Work in progress.

Passive voice and victim blaming

Thursday night I went to the MASV presentation by Jackson Katz at UPG...and although it was one of those forced Residence Life things, it was actually rather interesting. In fact, it was sad that the majority of people from Seton Hill were RAs, because we are probably some of the more enlightened people on campus regarding sexual violence as it's part of our summer training. In other words, maybe more men should've been at the Men Against Sexual Violence program. Oh well. Back to the interesting points.

One of the first examples Katz gave of the problem of sexual violence was that over 99% of sexual violence is perpetrated by men. That means that women are usually victims (although some men are raped, and boys are frequent targets of molestation). Most notably, the perpetrator is usually a man. Yet it is the victim's problem -- it's a "women's issue."

How did it get to be a "women's issue" and not a "men's issue?" Passive voice. Katz used this example, based on queer theorist Julia Penelope's study of sentence construction:

John beat Mary.
Mary was beaten by John.
Mary was beaten.
Mary is battered.
Mary is a battered woman.

John, the perpetrator of the violence, drops out of the picture. Instead of saying what John did, the sentence becomes what Mary is - a "battered woman," which is caused by John anyway, but somehow he doesn't get credit for the mess he made. Blame is shifted. The spotlight is pointed at the victim and the perpetrator falls off the end of the sentence. Another example? "Mary got pregnant." Well, then, it's all her issue....apparently we are to think it was an immaculate conception?

Anyway, his main point was that men have to start taking responsibility - it's not enough for a man to just "not be a rapist" anymore. Instead, they have to speak up and challenge the social construct of masculinity and remove sexual violence from the category of "women's issue," as half the people involved in a sex crime are men anyway. It was never not a man's issue.

Posted by Julie Young at February 1, 2004 01:12 PM