But she was unfaithful: benevolent sexism and reactions to rape victims who violate traditional gender role expectations

Sex Roles: A Journal of Research,  Sept, 2002  by G. Tendayi Viki,  Dominic Abrams

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Stereotypic beliefs about rape seem to influence people's evaluations of victims of sexual assault (e.g., Bohner et al., 1998; Krahe, 1988). Rape myths, which have been defined as "stereotypical beliefs about rape that put women at a disadvantage" (Bohner & Schwarz, 1996, p. 163), are an important example of such beliefs. Individuals high in rape myth acceptance (RMA) have been found to be less likely to define a situation as a "rape" even when it meets the legally accepted criteria (e.g., Fisher, 1986) and to attribute more blame to the victim of rape and less blame to the assailant (Krahe, 1988). An example of a rape myth is the commonly held belief that only certain types of women (e.g., sex-workers) are usually raped (Burt, 1980). Although such a myth is clearly empirically false, it serves the function of obscuring and denying the personal vulnerability of all women by suggesting that only certain kinds of women are vulnerable to sexual violence (Lonsway & Fitzgerald, 1994).

In the present research we examine victim blame in relation to different types of victims of acquaintance rape. In predicting victim blame, we consider the role of rape myth acceptance, but our main focus is on the role of benevolent sexist beliefs.

Benevolent Sexism and Victim Blame

Glick and Fiske (1996) proposed that sexist attitudes may not entirely manifest in hostile forms. Rather, sexist attitudes may be ambivalent (ambivalent sexism), composed of both hostile sexism (HS) and benevolent sexism (BS). Hostile sexism can be defined as the typical antipathy that is often assumed to characterize sexist prejudices. Benevolent sexism, on the other hand, is a set of attitudes that are sexist but subjectively positive and affectionate toward women. Glick and Fiske (1996) developed the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI), which is a 22-item measure that assesses an individual's level of ambivalent sexism. Although, HS and BS subscales were found to be positively correlated (Masser & Abrams, 1999), Glick and Fiske (1996) maintained that BS and HS "have opposing evaluative implications, fulfilling the literal meaning of ambivalence" (p. 494). They argued that ambivalent sexists reconcile their hostile and benevolent feelings by classifying women into "good" (deserving BS) and "bad" (deserving HS ) subcategories. There appears to be some match between Glick and Fiske's theory and the existence of rape myths that suggest that only "bad girls" are sexually assaulted. It seems that the differentiation between "good" and "bad" women may provide grounds for individuals to blame certain victims of rapes.

We have previously proposed that BS may play an important role in victim blame, especially in acquaintance rape situations (Abrams, Viki, Masser, & Bohner, in press). Our reasoning was based, in part, on previous findings that women who are perceived to have "bad reputations" are more likely to be blamed for the occurrence of an acquaintance rape (Cassidy & Hurrell, 1995; L'Armand & Pepitone, 1982; Luginbuhl & Mulin, 1981). Indeed, lay-persons and legal practitioners have been found to attribute blame to rape victims on the basis of extra-legal factors such as alcohol consumption (Corcoran & Thomas, 1991), and type of clothing (Johnson, 1995). Such differences in victim blame appear to be consistent with the notion that rape victims are differentiated into "good" and "bad" subtypes. Benevolent sexism is significantly related to the idealization of women who conform to traditional norms (Glick et al., 2000). Therefore, it seems likely that individuals who are high in BS would be more likely to be "offended" by , and hence to blame, rape victims who may be perceived as violating traditional gender norms.

Consistent with this argument, Abrams et al. (in press) found that individuals high in BS assigned more blame than low BS individuals to the acquaintance rape victim. No differences in blame between high and low BS individuals were observed for the stranger rape. It is interesting that these effects were obtained even after the effects of HS and RMA were accounted for, which suggests that the above effects are unique to BS. Abrams et al. argued that their findings were obtained because high BS individuals hold particular beliefs about how "good" women should behave and thus view women who violate such expectations as deserving anything unfortunate that may happen to them.

An important limitation of Abrams et al.'s research is that they use the same two vignettes (stranger rape vs. acquaintance rape) across their studies. As such, it is possible that their observed results may be due to unintended subtle differences between the stimuli rather than to the general effects they hypothesized. In this study, we focused on acquaintance rape and varied the type of victim. Participants were presented with either one of two rape victims. For the first (control) victim, no information concerning her personal characteristics was provided, whereas the second victim was described as a "married mother of three." In essence, the description of a married mother who is raped by an acquaintance resulted in a scenario where a victim is sexually assaulted during an act that is potentially one of infidelity. If it is the case, as Abrams et al. argued, that individuals high in BS blame rape victims who violate traditional gender-role expectations, then a married woman who is raped while cheating on her husband should elicit very little sympathy. As such, we expected participants to attribute more blame to the "married mother" in comparison to the "control" victim. However, we hypothesized that this effect would be moderated by BS such that individuals high (rather than low) in BS would attribute more blame to the "married mother" than to the control victim. As in Abrams et al.'s studies, HS and RMA were not expected to moderate the effects of victim type on victim blame.