Today in What the Everloving Fuck
Lara Logan, a journalist for the American TV network CBS, was sexually assaulted during the chaos following Mubarak's resignation in Tahrir Square in Cairo four days ago by a group of men. She was rescued by a number of Egyptian women and soldiers.
The statement put out by CBS was prompted by the fact that news agencies were going to break the story anyway, and was crafted with Logan's input and is carefully worded.
Since the news broke, a number of horrible people have tried to make the case that she deserved it (she's hot! She's blonde! She's putting herself in danger by trying to be a foreign correspondent!). A number of other horrible people have tried to posit gang rape as a crime that is isolated to Islamic societies.
Echidne of the Snakes has an excellent run-down of the initial horrible reactions.
But the double-punch to the gut for me, aside from reading about the initial attack, is the reaction of what we in the US think of as the progressive media.
Nir Rosen, whose reporting on Iraq I respected, mocked Logan as an attention whore when the news came out. (He has since apologized, and admitted that there is no taking that sort of vileness back. But his knee-jerk reaction to the situation is telling.)
The Village Voice's blog, Running Scared, on the other hand, demands to know the details, because it is crucial to know exactly how much Logan was assaulted, for journalism..
This is rape culture. All of the focus is on what the victim did, or the granular degree to which she suffered. None of it is on how groups of men end up assaulting women because they can.
This entry was originally posted at http://danceswithwords.dreamwidth.org/151606.html (
comments). Comment at either site.
The statement put out by CBS was prompted by the fact that news agencies were going to break the story anyway, and was crafted with Logan's input and is carefully worded.
Since the news broke, a number of horrible people have tried to make the case that she deserved it (she's hot! She's blonde! She's putting herself in danger by trying to be a foreign correspondent!). A number of other horrible people have tried to posit gang rape as a crime that is isolated to Islamic societies.
Echidne of the Snakes has an excellent run-down of the initial horrible reactions.
But the double-punch to the gut for me, aside from reading about the initial attack, is the reaction of what we in the US think of as the progressive media.
Nir Rosen, whose reporting on Iraq I respected, mocked Logan as an attention whore when the news came out. (He has since apologized, and admitted that there is no taking that sort of vileness back. But his knee-jerk reaction to the situation is telling.)
The Village Voice's blog, Running Scared, on the other hand, demands to know the details, because it is crucial to know exactly how much Logan was assaulted, for journalism..
This is rape culture. All of the focus is on what the victim did, or the granular degree to which she suffered. None of it is on how groups of men end up assaulting women because they can.
This entry was originally posted at http://danceswithwords.dreamwidth.org/151606.html (
comments). Comment at either site.