Post dealing with rape, reporting and responses to same; trigger-warning

[selenak]

And on a note of what the hell, world? You may, or may not have seen during the last week lj posts about the way the New York Times saw fit to report the gang rape of a eleven years old girl. (Victim blaming abounded.) Now I've come about an online article reporting in more detail and depth about the circumstances. It also links a video from a local news report in which the mother of one of the boys/men (he's 19) is interviewed, and quotes from said interview.

...I'm usually adverse to the whole "blame the parents" approach. Especially with rape. And it must be a horrible situation, finding out your child has done something like that. But if you raise your son along these lines:

FOX 26: What did you do? Did you talk to your son?

Hancock: Yes I did. Yes I did. I said, ‘Baby, I’m your momma. You can talk to me.’ (The victim) said she was 17 years old and that’s what he told me.

FOX 26: But Anita, a lot of people would say, ‘This is an 11 year old child. Even if she lied, she’s eleven.’

Hancock: I understand that. I understand that. I’m not defending him. I’m not defending her. I’m not defending no child because if it were my child, I would feel the same way. My point is, where was her mother?

FOX 26: If this was reversed. If your son wasn’t your son, but you were the mother of this 11 year old, what would you do? What would you say? What is justice?

Hancock: First of all, I would know where she was. That’s the justice. Not knowing where your baby is is not justice. I feel like she should be accounted for not knowing where your baby at.

FOX 26: What lesson does you son need to learn?

Hancock: ID. Identification. This (holding up nametag and picture) is what you ask for baby.

FOX 26: So you’re going to tell your son, next time he meets a girl to ask for her ID?

Hancock: Identification.

...the you are also responsible. "Identification?" Seriously? IDENTIFICATION?

Talk about rape culture.

Comments

[monanotlisa]

God, that's nauseating.

[selenak]

It's awful beyond words.

[kindkit]

consider yourself warned for trigger

A trigger warning isn't actually all that helpful if you don't also use a cut tag so that people can choose not to see the potentially-triggering content.

And maybe it was unintentional, but "consider yourself warned" sounds rather dismissive/sarcastic.

Discussions of sexual assault can be triggery for me; if I'm feeling vulnerable they can make me very upset for the rest of the day or longer. Luckily for me, today isn't a day when I'm feeling that vulnerable, but if it had been, this uncut post might've been a problem for me.

[selenak]

I did not mean to sound dismissive/sarcastic - maybe that's another case of English not being my native language not alerting me to it coming across this way. Have edited the title of the post accordingly. However, if you see a post headlined as discussing rape, isn't it like seeing a headline in a newspaper, i.e. if you do not want to read it, you can skip the entire post/article? This isn't sarcasm, either, it's a genuine question, because that's what I do when coming across articles or posts with headlines indicating something I don't want to read about.

In any event, I will make sure to give future posts with discussion of rape an lj cut (should I do so with this one retrospectively or is that pointless now? Otoh there could be people reading it who simply weren't online yesterday who feel the same way you do?) because better to be cautious than to hurt someone.

[kindkit]

Scrolling down past an uncut post without reading anything in it isn't very easy, at least not for a fast reader like me. And if it's uncut, everytime I recheck my reading list on DW I may see it again until it's off page 1 of my reading list.

And no, it's no different from a newspaper article. But newspaper articles don't warn for triggering content. If you're going to warn, I think it makes sense to give people a complete choice about what they want to see, by using a cut.

I appreciate your using a cut on the new post you made recently.

[chaila]

What. The. Hell. Even if she lied, she's 11. Even if she's 17, she was gang raped. Argh.

Not knowing where your baby is is not justice.

What is this??? That's disgusting.

[selenak]

It's so vile on every level. I was horrified when reading the original article (both about what happened and about the reporting) last week, and by now I'm furious beyond belief.

You would not believe reactions like the ones quoted in fiction. You would not want to. You'd call them over the top one dimensional satire of human beings. But this is real.

[yvi]

Apart from the issues already pointed out... I get reall annoyed at this notion that a parent always has to know where an 11-year-old is. I and all my friends were running around without supervision by the age of 7 or so. Is that so unheard of and bad?

[selenak]

Not at all. Mind you, it may depend a bit on the area where you live, but I wasn't under constant adult supervision after age 7 anymore, either. I wasn't allowed to go out at night, of course, but during the day I could run around where I wanted. And when I was 11 I was the one looking after my little brother on occasion when my parents went out at night.