UNITED STATES
Jewish Philanthropy
By Guila Benchimol
While Donald Trump has claimed that focusing on his comments about sexual violence are “nothing more than a distraction from the important issues we are facing today,” I beg to differ. This moment demands practical suggestions as to what we can do differently so that we can do better. While other issues affecting the Jewish community are equally as pressing, this moment is one where many victims and survivors of sexual violence are reeling from the results of the election which has communicated to them that their pain and experiences do not matter.
One place to start is by educating ourselves about how to read and understand the many stories about sexual violence that are now being shared. I have written in the past about how the techniques of neutralization, which are the strategies that are used by perpetrators and others, neutralize victims and dilute their claims of injury and suffering. These strategies allow us to ignore or disbelieve victims and justify such a response.
Gresham Sykes and David Matza introduced their theory of neutralization in the ‘50s to explain that youths who committed crime used specific techniques to push aside the feelings of shame that would generally accompany their criminal acts. The five techniques are the denial of responsibility, denial of injury, denial of the victim, condemnation of the condemner, and an appeal to higher loyalties. Three of these techniques, the ones in which responsibility, the injury, and the victim are denied, are particularly salient when it comes to victims of sexual violence in general, and even more so when the offender and victim are acquainted, or when the victim is female. They are known as rape myths and have a similar effect as the techniques of neutralization.
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