The Mind's Ghost

I understand now that by writing a meta about why Tim sometimes victim-blamed Jason early on I have been too hasty, because apparently we first need to clarify what victim-blaming is. That's on me. Thankfully, someone made a post listing a bunch of arguments that highlight some of the issues underpinning that mechanism. It made me very mad in the moment because I think this was a harmful post and on top of that it was condescending in a way that implies authority. However, ultimately it's a good opportunity to talk about that, both because learning to recognize victim-blaming is a vital skill to have in order to support one's community, and because I don't think it's a good idea at all to let this kind of harmful misinformation spread in our spaces unchecked.

Victim-blaming meta take 2

So here we see OP claiming that we can't refer to "Jason's whole situation" (aka the treatment of his murder in and out of comics) as victim blaming because according to OP, that's not what that means. First, I can't resist pointing out that OP, intentionally or not, is using a rather dishonest technique in so that they're saying the same thing twice. It's very well done but let's untangle that sentence a little bit:

"that's not what that term means and it's ALSO not what's happening either inside or out of the comics." Note the ALSO in higher case meant to emphasize that there are two arguments here giving more weight to OP's position.

> "that's not what that term means" okay but what is what that term means? What does "that" means here? What is being compared to the definition of victim-blaming? The answer, by syntactic inference, seems to be "jason's whole situation", which again, is how OP refers to the treatment of Jason's murder in and out of canon, what they're arguing here with the fandom. Compare that that to the other part of the sentence:

> "'it's ALSO not what's happening in and out of comics"

Do you get what I'm saying? The "it" pronoun here is what we call a referent, meaning that its function is to serve as a replacement for a word of group of words that has been used before -though sometimes there can be ambiguity as it could refer to different previously mentioned elements. Here, we have two possibilities, but only one makes sense logically. Either this person is saying that "Jason's whole situation isn't what's happening in or outside of comics" which is some kind of tautological paradox: according to this person, Jason's situation wouldn't be... Jason's situation. The other option, a bit more awkward syntactically but way more logical, is that "it" actually refers to "victim-blaming", meaning that they're saying victim blaming isn't what's being said in and out of canon. Ultimaly, this person is saying twice that Jason's treatment isn't victim-blaming, and wording it differently with an ALSO added for emphasis to make their claim seem more potent than it is.

Honestly, that's a detail. Accidentally saying the same shit twice is something we all do sometimes, and it's not what we're focused on here, but since they added that infuriating "also" as though their logical mistake was some kind of grand speech, I wanted to be petty and point out that manipulative phrasing. It also can't hurt to clarify why I'm only answering one claim even though OP makes it look like they're saying two things.

But in any case, OP is telling us that there are no occurrences of people speaking about Jason in and out of canon that fits the definition of victim-blaming. Fortunately, I happen to have access to a formidable website called wikipedia, which allows me to find common definitions for concepts and double-check the sources for these definitions.

Victim-blaming, then, can be defined as : a devaluing act that occurs when the victim(s) of a crime or an accident is held responsible — in whole or in part — for the crimes that have been committed against them.1 This blame can appear in the form of negative social responses from legal, medical, and mental health professionals, as well as from the media and immediate family members and other acquaintances. Some victims of crime receive more sympathy from society than others. Often, the responses toward crime victims are based on the misunderstanding of others. This misunderstanding may lead them to believe that the victim deserved what happened to them, or that they are individuals with low self-esteem who seek out violence. As a result, it can be very difficult for victims to cope when they are blamed for what has happened to them.

(pay attention to the parts in blue, they're going to help us later).

It can also be defined as: an attitude which consists in holding the victims of an aggression or an injustice responsible for what they experienced. The culpabilisation of the victims allows us to avoid condemning the aggressor, who is granted attenuating circumstances. (translated from french, sorry if the syntax is a bit awkward i tried to stick to the original wording as closely as possible).

Or, again: the procedure (actions/approach) of attributing the perpetrator's blame for an act of violence to the victim (translated from german, sorry if the syntax is a bit awkward i tried to stick to the original wording as closely as possible).

The Spanish page from wikipedia is way too close to the English one to give us any new insight in the definition itself but it has the merit of reminding us that victim-blaming is the social tool of fascism, which is an important reminder in case anybody here is wondering why I'm mad.

Point being, OP didn't deign support her claim with a definition, but we have more than enough definitions to go around, and despite differences in phrasing they all more or less say the same thing: "victim-blaming is when part of the responsibility for an act of violence is attributed to the victim of that act."

In A Death in the Family, Jason is struggling mentally. He does behave recklessly as Robin, at that moment in time, which is treated as out of character for him and attributed not to a light-hearted daredevil attitude but to psychological struggle and potential suicidality. However, even recklessness that hadn't been a factor, Jason would still have gotten killed. As a consequence of his struggles, Jason travels in order to find his biological mother. There, he is reunited with Batman, and together they end up finding his mother, Sheila Haywood. He did not go there for vengeance (against who? Joker hadn't done anything to him) thrill (he seems more miserable than anything at this point in time) or to prove himself, he went there to find his mother. There, he finds out that Sheila's in trouble because of the Joker. He reveals to her that he is Robin in an effort to get her to trust that he and Batman can help her. Meanwhile, Bruce goes to stop Joker from killing a bunch of people, and tells Jason to stay put. But Jason doesn't, because Sheila tells him to follow her. That's the point that people love to remember, the cornerstone of the victim-blaming- Jason was "disobedient", he didn't listen to Batman. But they forget that in disobeying Batman, he was obeying Sheila. This decision wasn't made because Jason was disobedient, it was made because he had to make a choice which command to obey and he made that choice based on his trust in Sheila and his desire to help. And Jason wasn't reckless in going to the warehouse that the Joker was in, simply because he couldn't have known that there was danger there -he trusted Sheila who lied to him and told him the warehouse was empty. He didn't think himself strong enough to solo Joker and his goons, he just didn't know that he would have to.

If you're looking for factors in Jason's motivations and character that lead to his death, there are three: his yearning for a parent, his eagerness to trust people, and his heroism. Anything else said about Jason's motivation in that story is a lie. And what narrative would lying about Jason's character and motivation serve?

What is said in the comics themselves :

Tim hallucinating Jason's ghost, aka Tim's perception of Jason, telling him that Jason died because he "thought that he could be better than Batman" and that he "killed himself, because he couldn't wait, because he didn't think it through".

"I'm not like Jason. But what if I have some other flaw? Sometimes I think I go too far the other way. Too cautious." Here, Tim is implying that Jason had a flaw, his recklessness, and though it's not explicity stated I don't think you could argue in good faith that this scene isn't about Jason's death -and that Tim isn't attributing Jason's death to that flaw.

I didn't highlight anything because all of Alfred's dialogue and monologue counts. First he characterizes Jason through a motivation of vengeance, then claims that Jason's death was foreseeable because of Jason's character, and then says "It's not your fault, the lad was determined to disobey you."

"But Jason was reckless. The role of Robin turned him into a daredevil... He took chances. Openly defied Batman's orders. And that's what killed him. He went solo against the Joker."

"Jason saw being Robin as a game. It's probably what got him killed."

Compare all these examples to what happened in aditf: these characters are lying about Jason's character and motivations in order to create links between this character and motivation on one hand, and then relying on these causality links to attribute some or even all the blame of Jason's murder on Jason. Let me be very clear: Jason's murder has one person who bears entire blame and responsibility (Joker) and other people who bear partial blame and responsibility (Joker's accomplices, including Sheila). And yet, these panels that all address the causes of Jason's death don't even treat Joker as the main cause! They're talking like Jason drove a car without a license and Joker is the wall that Jason drove into. The agency is completely taken from Joker and attributed to Jason. Tim's inner Jason says "I killed myself." Batman's inner monologue says "he took chances. Openly defied Batman's orders. And that's what killed him." "Jason saw being Robin as a game. It's probably what got him killed."

What was said by the writers

Honestly I don't hate myself enough to push through several Jim Starlin interviews, so here are just a couple quick examples.

"Robin died for a number of reasons. He didn't listen to Batman when Batman told him to wait." Here, in this list, we see the responsibility for Jason's death being partially attributed to Jason. You might argue that what is listed here is an objective truth, and it is, but it's said as a justification for the writers to skirt responsibility because Jenna is upset with them for killing Jason (which one of the societal purposes of victim-blaming btw). Listing the chain of events that led to the death in the story is off-topic here- this person is highlighting them specifically so that the blame is pushed on all the fictional characters here, including Jason, and the voters, rather than dc themselves -as though they weren't the ones writing the story in the first place. Additionally, note the very punitive framework: Jason's death is a logical consequence of his disobedience. Remember to always listen to your father, Jenna. Or else you will get brutally murdered and it will be your fault.

This one I wanted to use here because it's so shameless it's impressive that they believed it would work. The chain of logic is as follows: Jason died because the public voted for his death - the public voted for his death because he was disliked- Jason was unpopular not because of any writing choice but because Jason broke through the fourth wall magically and earned himself real world agency. Jason is blamed for his own death through the intermediary of the voters (fucked up to put all that on literal kids btw) and in order to skirt responsibility on writing a child murder they weren't all too proud of, they invited Jason some kind of magical agency that made Jason seize control of the narrative from them. Honestly, I could have made that whole point without using that example, but I think it matters, it says something about this fandom that we can look at something so ridiculously, egregiously exaggerate, and still be able to say "victim blaming, what victim blaming? I don't see it." The elephant! In the middle of the room! It's right there!!!

What the fandom is saying

To clarify, I'm talking about the comics, dc themselves and the fandom even though the rest of the post discusses only the comics because OP said "that's not what happens in and out of canon" and I want to disprove it completely. There is victim-blaming rhetoric happening inside of fandom, and it's important that we are able to identify it amongst ourselves.

Now. Honestly this is a little malicious. I could have gone with a compilation of screenshots earned by painstakingly getting through the anti jason todd tag or asking some of my friends to provide me screenshots. But this is one of my favourite fallacies, so I kind of can't resist.

Do you know what an autophagic argument is? It's an argument that eats itself, in the sense that it disproves himself. Sort of like saying "Jason isn't victim-blamed in the fandom" while victim-blaming Jason in a fandom post.

Kinda like this:

"Jason did do something stupid and reckless, and the joker took advantage of that and killed him".

To be clear, this isn't me attacking OP's rhetorical skills by saying they made such a basic mistake. From OP's perspective, this isn't an autophagic argument, because they don't see what they're saying here as victim-blaming for interesting reasons we'll get to later. But here, they are making up a reckless and stupid behaviour to serve as a cause (which as stated isn't what happens in this story) and use that to attribute partial responsibility (and as you'll remember, blame shift only needs to be partial to fit the above-mentioned definitions) to Jason in the causality leading to their death.

Victim-blaming doesn't necessarily absolve the culprit of the crime- instead, when it's partial like here, it dilutes the amount of attributed responsibility to the culprits. Here, as you'll notice, the phrasing of the link between Jason's mysterious actions and his murder doesn't erase Joker's responsibility, but it erases Sheila's. It's the weight of Sheila's lie and manipulation that is attributed on Jason by erasing her agency and replacing it with Jason's vague "stupid reckless action". It's victim-blaming. In fandom. Ergo, there is in fact victim-blaming about Jason's murder in fandom.

Honestly, the beauty of autophagic arguments is that they save you a lot of work in your objections. I don't have to do the work of compiling all the annoying posts I have seen, because I just have to point out the contradiction and it takes away the whole credibility of the argument. So I'm genuinely thankful, because that saves me a lot of work.

Two more things I find noteworthy to mention:

-blaming Jason's death of recklessness is not only untrue, it omits that the recklessness evoked earlier in the story (that again, does not end up playing a role in his death) is born from mental health struggles and potential suicidality. Why is that systematically erased when people talk about Jason's recklessness as a cause of death? Probably because people know that blaming a suicidal teenager for his death is a bad look. Even when a kid kills themselves without using anyone as a proxy, societally we tend to consider that suicide is, in most cases, a "non-choice", something people do when they see no possible alternative due to a variety of factors that made carrying on with their life impossible to them. Even if Jason had indeed died because of recklessness, blaming him for it would still be a slap in the face of suicidal people and the reality of their struggles.

-I've mentioned it before: while it's sneakier than some of dc's more blatant bigotry, the idea that Jason died because he was disobedient is sexist and in particular, very patriarchal.

Now. So far what I've done is provide examples of what I think is a good methodology for identifying victim-blaming when in doubt: find a definition to refer yourself to, focus on the content and analyse what is being said (like "jason killed himself"), in what context (like answering someone who is upset at the writers for killing him) and how is it framed (like making up motivations that didn't exist to paint his actions in a negative light), confront what the combination of these elements is saying explicitly or implicitly depending on the panels, and compare that with your definition of victim-blaming.

Going back to this as I said, I think it's interesting. "That's the tragedy! It's not even an explanation it's just literally describing the events of that story." Putting aside the fact that here there are mistaken. OP seems to be under the impression that if you point out a chain of causality that is factually true, that means what you are saying cannot possibly be victim-blaming. OP is right that causality is not the same as blame, but it's not true that highlighting causality cannot be a way to highlight blame. If I say "Jason died because Joker made the choice to murder him" that is a true causality, but it's also ascribing blame to Joker. There are elements in the sentence, in the wordings, that transform the simple highlighting of causality into ascribed blame. The word "choice" is a one that I see a lot in their meta and people in fandom in general : the focus is on Jason's choices in the story puts the emphasis on his ability to impact his own life, and the choice to paint the story of Jason's death as a consequence of his own agency -when murder and victimhood in general is associated with a loss of agency- is also a way to shift the blame. Saying "Jason is experiencing the consequences of his own actions" is technically true, but it's also not neutral. If I go and take the plane and the plane crashes and I get hurt, I'm technically facing the consequences of my own actions -but if people are always highlighting the fact that I got hurt hurt because of my choice to take the plane, that I'm facing the consequences of my own actions, how is that not victim-blaming? Would it genuinely occur to you to say that to someone?

The other big thing I see in those phrasings is the erasure of key elements from the actual process. It's what OP does in the screenshot and it's more generally what dc editorial and people in general do when they draw on the link between Jason not listening to Batman and Jason being killed without including Sheila despite her lie being a key factor in the story. It's technically true that Jason disobeyed Batman and died as a result, but it's a dishonest expose of the facts that misses a key factor. If Jason disobeyed Batman for personal reasons, then he is exerting his full agency-however, if he is doing so based on wrongful information and injunction from an authority figure, his agency is largely diluted, and if agency is diluted then so is responsibility. Phrasings that deliberately erase factors that decrease situational agency while use specific terms to highlight someone's presumed agency are therefore a tool to convey victim-blaming implicitly.

And that's the issue: sometimes, victim-blaming is implicit. And therefore, there will always be people who will argue that since they didn't technically say that someone was responsible for their aggression, they can't be accused of victim-blaming, because the social function of the implicit is to allow people to simultaneously use the power of speech and the impunity of silence.

However, that doesn't mean it's impossible to call out victim-blaming when it is implied, it just requires a perspective a little different. According to Grice's communication matrices and Spears' theory of indirect acts of language, implicit communication is based on the expectation of a reasoning that takes the enunciated explicit as one of its premises. The person who is making the statement is making the bet that people will take the explicit statement, the context, other relevant information, and therefore get to the message they really intended to communicate. This is something that everyone who can understand implicit knows intuitively: when someone known to have a cryptofascist ideology is doing a nazi dogwhistle towards a bunch of neonazis, they'll say "i was just waving to the crowd" or something of the effect, and we all get mad at the shamelessness because we're like "are you taking us for idiots? We know the context clues!! We know what you're actually doing!!" By making it sound nerdy, I'm not really saying anything new, but I do believe that by phrasing it that way it helps take down implicit arguments that otherwise would feel impossible to argue. Since it's a reasoning we are expected to make, we are expected to get to a hypothesis of the intended message. Therefore, by formalising the reasoning between prior knowledge of the interlocutor, situational context, and explicit statement, we can get to a well-argued hypothesis. From there, it's basically Okham razor: is there a hypothesis that's simpler and requires less ridiculous premises than the one we got to?

An example: A child sends a dc writer telling them they're mad that they killed robin. The dc writer answers by explaining that robin died because he didn't follow orders and was killed by the joker. The context tells us that the child just read the comic and knows very well how robin died. Moreover, we know the writer has a vested interest in not being held as responsible for the death of robin based on the negative responses he is getting to that. The statement phrases Jason's actions in a negative light even though, reading the comic, they come across as heroic. Further reading of the surrounding context shows that the writers also make a point to emphasize the decisive power of the voters in Jason's death. Question: why is the writer repeating the plot of a story the child knows very well while framing it in a way that makes robin look bad? A first hypothesis is that the writer wants to put the responsibility on robin so they don't have to explain while they made that decision. Another hypothesis is that the writer misunderstood the child and thought they hadn't read the comics and were asking for a synopsis of robin's death. Which is the most probable hypothesis here?

This is a little tedious, but that's my strategy to avoid getting cornered by dishonest implicits. It sounds like a lot when it's about comics, but when confronted with victim-blaming irl, I'm glad to have this tool: it helps reason more critically and stop the person from getting in your head and making you go "they're right, maybe i'm seeing evil everywhere, maybe I'm the problem" and victim-blaming yourself.

Also, another tip for implicit: there's a reason why people just say things. If someone makes a post out of nowhere going "reminder that Jason made the decision to walk into that warehouse on his own volition", the question "why did this person say that?" is crucial. Who is the message directed to? Why is it presumed that people need a reminder? Sure, the statement is true, but what purpose does it serve?

And who helped me with that? Not people calling for some nebulous revolution. Not people telling me that the system was useless. Not people preaching at me to grow my own food. It was a church food bank partially funded by the state of Texas that some southern hippies donated a bunch of Whole Foods nonsense to.

And you know what? I’m sick and tired of defeatism. What can we get done right now, huh? Are you gonna accept something a bit better to help people right now or are you waiting for your perfect utopia to come to you?