On Believing the Victim

While talking with my friends the other day, we started discussing media personalities, accusations of improper behavior, and believing the victim. Or, more exactly, always believing the victim.

First off, this post isn’t about any particular case or example. And I’m not saying we shouldn’t believe the victim. But I’ve seen and heard a lot of aggression when people have the audacity to doubt an accusation—and that aggression is aimed at the doubter. “How dare you not believe this person who has been hurt?!” And while a lot of shady stuff has gone down in the world, and a lot of people have abused their power and positions, the mindset of absolutely believing another person worries me. Because, as seen in Rashomon and noted many times over, people experience things differently. I’m not saying this forgives or condones someone’s actions in all/most cases, but I think keeping this in mind should inform how we view the information we’re given.

Because what the mentality of always believe the victim forgets is that our world is not black-and-white. Life is messy and confusing and we’re human. People have different experiences, which leads them to react (physically and emotionally) to things differently. People will interpret events differently based on their prior experiences.

For instance, a black man who has been hassled by the police wrongly multiple times, will undoubtedly have less trust in police than a white man who has only ever been pulled over for speeding (and was possibly able to talk his way out of it). They are likely to experience the exact same interaction differently (ie, even if the cop says the same thing to each man, the baggage the man carries will affect how he hears/interprets those words). And both experiences are real and accurate for that person. Of course, this gets messier the more people who are involved. Because everyone brings something different to the table.

Interactions can become even more heated when issues of race, sex, and power come into play. But also sometimes just personality. Such as, I tend to be kind of blunt and straightforward. I try to temper this as much as possible, especially in the workplace, but I’m not always aware of being blunt. When I started my job, I was told the one person I would be working under could be “over sensitive”, so I made sure I spoke to this person and explained that I could sometimes be blunt, and if I ever seemed as if I was being rude, to please let me know as I did not mean to. This coworker and I never had any problems.

Another coworker who outranked me, who was, I had thought, something of a friend—we shared stories about our personal lives and joked together every morning—reported me to my boss for being “disrespectful.” I was shocked when I got called into my boss’s office and he told me what I’d been accused of. Now, he knew me, my way of speaking, and we rehashed the conversation that this person had been offended by. He’d heard her story, he listed to mine, and he could see where she was coming from. I didn’t get reprimanded, but I was told to be more mindful of how I spoke to her in the future.

I think the hardest part of that incident was that she had been considered a friend, and instead of approaching me and saying “that didn’t feel appropriate, I felt disrespected,” she went to my boss (and thus it went in my work record). I stopped being friends with her at that point, because I wasn’t sure what was appropriate or inappropriate interactions. I had to draw a sharp line in the sand. And maybe from her perspective we weren’t friends and she was just humoring me or sharing like people do. Maybe it was a matter of how we acted in her office versus in my cubicle. I don’t know, and I didn’t know she had drawn a line until the incident had occurred.

In that case, neither of us was necessarily “in the wrong,” but we were coming from different places. Maybe I had read into our relationship too much and thus had spoken more freely than I would have with someone else. Maybe I was tired because I’d just gotten back from a work conference, so I was a bit more snippy than usual (as I dug myself out from a pile of work that awaited me). Maybe she thought she’d drawn a line in the sand but it wasn’t clear to me. Maybe she could have approached me directly and I would have apologized for being rude (because I certainly hadn’t meant to be). Maybe she could have established clearer boundaries. So who was the victim here? I imagine we both were at different times (at least from our individual perspectives).

In a very different setting, I was giving feedback on a story in my writers’ group (through email) and had mentioned that something shouldn’t be described because the POV wasn’t looking at it, so it was odd to be given visual details. The person wrote back with a detailed reasoning of why she included that information and that it was very important to have that sort of POC representation in her stories. I nodded, thought she had a good point, and moved on.

Much later, I found out she’d told one of her friends in the group that I was ignorant and a little racist and wanted to “white wash” her story. Again, I was shocked. Part of me wanted to pout and complain about how she obviously had a chip on her shoulder and she was being ridiculous. But maybe her previous life experiences had given her reason for that chip. And maybe I could have phrased my feedback differently (again, see above story about me being blunt). Again, who is the victim? Whether intended or not, she experienced racism. Whether what I did would be considered racist by any other person, who knows. But she took it that way, and her feelings are valid.

I think the problem (if that’s the right word), comes along when interpretation of actions become equivalent to definites. Especially when the actions themselves are not described, but rather just the accusations. Or Rashomon-level descriptions of the events are given. (And I realize that this is nearly impossible to avoid to some degree.) Maybe when talking to her friend, she said “BL wanted me to remove mentions of my character’s identity.” And that’s certainly one way to describe what I’d suggested. But it hadn’t been my intention to erase her character’s identity, so much as my intention to question whether someone would describe something they couldn’t see. (IE, when lying in bed in the dark, I don’t think about how I’m lying on blue sheets the color of the morning sky.)

So does her interpretation of my actions as being racist make me a racist? If ten similar people were polled and only one found the comment racist, is the comment racist or not?

If I say “Fuck” in front of my mother, she is offended and disgusted. She finds that language rude. Does that make me rude? Because when I’m around other people, they curse just as much as (if not more than) me. I’m not rude to them. Obviously circumstance and situations change constantly and there are things that are only appropriate at certain times. But sometimes one person might not know about the rules/boundaries of another person or situation. If there is a boundary that is well-known, societal-level, or whatnot, then yes, people should respect that. If one person has made clear to another that something isn’t appropriate to/around them, then yes, people should respect that.

But because so many things in life are not so clear, I don’t think it’s safe to say the victim is always right. Because sometimes there isn’t right and wrong; there’s just two sides to a story. I’m not saying the victim is wrong or lying. It’s life. It’s complicated. We want to make it simple because it’s easier to shout a slogan or stamp a hashtag, but sometimes that bashes down people who aren’t quite guilty of what they’re accused (or bashes them down more than their actual actions warrant).

I just hope people will pause and think the next time they hear “so and so did X and is a Y because of it.” Try to take the time to try to separate your emotional reaction from the facts you’re given. Find out the facts, even hear both sides of the story, before you join the hordes chanting whatever they think is right. Because chances are, if it’s “clear-cut” or “black-and-white,” then it’s probably the exact opposite.

PS. I realize some of this post comes from a idealistic world where people don’t constantly abuse their power and do horrible things (and get away with it). I know we want to give victims a voice, especially when they’ve been silenced (especially if it was done actively), and I want to make sure they have a voice. But I’ve seen too many instances where people just jump on the bandwagon of SO-AND-SO IS A TERRIBLE HUMAN BEING without even questioning the facts, that it makes me especially wary. By all means, make a judgment, but please wait until the prosecution and the defense have both made their case.