Ladies, We Have A Problem
A young woman who pressed rape charges against two New York City police officers could not be believed, in part, because she was drunk. When an 11-year-old Texas girl was allegedly gang-raped by 19 men, The New York Times ran a story quoting neighbors saying that she habitually wore makeup and dressed in clothes more appropriate for a 20-year-old. The maid who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of rape has been discredited for being a liar, and The New York Post claimed she was a prostitute. The young French woman who is pressing charges of attempted rape against Strauss-Kahn — an event she has recounted in a novel — has been painted as an unreliable narrator, young, overdramatic and unstable.
None of us can know the veracity of any of these women’s claims. But the standard response to any public attempt by a woman to upend expectations of consent, passivity and silence — whether she does it calmly or hurriedly, in court or in fiction, or while wearing a corset on Michigan Avenue — is still that she is a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty.
Please see my earlier post on why I think SlutWalks are stupid/counterproductive.
