There are crimes and then there are crimes and then there are atrocities. These are, I suppose, matters of scale. I read an article in the New York Times about an eleven-year-old girl who was gang raped by eighteen men in Cleveland, Texas.
The levels of horror to this story are many, from the victim’s age to what is known about what happened to her, to the number of attackers, to the public response in that town, to how it is being reported. There is video of the attack too, because this is the future. The unspeakable will be televised.
The Times article was entitled, “Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town,” as if the victim in question was the town itself. James McKinley Jr., the article’s author, focused on how the men’s lives would be changed forever, how the town was being ripped apart, how those poor boys might never be able to return to school. There was discussion of how the eleven-year-old girl, the child, dressed like a twenty-year-old, implying that there is a realm of possibility where a woman can “ask for it” and that it’s somehow understandable that eighteen men would rape a child. There were even questions about the whereabouts of the mother, given, as we all know, that a mother must be with her child at all times or whatever ill may befall the child is clearly the mother’s fault. Strangely, there were no questions about the whereabouts of the father while this rape was taking place.
The overall tone of the article was what a shame it all was, how so many lives were affected by this one terrible event. Little addressed the girl, the child. It was an eleven-year-old girl whose body was ripped apart, not a town. It was an eleven-year-old girl whose life was ripped apart, not the lives of the men who raped her. It is difficult for me to make sense of how anyone could lose sight of that and yet it isn’t.
We live in a culture that is very permissive where rape is concerned. While there are certainly many people who understand rape and the damage of rape, we also live in a time that necessitates the phrase “rape culture.” This phrase denotes a culture where we are inundated, in different ways, by the idea that male aggression and violence toward women is acceptable and often inevitable. As Lynn Higgins and Brenda Silver ask in their book Rape and Representation, “How is it that in spite (or perhaps because) of their erasure, rape and sexual violence have been so ingrained and so rationalized through their representations as to appear ‘natural’ and inevitable, to women as men?” It is such an important question, trying to understand how we have come to this. We have also, perhaps, become immune to the horror of rape because we see it so often and discuss it so often, many times without acknowledging or considering the gravity of rape and its effects. We jokingly say things like, “I just took a rape shower,” or “My boss totally just raped me over my request for a raise.” We have appropriated the language of rape for all manner of violations, great and small. It is not a stretch to imagine why James McKinley Jr. is more concerned about the eighteen men than one girl.
The casual way in which we deal with rape may begin and end with television and movies where we are inundated with images of sexual and domestic violence. Can you think of a dramatic television series that has not incorporated some kind of rape storyline? There was a time when these storylines had a certain educational element to them, a la A Very Special Episode. I remember, for example, the episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 where Kelly Taylor discussed being date raped at a slumber party, surrounded, tearfully, by her closest friends. For many young women that episode created a space where they could have a conversation about rape as something that did not only happen with strangers. Later in the series, when the show was on its last legs, Kelly would be raped again, this time by a stranger. We watched the familiar trajectory of violation, trauma, disillusion, and finally vindication, seemingly forgetting we had sort of seen this story before.
Every other movie aired on Lifetime or Lifetime Movie Network features some kind of violence against women. The violence is graphic and gratuitous while still being strangely antiseptic where more is implied about the actual act than shown. We consume these representations of violence and do so eagerly. There is a comfort, I suppose, to consuming violence contained in 90-minute segments and muted by commercials for household goods and communicated to us by former television stars with feathered bangs.
While once rape as entertainment fodder may have also included an element of the didactic, such is no longer the case. Rape, these days, is good for ratings. Private Practice, on ABC, recently aired a story arc where Charlotte King, the iron-willed, independent, and sexually adventurous doctor was brutally raped. This happened, of course, just as February sweeps were beginning. The depiction of the assault was as graphic as you might expect from prime time network television. For several episodes we saw the attack and its aftermath, how the once vibrant Charlotte became a shell of herself, how she became sexually frigid, how her body bore witness to the physical damage of rape. Another character on the show, Violet, bravely confessed she too had been raped. The show was widely applauded for its sensitive treatment of a difficult subject.
The soap opera General Hospital is currently airing a rape storyline, and the height of that story arc occurred, yes, during sweeps. General Hospital, like most soap operas, incorporates a rape storyline every five years or so when they need an uptick in viewers. Before the current storyline, Emily Quartermaine was raped and before Emily, Elizabeth Webber was raped, and long before Elizabeth Webber, Laura, of Luke and Laura, was raped by Luke but that rape was okay because Laura ended up marrying Luke so her rape doesn’t really count. Every woman, General Hospital wanted us to believe, loves her rapist. The current rape storyline has a twist. This time the victim is a man, Michael Corinthos Jr., son of Port Charles mob boss Sonny Corinthos, himself no stranger to violence against women. While it is commendable to see the show’s producers trying to address the issue of male rape and prison rape, the subject matter is still handled carelessly, is still a source of titillation, and is still packaged neatly between commercials for cleaning products and baby diapers.
Of course, if we are going to talk about rape and how we are inundated by representations of rape and how, perhaps, we’ve become numb to rape, we have to discuss Law & Order: SVU, which deals, primarily, in all manner of sexual assault against women, children, and once in a great while, men. Each week the violation is more elaborate, more lurid, more unspeakable. When the show first aired, Rosie O’Donnell, I believe, objected quite vocally when one of the stars appeared on her show. O’Donnell said she didn’t understand why such a show was needed. People dismissed her objections and the incident was quickly forgotten. The series is in its twelfth season and shows no signs of ending anytime soon. When O’Donnell objected to SVU’s premise, when she dared to suggest that perhaps a show dealing so explicitly with sexual assault was unnecessary, was too much, people treated her like she was the crazy one, the prude censor. I watch SVU religiously, have actually seen every single episode. I am not sure what that says about me.
I am trying to connect my ideas here. Bear with me.
It is rather ironic that only a couple weeks ago, the Times ran an editorial about the War on Women. This topic is, obviously, one that matters to me. I recently wrote an essay about how, as a writer who is also a woman, I increasingly feel that to write is a political act whether I intend it to be or not because we live in a culture where McKinley’s article is permissible and publishable. I am troubled by how we have allowed intellectual distance between violence and the representation of violence. We talk about rape but we don’t talk about rape, not carefully.
We live in a strange and terrible time for women. There are days, like today, where I think it has always been a strange and terrible time to be a woman. It is nothing less than horrifying to realize we live in a culture where the “paper of record” can write an article that comes off as sympathetic to eighteen rapists while encouraging victim blaming. Have we forgotten who an eleven-year-old is? An eleven-year-old is very, very young, and somehow, that amplifies the atrocity, at least for me. I also think, perhaps, people do not understand the trauma of gang rape. While there’s no benefit to creating a hierarchy of rape where one kind of rape is worse than another because rape is, at the end of day, rape, there is something particularly insidious about gang rape, about the idea that a pack of men feed on each other’s frenzy and both individually and collectively believe it is their right to violate a woman’s body in such an unspeakable manner.
Gang rape is a difficult experience to survive physically and emotionally. There is the exposure to unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, vaginal and anal tearing, fistula and vaginal scar tissue. The reproductive system is often irreparably damaged. Victims of gang rape, in particular, have a higher chance of miscarrying a pregnancy. Psychologically, there are any number of effects including PTSD, anxiety, fear, coping with the social stigma, and coping with shame, and on and on. The actual rape ends but the aftermath can be very far reaching and even more devastating than the rape itself. We rarely discuss these things, though. Instead, we are careless. We allow ourselves that rape can be washed away as neatly as it is on TV and in the movies where the trajectory of victimhood is neatly defined.
I cannot speak universally but given what I know about gang rape, the experience is wholly consuming and a never-ending nightmare. There is little point in pretending otherwise. Perhaps McKinley Jr. is, like so many people today, anesthetized or somehow willfully distanced from such brutal realities. Perhaps it is that despite this inundation of rape imagery, where we are immersed in a rape culture, that not enough victims of gang rape speak out about the toll the experience exacts. Perhaps the right stories are not being told or we’re not writing enough about the topic of rape. Perhaps we are writing too many stories about rape. It is hard to know how such things come to pass.
I am approaching this topic somewhat selfishly. I write about sexual violence a great deal in my fiction. The why of this writerly obsession doesn’t matter but I often wonder why I come back to the same stories over and over. Perhaps it is simply that writing is cheaper than therapy or drugs. When I read articles such as McKinley’s, I start to wonder about my responsibility as a writer. I’m finishing my novel right now. It’s the story of a brutal kidnapping in Haiti and part of the story involves gang rape. Having to write that kind of story requires going to a dark place. At times, I have made myself nauseous with what I’m writing and what I am capable of writing and imagining, my ability to go there.
As I write any of these stories, I wonder if I am being gratuitous. I want to get it right. How do you get this sort of thing right? How do you write violence authentically without making it exploitative? There are times when I worry I am contributing to the kind of cultural numbness that would allow an article like the one in the Times to be written and published, that allows rape to be such rich fodder for popular culture and entertainment. We cannot separate violence in fiction from violence in the world no matter how hard we try. As Laura Tanner notes in her book Intimate Violence, “the act of reading a representation of violence is defined by the reader’s suspension between the semiotic and the real, between a representation and the material dynamics of violence which it evokes, reflects, or transforms.” She also goes on to say that, “The distance and detachment of a reader who must leave his or her body behind in order to enter imaginatively into the scene of violence make it possible for representations of violence to obscure the material dynamics of bodily violation, erasing not only the victim’s body but his or her pain.” The way we currently represent rape, in books, in newspapers, on television, on the silver screen, often allows us to ignore the material realities of rape, the impact of rape, the meaning of rape.
While I have these concerns, I also feel committed to telling the truth, to saying these violences happen even if bearing such witness contributes to a spectacle of sexual violence. When we’re talking about race or religion or politics, it is often said we need to speak carefully. These are difficult topics where we need to be vigilant not only in what we say but how we express ourselves. That same care, I would suggest, has to be extended to how we write about violence, and sexual violence in particular.
In the Times article, the phrase “sexual assault” is used, as is the phrase “the girl had been forced to have sex with several men.” The word “rape” is only used twice and not really in connection with the victim. That is not the careful use of language. Language, in this instance, and far more often than makes sense, is used to buffer our sensibilities from the brutality of rape, from the extraordinary nature of such a crime. Feminist scholars have long called for a rereading of rape. Higgins and Silver note that “the act of rereading rape involves more than listening to silences; it requires restoring rape to the literal, to the body: restoring, that is, the violence—the physical, sexual violation.” I would suggest we need to find new ways, whether in fiction or creative nonfiction or journalism, for not only rereading rape but rewriting rape as well, ways of rewriting that restore the actual violence to these crimes and that make it impossible for men to be excused for committing atrocities and that make it impossible for articles like McKinley’s to be written, to be published, to be considered acceptable.
An eleven-year-old girl was raped by eighteen men. The suspects ranged in age from middle-schoolers to a 27-year-old. There are pictures and videos. Her life will never be the same. The New York Times, however, would like you to worry about those boys, who will have to live with this for the rest of their lives. That is not simply the careless language of violence. It is the criminal language of violence.
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Image of Paolo Veronese’s The Rape of Europa is now in the public domain and used accordingly. Rumpus original coin art by Jason Novak.
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Don’t miss “New York Times ‘Responds’ to Backlash” by Julie Greicius.
132 responses
For another terrifyingly apt example of the condensation of rape victim and place, see Didion’s haunting “Sentimental Journeys,” about the Central Park jogger, who was as deified as this child is, if not vilified, at least depicted as somehow deserving.
I also wondered why the Times thought we might want to see pictures of the site. What possible purpose did that serve?
Thank you, Roxane. This is such a difficult topic.
My girlfriend was gang-raped in college, more than twenty years ago. She still has nightmares, she is still in therapy, she is in recovery from a long nightmare of drinking and addiction and suicide attempts, and from a failed marriage to a sexually abusive man.
I don’t know how women who have been through this experience are able to talk about it publicly. I love her very much, we’re good for each other and she says with me she feels safe for the first time in her life, but even with all that, she can’t really talk to me about what happened that night. When she tries, it sends her into a dark hole for days.
Such an excellent discussion–and true. I’m tweeting this and Facebook linking. What you say is relevant and important.
The Times has since modified its story to remove the part where they suggest the girl somehow deserved the rape.
The men and boys who perpetrated this act should have their sexual organs removed. All of them. If they are repentant, perhaps anesthesia could be used.
Great article. The NYT article yesterday was sickening.
Is the Dolce & Gabbana ad depicting a woman being pinned down by a man while three others look on intentional or just careless placement? I’m think the later since the ad isn’t mentioned in the article…
I was gang raped forty years ago. Reading about this 11-year-old girl, I am overcome by rage. This journalist wrings his hands because the rapists’ lives are affected? The poor dears might even end up in prison where they are raped by men stronger than they are. When a man is raped, it’s an abomination. When a woman is raped, it’s routine.
For writers trying to bring language and the reality of sexual violence into some kind of commensurate relationship there is an enormous risk – likelihood even – that the outcome will be entertainment; pleasure, and identification with the violator. Other writers – of television, movies, novels and, for all I know, The New York Times – are straining to achieve this outcome; the derealising of sexual violence for profit. Fundamental to which, as Roxane Gay rightly identifies, is the disappearance of the victim’s temporality from the story – the fact that violence ends for the violator (until they do it again) but it never, never, never ends for the violated.
Thanks for this piece.
great essay, roxane. when i read the original article i erped in my mouth a bit…so much distance between the object of the girl’s body and the subject of the town’s trouble. god damn it. well articulated and PATIENT discussion, taking us back through our own complacency…
@Kate That’s not a site ad at all. We would never let an advertisement like that run on The Rumpus. It was placed in the article as an example of how we are surrounded by not-at-all-subtle rape-normalizing media messages.
Thank you. A terrific essay. No really comments to make, just wanted to say thanks.
CWebb, I thought a lot about the Central Park jogger because I was a teenager on the East Coast when that happened. The rhetoric of that incident is so markedly different from this instance. The contrast was, as you note, stark and it just makes it all so much worse.
Anon, I’m glad your girlfriend has you. Safety is the first step. She may never be able to talk about it with you but I have no doubt she knows you would be willing and able to listen.
Mary, yes, indeed. It’s all so vicious.
Lidia, I read the article and I was at work, about to go teach, and I was just so outraged. I had to close my door to sort of spew a little before I molded young minds. It’s just so exhausting that we need to have these conversations, that these things need to be said.
Thank you all.
My thoughts after reading this are in such a tangle I can’t easily put to words anything that I’m feeling, but it’s something about how we’ve confused sex and violence. I CAN say thank you, Roxanne, for this piece. There is so much more behind this story – how everyone involved got to this particular place in time – that may never be known – and I think this is what pisses me off the most – is because all the people in that small town helped create this situation. I think a lot of writers know this, instinctively, and write because they know that “in real life” the whole story won’t be told. I appreciated your musing on your own place in this “gratuitous” use of violence in your writing. You’re brave to “go there.” I’ve been afraid to so far.
“I would suggest we need to find new ways, whether in fiction or creative nonfiction or journalism, for not only rereading rape but rewriting rape as well, ways of rewriting that restore the actual violence to these crimes and that make it impossible for men to be excused for committing atrocities and that make it impossible for articles like McKinley’s to be written, to be published, to be considered acceptable.” Yes.
Your statement, “We live in a strange and terrible time and for women,” echoes much of how I have been feeling lately. There are days when I feel like girls had more opportunities when I was growing up in the 70s than they do now (I don’t remember being so inundated by princesses as my friends’ daughters seem to be now). Days when I cannot fathom that the protections we marched for in the 90s are either threatened or, in some cases, gone now (my home state of Texas’s current battle over a bill that would require a woman seeking an abortion to have a sonogram and have it described to her if she chose not to look, being just one example).
The Houston Chronicle article seems to do a better job of reporting on how the girl’s life and her family’s lives are being affected (she has been taken by Child Protective Services and her family is being asked to leave the town, supposedly for their own safety), although even in that article the 11-year-old girl is described as, “having sex with multiple young men, according to the statement.”
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/7459716.html
Thank you.
Thank you for writing this. I’ve been screaming about the attack on women and the way that the rhetoric has changed for years, mostly to the amusement and often bewilderment of my friends. I don’t think they could contextualize the shift in our culture. This does so beautifully. Masterful writing and an important conversation that we all need to be involved in.
Great thoughts indeed. It is hard to articulate the mix of bafflement and rage I feel regarding that NYT article, and you did so well. As someone else said, it’s a patient way of discussing it.
Excellent work, Roxane. That Times article is baffling and offensive. No other way to describe it.
YOUR piece on the other hand, reminded of the last time I read about rape that made any sense-
http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/feature/2009/09/28/polanski_arrest
I was raped by my ex. I hardly told anyone because I knew no one would believe me. After I escaped from the relationship, I spoke to a wife of one of his friends on the phone. She told me he confessed to her that he had raped me, then followed that up by telling me that she didn’t think he really raped me. She said because I only told her about the times he verbally pressured me into it that she didn’t believe he ever physically forced me. I couldn’t even argue back–I was so mortified! I was still having flashbacks and panic attacks at the time and to hear my fear about other people knowing confirmed really threw me. That all happened 15 yrs ago and I’m shaking so bad I can barely type. So I wish I could say I am surprised by the horrific attitude of the NY Times article but I’m not.
Thanks for this essay. I don’t totally agree with every statement here, but I am so grateful for your writing this and addressing the fact that we live in a society that too often allows victims of violence to feel as if they’re somehow responsible–as if they “did” something and deserve what they suffered, as if they shouldn’t complain, as if the “right” thing to do is be silent/private where trauma is concerned. It’s so complicated & disturbing how language is part of the virus. So again, thank you so much for writing & sharing this.
Thank you for this very thoughtful, beautifully written piece. It is a most welcome antidote not only to the James McKinley Jr. article but to so much insidious writing like his which permeates our media and affronts us every day, some of it consciously, much of it unconsciously, which in some ways is far worse. I have a feeling the New York Times editors and McKinley himself were clueless as to how deeply misogynist his article is. Thanks to your piece, and several others I read today objecting to the tone and language of the New York Times article, I believe and hope some consciousness has been raised in all of us regarding the “rereading and rewriting of rape.” Your piece has certainly made a stunning start.
Paula, that Salon article is amazing, and it also brings up a point that has been infuriating me about this rape case, and much rape reporting in general, which is that (to paraphrase), “she looked much older, like, almost twenty.”
Am I missing something? Is it okay for seventeen to twenty eight (or even one) people to rape a twenty year old? Of course, it’s horrible that she’s only a child, but twenty is pretty fucking young, and even if she was in her thirties, or middle aged, or fucking elderly, it is atrocious and disgusting and makes me want to walk down the street rage punching the windshields of parked cars.
I am also completely horrified by this new trend of rapists recording their attacks, like some kind of fucking memento they can LOLZ over with their dipshit friends. The upside of this is it makes them much easier to identify and prosecute.
Thank you, Roxane. I was outraged by that NYT article too. What you’ve said here is important and true.
I’m really glad you wrote this, Roxane. I was shocked when the interviewee mentioned how the child was “dressed like a 20-year-old”. How could any person, under any circumstances, even the slightest bit insinuate that a child was asking… I can’t even finish this.
Thanks again Roxane, you’ve done a great service here.
“They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said. ‘Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?’ said Ms. Harrison, one of a handful of neighbors who would speak on the record. ‘How can you have an 11-year-old child missing down in the Quarters?”
It’s something that wouldn’t surprise me to read in the 1930s, but what the fuck is NYT thinking now? She’s 11 years old and there were 18 men. Why is it a salient ‘fact’ that she dressed old for her age? What a piece of shit ‘reporting’ job.
Thanks for writing this, Roxane.
Bravo Roxanne for this beautifully written piece.
Roxane + The Rumpus:
I tweeted and facebooked this article and even wrote an e-mail to the Times writer linking him to it. One of the saddest elements of this whole debate about rape language is that even good-hearted people who know rape is wrong might read that NYT article and not think twice about the language used. It’s just such a subtle thing, belittling the victim and making the perpetrators into something like innocent bystanders.
I closed my eyes really tight today and said my most fervent prayer for this little girl and for the rest of her life. She has a tough road ahead of her, tougher than most of us can likely imagine. At only 11 years old, to have your soul taken from you in such a vicious way… I just want her to know, I hope she learns eventually, that she’s not alone. I wished for my spirit to be with her for always.
Thanks again for publishing this piece.
-Meghan
Ads like the Dolce and Gabbana one featured here are ubiquitous and have been for years. That very few people notice them until they are pointed out (and you have to point out a *lot* of ’em before people will take you seriously and not accuse you of “reading too much into it”) says volumes about our culture’s persistent numbness to violence against women.
Perhaps most disturbing is that the bulk of these advertisements appear in fashion magazines with a female audience. From childhood, we’re taught that “dead is sexy” (Sleeping Beauty, Snow White): if a submissive woman is a good woman (Cinderella), then a dead one must be pretty damn perfect. In the pages of Vogue, we look at the body sprawled on the stairs, and say, “Ooooo, love her shoes!”
I don’t know what the solution is besides making this stuff more visible. So, thank you, Roxane. And I’m finally going to get my collection of images up on the web, like I’ve been promising for years. . . .
I agree whole-heartedly with everything in this piece, and find the way our media approaches the topic of rape rather appalling. The only show discussed that I have seen, though, is SVU, and I think much of the problem with their approach to the topic is that ultimately the show has very little to do with the victims. Instead we watch the intrepid detectives champion the cause of the victim, and by the end we feel vindicated, as they always get their perp. Somehow it makes it seem that once the guy is behind bars everything in the world is all better. However, while reading this I couldn’t help but think of the movie Irreversible by Gaspar Noé. The film takes place in one night and follows a man seeking revenge for the rape of his girlfriend. It starts at the end, with the actual revenge scene, and as the movie progresses each scene shows us the events that led up to the previous. The movie is exceptionally disturbing from the get-go, as we have no context for the extreme violence we see. But, as the movie unfolds that context is created, yet it doesn’t eases the feeling. The rape scene itself is horrendous. I watched the film on two different occasions with two groups of friends, and of the 10 minutes or so of the scene we never made it through the first half. And perhaps this is the only way to treat rape, as something so awful no one should be able to stomach it. No euphemistic discussions attempt to deconstruct and understand it, it just is, and is beyond understanding. We can only understand it on the most visceral level. I think a huge theme in the movie is showing all of the things we just can’t take back and how nothing we can do will make it any better. The one act triggers a chain that destroys the lives of all involved. That’s it. I would recommend it for anyone looking for an honest artistic representation of rape and the damaging power it has, but be warned it is not for the faint of heart, and once you watch it, you can’t take that back, either.
Nailed it, Roxane. Nicely done.
OUTRAGEOUS
DAMN THAT NYT ARTICLE
THIS COMMENTS SECTION NEEDS
SOME ALL CAPITAL COMMENTS
burning while reading about this
thanks for this essay roxane
“There were even questions about the whereabouts of the mother, given, as we all know, that a mother must be with her child at all times or whatever ill may befall the child is clearly the mother’s fault. Strangely, there were no questions about the whereabouts of the father while this rape was taking place.”
Yes–and what about the mothers of the 18 men who raped this girl? Why didn’t the NYT writer mention those mothers?
Thank you, Roxanne, for this thoughtful bit of appropriate outrage. The NYT damn well better write some kind of apology or retraction.
If you’d like to see a better (not perfect, but much better) example of reporting on this story, look at this version from the AP: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41993963/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/
Jesse, I also thought about Irreversible when I wrote this because as horrifying as that rape scene is, that’s an accurate depiction of rape and the unwatchableness of it really speaks to what I’m trying to articulate here. We consume so many representations of rape because they’re palatable, because they’re circumspect, because they are not quite accurate. In Irreversible, we see the utter repulsion of the rape act and, if I remember correctly, the actors actually, went all the way with that scene, they went there.
On the same day as this infuriating Times article, I received an email from my university’s security center about a rape committed near my subway stop. The man who runs security briefly described the incident, then suggested that, to avoid being raped, students are “reminded” to get off at a train stop other than the one where this crime occurred. The email contained no other information about rape/sexual assault, rhetorically pinning rape to a train stop, to my neighborhood, to my failure as a woman to fear traveling alone.
Suggesting that I take a different train or that this little girl should not have dressed like a 20 year old (it pains me to write those words) propagates fear and victim-blaming under the label of “rape prevention.” It means to say, “We reminded you not to wear makeup or take this train, so we will not be accountable for the atrocities committed against you.” The rhetoric, the language used in these incidents are not passively complicit in our rape culture; these words actively promote it. As Roxanne so eloquently wrote, “That is not simply the careless language of violence. It is the criminal language of violence.” Roxanne, thank you for this piece.
The Times should be ashamed.
Thanks for examining honestly and clearly the issues this brings up, Roxane.
I would add that too often (including in this article) even when the verb “to rape” is used, it is used in the passive voice, as something that happens to a woman/girl, instead of something that a man does to a woman/girl. To wit:
“An eleven-year-old girl was raped by eighteen men. ”
Why don’t we, as a culture, say instead: “Eighteen men raped and eleven-year-old girl.” ? I think this would be an even more careful use of language. Assign the unspeakable crime to the men who committed it, not to the victim.
You’re an inspiration, Roxanne. Amazing article.
We cannot just stand by and allow things like this to happen to girls and women, and we cannot allow institutions like the New York Times to use language against us to further oppress us.
Thank you so much for this. I have been in an inarticulate rage and so admire your ability to be so appropriately eloquent. I too noticed the euphemistic language, the profoundly disturbing “delicacy” about naming the crime.
As for quoting the people who spoke about this child’s clothing, the only way I can grasp how obscene this is is to try and imagine that the New York Times, after a bank robbery, decides to quote bystanders who say the bank was asking for it by having money around. “People said they even advertised having money.” The comments would be deemed nonsensical and would certainly not be treated as news. Only when rape and other sexual assaults are involved do we observe this kind of desperate, violent effort toward distorting the truth in the service of leveling the culpability score. It is unspeakable.
But thank you for speaking.
Wonderful article Roxane. I think this is one of those examples where it’s important not to lose focus of what happened in the simplest of terms. This was a horrific crime that happened. There is one victim. In an effort to what? Showcase an ability for presenting us with an alternative spin? or worse: Show off? The NYT prints that atrocious and brazenly insensitive count of this story. I, for one, am just glad that you responded in a timely fashion.
To Gail in the comments section: If it’s true that the NY Times has modified the story, shame on them. They should have to own up to that filth, if only as to serve as a reminder.
ROXANE. DAMN. my facebook wall has just blown the fuck up as a result of posting this article. it’s the best thing i’ve read all day. another piece of meat to throw in the stew is the awful duke lacrosse mess from a few years back. living in the raleigh/durham area while that was happening was a total mindfuck. responsible media is what this wound of a country needs.
I just wanted to add my thanks, Roxanne, for this piece. Well done. Sad and infuriating, but necessary. I hope the Times editors get inundated with e-mails linking to this piece.
This is really beautiful. Thank you for for writing it.
If they had any guts, the NYTimes should run this in Sunday’s op-ed section. This would likely be better than any retraction or apology they would come up with. You should submit it. Very well done. Thank you.
for anyone interested, there’s a petition on change.org to try and get the author of the times article (and presumably, the times itself) to acknowledge the victim-blaming slant of the article: http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-the-new-york-times-to-apologize-for-blaming-a-child-for-her-gang-rape#?opt_new=t&opt_fb=t. it’s not necessarily a solution the larger problem but at least it provides a way to express these sentiments to the author in a numbers-strong manner. the times has so far stood by the article but the petition, and hence the issue at hand, is getting some press by the village voice and others.
Thank you so much for writing this. As a feminist, a journalist, a writer, a survivor and the daughter of a survivor, I feel like I spend large portions of my day immersed in sexual violence, its repercussions and its representations. Much of what I encounter hurts my heart. I need to read essays like this and thoughtfully written fiction and theory that comes from a place of compassion and justice, because otherwise I would feel hopeless and overwhelmed. Please keep writing and keep talking, because we need more voices like yours to explain why reportage like this is so harmful.
Thank you for calling out the Times on this, Roxane.
It reminds me of the blatant media neglect when Lara Logan (a CBS news reporter) was sexually assaulted in Egypt while she was covering the protests there in early January. Anderson Cooper was praised for being beaten up on the job, but Logan was blamed for being too pretty and having elicited the assault.
Disgusting.
I find it troubling that the views of the journalist are being conflated with the comments of the Texas residents he interviewed. The statement regarding how the men’s lives wil be changed forever is NOT a statement by the author but a quote by a (female) neighbor in the community. Similarly, the author is not stating that the victim was dressed immodestly or inappropriately but rather that these were the claims and insinuations made by members of the community.
While there are certainly issues with how this crime was covered in the article, I think it is important to recognize that these two specific statements were not presented as the view of the author but rather gave insight into the disturbing way a community will vilify a female child in order to protect the reputation of men.
Powerful, extensive, rational argument, Roxane. Thank you for taking the time. The numbers themselves are unbelievable (from my research for 3xbad): “At minimum, a woman is raped in the U.S. every two minutes… a minimum of two hundred fifty thousand women are raped here every year; one in four women and one in six men will be sexually assaulted in the span of a lifetime; one out of every seven victims of sexual assault is under the age of six; fifty to ninety percent of rape victims suffer from PTSD.†Sickening — from the isolated incident to the culture-wide epidemic, both action and language (or media representation) we use to talk about it. And YES: how do we, as writers, address such an issue in our own work? How do we “get it right”? These are heavy questions I’ve wrestled with as well.
@ Patrick. The people who are criticizing the article aren’t saying that the writer said these insensitive remarks. Obviously, they are quotes from the townfolk. But he still chose to run these quotes for no substantive reason. The story is that an 11 year old was raped by 18 people. And, yet, he spends a portion of a relatively small article quoting the neighbors opinions on how she dressed and on how people are blaming the Mom for this. If your point is correct, that he was trying to provide insight on how a community wil vilify a female child to protect men, then he did it in an irresponsible and shoddy way.
Patrick, you make an important point but I want to be clear that no one is saying the reporter said these things. The problem is with how the reporter shared this story and in particular the imbalance and carelessness with which he addressed the rape of an 11-year old child. I personally find it terribly irresponsible for a journalist, in this day and age, to include a comment about an 11 year old child dressing like a 20 year-old woman in a story about rape. Victim blaming is inevitable but there should be some sort of threshold of integrity for talking about these sorts of things. Just because someone says something stupid doesn’t mean it should be acknowledged because in that acknowledgment, there is a whole lot implied about what is or is not acceptable when talking about rape.
Patrick,
These were not his comments, no but
The reporter chose which quotes to use. The reporter chose the angle. The reporter chose not interview an expert or something like that. The reporter chose not to provide greater context or to focus on how this little girl will be changed forever. He and his editors were negligent.
i have to agree with patrick..and say i find vilifying the reporter …who is “reporting” attitudes that prob contributed to this poor girls assault… troubling..i also agree that the reporter could have done a more”balanced” job…possibly just as troubling… there is a dole gabbana ad right ON THIS PAGE with this article… that portrays a pretty young model who looks ironically… like she is about to be gang raped …can you say..pervasive?
http://suicideblond.tumblr.com/post/3777167004/gang-rape-ad-fail-wtf
xoxo
the f*cking msnbc article someone above linked uses the word rape once. ONCE! this CHILD was RAPED, and all of the quotes from the townspeople explain exactly how this could’ve happened back in November and only break as a story now.
thank you, Roxane, for the analysis. someone has to talk about it.
annd i think we just determined that maybe that ad was on purpose? my bad…
Thank God for Roxane Gay–I read this article yesterday, was horrified, and thought “I wish someone would write an article explaining how utterly unacceptable this perspective is.” I sent a letter to the nytimes’ public editor as well.
Molly S, you make a great point. There’s a lot we all have to learn about how we use language.
I really value The Rumpus for running a piece like this. Excellent writing, Roxane
I honestly cannot get over this..i mean 18 boys/men did this to one girl. Was it her fault?…hell no. Not one of these boys/men thought maybe this is wrong, maybe I should get help..When I heard this story..Ill I could think of is what kinda of boys/men are these? Are they human beings? Do they have any sort of feelings? Who raised these boys/men to be so brutal? Did they suffer abuse themselves? Were they told this behavior was okay by a male role model or father? I never once thought for a second anything but complete sorrow for this young girl and her family..WHO WILL HAVE TO LIVE WITH THIS FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES. Maybe I think this way because I was raped before and I am a woman. It is never your fault. Never.
I think this was a very powerful and well written essay. I see a lot of what you are talking about in our culture and I was actually just discussing this with a friend from India recently when we were talking about attitudes toward women in different cultures.
The one thing I disagree with is that things are any worse than they used to be. I was sexually assaulted as a child in the 70’s and the reaction (or more lack thereof) was the same if not worse than now. I think that depictions of violence against women are much worse in the media now days, but I think a general, pervasive attitude of victim-blame and minimalizing the horror and damage of sexual assault is probably about the same as it’s always been in our country.
Roxane,
Phenomenal, to respond with such eloquence and thought so quickly. Thank you so for your clear thinking and good words.
Patrick,
a discussion that should have happened in the Times’ newsroom about the statements you mention was sketched out by Mac McClelland:
http://motherjones.com/rights-stuff/2011/03/new-york-times-texas-rape
Who was the editor that allowed this filth to be posted on the NY Times. This isn’t just a problem with McKinley, Jr, it is a problem with the paper as well.
Apologies if someone else has pointed this out, but I find it curious that both the New York Times piece and the Houston Chronicle article fail to identify the adult suspects in the case by name. A quick review of both publications’ archives suggests withholding names is not standard practice. But I guess men arrested for rape warrant extra protection?
Leslie, I think part of it is that the investigation is ongoing. I also did see a news report where all the adult accused assailants were named and their mugshots were shown so I think it just depends on the news outlet as to how they are approaching whose identities they are revealing.
Hi, Roxane. It’s likely that with any crime all investigations are ongoing until the verdict comes down. However, once arrest warrants have been issued and charges filed, adult suspects are usually identified in the media. It seems, though, that unless the perp is someone famous, accused rapists are given the benefit of silence. (The benefit of the doubt belongs in court.)
From murder of person to murder of hamster(http://nyti.ms/gCV2n2), names are named in the press (including the two publications in question). I honestly have no desire to know who is being charged with the gang rape of this girl. At the same time, I can’t help but to wonder at the omission of these names.
And I also have to wonder about how this treatment of the charged feeds into the whole dynamic of violence against women: men who are charged are anonymous, faceless. They couldn’t possibly be anyone we know. How comforting. . . .
I could not read all of your post. I am so angry that anybody would dare to blame an 11-year-old girl for her own rape. I don’t care what she was wearing or not wearing, she is a child. Who cares what is going to happen to those boys who raped her. They probably won’t get what they deserve with our court system being what it is. They should get a life sentence because that is what the 11-year-old just got – a lifetime sentence of feeling betrayed, not trusting, blaming herself, having to deal with what other people think, a lifetime of being afraid, of feeling ashamed because of what was done to her. How have we failed to teach respect for woman in our society?
I will read the rest of your post later.
Thank you. I can’t express the disgust I felt when I first read the Times article. Thank you for not staying quiet –this sort of anti-women sentiment shouldn’t be allowed to masquerade as journalism.
Thank you so much, Roxane, for several things:
– addressing a serious issue in our representation of rape (beautifully handled);
– using the clinical terminology to address the real consequences, a language we so often try to avoid;
– addressing the feeling you have as a woman writer.
I’ve been struggling with these feelings in my own writing, though I don’t profess to be anything yet in that regard. I never know how to put that feeling into a larger context; it was nice to see what it looks like when it’s done well.
I have two main thoughts while reading this story and after reading the Times article.
The first. The suspects are not directly accused of rape partly because they have not been convicted of it. There’s a legal aspect involved, and those writing about it are protecting themselves.
Second. I’m a writer. I have no fear of words. I don’t shy away from using them with one exception. The word rape literally hurts for me to write. I suppose the opposite reaction to your “writerly obsession.” And while you don’t directly address it in this article, I think we probably both ask ourselves why.
I suppose for me the why is because I feel no matter what I write, it will not change the damage done by rape. As I read your article, I feel an overwhelming sense of helplessness. There is therapy, but that will not change what happened and what will happen to this 11 year old girl. And that is painful.
The Times article does not leave me with the same intensity of emotion as your article. It let’s us off the hook.
And while I suppose they could address the fact that people blame the girl for the way she dresses or her mother for not being around, they don’t. They just report the story as news. As facts. And of course, I am fully aware that they have chosen which facts to include in order to shape a story.
Will I start writing about rape now? Probably not. But you have raised an important issue here and brought it back into the forefront of my consciousness.
Thanks for writing this. I just read Sports Illustrated and the comments about the Steelers’ loss all revolve around Ben Rapes-lisberger and HIS redemption and HIS feelings. Screw that! He’s the criminal. What about the girl who hasn’t been able to return to school? What about her? Her redemption? Her feelings? I just can’t read any more about it, really. It’s like the real victim was just a receptacle, a hole if you were. It’s disgusting and it pisses me off.
when did the rumpus change it’s listing from the most popular posts of all time to of recent? when the list was of all time it had the tao lin thing and a headline that said something like ‘illegal whores get gang fucked’. it was the headline that had erroneously led men looking for porn to the site, at least that’s what i understood in my head as to why it was one of the most ever popular? ‘the careless language of sexual violence’ headline sits in it’s place now. the juxtaposition for me just screams of cognitive dissonance, not of the rumpus, but of american culture right now.
Yes. Thank you for writing this.
“An eleven-year-old girl was raped by eighteen men. The suspects ranged in age from middle-schoolers to a 27-year-old. There are pictures and videos. Her life will never be the same. The New York Times, however, would like you to worry about those boys, who will have to live with this for the rest of their lives. That is not simply the careless language of violence. It is the criminal language of violence.”
My mother was raped when she was 11. After the rape she could not leave the house to go to school. Ultimately she became depressed and anxious. Her parents didn’t know what to do. They checked her into a psychiatric hospital. There she was given electroshock therapy, during which one of her vertebrates was cracked. Later they used a firehose on her. At age 21 she was raped again. She is in her 60s now. She still feels what happened to her. I feel it in her. She is articulate but didn’t tell me about these things easily. I had to guess, based on her reactions to certain news stories we talked about.
Careless language springs from careless feeling and thinking–from feelings of invincibility, from deficits of imagination and empathy. We are, none of us, untouchable.
But back to news and to other horror stories:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4078677.stm
Thank you for your masterful attempt to redirect the reading public. I only pray that your essay gets more widespread readership than that other periodical.
I also hope that our society begins to understand that the conditions that lead to these atrocities start long before the crime. It begins in the home, where girls are socialized to be responsive to the “needs” of men. Before we are even old enough to start school, we are taught to look “pretty”, to display empathy for others, and to not be a “whiner”. We are told that our fathers love us, and would never hurt us. So when daddy’s displays of “affection” gradually turn sexual (this happens far more frequently than is reported), we believe it is as he says, a display of affection. After all, he is the one who is supposed to teach us propriety.
The media tells us that our bodies are supposed to be attractive and sexy, in order to meet the sexual desires of men. Some of us just allow the weight to pile on, because it creates a barrier that minimizes the amount of time we have to spend trying to figure out whether men who speak with us are trying to get somewhere with us or just being friendly. Some of us use our sexuality to get what we want, and are denigrated for it, even though we are only doing what we were taught.
We learn so much more effectively through action and role-playing, and the lessons we learn through these methods are often in direct contrast to the lessons that are only presented verbally.
I am by nature a skeptic, but one can only hope that through active application of rational discourse we can perhaps begin to change these attitudes that are so ingrained in our culture.
I’m glad somebody said something. It was painful to read how the attackers lives would never be the same, how the victim had to be relocated because SHE we receiving threats, and how some people were claiming she was asking for it in the way she dressed.
So many men and one little girl. How could she be to blame? Anyone who knew it was happening, even if they were not a part of it, were guilty in this disgusting crime.
It doesn’t matter how a girl is dressed… especially when she is a minor… you DON’T RAPE A HUMAN BEING.
Thanks Roxane. I was also disgusted/enraged by that piece. Here’s a cut-and-paste of an email I sent to the reporter. It’s all shrill and outraged, but I don’t see how it couldn’t be.
To James C. McKinley R.:
I was outraged by the wrongheaded and morally irresponsible angle of your article of March 8, by the way its chosen quotes seem to cry for the “community” and the young men who raped that child. If you look over the quotes that you chose, do they not seem to insidiously point blame in the direction of the eleven-year-old and her family?
I am not interested in berating you or taking you to task but I was curious as to whether, in hindsight, you agree that the slant of the article was egregious in any way, or at least misguided.
I read a piece on the literary website The Rumpus that was prompted by your article. The URL is below. In its beginning, your article is discussed at some length and I agree with the author’s treatment of your decisions. You should read it. Especially the beginning.
Let us treat heinous violent crimes committed against children with the gravity they deserve. Let us not discuss the hearsay clothing habits of eleven-year-old rape victims. Let us not choose quotes that blame mothers for gang rapes of children.
The hackneyed notion of a community being “torn-apart” or “destroyed” or “shaken” is an imaginary, unquantifiable trope. Sure it’s lazy journalism, and it’s boring, but these are only the first and most benign of your problems. With this article, you and your editors are beyond bad taste and shaky judgment; you are planted squarely in the realm of the repulsive, the inexcusable. If those 18 alleged rapists have lawyers, those lawyers loved your article. Those lawyers are smiling and joking to each other that you must be working for them.
https://therumpus-production.mystagingwebsite.com/2011/03/the-careless-language-of-sexual-violence/
Sincerely,
Jonathan Pappas
as a 10 year rape survivor and former rape victim advocate, i thank you so much for writing this. i have been covering it as much as possible on my own blog and updating through change.org in the hopes of the NYT growing a conscience.
thank you. truly.
Hi Roxane,thanks for writing this. I read both articles a couple of hours ago and, as a rape survivor and the mother of an eleven year old I can’t stop thinking about it. I’ve tried to find a response from The Times and can’t find any. Has there been any? Why are there no reader reactions on their site? Or have I just missed it? Thanks,
Carolyn
@Carolyn The Times’ response was lacking:
https://therumpus-production.mystagingwebsite.com/2011/03/ny-times-responds-to-backlash/
Tony Porter gave an excellent talk at the T.E.D.Women’s conference in D.C. last December, “A Call to Men.” He bravely discussed the topic of violence against women and how boys are taught to dominate and abuse women from early childhood. He told his own personal story of being invited to a gang rape by the older cool kid who lived across the street in his NYC neighborhood. Tony knew he had to show up, but he also knew that he could never go through with it. His account gives insight as to why he could not commit such an atrocity. Here is the link: http://www.ted.com/talks/tony_porter_a_call_to_men.html. Today, Tony runs an organization that educates men on how to treat women.
I think that Tony is on the right track, but he is up against an entire world that teaches boys to dominate, abuse and hate women. I think it has something to do with ignorance and fear. For centuries, men have feared the power of a woman. Our bodies do miraculous things that they cannot, like giving birth and producing milk. Rape can destroy a woman’s ability to have children. In some cases of rape, especially gang rape, men will slice off the woman’s breasts.
Men also fear our intuition, our spiritual prowess, our unique mental capabilities, our strength and our endurance. Chief Dan George said that what one fears, one destroys: “If you talk to the animals they will talk with you and you will know each other. If you do not talk to them you will not know them, and what you do not know you will fear. What one fears one destroys.”
It is really important to have this discussion about language and its role in subtly condoning and normalizing violence against women. There is a lot to unpack here. But why not take a moment, while considering all of this, to make a donation to an organization that supports women’s autonomy and health? After reading your article last night Roxane, I went to an event for Access, an organization founded by clinic escorts. A woman who manages a clinic in Oakland received an award and mentioned that there have been girls as young as 11 who have received treatment in her clinic. Here is a link to Access and another organization, IPAS that also provides essential health services for young women and girls.
http://whrc-access.org/
http://www.ipas.org/
You know, there’s a word that means “forced to have sex” — rape. It drives me INSANE when reporters refuse to use the word. They talk about propriety and not wanting to use ‘nasty words like that.’ Meanwhile, they’re shoving graphic details down our throats. The media loves to spike ratings by getting as graphic as possible while pretending to be appropriate.
My best friend was gang raped in college, though she’d never call it that. It took her years to even utter the word rape. “Sexual assault” was much easier for her (and for me) to accept. And I think that’s fine — survivors have the right to choose whatever words they like. But for a reporter to say that a child was “forced to have sex,” and to caption a photo of the site of a 18-man gang rape as the place where the “assault” occurred… it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Our culture has spent far too much time equating rape and sex, and reporters using phrases like that just make it worse.
One of the hardest conversations I had to have with my friend was when she cried about how her first sexual experience was being gang raped. I told her that it wasn’t her first time having sex — it was rape, and that’s different. She was still a virgin, and she had the right to choose who she would have sex with for the first time. She felt better, but I know she still worries about it. A culture that equates rape and sex is a culture that has embedded doubt and anxiety in the back of her mind.
I remember having seen those rape stories on the soaps my mom watched when I was about 9 or 10 and what I understood from them at the time was that after a girl or woman was raped she would end up getting rescued by someone who loved her despite being damaged and that there love would be more pure, powerful, and epic than just a regular relationship. PURE. The idea that these characters had kept their purity (which according to christian ideals they would have lost with their virginity) because they did not chose to have sex and since sin seems to be primarily attached to losing ones virginity later when the character and her rescuer make love the sex then is pure. This is at least the message my young brain understood which in hindsight is a strange and frightening message to be getting.
However, I’d say the message was not historically unusual. Women have been depicted for centuries as being of nature, and so prone to the nature of their “sinful” bodies. Their purity was the only thing deemed to be of value and the only way to protect that purity was to keep a girl under the control of first her parents and then her husband so that she is never responsible for her sexuality. Men are depicted as creatures of sense and so if they give in to sin it is because they are seduced by the natural body of a woman not by the nature of their own body. These attitudes are still clearly showing in the NYT article, despite all the theoretical societal changes in attitudes towards sex.
When a society has spent so long believing women shouldn’t have sexual control it is not surprising that they continue to confuse rape and sex, just horrifying.
Thank you for the article. It makes my stomach sick to think about how tramatized that little girl is. I have a little sister who is 11, and I want to castrate all of those men/kids who raped this poor, innocent girl. I guarantee that all 18 of them will rape again! The punishment for such hideous crimes need to include castrating. And, even if they get put in prison they are separated from other prisoners who may kill them. Honestly, throw them to a pack of hungry wolves and let them get what they deserve. Maybe if our country had harsh punishment for such things it would happen less often. Putting your parts in places they are unwanted, deserves to have that part removed. no more chances. Don’t give them special treatment in prison, chop it off and let them bleed to death. That may sound harsh, but they are all damaging their victims’ lives, in more ways than one. Psychologically, emotionally, physically and socially to name a few. The pain of the victim never goes away, NEVER! 11 years old, with her entire life left to live, and now she has to live it with the devastation of gang rape!!! My heart goes out to her. For those of you who are worried about the evil-doers that raped her: how would you look at things if this happened to your daughter, or even you? you may want to rethink this one . . .
If you do indeed have friends who “. . jokingly say things like, “I just took a rape shower,†or “My boss totally just raped me over my request for a raise.†you need new friends. I personally have never heard these expressions used.
I keep hearing this phrase “rape culture”, yet I have never heard anyone publicly say anything good about rape. In fact, there is a weekly TV show called “Law and Order: SVU”, which shows extremely, extremely negative representations of rape. This is not a “rape culture”.
Paul,
Maybe you should actually read Roxane’s piece before commenting. Just a suggestion.
@Paul: “Law and Order: SVU” is a good example of rape culture. The entire show is based on creating entertainment value out of sexual crimes–*specifically* sexual crimes, and no others.
The core of the appeal is in the viewer’s voyeuristic enjoyment of stories about violent, transgressive sex. The fact that the whole thing is coated with a moralistic tone and hero cops who “cure” the rapes by catching the perps only serves to make the voyeuristic pleasure feel legitimate, so that the viewer can watch without feeling any qualms.
Blech.
@Paul, denying rape culture is the same as denying we require air to breathe. This is not a matter of debate. A rape culture does not necessarily mean that rape is glorified but it does mean that with shows like SVU, rape is watchable and if rape is watchable, it is not being treated carefully. Rape should be unwatchable and unreadable if we’re talking about it accurately. It’s not about talking about rape as a good thing. Save for sociopaths and psychopaths, I don’t believe anyone truly believes rape is good. Not enough people, though, understand just how damaging rape actually is. You’re free to disagree.
Violent rape destroys people’s lives and forces them to live with psychological traumas that linger until the day they die. Your description of the aftermath of rape is insufficient. And everyone in their heart knows what a horrible, horrible thing that is to do to someone, especially a little girl.
The article from the Times would be a monstrosity of journalism if those men had been prosecuted and found guilty of the crime. BUT THEY HAVEN’T YET! Your entire critique of the article is based upon a massive leap to the conclusion that all of these men are guilty before there’s even anything approaching definitive proof, and that is a *very* dangerous thing to do. You are potentially damaging the credibility of every woman who will ever accuse a man of rape.
Look at the Duke lacrosse case. If you start a witch hunt against a potential rapist and it turns out that he is innocent, you’re just crying wolf. Because of the psychology of these kinds of atrocities, jurors – especially women, ironically – will look for any reason to believe that it isn’t true, either it didn’t really happen or the woman was “asking for it”. Every time you cry wolf, you give them one more reason not to believe a rape victim. You damage her credibility. You make it easier for rapists to get off.
The Times article was fine. It was free from personal opinion and only presented the facts. The quotes from the community members were unfortunate, but don’t blame the reporter for the people in the local community trying to pretend something this horrific didn’t really happen. Give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s doing the best he can with what limited material he was able to procure.
And please, please, please stop making a big deal out of this case until you can actually do some good by making a big deal of it. Right now, all you can do is harm.
Kelly,
Your willingness to defend the accused rapists, none of whom were named in this article, is remarkable. Sorry, but your analogy is beyond faulty–it’s ludicrous.
I hate the fact that they keep saying “she dressed like a 20 year old”. Not only is it completely wrong to blame the rape on her clothing, but it’s also wrong to talk about it as if she were 20 it would be more okay. It’s not more atrocious that these “men” raped a child, it’s atrocious period that they would do that in the least. Like there’s some magic age where it becomes a little bit more acceptable in any way.
All of this makes me so angry, but nothing more so than the fact that they’re passing around the pictures and videos. What gives anyone the right to post these images of this poor child?
What happened to her was not sex; sex requires both parties saying that they’re in it, and for the entire time and for everything that happens. She wasn’t “forced to have sex” she was raped. Don’t play around with words, James.
Kelly, perhaps you missed a few of the more pertinent details as to “anything approaching definitive proof”: a) there was a VIDEO made; that is how the police knew whom to arrest; b) at least one of the perptrators went to the police, turned himself in and confessed.
And while we are on the subject of language Roxanne, how about the ubiquitous use of the word “alleged.” I am sick to death of how often I see that word used to describe a crime that has clearly taken place. There is a video, perhaps more than one, of 18 men raping a girl, and it is called “the alleged rape” by many in the media. Someone has 3 bullets in their head and it’s “an alleged murder,” as if anyone is capable of putting more than one bullet in their own head.
Have the media become so sue sensitive that they refuse to distinguish between an actual crime and an alleged one? Or as Kelly would have us believe, there is no crime if no one is convicted yet?
Ann,
I understand why newspapers use the word alleged, but I would rather they use it simply to describe the accused rather than the crime itself. That makes far more sense to me. The only time I would say they should use alleged in reference to the crime is where there’s real question as to whether or not a crime has been committed. That’s certainly not the case here.
Brian, Bulls-eye!
I spoke out about this on Facebook and need to do it here as well. @Kelly– “The Times article was fine. It was free from personal opinion and only presented the facts. The quotes from the community members were unfortunate, but don’t blame the reporter for the people in the local community trying to pretend something this horrific didn’t really happen. Give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s doing the best he can with what limited material he was able to procure.”
Ann, it seems to me that you ramp up your own argument with so much emotion the forest and the trees become one. The writer did nothing wrong. I’m a feminist and I deplore and condemn all rape. The writer is not a rapist. And, where was the girl’s mother?
Kelly, I’m not sure how this case could be anything but a big deal but if you actually read what I wrote you would see that I used this case as a catalyst for a larger conversation about rape, representation, and rape culture. If you had read what I wrote, you’d note that I didn’t talk about the case as much as I discussed the reportage of the case which was sloppy and irresponsible in my opinion. There is no witch hunt here. Matters of justice are far, far out of my hands. I am not a lawyer. I am not a journalist. I am one woman, a writer, who wrote a personal essay expressing an opinion which you are free to disagree with. What you’re discussing here has shockingly little bearing on what I am discussing. That said, I don’t name the suspects. We don’t know all the facts of the case and everyone involved deserves justice but as far as I am concerned, it is pretty clear that something horrifying went down. There is no crying wolf here. No matter what happened, no matter the circumstances. an 11 year old cannot consent. Sex with an 11 year-old is rape, period. Drawing comparisons between this and the Duke case is ludicrous. I don’t blame the reporter for the quotations he shared. I blame him for unbalanced reporting. You make valid points but they are part of a rather different conversation.
Jenne, the New York Times themselves have acknowledged the flaws in the reportage so to say the Times reporter did nothing wrong when his own employer admits missteps is strange.
Jenne’
No one here is conflating the writer and the rapists–remember, there were 18 of them in this case-so you’re objecting to a comparison that was never made.
I find it, well, messed up that you’re asking the same question that some of those in the town were asking, with the same callousness and the same lack of awareness. Where was the mother? Really? How about where was the sense of decency among those 18 men of various ages that made them think that this was okay?
And why limit it to mothers? Where were the fathers of any of the rapists? Why is it that the victim is the one who was in need of supervision, and not the 18 men and boys who apparently thought there wasn’t anything wrong with raping an 11 year old girl? This is the problem with this article–this is what the writer and editor got wrong. They didn’t ask these sorts of questions when covering the story. They just bought into the same callous sexist framework that you’re buying into, Jenne’, that the rape wouldn’t have happened if someone had been keeping a closer eye on the girl. You know what would have stopped this rape from happening? If those 18 men hadn’t raped her. That’s who’s responsible for this rape–the men who did it. No one else.
To ask questions like “where was the girl’s mother?” is to suggest that the men involved were incapable of restraining themselves from raping this girl when they had the chance, and as a man, I find that incredibly insulting. It reduces my gender to nothing more than a hormone-enraged cock that will jam itself into any available hole regardless of whether the owner of that hole is willing or not. And yet billions of men manage to make it through every single day without raping anyone, or even trying it, or even thinking about it.
Excellent article, but I just wanted to point out why journalists don’t use “rape” in the article. There is a legal definition we must adhere to. Saying a woman was raped before the guilty party is convicted is libelous on our part and can lead to massive, expensive suits which we will lose. I hate that it is that way, but that is the legal system. We often use the language in affadavits, search warrants or court testimony–and that means phrases like “allegedly assaulted.”
Careful journalists pay special attention to such language. You will also see the word “murdered” handled very carefully among such responsible news outlets (many mainstream ones have eschewed this standard, including the AP). We have a long unsolved case of “homicide” in my town, and we never write that the victims were “murdered” because no suspect has been arrested, tried and convicted of “murder.” We always have to say they were “shot” or “killed.”
Roxane, I came back and read the rest of your article. Thank you for writing this article. I have shared it on Twitter and on my Facebook page and just finished writing a post of my own about your article. Your post needs to be shared with as many people as we can. Society needs to stop letting the rapests off the hook and needs to stop blaming the victims. I appreciate your efforts in writing this.
I have noticed not only the casual violence against women in media images and conversation, and entertainment. But in entertainment it’s taken on a more sinister vibe…rape is SELLING right now (see “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” series). The GWTDT series has horrible, disgusting rape in it–and it’s all okay because the victim gets revenge! Well, then more writers see how well it’s selling and say, “I should write that too,” (because heaven knows, we want to sell) but they have to take it a step further…and a step further from that…and rape is everywhere and thought of as ENTERTAINING. I wrote a blog post about it last summer. Argh.
http://didiexpectangels.blogspot.com/2010/06/okay.html
In one of the two (two!) sentences that use the word “rape” in this article, the girl isn’t even mentioned in one, and in the other, she’s the object of the sentence:
“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.”
Nice, Mr. McKinley, nice. You can barely use the word rape, and even when you do, you make the rapists the subject of the clause.
Brilliant, Roxane. Makes me so proud to know you in cyberland.
I was sexually abused when I was 5-years-old. Despite years of therapy and an amazing wife, I don’t guess I’ll ever fully overcome the feelings of fear, isolation, self-loathing and mistrust that were virtually imprinted upon my DNA at such a young age.
Obviously, I’m appalled by what those sick fucks did to that 11-year-old girl. One commenter wrote that the men should be castrated. She’s got my vote.
Roxane, I think your story raises some important issues. However, I can’t help but wonder if in the end you have unwittingly contributed to rape culture sensationalism. At the very least it appears you’ve been disingenuous and self-serving.
You write: “How do you write about violence authentically without making it exploitative?†as if, in the wake of rape, our first concern should be the writer’s moral compass.
You disparage TV and the media for its careless handling of rape and in the same breath take an awe-shucks-I-feel-lousy-about-writing-that-rape-scene-in-my-latest-novel stance. I dunno—it just doesn’t seem right to acknowledge your failings and still “cash in†on the rape-crazed zeitgeist.
In response to one commenter (Paul), you write: “Rape should be unwatchable and unreadable if we’re talking about it accurately.†Seriously? Then, why are you writing about it? Further, why do we write, if not for the sake of accuracy?
In the same way that we reinforce a child’s maladaptive behavior by reacting to it, writing about rape, in my opinion, opens the door to continuous bastardization.
If we are being responsible, I think our first job should be to listen to the victims. If they have nothing to say, we should respect their silence.
Then again, what the fuck do I know? I’m damaged goods.
Thanks for your comment, Randy. These are, indeed important issues. I do think you’ve misinterpreted some of what I’ve written. It’s a real stretch to go from what I’ve written here to suggesting I am advocating prioritizing writing over care for victims. Thinking through how rape is represented is a completely separate issue from what happens in the wake of rape. I do not see how you could draw that conclusion. I’m not talking about the aftermath of rape (though that is a very important topic and one I’m intimately acquainted with) as much as I’m talking about rape and representation. What I am doing is suggesting that when we’re writing about rape or depicting rape, there might be other, more careful ways of going about it. I don’t have the answers as to how. I am not taking an awe shucks stance in discussing my own noveI. I don’t feel lousy about writing my novel. I am trying to make sure I get how I represent violence as right as possible, no more, no less. I’m certainly not cashing in on anything. I’m not even sure what you mean with that. I didn’t get paid to write this. When I say rape should be unwatchable and unreadable, I mean we should be so accurate as to make it clear just how profound an impact such an event has on someone’s life. Finally, I am not suggesting we don’t write about rape. I am, in fact, suggesting exactly what you note… that we write or otherwise represent rape so accurately that it is not so easy, for example, to use a rape storyline as a means of increasing viewership on a hit television show.I get the sense that you’re reacting here from a very personal space and I respect that as well as the opinions you’ve voiced here. I was reacting too and there’s no way that every victim of rape or sexual abuse will see the discourse about rape handled the way they want. I’m one voice in a discussion that should and will continue.
Roxane wrote: “Thinking through how rape is represented is a completely separate issue from what happens in the wake of rape.”
I’m not convinced this is entirely true; otherwise, why even concern ourselves with how rape is represented?
Instead I think the two are terribly intertwined, and that’s exactly why the issue is so vexed: how do you represent the horrific in a way that doesn’t somehow exploit or aestheticize it?
I’m guessing that many of these effects are out of our (writers’ and other representers’)control: what I find repulsive, someone else may see as a turn-on. Representation is just one half of the equation; reception is the other.
That said, the narratives produced around any sort of experience *do* shape how both survivors and others perceive it (e.g. “It must have been her/my fault”). And that’s why we have a responsibility to tell versions of the story that don’t fall along the easy fault lines (as the NYT piece did). We don’t have complete control how our version will be received, but we still need to put it out there; otherwise the prevailing story maintains its dominance….
Case in point: what story(ies) can you tell about this photo? http://msnbcmedia1.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/g-110313-cvr-miyagi-8p.grid-12×3.jpg Where do you start? What’s your angle? What do you want to achieve? And what are the myriad way viewers can interpret?
Then consider how this “photo” has been created. It’s not a straight shot. But does it tell a story that is more accurate than aerial footage? From whose perspective?
These are not easy questions, but they’re real. And they’re what we have to deal with….
Excellent article. Thank you. We’ll repost! Thank you for everything you do to #stopabuse.
Is it just me, or is this yet another form of silencing this conversation?
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7472373.html
Roxane, I read your thought-provoking essay first and much of the conversation in the comments that followed before actually reading the NYT article. I had heard nothing about the story previously.
Here is the sentence in the Times piece that really got to me, as a human being, a woman, and the mother of a 15-year-old boy and an almost-10-year-old girl (who loves to wear “tight” jeans and is suddenly into lip gloss AND riding her new bike around the neighborhood, sometimes unsupervised):
“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. Among them is, if the allegations are proved, how could their young men have been drawn into such an act?”
Lord have mercy is all I can think when I’ve stopped shuddering enough to actually be able to get my mind around that. It’s hard to say what part of it is most sickening — the “if proved,” or the “how could…,” or the “their young men,” or the “drawn into” or the “such an act.”
Thank you for writing so clearly here about the impact of language and representation. The way we talk about, write about, and depict rape or any violent and/or sexual crime against a child–girl or boy– (or an adult, for that matter) — the stories that we tell ourselves and others — clearly can serve to perpetuate the crime — both in a specific, horrible case, like this one, and in general, by contributing to our cultural ability or willingness to rationalize (is it going to far to say “feed”?) sexual violence committed, for the most part, by men and boys. The scope of the problem, revealed by the reality of this horrific crime against an 11-year-old girl AND by the story and discussions we hear about that crime, sickens and scares me more than I can say.
P.S. I read Mary Karr’s memoir “The Liars’ Club” not long ago, which included a heart-breaking account of her being raped by an older neighborhood boy when she was very young (8 or 10? I can’t remember exactly)…also in East Texas, I believe. Similar place, different time; one rapist, not a gang of 18. But the point is that I remember thinking as I read it–sort of by way of comforting myself–that what Ms. Karr described happened a long time ago, in a different era, really. And that my own precious daughter was growing up in a much more progressive, less ignorant time, thank God. So she could never be the victim of a crime like rape in our neighborhood, in our small town in rural Virginia.
I can tell you that denial died hard today. I need to find some resources to help me help my kids (and my future grandkids!) now that my eyes are open to the possibility that it’s never going to go away–even if a whole lot of people in a whole lot of places work very hard to change things. But we can’t not try.
At least some things are written about carefully, albeit creatively, by the Times’ writer:
“forlorn” Christmas decorations and “abandoned” family pictures.
Indeed. Objects all.
Roxane, thank you for writing this.
Roxane, undeniably important post. This is what appals me about otherwise fascinating new school rappers like Tyler the Creator from OFWGKTA entertaining the persona of a rapist. I mean, how dare he? Naturally, using horror in rap, as intended by the artist, can be really meaningful, offering an indifferent uncovering, if you will, of horrific material as part of his deliveries, I understand. But, either way, his entertaining the persona of a rapist should not be made ironic, if his target is gangsta, because such an effort pales compared to its subject matter, nor are its provocations meaningful, it provokes merely repugnance and misplaced aesthetic, to my mind.
Fantastic essay. However, i was distracted by the Dolce and Gabanna ad on the side that portrays a shirtless man holding down a woman who has her hips against his while several other men watch: an obvious example that the problem goes beyond just casual language describing rape. We are constantly surrounded by images of “beautiful” men and women, involved in situations of sexual domination.
Hi Deetz, the point you make is exactly why that image was inserted into this essay. We would never run an ad like that on The Rumpus.
Fantastic article! As someone who has struggled with the repercussions of one night for too many years now, it does my heart justice to see someone who is willing to speak out against our careless use of language regarding rape. I’m curious though about the final image displayed on this page. “Forcible rape” is a distinction that has always offended me. Rape by definition is forced, it’s a needless distinction used by those who would would subjugate women in law or by those who feel the need to sensationalize “rape” as a word to reinforce the impact it should already have.
I’m curious as to hear your thoughts about publicizing the motivations of the attackers. Quite often, we hear about ‘sorry and terrible’ an attacker feels from media outlets yet I rarely have seen any publications about rapist’s motivations in news outlets. I bring this to light because I wonder if people would be less willing to defend these men if they understood. If more men were willing to speak out against this.
I already predict that this could have the reverse effect of sympathising with them or trying to humanize them though understanding. What are your thoughts on it?
Thanks for reading my comment!
A little ray of hope here: http://magazine.goodvibes.com/2011/03/21/slut-shaming-on-the-playground/ If only more parents were so aware. . . .
That said, parents alone can’t change this overwhelming cultural bent. It takes each and every one of us. . . .
Hi Roxane–
I really loved your piece. After reading it, and Zoe Zolbrod’s complementary essay on The Nervous Breakdown, I was finally able to put into words some of the things I originally wanted to write about on your comments board here, and linked to this piece in my TNB essay:
http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/gfrangello/2011/03/we-are-complicit-meditations-on-a-28-year-old-gang-rape-and-that-little-girl-from-texas/
I’m a little late to the party here, but thanks for writing this.
I hate the (whitewashed) term ‘Sexual Assault’.
Hate it.
As someone who has been sexually assaulted, but NOT raped, I really need that term. Just saying.
At this late date, I simply wanted to thank you for this fine article. A friend steered me to this article during a chat about offensive retail advertising.
It will take courage to lead an existence. Any life.
I understand the hesitance to say that gang rape is worse than rape. I think it’s just because it sounds too much like what rape apologists say when they say a rape is not that bad if it’s spouse rape or that it’s not that bad if the woman was passed out drunk. But they say those things to make it more acceptable for the rape to happen. Knowing that you are completely on the victims’ side, I think it’s okay to say that a gang rape is way worse. The rape tends to last longer and be more violent. But I think the main thing is that a rape done by a single person is terrible, but you know there are terrible people here and there in the world, so it doesn’t really surprise you that there are rapists out there. What disgusts me about gang rape is that you can find a group of 18 men of all different ages that are willing to participate in something so horrifying. It’s gang rape that makes it so blatantly obvious that a rapist is not just one creepy, disturbed guy hiding in the bushes. Rapists are everyday men (and sadly, boys in this case). All men are fed the idea that a female of any age is there for their sexual gaze and pleasure. And we have no idea of knowing which ones actually buy into it until they act on what they’ve been taught.
Thank you for writing this article. This is one of the most comprehensive articles I’ve read concerning rape culture, I wish everyone could read it.
wonderfully written article, but a request for your book when it comes out. please include a warning about possible triggers. i wont read something with the detail you’ve suggested will be in your book and it would absolutely trigger emotions im not yet ready to deal with.
There was a case here in Ireland where a women was raped outside a nightclub. She had passed out after the man, who was described as a pillar of the community, bought her a drink and CCTV had footage of carrying her outside to the car park where he raped her. At his conviction, there was a queue of over fifty townspeople IN THE COURTROOM and in the presence of the victim, to shake his hand and offer condolence.
My english professor is having us read this for class- its fantastic. I was unaware of the story until today.
At almost a year later, there should still be an uproar about this.
Thank you for writing and publishing this.
The vast majority of commenters here are females-It would be awesome if more men & boys started being outwardly vocal against rape. This would help to discourage their fellow males from this disgusting behavior and character. It would be helpful and reinforcing to hear it not just from women but from their guy buddies and male authority figures. Rapers & potential rapers should be rebuked, shamed, and violently discouraged from every direction and viewpoint- men and women should be resolutely united on this and all genders should participate in the act of speaking out. It is very encouraging to know about the man who is doing this at TED! thank you to who posted that.
Thanks so much for addressing such a painful subject, Roxane. My brother is a deputy sheriff who told me that one of his inmates at the jail was arrested and charged with rape, and that the inmate already served 10 years for a prior rape conviction. My brother went on to say that 10 yrs was too tough a penalty. He actually said, “It’s not like he killed someone.” I couldn’t believe he would think of rape in such a casual way. Right now I’m really into watching true crime shows on the ID channel, and I cannot believe how many of the perpetrators in sexual assault/homicide cases have a history of sexually violent behavior. Some of them are child molestors and rapists who’ve only served 5-10 years in prison. Once they get out, they go trolling for subsequent victims. It’s so sick that sex crimes aren’t punished as harshly as they should be.
Jenne, it doesn’t matter where the girl’s mother was. Or where her father was. The issue here is the men and boys who raped a child. Her parents are not responsible for that. The rapists are.
Where is the father??? Why is he not hunting down and executing those 18 men??? As a father, I must say that I would have no rest until these men were dead or I was.
Just stumbled across this. It sounds like the story is even worse than originally reported: http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Court-files-tell-of-repeated-rape-of-girl-in-1690589.php
I have some sympathy for the writer of the story though. The victim was a minor, so you can’t write much about her or even really spend much time talking to her. It’s also a follow up story, just as charges are about to be filed, so the obvious story is on the perpetrators and the town. I think it is perfectly reasonable for a town of 9,000 to be shocked that so many of their community would join in on a gang rape, and the impact of so many families in such a small community all having criminal household members locked away for a while has got to be huge. There is almost always blowback against the victim and their family too, and to ignore it is disservice to the victim. Most of the objectionable content is based on actual quotes from the community, so it is hard to put this on the writer. All in all, this seems like all this is an obvious follow up story, and one worthy of being written.
I’m also not sure the focus on the perpetrators is really a bad thing. Helping people to recognize that rapists, while unquestionably horrible criminals, are everyday people in their community, sometimes even prominent ones, is important. If you want men to stop raping women, sadly helping them to empathize with victims is probably not nearly as effective as telling the story of how lives of *perpetrators* are forever destroyed (and I didn’t detect even the slightest hint of sympathy for the perpetrators on behalf of the writer). That’s a part of the story that is not told often enough and thoroughly enough.
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