Blog Post 6: Feminist response and victim blaming

On Tuesday, we talked about feminist response and the existing problem with the justice system. One student posted an article about how victims of rape respond to justice system. She said many victims are afraid of being prosecuted by police for what they said about the truth, even though they are telling the truth. About this, the instructor said this is one reason why people don’t see justice system as an ally if they report the case. In my opinion, one way to increase the number of reports is to rebuild the justice system and earn back people’s trust. This maybe a difficult step to take. The justice system is dominated by powerful men; since this society is a male dominated society, man can hardly care about women’s request to reconstruct the justice system. If people want to completely change the justice system, they need to change the entire culture (the male dominated culture). This could also be difficult. It takes time to change the society’s interest from man’s needs towards woman’s needs. This is why I agree on what the instructor said, that it’s hard for people to convert the situation of rape. The instructor said he was paying attention since the 70s and the numbers of rape being reported really hasn’t changed much since the 70s. This unchanging trend maybe contributed by the fact that justice system doesn’t trust victims confession. What I would suggest in order to upgrade the justice system is to make a set of laws that regulate justice system’s administration and order. This way the justice system won’t be able to go beyond that law if it wants to give misjudgment based on masculine interest.

One thing that interests me about the discussion is when the instructor talked about the chain reaction or the circulate reaction brought by the dysfunctional justice system. He said the less rape being reported, the less rapists being caught, the more likely those who escape conviction will commit rape again. This circulating effect maintains the rape culture and this is why rape incidents kept going on and never gets solved. The unsolved cases are put aside and laid up. I think one way to break this chain reaction is to start from the police system and reinforce the education for police investigation. Each police need to have the responsibility to carefully investigate the cases and not ignore those which seem small. But as I said, I think to completely change the police system is difficult and takes a long time. America is still under capitalism. The capitalist economy system also has influence on gender inequality; upper class holds more power than the weak and the poor. Thus the male polices who have the back of the justice system, have more power over female victims. To me the phenomenon of rape is also a social and political result; to change such phenomenon we need to change the capitalist system first, but the society needs capitalist economy to survive and develop, thus I don’t think our society will abandon such economy any sooner. It will be long term change if we are to change the capitalist system, and it will take even longer to alter the issue of rape.

In class, we also talked about blaming victim. If justice system told the victim it’s their fault, the victim is going to hesitate and think that maybe it’s their own fault. This is because victims have come through some emotional trauma, and they can hardly defend themselves. I think it’s important that the justice system stop letting all the woman take the blame for what the rapists did. Man also have to take the responsibility for their action.