Freedom of Expression in The Movie Spotlight as a Medium to Convey the Voices of Sexual Abuse Victims to the Public

Spotlight (2015, directed by Tom McCarthy) is a docudrama which told the story of the investigation of sexual assault of young boys in Catholic Church in Boston, United States of America. A group of four journalists from The Boston Globe, called Spotlight, specialized in investigation overlooked, forgotten cases, and one of the cases is the sexual assault cases that happened inside the Catholic Church. Although their journey to seek the truth has many challenges and problems, they helped a lot of abuse victims to have courage and speak up over the tragedy that happened to them. Spotlight's realistic expression on the narration was shown through the character's dialog, which contributed to the plot of the movie itself. The meaning of "Freedom of Expression" depicted in the movie Spotlight was to symbolize the struggle of the characters, which includes the journalists and the victims, to fight for their rights. Through this movie, McCarthy wanted to help more people who were victims to speak up about their traumatic abuse. Spotlight not only could be a technique of mental healing for victims, but also a media of advocacy for people to know, to inform and to communicate the negative aspects of victim blaming. Keywords: Freedom of expression, docudrama, sexual abuse, victim blaming, advocacy

Victim blaming among young students

The article presents basic information on the problem of victim blaming, describes the history of the appearance of this concept. Major factors in the formation of victim blaming such as patriarchal attitudes, the phenomenon of a just world, family and upbringing, established social cliches and patterns of relationships and the media have been identified. The results of the study have been presented, from which the level of awareness of young people about the problem of victim blaming and their views in the context of the problem have been outlined. The role of the immediate environment in relation to the victim of the situation has been considered, and the influence of the media on the formation of victim blaming among students has been outlined. The problem outlined reflects the impact of victim blading on young people and the further consequences of this negative experience.

It’s Time to Consider LGBTQ-Affirmative Psychology in Malaysia

International studies have revealed stark mental health inequities affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people. While there is increasing awareness of higher prevalence of mental health difficulties among LGBTQ people in Malaysia, this issue has often been viewed through a cisheterosexist (cisgenderism and heterosexism) lens that criminalizes, pathologizes, marginalizes, and/or delegitimizes noncisgender and nonheterosexual forms of identities. Informed by LGBTQ-affirmative psychology, this viewpoint aims to scrutinize the common misconceptions surrounding the living experiences of Malaysian LGBTQ people; these include poor mental health among LGBTQ people, victim-blaming narrative of sexual violence, LGBTQ is a mental illness, and LGBTQ is a Western influence. This viewpoint draws on empirical and theoretical research, as well as international guidelines, to debunk these misconceptions. Recommendations are also provided for psychology practitioners and researchers to embark on the journey to supporting Malaysian LGBTQ people in a culturally safe manner.

Gender differences in videoed accounts of victim blaming for revenge porn for self-taken and stealth-taken sexually explicit images and videos

Using video recounts from revenge porn victims, this study explores whether levels of victim blaming differs for the sharing of self- and stealth-taken sexually explicit images and videos. Building on previous work which has demonstrated victim blame for both self- and stealth generated images in occurrences of revenge porn (Zvi & Schechory-Bitton, 2020), the reported study presents an original and ecologically valid methodological approach whereby 342 (76 male, 266 female) participants (Mage = 39.27, SD = 11.70) from the UK watched videoed accounts of real experiences of falling victim to revenge porn, rather than using text based, often fictional, vignettes to attribute blame which dominate studies in this area. All data was collected in 2019. The results demonstrated that significantly more blame was assigned to victims when participants were indirectly rather than directly asked who was to blame for the occurrence of revenge porn, supporting the notion of an unconscious processing bias in attributing blame. More blame was also assigned to those victims who themselves generated the material compared to when it had been acquired without their awareness by a perpetrator, suggesting the cognitive bias to be in line with a just world hypothesis. Male participants were more likely to blame a victim than were female participants, although sex of victim and mode of shared sexually-explicit material (video or image) did not appear to affect levels of victim-blame. Findings are considered in terms of extant research and the need for future work in the area of victim blame and revenge pornography.

Sexting und sexuelle Grenzverletzungen an Schulen

Dieser Beitrag beleuchtet den schulischen Umgang mit Sexting-Veröffentlichungen aus der Perspektive von Schülerinnen und Schülern. Zunächst werden die Prävention sexueller Gewalt als Aufgabe von Schule (auch im digitalen Raum) und das Phänomen Sexting beleuchtet. Im empirischen Teil wird aufgezeigt, was Schülerinnen und Schüler daran hindert, mit Lehrpersonen in Kontakt zu treten, wenn ihre intimen Aufnahmen veröffentlicht wurden oder sie darum wissen, dass Sexts anderer Jugendlicher kursieren. Neben dem Umstand, dass Lehrpersonen häufig nichts vom missbräuchlichen Umgang mit intimen Bildern erfahren, verweisen die Jugendlichen auf Einstellungsfragen und Machtasymmetrien, jedoch auch auf adoleszente und institutionelle Abgrenzungen. Dabei thematisieren die Schülerinnen und Schüler Vertrauen im Lehrpersonen-Schülerinnen und Schüler-Verhältnis, eine Trennung in öffentliche und private Sphäre, den Aspekt beidseitiger Scham sowie die Zuschreibung der Verantwortung an die Betroffenen (Victim Blaming). Der Artikel kommt zu dem Schluss, dass es einer Abwendung vom Devianz- und Abstinenzdiskurs und hin zu einer Anerkennung einvernehmlichen jugendlichen Sextings als Form digitaler sexueller Kommunikation bedarf, um ein Veröffentlichungsgeschehen im schulischen Rahmen angemessen besprechbar zu machen und formuliert Implikationen für die schulische Praxis.

Why Perpetrators and Innocent Victims are Sometimes Harshly judged? Belief in a Just World and Other Situational Determinants

Although Belief in a Just World (BJW) has positive influences on well-being, the attempts to maintain these beliefs may give rise to awry judgments in contexts of harm. In a scenario-based study, we examined the associations of general belief in a just world (GBJW) with BJW maintenance strategies, including victim blaming, victim derogation, perpetrator demonization, and compensation. We hypothesized that because these harsh judgments about victims and offenders along with compensation are used as defensive mechanisms against threats to BJW, using a specific strategy depends on the availability of each strategy and the level of a person’s GBJW. Thus, we also tested whether GBJW and situational cues for victim’s respectability and perpetrator’s evilness have interaction effects on various strategies to defend BJW. By manipulating the characteristics of the victim (professor vs. car dealer) and offender (with evilness cues vs. without evilness cues) in a crime scenario, the interaction effects on judgments about victims and perpetrators as well as compensation were investigated. The results indicated that while GBJW interacted with victim’s respectability and perpetrator’s evilness to predict demonization and derogation, there was no three-way interaction and two-way interaction effects between victim’s respectability and perpetrator’s evilness on the four BJW-maintenance strategies. Taken together, our findings highlight the nuanced effects of just world beliefs on how people react to and make sense of violent incidents.

„Blaming the victim?“ Ergebnisse einer Vignettenstudie zur Stigmatisierung von HIV-positiven Personen

Zusammenfassung Hintergrund Die HIV(„human immundeficiency virus“)-Infizierten sind Diskriminierung in verschiedenen Bereichen ihres Lebens ausgesetzt. Ein Mechanismus der Stigmatisierung in diesem Zusammenhang basiert auf fehlendem Wissen über die Ansteckungswege von HIV. Ziel der Arbeit Wahrgenommenes Eigenverschulden sowie verantwortungsbewusstes Verhalten bei einer HIV-Infektion werden als mögliche Ursache für die Einschätzung der sozialen Distanz gegenüber HIV-Infizierten untersucht. Material und Methoden Datengrundlage ist eine Online-Vignettenbefragung, an der insgesamt 135 Personen teilgenommen haben. Die Hypothesen werden mit clusterkorrigierten multiplen linearen Regressionen getestet. Ergebnisse Wenn eine HIV-Infektion als vermeintlich selbst verschuldet wahrgenommen wird, so ist die soziale Distanz zu den Erkrankten größer. Ähnliche Distanzierung erfahren HIV-infizierte Personen, die beruflich eng mit Menschen zusammenarbeiten, z. B. Beschäftigte des Rettungsdienstes. Vor allem homosexuelle HIV-positive Männer werden stigmatisiert. Schlussfolgerung Die Stigmatisierung aufgrund von „victim blaming“ gegenüber HIV-Infizierten konnte in dieser Studie aufgezeigt werden.