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Sigh.

zuzu

Read this AP account of a horrific attack on a Hispanic teenager in Texas by two slightly older white teenagers, and think about what they’re avoiding saying:

SPRING, Texas – Two white teenagers severely beat and sodomized a Hispanic 16-year-old boy who they believed had tried to kiss a Hispanic 12-year-old girl at a party, authorities said.

The attackers forced the boy out of the Saturday night house party, beat him and sodomized him with a plastic pipe, shouting anti-Hispanic epithets, said sheriff’s Lt. John Martin.

Could it be the word “rape,” by any chance?

This boy was raped, but the AP squeamishly avoids the term. The story goes on to say that the attackers were charged with aggravated sexual assault, which is the charge that seems to cover forced penetration with an object rather than a penis. Had the victim been female, the story would have said that she was raped.

What could the reason be for the AP to use the term “sodomized” rather than “sexually assaulted” or “raped?” Some belief that men can’t be raped? Or that rape is a crime of sex rather than of violence, so that if there wasn’t any possibility that the victim invited it by dressing provocatively or some such?

Also, the use of a term that also describes consensual sexual relations between gay men to describe a violent sexual assault serves only to perpetuate the myth that there’s something unseemly and deviant about consensual homosexual sex (not to mention the acts that heterosexual couples indulge in that also fall under the definition but few associate with the term anymore). You certainly never hear of the press using the terms “intercourse” or “sex” or “lovemaking” to describe a rape of a woman by a man.

And it’s not just this case that the press avoids the term — I remember that in the Abner Louima case, the press used the “sodomized with a broomstick” formulation. Perhaps, by avoiding the term “rape,” the press can distance itself from the blame-the-victim narrative it lapses into so easily in coverage of women who’ve been raped. In this case, there’s a bit of that, but it’s quickly displaced — first to the rapists themselves, then, sadly and probably predictably, to the girl that the victim tried to kiss:

Sheriff’s Lt. John Denholm said investigators believe the attack was prompted by the age difference between the 12-year-old girl and the 16-year-old boy.

“The two suspects were being mean and vicious and looking for any excuse to stomp somebody,” he said.

Denholm said the 12-year-old girl and her older brother witnessed the attack, but made no effort to stop it.

Because it always has to be a woman’s fault. She’s twelve, for God’s sake, and these two thugs beat, raped and poured bleach on a 16-year-old boy, and somehow, she or her older brother (age not specified, note), were supposed to stop this?

The victim, sadly, has only a 50-50 chance of survival due to the severity of his injuries.

33 thoughts on Sigh.

  1. Hey, let’s blame the twelve-year-old, though. Bets on accurate reporting?

    Jesus, this kid was sixteen. That’s what gets me. Sixteen.

  2. Ginmar, was it your post on lynching that made the argument that the white women in the Emmett Till and Scottsboro Boys cases were a convenient device for the white men to punish the black men and have the focus deflected to the women?

  3. Yes, actually. I believe it was. Funny how refusing to accept sexism from any group of men gets you accused of being a racist.

    Emmitt Till was a fourteen-year old boy who was murdered by two adult white men, after his friends gave him up. The white woman he whistled at kept silent. In the Scottsboro case, rape charges were preceded by white boys being ejected from a train by black boys. They then told adult white males that white girls on the train were ‘in trouble.’ Maybe the trouble was in white females sympathizing with black males in the way white males used both.

    White women definitely were racist in these times. It’s just that when I see people conveniantly parotting the woman-hating rhetoric I see elsewhere—on behalf of men—-that I get a teensy weensy bit suspicious. How come nobody called the way Anita Hill was treated a ‘high tech lynching’? How come she wasn’t in line for the Supreme Court? How come this extremely intelligent black woman wasn’t the hero for her community? To this day she’s my hero.

  4. There was only one woman in the Emmett Till case, by the way—Caroline Bryant, the wife of one of the men who killed Till. There were two women in the Scottsboro case. One of Till’s relatives gave him up, so how come Bryant gets the blame? White men sure didn’t have a probelm raping ‘no class, trashy white or black women’ but the minute those women found common ground in black men they killed the black men—-and sometimes the women, too.

    In the Scottsboro case, the women were in their late teens and were taken into jail by men who were willing to kill. What were they killing over? Do you think they might have been terrifying to those girls? Guess not, because they were racist white whores. At least that’s the feedback I’m getting. Men are men, but women are whores.

  5. Oh, and by the way, about a week ago, I wrote about how the stripper at Duke should have just told the lies that all women tell: Omit the sex, and you’re a good victim, at least where men are concerned. If she’d have said, “Well, they stiffed me, beat me, stole my money,” they would have been arrested, charged, convicted, and they would have settled. “I ran into a door. I …fell. I stumbled on the stairs.” Funny, the lies men choose to believe, huh?

    What reason did she have to undergo this ordeal? What reason aside from justice? That woman was raped. Rape is how men try and turn themselves into men and others into women—second class citizens. They do it to men and to women. That’s why I’m feminist. I won’t ally myself with men as a group, ever. Women are my first alliance.

  6. A movie that has stayed with me for probably over twenty years now is the British one from the early 80’s I think, about life in an English borstal. The movie was called ‘Scum’. Around these parts we call adult only movies R18 to be viewed by eighteen and over year olds. With the controversy surrounding it this movie was R26 in most peoples minds. It was extremely violent and featured among the character’s story lines the gang rape and subsequent suicide, under furthur tragic circumstances, of a young boy. It was a totally sympathetic telling and the audience’s compassion would go out utterly unreservedly to this boy (unlike what usually happens for female rape victims). We felt his fear, his shame etc, etc as if we had shared his experience. I am yet to see as wholly sympathetic and disturbing a portrayal of the rape of a girl or a woman in any movie. Not saying one doesn’t exist, but if it does I haven’t seen it. I’ve sometimes felt that Scum should be compulsory viewing for older boys and men so they can see what it’s *really* like to be raped, and identify with the victim.

    I think it’s probably no accident that the word ‘rape’ is being avoided in this case. If men were confronted with the untainted reality of rape, by having to identify with a male victim *of* rape, they could no longer maintain the dilutions and the fictions that they do around the rape of girls and women. Or, at least it would be much more difficult. This is what they aim to do, consciously or unconsciously, I think, when they avoid the word here. Maybe they’re trying to preserve some kind of masculine dignity for the boy as well, by which I mean not ‘feminising’ him. Grrrr. I haven’t thought that through – and then there is, as you say, that aspersion on consensual homosexual sex.

    Clearly there were men involved in the making of the movie, Scum. All but one of the actors, as I recall, were male. Honesty is possible then. But the willingness has to be there.

  7. I hate to say this, but I think it’s an example of andocentric bias. People are afraid of saying “rape” in conjunction with a male victim. Perhaps it’s because of some latent stigmatic association we hold culturally between male rape and homosexuality.

    I think it’s a tragedy, and I think it’s horrid. But it’s the best explanation I think I can come up with. If only we could be so sensitive toward female rape victims.

  8. Yeah, I just saw this story on the news and they didn’t mention that the victim had been sodomized. I remember one troll somewhere saying once that rape wasn’t rape if the rapist didn’t get anything out of it—something sexual—so I wonder if that’s the case here.

  9. I think it’s worded that way to avoid suggesting the attackers were gay.

    Also– the attackers were shouting anti-Hispanic epithets, but the presumed reason for the attack was the *age* difference? Nuh, uh.

  12. Had the victim been female, the story would have said that she was raped.

    You’re making a pretty huge assumption there. When an object is used, whether the victim is male or female, the term “sodomized” is often used–it’s the more specific term. For example:

    Prosecutors said Rippey and three other teenage girls abducted Sharer after luring her from her home following a punk rock concert in Louisville.

    Before dawn on Jan. 11, 1992, they bludgeoned and sodomized Sharer with a tire iron, sliced her legs with a knife, and drove around with the dying girl locked in the car’s trunk.

    I would agree that it’s unfortunate that the definition of sodomy encompasses both consensual and forced acts; I don’t use it to describe consensual acts, and I think that aspect of meaning is going away over time.

    Because it always has to be a woman’s fault. She’s twelve, for God’s sake, and these two thugs beat, raped and poured bleach on a 16-year-old boy, and somehow, she or her older brother (age not specified, note), were supposed to stop this?

    I would just note that while the subject passage sounds bad, the reporter has paraphrased the cop. For all we know, it’s a summary of benign, nonjudgmental answers to questions when the cop was being interviewed.

    What a horribly sad case.

  13. You’re making an assumption that she’s making an assumption. It’s not a sad case: it’s a vile case. Sad is tragedy; this was malice.

  14. You’re making an assumption that she’s making an assumption.

    Huh? How is this:

    Had the victim been female, the story would have said that she was raped.

    …not an assumption?

    It’s not a sad case: it’s a vile case.

    I’d agree it’s vile in addition to being sad. Really, is that the kind of thing we need to fight about?

  15. Oh, and by the way, about a week ago, I wrote about how the stripper at Duke should have just told the lies that all women tell: Omit the sex, and you’re a good victim, at least where men are concerned. If she’d have said, “Well, they stiffed me, beat me, stole my money,” they would have been arrested, charged, convicted, and they would have settled.

    Don’t suppose there’s a way to get that statement into the prosecuting attorneys’ hands, and suggest they repeat it as part of closing arguments?

    In any case, it is a very well-stated critique of the way dismissal and blame-the-victim mentality are so intertwined in this society’s view of rape. As always, well said.

  16. It’s the way women have always lied. “I fell….I tripped….I ran into a door. Oh, I LIKE sunglasses, really.” But when they finally tell the truth, they get called liars.

  17. The thing I find most tragic is that rape, one of the most reprehensible crimes that one can commit in our society, is often a crime that hinges solely on circumstantial evidence–that is, the competing stories of those involved. In all but the most brutal cases, the hardest part of solving the case is determining who to believe.

    I’ve seen both sides; women browbeaten into dropping legitimate charges, and good men’s lives ruined by malicious accusers with agendas. But any way you slice it, it’s horrible and tragic. I think, sadly, the only thing that can be done by the media is to leave it be–treat it as a private matter, resolved between the victim, the perpetrator, and the law enforcement agencies responsible for prosecuting it.

    Rape, to me, is too horrible a thing to go blasting on screens everywhere for the world to see and judge prematurely. I’m rambling, but regarding the latest stories, my full sympathies go out to both the young man in this case, as well as the young woman involved in the Duke investigation. They’ve had their privacies and dignities violated enough.

  18. Given the rarity of false rape accusations, freeman, I’m a wee bit skeptical that you know that many ‘good’ men. It’s interesting how often men believe that other men treat women the way they treat men. It’s also really conveniant—for the men.

  19. It’s the way women have always lied. “I fell….I tripped….I ran into a door. Oh, I LIKE sunglasses, really.” But when they finally tell the truth, they get called liars.

    I actually have a somewhat funny story about that — on my first or second day working as a summer intern for the legal services office in Ann Arbor, I rolled over in my bed, which was pushed sideways under the window, and smacked my browbone on the windowsill. I woke up with a black eye.

    I slathered it with makeup and prayed that no one would see it, because of all places to be working when something like that happened, I had to be working at the one place where they *wouldn’t* believe, or accept, the truth because it sounded like the kind of lie they encountered all the time. Fortunately, no one noticed.

    You’re making a pretty huge assumption there. When an object is used, whether the victim is male or female, the term “sodomized” is often used–it’s the more specific term. For example:

    The example you cite had a dead victim, which makes it a “murder case” rather than a “rape case,” not to mention female assailants, which complicates matters. Contrast with the Orange County gang-rape case in which the terms “sexual assault” and “rape” were used consistently in the coverage, even though

    Most of the guilty verdicts involved sexual assault with foreign objects, including a pool cue and a bottle.

  20. When I got mugged, I had bruises all over, and some teeth were knocked out. I didn’t want to go anywhere alone, so I asked a buddy to take me to the grocery store. He was black. Everyone in the store glared at him, and then looked kind of disgusted and pitying at me. One lady came stomping up to me and gave me a lecture on self respect or something at the top of her lungs, before smugly turning away, glaring at my bud, and striding triumphantly off, having demonstrated her self esteem, awareness, and superiority to everybody—at my expense.

    The oddest thing is that when I went out people never assumed I’d been the victim of a crime. There was the oddest sense that they were disappointed that I hadn’t learned my lesson about claiming space and safety for myself, and that I should be cowering at home—even though they were of course totally sympathetic, really. Honest, they were. I was a bad victim. I was angry—not even so much at the mugger, as at the guys who watched and said, “We thought it was your boyfriend”, the boss who said, “No wonder YOU got mugged”, and so forth. People wanted me to be chastened and subdued and scared so they could give me lectures but feel all manly and compassionate. They wanted to use my expereince against me. They wanted the mugging to have scared me. It was the oddest thing, but I’ve never lost that sensation.

  21. Ginmar,

    Specifically, the “good men” I refer to in this case was a singular man–a man whom is easily one of the kindest and gentlest individuals one could ever know. The accuser in this case had a proven prior history of false rape accusations, several–as in this case–where no sexual contact or attempts at sexual contact even occurred. So to counter the derision with which you meet my claim, I have truly seen both sides.

    Also, while I have been forced to watch while rape victims I’ve known have had their dignity publicly shredded and hung on display, I still think that it is grossly insensitive to presume guilt for any individual. As I’ve said before, Ginmar, I think the most responsible and tasteful thing to do is simply stand by and let the justice process work itself out, while offering the hand of compassion to those involved.

  23. Ginmar’s story reminds me of something I was told in a self-defense class years ago. They told us that people will often not intercede if they think that an altercation is a domestic issue, and that one thing you should say to bystanders if you’re being attacked is, “I don’t know this person.” It made me so sad at the time, and still does. I will admit that I’m afraid to physically intercede when I see a man and a woman fighting, although now that I carry a cell phone with me I’ll call 911 just to let someone know that something is going on.

  24. Getting here late. In the follow-up to the Scottsboro case, one of the women, Ruby Bates, later recanted & spoke out on behalf of the defendants’ innocence.

  25. focusing on arriving at a proper word/definition of the crime (raped vs. sodomized) essentially takes attention away from the sheer tragedy of this story. i agree that the term “rape” should have been used. but really, in the scope of things, the AP’s choice of wording is NOT and should not be the main issue here. exploring this aspect also draws attention away from the glaring racial element of this case.

  28. My journalism training is very rusty, but I remember taking a very long quiz in a journalism law class about rape, sexual assault, etc. and the variety of terms that could be used in stories. We were given a copy of a county’s legal definition for each of the terms, given an “interview” with the victim and had to answer questions as to what each action taken against the victim could be called. It was quite convoluted and hard to understand and the end answer was that it wasn’t “rape”, even though it was “rape” in the eyes of everyone taking the test. Why? Because that county’s definition said it would be rape only if the victim were tied up in some way.

    So while in all of our eyes what this young man went through was a brutal rape, the law of the county in Texas where it occured is likely different. And unless the AP journalist wants to be sued by the attacker’s family and shunned by the police department for false reporting, the journalist has to use the legal terms employed for that county.

    Standardization of these terms, and definitions of these terms in stories would be very beneficial to the reading public, but editors don’t want to waste space with things like that since space = money.

  30. I would have taken the class in 1996. And I don’t remember the county the law was taken from but it was somewhere in Ohio, although not the county the school was in.

  31. Hi from Texas. Things are still pretty bass-ackwards here, but according to our penal code, “sexual assault” is the term used to refer to any forced sexual act, rather than rape or sodomy. So I believe the use of the term “sodomize” does reflect the reporter’s bias.

  32. So while in all of our eyes what this young man went through was a brutal rape, the law of the county in Texas where it occured is likely different. And unless the AP journalist wants to be sued by the attacker’s family and shunned by the police department for false reporting, the journalist has to use the legal terms employed for that county.

    Like Joni said, the charge was aggravated sexual assault, so it would have been perfectly accurate to say that the victim had been “sexually assaulted.” As with the Duke case, the media has been using “rape” even though one of the actual charges is “sexual offense” because “rape” is for penile-vaginal forced sex and “sexual offense” is for forced penetration with an object.

    I think one of the media biases is that when a man is sexually assaulted, it’s almost always with anal penetration, so “sodomy” comes to mind. Whereas, when a woman is assaulted, regardless of whether the penetration was vaginal, anal or oral, and whether it was a penis or other object, it’s easier for members of the press to conceptualize it as “sexual assault” or “rape.”

  33. Don’t automatically blame the press for this one. I understand your ire, but legal terms are not standard. The FBI continues to restrict the use of “rape” to an assault on a woman’s vagina, excluding men and minors from the definition, of which this victim was both. Some codes use “sodomy” specifically for an anal assault, regardless of the victim’s sex.

    One reason it’s hard to know how many rapes are reported is just trying to figure out what gets reported as rape.

    And isn’t that girl just horrible? How could she not have bravely stood up to those vicious, agressive, deranged, murderous rapists? What was she, chicken?

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