Helpless Victims?

Helpless Victims? Twenty years ago the feminist slogan was "Girls can do anything!" Today's feminists seem to be arguing precisely the opposite. That, far from being men's equals, like these Israeli women conscripts, they are really nothing more than helpless victims, utterly incapable of looking after themselves. The women in the photograph (and their M16s) would probably disagree.

"VICTIM" is a slippery word. Our hearts go out to the "victims" of natural disasters and random attacks – people who have suffered harm through no fault of their own. We are more sparing with our sympathy, however, if the "victims" are perceived to have, even in the slightest degree, participated in, or contributed to, their own misfortune.

The women involved in the political downfall of Dr Richard Worth provide a topical example. Across the airways and throughout the blogosphere debate has raged over the degree of culpability (if any) attributable to the former Cabinet Minister’s "victims".

The Left – especially the Feminist Left – has come down firmly on the side of the women, painting them has the helpless prey of a powerful and predatory male. The Right, while expressing scant sympathy for Dr Worth, has been equally reluctant to acknowledge the women’s "victimhood" unequivocally.

To the rising fury of the Left, right-wing commentators have homed in on the details of the women’s allegations – asking pertinent questions and raising reasonable doubts.

I must confess to harbouring one-or-two questions and doubts of my own in relation to this "sex scandal", but what worries me most is the Left’s apparent inability to assess critically the variety of allegations currently being levelled against Dr Worth.

In the ever-diminishing sorority of radical feminist ideologues, all that is required to convict a man of sexual misconduct is a woman’s accusation. To demand proof from the accuser, or an inquiry into the context of the accused’s alleged "crime", is tantamount to colluding in the woman’s ongoing victimisation by our repressive patriarchal society – to which, ultimately, all women fall victim.

But, to create an alternative society, one in which a man can be convicted of a serious offence purely on the accusation of a woman, is to create a society even more oppressive than the patriarchy it is intended to replace. To abandon the presumption of innocence; do away with a person’s right to confront their accuser; fatally compromise the fundamental rules of evidence; and renounce trial by jury and "reasonable doubt", is to undermine our justice system in its entirety.

Yet this is the road that many feminists (motivated, no doubt, by the very best of intentions) would have us go down.

Feminist sociologist, and Whanganui Family Violence Case Management Coodinator, Dr Angela Jury, for example, argues for "an ideological shift away from burdening abuse victims with the responsibility of choosing to end the abuse".

According to Dr Jury’s research: "the use of language around choice and freedom in advice to abused women – ‘you don’t have to live like this’, ‘you can leave’, ‘there is help available’. All of these – while probably selected as terms offering empowerment to victims – can also operate to engender a sense of weakness on the part of the victims … thus creating a sense of shame and self-blame."

Okaaaay.

But, if we’re not allowed to encourage the woman to end the abuse herself, by leaving the abuser and/or alerting the authorities, how are we supposed to keep her safe from harm? By encouraging others to alert the authorities on her behalf? But wouldn’t that mean dobbing in our neighbours, our workmates, even our friends – if we believed them guilty of abusing their wives, partners or children? And, what if the abuse victims were too overwhelmed by "shame and self-blame" to testify against their abusers – what then? Should they be convicted without hard evidence? Purely on the basis of our accusation?

No scope there for the most egregious miscarriages of justice!

But this is exactly the tangled ethical thicket into which an uncritical focus on victimhood leads us.

If we are to build a just and equitable society, it can only be constructed upon the assumption of a free and equal citizenry. And I use the word "assumption" quite deliberately here, because "freedom" and "equality" – like "justice" and "truth" – are abstract nouns which may, or may not, refer to real and concrete entities like you and me.

And yet, without assuming the abstract concepts of democratic citizenship refer to something real, we are lost. Because, if we are not free and equal citizens, then what are we? Nothing but problematic bundles of neuroses and psychoses? Bent and battered human vessels, chockfull of defective genetic material? Suitable cases for "expert" treatment?

Nothing but helpless victims.

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Evening Star of Friday, 12 June 2009.