The Imperfect Victim

The idea that only the perfect victim deserves help or justice comes up a lot around the treatment of women in cases of sexual violence and domestic abuse. The perfect victim is modestly dressed, sexually chaste, perhaps even a virgin. The perfect victim does not drink, or flirt… and on it goes. In terms of how the media and wider public responds to the victim, ideally they should also be young, white and pretty if they want to be taken seriously. The effect of this is to deny help or justice to the vast majority of victims.

It turns out that people will try much the same things when it comes to countries. Ukraine isn’t perfect and it is full of people who are not perfect. I’m seeing that used as a justification for Putin’s aggression, and to undermine people wanting to offer support and expressing concern.

Perfectly innocent victims are hard to find – whether we’re talking about individual humans or groups of people. Self defence is always a consideration, and it is always reasonable to defend yourself in whatever way is necessary. However, if what you’re defending yourself from is the flawed humanity of the other person, that’s not ok. 

There are right-wing elements in the Ukrainian army, apparently. By that measure, I’m not sure if we could find a country innocent enough not to deserve military invasion.

If we insist that only perfectly innocent victims deserve help or compassion, we undermine everyone’s humanity. We justify violence. We excuse the inexcusable. Domestic abusers and rapists alike always blame their victims, whether it’s the claim that their clothing was too provocative, or that they were ‘asking for it’ by making the aggressor angry, this is all too normal. If we accept the aggressor’s justifications, we enable them, and that’s just as true with countries as it is with individuals.

If it turns out that the victim is problematic, we can better sort that out when someone isn’t trying to kill them.