Roxane Gay is Spelled With One "N" : What Empathy Is
The New York Times' Rape-Friendly Reporting
From today's New York Times: The police investigation began shortly after Thanksgiving, when an elementary school student alerted a teacher to a lurid cellphone video that included one of her classmates.The video led the police to an abandoned trailer, more evidence and, eventually, to a roundup over the last month of 18 young men and teenage boys on charges of participating in the gang rape of an 11-year-old girl in the abandoned trailer home, the authorities said. This story from Cleveland, Texas, is beyond horrifying. Obviously. "Gang Rape of Schoolgirl, and Arrests, Shake Texas Town," the Times article covering the atrocities, is a collection of one perpetrator-excusing, victim-blaming insult after another. The case has rocked this East Texas community to its core and left many residents in the working-class neighborhood where the attack took place with unanswered questions. Hmm. This is the point at which, as the writer's editor, I would send him an email.
The destructive culture of pretty pink princesses
Girls the world over often go through a "princess phase," enthralled with anything pink and pretty — most especially the Disney princesses. When it happened to Peggy Orenstein's daughter Daisy, the contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine stepped back to examine the phenomenon. She found that the girlie-girl culture being marketed to little girls was less innocent than it might seem, and can have negative consequences for girls' psychological, social and physical development. Orenstein's exploration took her to Walt Disney World, the American Girl flagship store in New York City and a child beauty pageant. LiveScience: How did you get inspired to write the book? Orenstein: I'm a mother, and I think that when you're an adult, you don't really notice what's going on so much in the world of kids' culture. And so I started to go, 'What is this?' A lot of people were looking at issues of eating disorders or depression, or sexuality or culture, and issues in teenagers.
Steubenville teens are found guilty but rape culture remains alive and well
*Trigger warning* Yesterday, the verdict was handed down in the Steubenville rape case. The defendants, Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond, were found guilty. I feel great relief that I’m not writing about a “not guilt” verdict today. But it’s hard to hold on to that sense of relief–to realize that this ending was the best one possible in this particular case–when the problem is so much bigger. I don’t want to live in a world in which a mainstream media outlet reporting on the verdict barely mentions the victim in their rush to lament the fact that the “promising lives” of the defendants have been ruined and that this “will haunt them for the rest of their lives.” I don’t want to live in a world in which girls are so well-schooled in the consequences they’re sure to face for speaking up about a sexual assault that the victim immediately tried to assure people that she “wasn’t being a slut” and initially didn’t want to name the defendants ”because I knew everyone would just blame me.”
Reporting on a Gang Rape in East Texas
Twitter comments and a smart piece on Jezebel have been astutely criticizing this New York Times piece on the alleged gang rape of an 11-year-old girl in the East Texas town of Cleveland. It’s a horrifying story. We’re told that a schoolgirl was raped by "18 young men and teenage boys" – 18 – in an abandoned trailer filled with "a filthy sofa … a broken stereo and some forlorn Christmas decorations." Can you feel your pulse quickening as you imagine an elementary school kid held down and raped repeatedly in this sordid place? Here’s what Cleveland residents quoted in the Times story did: They speculated about what the girl had done to bring it on herself. Libby Copeland is a writer in New York and a regular Slate contributor. Follow The paper quotes them at face value: Residents "said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. The kindest reading of what makes people blame the victims of rape is fear.
Northwest: Toppenish teen fakes pregnancy as school project
Published: Thursday, April 21, 2011, 3:10 p.m. Gordon King / Yakima Herald-Republic Toppenish High School senior Gaby Rodriguez reveals to the school her pregnancy is a fake. She used padding to simulate the pregnancy during the school year. By Adriana Janovich, Yakima Herald-Republic YAKIMA -- Gaby Rodriguez would worry whenever anyone asked to touch her baby bump. It wasn't because she felt shy or embarrassed. For the past 6½ months -- the bulk of her senior year at Toppenish High School -- the 17-year-old A-student faked her own pregnancy. Only a handful of people -- her mother, boyfriend and principal among them -- knew Gaby was pretending to be pregnant for her senior project, a culminating assignment required for graduation. Her teachers and fellow students, except for her best friend, didn't realize they were part of a social experiment. Neither did six of her seven siblings, including four older brothers, her boyfriend's parents, and his five younger brothers and sisters.
Steubenville and the misplaced sympathy for Jane Doe's rapists | Megan Carpentier
The victim in the Steubenville rape case, known in most (but not all) of the media coverage of the case as "Jane Doe", was taught by her rapists, her then-friends and much of her hometown that she doesn't matter. She didn't matter to the boys who made use of her unconscious body to satisfy their own sexual urges and desire for power; she didn't matter to her friends who sided with those boys; and she didn't matter to the football boosters in her hometown, who were unwilling to see their pride in the team tarnished by the actions of two of its players. She learned that a lot of people around her, including some in positions of power, thought that the futures of her rapists were more important than what they'd done to her and what she'd have to learn to live with. It wasn't enough that ABC aired a rosy profile of one of the now-convicted rapists before the trial, emphasizing his happy mood the night of the rape and his football career.
Why do police douse protesters with colored water?
As Egypt prepares to mark the first anniversary of the Egyptian revolution on Wednesday, with activists mapping out protest routes and the ruling military council partially lifting the country's emergency laws and releasing prisoners in apparent goodwill gestures, Al-Masry Al-Youm is reporting something rather odd. Anonymous security sources tell the Egyptian newspaper that security forces are planning to use batons, loudspeakers, and "colored chemicals that will stain one's skin for six months" against "those perceived to be violating the law." It's the colored chemicals in particular that's gotten picked up by Twitter users in Egypt, generating a mixture of outrage ("colored chemicals you idiots?!!!!!), humor ("so it's paint ball fight now?"), advice ("Vaseline reduces the effects of colored water") and skepticism ("if it's real we wouldn't be finding out about it a week beforehand"). Nevertheless, the approach is still employed frequently. But dyes have their drawbacks too.
