bias which is the tendency to retrospectively analyse an act of violence to suggest that the victim should have foreseen that it would happen – a woman driving late at night on the motorway should have known that it would have led to her being raped and robbed. The Fundamental Attribution Error similarly refers to an overt emphasis on the personal characteristics of the victim whilst ignoring external circumstances that play a role in the commission of a crime – women who wear “provocative” clothes get raped because of their clothing.
An inevitable byproduct of victim-blaming is that it ingrains a false sense of control and safety by following the social scripture on acceptable behavior for women, such as observing purdah, not going out late at night, depending on the protection of male guardians, women can avoid male violence. Yet such societal guidelines should be viewed with scepticism since they are predicated on patriarchal conceptions of gender roles meant to subjugate women, and misconceptions about the reasons for sexual violence.
By not categorising a woman’s consent as such when its freely, enthusiastically, and voluntarily given, cases that involve emotional coercion leading to consent, consent derived as a result of a power dynamic between the perpetrator and victim, withdrawal of consent, consent to only specific acts but not to others, lack of consent to sex within marriages are rarely seen as rape.
Even Benevolent Sexism that attributes superficially positive qualities to women, such as being more pious, moral, and less sexual than men, inherently reinforces ideas of what an ideal rape victim is; chaste, young, with no prior sexual history or interest in sex, who physically resisted rape in a manner understandable through a male perspective on how to respond to violence, and who reported the crime immediately. Any deviation from the prototype of the ideal victim is equated with being held responsible for the violence instead of the perpetrator, acquiescence to sex, or making a false accusation. The framing of consent is particularly problematic; categorising lack of resistance, mere acquiescence, or silence as consent by a woman essentially objectifies them as passive creatures with lesser sexual desires and agency. By not categorising a woman’s consent as such when its freely, enthusiastically, and voluntarily given, cases that involve emotional coercion leading to consent, consent derived as a result of a power dynamic between the perpetrator and victim, withdrawal of consent, consent to only specific acts but not to others, lack of consent to sex within marriages are rarely seen as rape. By framing women as passive, rape discourses also juxtapose men as having higher and uncontrollable sexual drives, effectively removing the onus from the perpetrator who cannot control his lust for the victim. Similarly, narratives that portray rapists as “monsters” also conveniently strip male agency in the exercise of violence by attributing it to nature rather than something that can be controlled. Furthermore, it plays into the stereotype that perpetrators are strangers; thus, the collective cognitive dissonance at the image of the monster not matching the reality of an atypical perpetrator, an acquaintance or a loved one further makes society doubt the victim.
Rape myths regarding the causes of sexual violence also perpetuate victim-blaming. Foremost is the idea that the reason behind rape is uncontrollable lust. This narrative does a disservice to both men and women. By assuming that women fan such lust or are careless in preventing rape, state policies and societal narratives increasingly focus on paternalistic rape prevention policies such as limiting the mobility and opportunities for women. Similarly categorising male violence as a biological impulse rather than framing it as a social process, constantly makes demands from men to prove their masculinity through violence and also prevents male rape victims from coming forward since male rape is equated with loss of manhood.
Feminist theories over the last couple of decades have increasingly shifted from viewing rape as an individualised experience to understanding how, on a cultural and systemic level, it serves as a tool to maintain gender roles and support patriarchal structures. Sanday’s cross-cultural study distinguishes factors between rape-prone and rape-free societies to state that the former embodies hostility towards women, belief in traditional sex roles, less female authority, and male sexual entitlement. This is in direct contradiction to claims that an increase in obscenity or active socialisation of both genders is the reason for the rise in rape cases. Rape, for the purposes of rape prevention, thus should not be seen as an end in itself but rather on the tail end of a “continuum of threated violence” where acts preceding it such as sexist jokes, sexual coercion, stalking, harassment, verbal and physical abuse must be analysed and prevented.
If discourses on rape can promote and sustain a rape culture and victim-blaming, then they can also change it. In 2016, a study published in the Personal and Social Psychology Bulletin concluded that public coverage of rape cases focuses on the victim’s story and experience, even in a compassionate manner, it increases the likelihood of victim blaming. Participants in the study, when asked how the rape could have been avoided, also were less likely to blame or refer to victim’s behavior when the rapist was made the subject of coverage. The use of passive language (such as “rape happened” rather than “he raped”), euphemistic language (such as “underage woman” instead of a “female minor”) or episodic framing focused on individual stories rather than thematic framing of sexual violence as an endemic problem also can lead to greater victim blaming.
By reframing societal discourses on gender roles, consent, rape myths and responsible coverage of gender-based violence, the sociological desire to blame victims can be overcome. The benefits are manifold; this can allow more survivors to report crimes, shift the burden on rapists to not rape rather than on victims to not be raped, and prevent similarly situated victims from facing unequal treatment in courtrooms based on their individual traits. Most importantly, by throwing off the distracting shackles of victim-blaming, the public can hold accountable the institutional and state failure in curbing violence against women.
