NCJ Number
238719
Date Published
2010
Length
253 pages
Annotation
This book examines how and why society stigmatizes survivors of rape, battering, incest, and clergy abuse, and how these victims can reclaim their identities.
Abstract
This book explores the shifting societal perceptions over time of victims as blameworthy, blameless, pathetic, or heroic figures. The portraits provided link those images to their real-world consequences, demonstrating that they dominate the ways in which people think about intimate violence and individual responsibility. The analysis details the fundamental issues at the center of debates about crime and deviance, victimization, and social problems. Chapter 2 is an introduction to the survivor movements from which stories illustrate the use of vocabularies of victimization that rely on the cultural code of agency. It discusses the historical backdrop and cultural milieu of the survivor movements and the founders of each movement. Chapter 3 shows how the anti-rape movement in particular drew on the image of the "blameworthy victim" to bring public attention to the problem of rape. Chapter 4 provides exemplars of collective victim identity work drawing on rhetoric that early activists in the battered women's movement used, especially in social scientific literature. Chapter 5 provides stories and imagery generated by a countermovement that has made use of the fact that victims may be negatively evaluated because they are lacking agency. Chapter 6 examines victims who are cast as agents but who are not blamed. Chapter 7 concludes with an examination of the vocabulary of victimization, victimism, and surviving. Bibliography and index