Editing Victim blaming (section)

==History==
Although Ryan popularized the phrase, other scholars had identified the phenomenon of victim blaming.{{sfn|Robinson|2002|p=141}}
In 1947 [[Theodor W. Adorno]] defined what would be later called "blaming the victim," as "one of the most sinister features of the [[Fascism|Fascist]] character".<ref name=Adorno1947>{{cite journal |last1=Adorno |first1=T. W. |title=Wagner, Nietzsche and Hitler |journal=The Kenyon Review |date=1947 |volume=9 |issue=1 |pages=155–162 |jstor=4332830 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Harding |first1=James Martin |title=Adorno and 'A Writing of the Ruins': Essays on Modern Aesthetics and Anglo-American Literature and Culture |date=1997 |publisher=SUNY Press |isbn=978-0-7914-3270-9 |page=143 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OT8yfsEUcw8C&pg=PA143 }}</ref>

Shortly thereafter Adorno and three other professors at the [[University of California, Berkeley]] formulated their influential and highly debated ''[[F-scale (personality test)|F-scale]]'' (F for fascist), published in ''[[The Authoritarian Personality]]'' (1950), which included among the fascist traits of the scale the "contempt for everything discriminated against or weak."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hammer |first1=Espen |title=Adorno and the Political |date=2006 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-415-28913-9 |page=63 }}</ref> A typical expression of victim blaming is the "asking for it" idiom, e.g. "she was asking for it" said of a victim of violence or sexual assault.<ref name=encyclopedia>{{cite book |last1=Jackson |first1=Nicky Ali |title=Encyclopedia of Domestic Violence |date=2007 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-0-203-94221-5 }}{{page needed|date=March 2021}}</ref>

The [[just-world fallacy]] is proposed as one explanation for why people blame victims: rejecting the uncomfortable idea that bad things happen to people randomly and undeservedly results in a false belief that victims must have done something to deserve what happened to them. This also implies that people can avoid being victims by behaving correctly. Though an ancient idea, it became the subject of modern [[social psychology]] in the 1960s beginning with [[Melvin J. Lerner]].<ref name="An Overview">{{Cite book | doi=10.1007/978-1-4757-6418-5_1 | chapter=An Overview: Advances in Belief in a Just World Theory and Methods| title=Responses to Victimizations and Belief in a Just World| pages=1–7| series=Critical Issues in Social Justice| year=1998| last1=Lerner| first1=Melvin J.| last2=Montada| first2=Leo| isbn=978-1-4419-3306-5|editor-last1= Montada|editor-first1=L.|editor-last2= Lerner |editor-first2=M. J.|location=New York|publisher=Plenum}}</ref>