Widespread media coverage around stories where celebrities from all areas of society (athletes, actors, musicians, politicians, religious leaders, influencers, etc.) have been accused of violating others, has shaped the ways our society understands abuse and survivorship. All too often we have seen survivors who have come forward and shared their experiences met with indifference, disbelief, and outright backlash.
This larger social dynamic reinforces those same responses to survivors in their everyday lives. Many survivors describe their experience of abuse or assault, how they told family and friends, and how they were not believed or their trauma ignored. To explore the connection between these experiences, both public and private, it is necessary to start with understanding the definitions of some key terms.
Helpful Definitions^1:
Bias
Having a strong positive or negative opinion of someone based on past experiences or beliefs and not current situations or information. Bias can lead to not believing the current information that doesn’t fit with your already formed opinion.
Example: A teacher at a school has a reputation for being cool and understanding with students. One day you are told this teacher has yelled at a student in the hall after class and you wonder what the student did wrong. In this example, your bias led you to believe the student had done something wrong instead of focusing on the teacher’s inappropriate actions.
Groupthink
Choosing to go along with popular opinion and take similar action as others in a group to avoid judgment and loss of belonging. Groupthink can lead to joining in on harmful behavior because it is what everyone else in your group is doing.
Example: You are scrolling on social media and see that someone has made an outcry of abuse in a community you are a part of. When you click on the post, you see that almost all of the comments have claimed that the abuse is not true and bullying of the person who posted. You like/react the comments you think are right and funny. In this example, groupthink made it easier to like the mean and dismissive comments instead of looking for facts or supporting the poster.
Parasocial Relationship
This is a one-sided relationship that the public has with someone famous, well known, or well regarded. The dynamic of this kind of relationship involves individual members of the public putting in a lot of time, energy, and emotion to a bond with someone that does not know them.
Example: You hear about a new band and listen to their music. You grow to love the songs and start having a lot of strong feelings about the members. Over time as your love for the band grows, you start reading articles about them, watching their interviews, following their social media, and maybe joining a fandom group. You start to feel like you have a personal connection to them even though you’ve never met them. This is parasocial because you feel deeply connected to these people – you know a lot of information about them through all the ways you’ve engaged – and they do not know who you are.
^1 For more information about these and other concepts, please see the footnote at the end of the article.
Since media plays such a large role in shaping how we individually think, feel, and behave in our daily lives, we can see these larger social dynamics replicated in our smaller community or individual relationships. In parasocial relationships, people tend to trust their feelings about a famous person more than they trust the evidence or claims of others. For example, family members may trust their feelings about a beloved elder over the outcry of abuse from a child who is acting out.
When someone famous, popular in a community, or close to us is accused of abuse, it can be hard to accept. Instead of considering the survivor(s), people feel the need to defend the person they like over the people that were hurt.
Why Does This Happen?
Likeability is Power
When anyone receives positive attention from media, communities, or in close relationships, we are encouraged to assume they’re good people in every way. This makes it easier to ignore or downplay potential harmful behavior.
Believing Is Belonging
In our society, we are taught that the things we like, believe in, or are connected to are part of our identity. Being a fan of someone or something – like a music artist, sports team, celebrity, or religious leader – can then become the main way we feel like we belong to something bigger than ourselves. This makes it harder to change how we think or feel about those people, beliefs, or things because it feels like we are disagreeing with the majority and will no longer belong to the group.
Blame the Messenger
Being told that someone you admire or care about has chosen to cause sexual violence towards someone else changes how we see our lives, our relationships, and even ourselves. The anger, fear, resentment, confusion, and other difficult emotions that can come up sometimes feel easier to direct at the survivor seeking support.
Understanding why people react this way shines a light on these flaws in our society, but awareness alone does not fix them. Bias, groupthink, and parasocial relationships will continue to affect our behavior if we don’t take action to counter these problematic dynamics. Critical thinking, self-reflection, and centering care are what’s important for responding appropriately to outcries of abuse and supporting survivors in our communities.
What Can We Do About It?
No Good Pedestals
Putting anyone up on a pedestal – believing they can do no wrong or that they shouldn’t face consequences for their actions – hurts us all. We are interconnected and when we dismiss the experiences of survivors in favor of maintaining an influential person’s image, it creates an environment in which we are all more at risk for experiencing abuse and not getting the appropriate support we would need.
Two or More Truths
People are not simple or easy – many things can be true at the same time. Someone could be an incredible nurse, saving multiple lives each day, and at home pressure their partner to have sex. When we choose to only focus on someone’s positive qualities it means we aren’t seeing their whole humanity, that they are a complex person with the ability to do many different things.
Knowledge is Responsible
Facing the truth of sexual violence, that anyone can choose to harm someone else, and that this harm happens in our lives can be incredibly painful and scary. However, choosing to ignore sexual violence doesn’t lead to bliss; it leads to more harm.
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