From Feministing, You will not shame me, by Samhita:
I have gotten email upon threatening email to rescind what I said last year about the Duke Women's Lacrosse Team and their uninformed support for the accused rapists in the Duke rape case. The case that was mishandled, manipulated and finally dropped on Wednesday...
...I just want to say first and foremost, I still stand by what I say and have said. It does look bad for people to support accused rapists, at that point we didn't know the facts either way. Furthermore, women of color are in fact OFTEN sexually assaulted and usually the criminal justice system and/or the media either overlook it or mishandle it. Women of color often have a higher burden of proof that they are not lying about rape. Case in point (as Amanda and others stated ): when the lack of DNA evidence was announced -- before we even knew whether the players were innocent or not -- people were quite quick to accuse the accuser of being guilty of lying...
...And what is the outcome of all of this? The general public now believes that black strippers ARE in fact lying whores and the worst thing that could happen to a strapping Duke lacrosse player is that his lily white reputation is marred by false accusations. Beyond this being a terrible precedent set for women that bring up rape accusations (still something underreported) to never ever report rape again, the racist and sexist reaction from the media and public have been to say the least profound...
I also liked this comment that followed by The Law Fairy, emphases and expletives hers:
...These guys were accused, potentially falsely. They got a lot of publicity for it, and now they're sobbing about their poor tattered reputations.Um.
These guys all but BEGGED for the publicity they got. They did media interviews OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL. They whined and screamed the whole time that the simple existence of charges against them was itself discriminatory. And because they are rich and white, the [MainStream Media] ate it the fuck UP. Make no mistake: these assholes WANTED the publicity. They MADE the publicity happen. Their LAWYERS made the publicity happen. This was a calculated media attack meant to intimidate the DA into fucking up, and guess what -- he did. Now, instead of taking their victory and going home, they want to re-write history and pretend that the MSM was against them this whole time.
I don't think I've EVER read an MSM story where a stripper was believed over a rich white guy she claims raped her. I read a few blogs supporting the woman in this case. Please, if someone could point me to an MSM article that ACTIVELY SUPPORTED THE NOTION THAT THESE PRICKS WERE GUILTY, I would really appreciate it. I'm not talking balanced articles. I'm not talking articles reporting the facts. I'm talking articles that came out and said "these scumbags did it. Listen to the stripper." I mean, crazy I haven't seen one, I know, Time and Newsweek print stories like that all the time, right?...
Someday I'll write about happy things again, like this week's episodes of The Office and 30 Rock. I need to get my own Floyd, because this VapoRub isn't going get under my nose by itself.
