An example of unkind deeds and cover-ups (being a shit) in regard to criminal matters is a father who commits incest on his daughter. When the daughter tells her mother who in turn calls the police, the father cover ups by saying that the mother refuses to have sex with him and the daughter repeatedly made passes at him.
He succeeds at being a shit when others believe him. In some cases, mothers and daughters accept the blame. They have internalized the beliefs with which the father defends himself and for which others excuse him.
To this day, some victims of sexual abuse and rape are silent out of fear that they will be held responsible. See Patricia Francisco, Telling: A Memoir of Rape and Recovery (New York: Harper Collins, 1999) and Surinder Jaswal (2005). Child and Adolescent Sexual Abuse in Health Facilities, Indian Journal of Social Work, 66 (4), 395-413, 2005.
Other sources of my understandings of what it means to be a shit come from my job as a social worker. I have had direct experience with many children who have experienced abuse and neglect and perpetrators have refused to take responsibility for their behaviors. They prefer to let the children feely as if they did something wrong and they deserved or caused these adversities.
My work with survivors of sexual and physical assault of women provides additional background to the present investigation. Society assigns blame to survivors for their own assaults and thus colludes in foisting on victims responsibility for their own rapes and battering. What did she do to provoke it? Why didn’t she kick him you know where? Why didn’t she just leave? These examples hardly do justice to victim-blaming statements that shift focus from those who truly are responsible. Such a diverting of attention lets perpetrators off the hook. Then they are free to abuse someone else, or to re-abuse the victim who is now silenced.
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