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When a tragedy occurs, whether we are involved on a personal level or not, a natural human behavior is to seek an explanation for what has happened. In the search for that explanation, unfortunately, a large part of society, lacking empathy and protected by the anonymity of social networks, falls into two psychological phenomena.
The first of these is called “fundamental attribution error”. This is a bias where a person attributes internal personal characteristics to the behaviors of others. In other words, we put ourselves as the protagonists of that situation, assuming from our way of being and / or thinking that “obviously” the victim could have acted differently.
By doing this, the context of the real victim, his life, personality, history, as well as external forces and variables that could also have played an important role in the face of a tragedy, are ignored.
The second phenomenon is called “hindsight bias.” This happens when a person, when observing something that happened, considers that anyone could have glimpsed a number of “signs” that would make the result “logical” or “obvious”, so that the victims “could have prevented” what happened to them .
Blaming the victim is a phenomenon that has unfortunately spread over time and allows people, on an unconscious level, to believe that such events could never happen to themselves.
In the case of María Isabel Pavez, this is no exception, even before her body was found, and people, from the comfort of their social networks, pointed their finger at the young woman, “why is she using Tinder? “,” Why was it talking to the ex if he is ex for something? “,” You do not have to go out with strangers “, are some of the millions of comments that can be read in the different news that went viral about her since his disappearance was reported.
In this sense, in conversation with El Mostrador Braga, the Executive Director of the Miles Chile Corporation, Anita Peña, reflects that in Chile and the world the credibility of women is always questioned in their stories, in their testimonies, “no Only in cases of violence, we have also seen situations regarding women who, as a result of rape, have a pregnancy, their testimony is also questioned, ”he explains.
This doubt about the credibility of women is an “expression of misogyny and machismo in our culture and institutions. Blaming women for violence is reproducing sexist violence, since the victims are held responsible and, furthermore, a collective problem is individualized. Violence is structural and is a collective responsibility that falls mainly to the State. Remember the phrase from Las Thesis, when they said and said all of them when performing the performance: the fault was not mine, or where I was, or how I dressed. A woman is not guilty of the violence she experiences. A woman who is a victim of femicide is not guilty of that violence. The culprits are the femicides ”, he analyzes.
A similar opinion is shared by the Co-Director of Abofem, Verónica Del Pozo, “the way in which the press and social networks react to a femicide like that of María Isabel is very symptomatic of the level of machismo ingrained in our society. Blaming the victim is something that is only done for gender-based crimes. We have never seen that, when faced with a car theft, someone says “well, why did you leave your car parked on the street” or “what were you doing using your car at that time”. Blaming the victim is not understanding that violence against women occurs because they are not considered worthy of the same respect and dignity as their male counterparts, and that this is the responsibility not only of the perpetrator of the crime, but of society in its own right. set ”, he reflects.
For the lawyer, many times this speech takes subtle forms, “these speeches are not only on social networks and in the press. What is dangerous is that they permeate the judiciary and state actors who investigate the crime and who must provide protection to the victim. With these biases, it is almost impossible for justice to operate as it should to protect women and adequately punish violence against them ”.
And this can be evidenced by recalling some of the other cases of femicides that went viral, Fernanda Maciel was murdered by her neighbor and best friend, Felipe Rojas. She even questioned whether she was involved in account adjustments for drugs. Thousands of details of his intimate life were revealed, they even questioned his mental health and if he had “started” with a lover.
Ámbar was killed by her mother’s partner, who was also an accomplice, when she went to look for the money that corresponded to her for her alimony, shouldn’t she have gone to “look alone” for what is due to her by law?
Femicides in Chile
One of the advances that occurred during 2020 with respect to violence against women is the expansion of the figure of the criminal type of femicide to situations where there is no coexistence such as pololeo, or when femicide is motivated by gender or the expression of gender, sexual orientation of the victim.
These situations were not previously covered by the criminal offense of femicide and today they are and it is recognized that they are also a form of gender violence. However, it is necessary to rescue, according to Del Pozo, that criminal law acts only in cases of extreme violence against women. And yet, violence also occurs in very early stages, with manifestations that are more subtle but need to be addressed.
In that sense, for her “it is still necessary to advance in legislation that allows us to effectively prevent violence in its earliest stages, such as, for example, what is proposed by the Comprehensive Violence bill, which is still sleeping in the Senate and that it has a much more macro perspective and that we think is much more complete in order to effectively prevent and not attack violence against women when these very serious events that we have known in recent days already occur ”.
Finally, seeking to blame the victim for something that happened, the only thing that achieves is to divert the focus of the debate, which is the pandemic of gender violence, the reasons why women are being murdered, and above all, what we can do as a society, to root out everything that ends the lives of hundreds of women, year after year in our country, and throughout the world.
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