To Those Who Ask Why It's Always the Victim Getting Blamed

[NashVegas]

In a word: fear.

Do you remember the infamous NY incident, of decades ago, when Kitty Genovese was stabbed and no one did a thing while she screamed for help?

Fear. Fear that standing up for her would put their own lives at risk, or inconvenienced.

It's so much easier to blame a victim for being stupid, for being kinder or more trusting than they should have been, for dressing the wrong way or not securing their wallet than it is to stand up and get in the face of a mugger, a rapist, a fraud.

Especially if that fraud is someone who brings the good times - star athlete, head of the country club, whatever. Victims - those who aren't afraid to call someone out on their shit - bring all the fun to a screeching halt.

That's all.

[aSpeckofDust]

1. I guess I am one of those fun killers, I tend to call bullshit when I hear/see it.

[hfojvt]

2. the story of all the witnesses who did nothing

seems to be media hype http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese

but danged if this guy doesn't make a very strong argument for the death penalty.

"and the initial death sentence was reduced to an indeterminate sentence/lifetime imprisonment.

In 1968, during a trip to a Buffalo, New York hospital for surgery, Moseley overpowered a guard and beat him up to the point that his eyes were bloody. He then took a bat and swung it at the closest person to him and took five hostages, raping one of them in front of her husband—actions he later blamed his parents for<12>—before he was recaptured after a two-day manhunt.<11> He also participated in the 1971 Attica Prison riots."

[La Lioness Priyanka]

3. it wasn't fear in the kitty genovese case, it was moral diffusion

otherwise known as the bystander effect or diffusion of responsibility

not fear at all

[NashVegas]

16. AKA - Fear

Even fear of being inconvenienced is still fear.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

22. no its not. everyone thought someone else had already done it.

thats not fear, thats diffusion of responsibility

[CrossChris]

4. Katrina -- the nation still blames the residents of NOLA for that.

If anything terrible happens to your region, you're next.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

7. really? majority of the nation blames NOLA?

i find that hard to believe.

[Recursion]

9. I remember a lot of "why didn't you get on the bus?" recrimination (nt)

[La Lioness Priyanka]

10. yes, and criticism of violence and such but i think these people are the minority and not majority

[Recursion]

12. It's like drinking in college

I remember a study that compared amounts of drinking with perceptions of amounts of drinking on campus and it turns out people perceived something like 500% more drinking than actually happened, because you see binge drinking and assume everybody else who's drinking is binging too. So we see a few assholes saying stupid things and assume a lot more people think that than actually do.

[Recursion]

11. Delete

Wrong place

[CrossChris]

13. In my experience. Those talking points were all over the media, and most stuck.

Granted, I may interact with a disproportionate number of conservatives b/c of my job, but it's disheartening how strongly those talking points (i.e. "Why live in a city built under sea level?", "Why didn't Nagin send the busses?", "Why didn't they just walk somewhere?", etc.) took hold.

[ThomCat]

5. Actually, in the Kitty Genovese case

Everyone thought that someone else had called the police.

Sociologists have known for a long time that the more people know about something bad happening, and know that there are many witnesses, the less any one of them feels any incentive to do anything about it. They all freeze and wait for someone else to take the lead.

They were all safe in their own apartments. They could have called the police anonymously. But, when interviewed, they said they didn't because they thought someone else surely had called the police already so they didn't need to.

So the lesson from the Kitty Genovese rape and murder was that in a situation where you think others have probably already acted to get help, Call anyway. Do whatever you can to get help, and provide help. Don't assume that others are doing it. Don't wait for others to do it.

[Recursion]

8. Several people did call the police

The urban myth probably says more about how we look at urban life than about apathy. The issue was the police were first called when he was "just" beating her up (or so it seemed), people could see flashing lights (though that turned out to be for a different call), and everybody assumed the police were responding to the attack. Also worth noting is the fact that Moseley attacked her twice because he was scared off the first time by a neighbor (who had called the police) yelling at him. The fatal attack happened inside the apartment building, later, where nobody could see it, though a neighbor who heard the attack called the police again.

[ThomCat]

14. No. They didn't.

They so famously DID NOT call the police that studies about why they did not call the police were done, and were published, that grad students still have to study today if you go to grad school for sociology or psychology.

The attack also did not happen inside any building. She was attacked in an ally where all the people in an neighboring apartment building with windows that opened onto that ally were able to hear it the brutal attacks very clearly.

The published facts of the case, from newspaper accounts and from later published academic research, were pretty clear. The whole point of the research, in fact, was to answer the suddenly relevant question, why is it that one person alone is more likely to call for help than a group of people who hear or see a crime in progress. The answer is, everyone defers responsibility to someone else, expecting that someone else will do it, but nobody ends up being that someone else, so nothing happens to call for help or offer help.

This effect was found to be more pronounced when people in the group cannot see what others are doing. But even when people can see each other, the effect is still there because people stand and wait, expecting someone else to make the first move.

[Recursion]

15. Yes. They did

The myths about the event that fill sociology textbook after sociology textbook have long since been refuted. Sociologists just don't seem to care.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.psych.lancs.ac.uk/people/uploads/MarkLevine20070604T095238.pdf&pli=1

People called, despite the absence of a 911 system.

Moseley left after the first attack because a neighbor scared him off.

The fatal attack occurred inside the foyer, which nobody could see.

[NashVegas]

17. Weak

First, I didn't even pull out the "38 witnesses" crap. I spoke of people hearing the screams and ignoring them, and they certainly did.

The authors of this article don’t argue that research on bystander apathy is invalid, or that bystander apathy doesn’t exist. They're just picking at the reported details that didn't make it to the court trial.

So ... lady screams she's being stabbed and no one goes down to check on her? Fear.


From your own link:
While, of course, this collection of retrospective accounts does necessarily provide adequate grounds on which to accept or reject claims regarding the lack of intervention, again the available evidence fails to support the parable of the 38 witnesses watching and doing nothing while a woman was murdered.

[Recursion]

18. Except people did go down to check on her

They didn't leave their apartments when she was being hit in the coutryard. They just called the police and scared the attacker off. A neighbor did go down and check on her, at which point she said she was ok and went inside.

When she was stabbed in a relatively secluded foyer, it did take some time for the old woman whose front door she was in front of to call the police, true.

[NashVegas]

19. I Don't Know Where You're Getting That

It's certainly not in the article you're citing, not that I can see.

And, again, neither that article or anything else you've written disproves the point of my original post: fear makes it easier to blame a victim than it is to stand up to an offender.

[Recursion]

23. Um... did you read it?

It quotes people who called the cops, and people who went to help her. Seriously, case closed.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

24. was this work published in a scientific journal or anywhere that lends it credibility?

[Recursion]

25. It was published by the APA

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/amp/62/6/555/

The Kitty Genovese murder and the social psychology of helping: The parable of the 38 witnesses.
Manning, Rachel; Levine, Mark; Collins, Alan
American Psychologist, Vol 62(6), Sep 2007, 555-562. doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.62.6.555

[La Lioness Priyanka]

26. thanks. i am not sure how definitive this account is. but will read the original article

later today, since i have access to apa databases.

[Recursion]

27. It's just a review of primary journalistic and legal sources

I'm not sure what being in a journal adds to that.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

28. a journal is peer reviewed. it adds a lot more credibility to any scientific knowledge

[Recursion]

29. Yes, I know what journals are. I've published in some.

I just don't see what peer review adds to this case, where someone is simply going over the available primary sources and pointing out that they don't correspond with what's in textbooks. I suppose someone could check that the newspaper articles and affidavits actually say what is being quoted, but other than that...

[La Lioness Priyanka]

30. it means its better than the claim that we didnt land on the moon.

its not just tinfoil. it rises to the level of scientific standards. it sounds like there is a lot more substance than merely recounting what actually happened, in a way that challenges the way we do science.

[Recursion]

31. Well, "science"

We are talking about sociology here, after all.

:evilgrin:

[La Lioness Priyanka]

32. a lot of psychological theories are based on that incident too

and social science is science. in fact modern physics is beginning to look a lot more like social science, than like physical science

[Recursion]

6. Several people called the police in the Genovese attack

Congratulations, you've spread a meme!

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.psych.lancs.ac.uk/people/uploads/MarkLevine20070604T095238.pdf&pli=1

[Pithlet]

20. I don't think that meme will ever die.

And I feel sorry for the poor neighbors who've had to live with that false accusation all this time.

[Odin2005]

21. K&R