Speaking Up

This is a story about speaking up.1

I live in a large city in the United States. Recently we had an election for mayor, and a local working-class man was elected. He appointed a new police commissioner (the head of the police force in the city). The Commissioner is also a local working-class man, very “down to earth” (real, not pretentious). He spoke at our neighborhood meeting a few weeks ago, and I was pleased with his report. It showed his intelligence, compassion, and love of our city. However, he said several things that bothered me. He wondered why women victims of domestic violence stay with their abusers and why young women who are sexually assaulted go out drinking and go home with men they don’t know.

I called his office and asked for an appointment to talk to him. I was surprised that I got one the next week. Fortunately I had an RC workshop in between and got to discharge about my boldness and what I wanted to say. (As a raised-working-class Catholic woman, I have often thought about speaking up without actually doing it.)

I prepared a talk about “blaming the victim.” This term was coined in the 1970s by a sociologist named William Ryan. He wanted to refute the belief that it was their own fault when people targeted by racism in the United States were poor—a belief that justified racism and social injustice. Victims of crime, especially rape, were also being blamed. The idea was that women were responsible because of how they behaved—for example, how they dressed.

When I got to the Commissioner’s office, he was welcoming and wondered what I wanted to talk about. I told him I wanted to talk about two things. The first was that I thought he had “blamed the victim” in his talk. The second was that I thought he was a breath of fresh air in city government and I would hate to see him have to defend himself against a storm of media criticism. I told him that if he did not understand the concept of blaming the victim, sooner or later he would have to face criticism.

I described what I meant by the concept and suggested that the questions should be about the people who victimize, not about the victims. I said that instead of asking why women do these things, he should be asking why men feel entitled to hit or rape women—that this was where he should be putting his attention as a police officer. And I asked what it was about our culture that made these crimes the most common in our city.

We had a good half-hour discussion. We were able to listen to each other. He described growing up with a “totally male mindset” and how hard it was sometimes to break out of it. He told me his wife was trying to educate him about women, and he appreciated my coming in to talk to him. I asked him if he would watch a talk by a man named Jackson Katz, one of the leading trainers on these issues, and gave him the link2 to look it up.

It felt great to be an active bystander—to step out of my pattern of feeling small and speak up about something important. 

"Lucy Lupo"
USA


1 “Speaking up” means freely expressing an opinion.
2 “Link” means site on the Internet.


Last modified: 2022-12-25 10:17:04+00