16 Days” Call to Action – Day 9 – Be alert to victim blaming wherever you hear it and call it out whenever you hear it, check out #fixedit campaign via Facebook.

There are a few points we need to make clear around this issue:

Firstly, it is NEVER the victim’s fault, the perpetrator CHOOSES to use violence and

Secondly, the media need to name Violence against Women for what it is: Assault/Murder.

There was an interesting article published in the Altlantic I read which included this; “I think the biggest factor that promotes victim-blaming is something called the just world hypothesis,” says Sherry Hamby, a professor of psychology at the University of the South and founding editor of the APA’s Psychology of Violencejournal. “It’s this idea that people deserve what happens to them. There’s just a really strong need to believe that we all deserve our outcomes and consequences.” 

Regardless of the factors we need to realise how this is impacting societal behaviour and ongoing detriment of movements for healing and toward the elimination of Violence against women.

Considering then, the role of media involvement on a global scale, we recognise that often, reports are cloaked around terminology which alleviates responsibility or downplays the gravity of the behaviour being report. For example, He is not a “nice bloke who lost control”; he is a man “who chose to be violent and harm/murder another person or people”

It becomes essential then, that we become familiar with what victim blaming is when we are faced with it, and that as individuals, communities and nations, we ensure we call it out as damaging and unacceptable behaviour.

Today, get familiar with Victim Blaming, really consider the words you are reading, voicing and hearing, and in your own small way, call it out.

Want to learn more? Have a look at this article from the ABC