oops

I meant to address the discussion, above, about people who engage in victim-blame in the names of their chosen deities.  Take various cultural and religious beliefs that make a rape victim responsible for the "shame" that is brought to their family and stoning the victim, to death, to relieve the family of the victim of the "shame," legally.  If that isn't hatred, ignorance, and straight-up psychopathological thinking, then I cannot imagine any other examples in human history that would suffice.  And, there are plenty of groups and organizations that hold fast to the belief that the victim must have done something to warrant what happened to them.  I've been present at some of these events where someone who contracted AIDS literally asked for and deserved it because they were homosexual. 

I watched, with my own eyes, a male police officer who was a church member that atttended regularly actually ridicule a man who was in the station filing charges of domestic violence against his wife - his face was lacerated and he was visibly shaking.  The officer said something along the lines of, "Whassamatta?  Can't you control the little woman?"  This same officer was, years later, investigated by Internal Affairs for having raped female drivers that he had pulled over for some offense.  This was long before on-board video cameras, and this is just one example of hatred and victim-blame that I am personally acquainted with.

Victim-blame is THE "go-to" response for people who have never experienced a criminal or civil assault.  There is no warm-and-fuzzy facet to victim-blame.  It is what it is, and we can try to explain it away in any terms that we can, but it's still just another type of violation against the victim.