Negative Third-Party Reactions to Male and Female Victims of Rape

The results largely indicated that people reacted more negatively to victims than to nonvictims. These negative reactions extended beyond blaming, to include derogation, distancing, and the expression of negative emotions. In contrast to the authors hypotheses, hardly any differentiation was found in negative responses to male compared with female victims. In fact, target gender was much less influential in reactions to victims than participant gender or participants’ own experience of sexual victimization.

This research demonstrates that concerns over normativity may at times have a stronger impact on reactions to victims than may concerns over harm and justice. Indeed, whereas normativity concerns may bind us to others in many instances, this clearly depends on who that other is, or what she or he has suffered. Other types of (experimental) designs may be necessary to further explore whether and how normativity concerns differentially affect reactions to male and female victims of sexual victimization.