Oscar Pistorius Has Crazed, Die-Hard, Victim-Blaming Female Fans

There are women who spend their days on Twitter harassing people who tweet negative things, even if they’re true, about Oscar Pistorius, the South African sprinter who has been charged with the murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. They are loyal fans of the Paralympian gold medalist, who they believe is sexy and innocent. They are all women. They consider themselves a community. They call themselves “Pistorians.”

Just like Team Breezy—the fan club of singer Chris Brown—Pistorians are devoted and aggressive and kind of uncool about violence toward women. It’s one thing for people to believe that Pistorius is innocent until proven guilty. (He is currently out on bail, awaiting his murder trial for fatally shooting his girlfriend three times. He claims he thought she was an intruder.) It’s another to glorify his actions, which ultimately ended in the death of a young woman, as being the noble option. As one Pistorian said, “Call me old-fashioned but I’d rather my boyfriend didn’t allow a perceived intruder to enter the house unchallenged.” In this scenario, she is likening herself to Steenkamp—who is dead. She would rather be dead than admit that, at the very least, Pistorius was too quick to pull the trigger. I wouldn’t call that “old-fashioned.” I’d call it illogical.

Vice writer Alex McClintock—who was harassed on Twitter by Pistorius’ female fans after tweeting about South Africa’s domestic violence problem and Pistorius’ arrest for assaulting a previous girlfriend—interviewed Marisca Fourie, an 18-year-old Pistorian from Cape Town. While Fourie admitted she felt “really sorry” for Steenkamp’s family, she still managed to discredit the dead woman, as though she were partly to blame in getting shot to death, due to rumors that she was cheating on Pistorius with a popular rugby player.

I think that everyone says nice things about her and bad things about Oscar. With this whole [South African rugby player and Steenkamp friend] Francois Hougaard story I heard, Reeva wasn’t that innocent.

So does Fourie think that Pistorius is innocent because the shooting was an act of self-defense or does she think that Pistorius was merely justified in his act because his girlfriend was maybe fooling around on the side? There’s a disconnect of logic there. If Pistorius shot her accidentally, then it shouldn’t matter whether Steenkamp had been faithful to him. These people are doing a horrible job at being super fans. Don’t they see that bringing up something like that doesn’t cast a shadow of doubt on Steenkamp’s reputation as a “good girl,” but rather, provides motive in the case against Pistorius. It doesn’t prove anything about Steenkamp, but it could certainly help prove that Pistorius premeditated her murder.

But what’s a little murder compared to being a bikini model? That’s the real shame! In response to one Pistorian’s tweet: “I’d be really upset if my daughter posed like that!!!!” McClintock points out, “I’d be really upset if my daughter got shot by her boyfriend.”