Today, it seems that everywhere you look there’s a new story emerging concerning the sexual assault of a women. In the past few years, there has been movements with increasing media attention such as the #metoo movement which centralize on women empowerment, and “bringing vital conversations about sexual violence into the mainstream” (metoomvmt.org). But I think that we need to investigate why these campaigns have been getting so much attention, and I suggest that it has a lot more to do with who is endorsing them than the problem they’re actually surrounding. Is the reason the #metoo campaign has been getting so much attention because of the high profile people who have been endorsing it? With supporters such as Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga, and widespread support garnered from select attire worn to elite events, such as the donning of a white rose to the 2018 Grammy awards in support of victims of sexual harassment and assault, it’d be pretty hard to ignore (Vox.com). But the fact is that until now, until big names have thrown themselves behind such movements, there have been many cases regarding sexual assault that have gone relatively unnoticed and I argue that the media has a history of situating stories involving rape and sexual assault as needing a reason to be told, to be cared about; the fact that the crimes are a gross violation of a person’s rights is not enough unless the victim (or the perpetrator) is somehow made to be worth caring about. Such as the case with the allegations against team USA gymnast physician, Larry Nassar. This case attracted a lot of media attention, but is the reason because of the “important” people (Olympians and Olympians in training) who were affected? On the other hand, in many high-profile rape/sexual assault cases, they have often been so, because the perpetrator is someone of unusual or high status, someone who society would not normally envision as a rapist. This is well demonstrated by the case of Brock Turner. This case garnered high media attention because of who he was, an outstanding student at Stanford University, a student athlete in the upper class. Media attention surrounded him, the multiple people who testified on behalf of his benevolent character, and how a conviction would impact the “perfect” life he had been working towards. There was little attention given to who the victim was as a person; how this crime would impact her. In a letter to Turner, the victim writes:
“You have dragged me through this hell with you, dipped me back into that night again and again…If you think I was spared, came out unscathed, that today I ride off into sunset, while you suffer the greatest blow, you are mistaken…Your damage was concrete; stripped of titles, degrees, enrollment. My damage was internal, unseen, I carry it with me. You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice” (Anonymous, cited in US Weekly).
In this letter, she attempts to reinstate her place as the victim, attempts to remind us that she is the reason the act should be cared about, because of the impacts on her, not him: something that the media seemed to forget. In the article “I Am Not Your Wife, Sister or Daughter” posted on “The Belle Jar” blog, the tendency for the media and the public to speak of women who are victims of sexual assault as a wife, sister or daughter, is denounced as a way of “advancing the idea that a woman is only valuable in so much as she is loved or valued by a man”, when in reality, the fact is that “rape is wrong” no matter who is the victim, it’s a person, and doing this to a person is wrong (The Belle Jar). In “Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse” By Jiwani and Young, they discuss media coverage of the many cases of disappearing women from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. They highlight how the media tends to portray the women as others, focusing on their aboriginality or criminal histories; things that isolate them from the rest of civilized society, from us, and from victims worth caring about (Jiwani and Young, 900). I’m not condemning the recent shift in attention towards such cases but I think it is worth considering the motivation behind such attention, and why some cases seem to be worth more publicity than others.
Works Cited:
“Brock Turner’s Stanford Rape Case: Everything You Need to Know.” Us Weekly, 15 Oct. 2017, www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/brock-turners-stanford-rape-case-everything-you-need-to-know-w209237/.
Burke, Tarana. “Me too.” You Are Not Alone, metoomvmt.org/.
Friess, Steve. “Ex-USA Gymnastics doctor gets up to 175 years as abuse victims applaud.” Reuters, Thomson Reuters, 25 Jan. 2018, www.reuters.com/article/us-gymnastics-usa-nassar/ex-usa-gymnastics-doctor-gets-up-to-175-years-as-abuse-victims-applaud-idUSKBN1FD1B9.
“I Am Not Your Wife, Sister or Daughter.” The Belle Jar, 20 May 2014, bellejar.ca/2013/03/18/i-am-not-your-wife-sister-or-daughter/.
Jiwani, Yasmin, and Mary L. Young. “Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse.” Canadian Journal of Communication, vol. 31, no. 4, 2006, pp. 895.
Romano, Aja. “How #MeToo is spreading to the music industry: Grammys attendees will wear white roses.” Vox, Vox, 26 Jan. 2018, www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/26/16936616/why-2018-grammys-white-roses.
