Sign Petition to Hold NYT Accountable for Rape Culture!
March 9, 2011
by The New Agenda
|h/t to Shelby Knox for starting this petition and to Joanne Bamberger for making us aware of the crime.
The New York Times reported today on the gruesome gang rape of an 11 year-old girl in Texas. You can read about this travesty here.
You can also read how the NYT reporter then proceeds to blame the 11 year-old victim (emphasis added):
Residents in the neighborhood where the abandoned trailer stands — known as the Quarters — said the victim had been visiting various friends there for months. They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said.
Ah, thanks James C. McKinley, Jr. If you hadn’t paraphrased things (in a way which frankly makes little common sense), how would the public have known that IT’S THE VICTIM’S FAULT she got gang-raped???
Sign the petition to let the New York Times know victim blaming is NOT acceptable here! And send this to a friend to do the same!
Signed!
They also quote a source who blames the mother…as though it builds the case against the child. I can’t believe the Times printed this garbage. What were they thinking?
“Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?” said Ms. Harrison, one of a handful of neighbors who would speak on the record. “How can you have an 11-year-old child missing down in the Quarters?”
Uhhhggg, how atrocious.
Rather than asking, where was her mother, somebody should be asking, where were those boy’s mothers? Where were their fathers? Who lets rabid children roam the neighborhood unattended??! But of course I’m not really blaming parents, I just get so sick and tired of hearing how a girl’s mother has to keep her on a short leash so she isn’t victimized. If there are that many male predators roaming the streets, perhaps we should have a curfew for them and demand they restrict their activities so it’s safe for girls to leave their homes?
But I digress, the NYT was completely irresponsible in their reporting and should be held accountable.
yttik – thanks for being about the only thing that gave me a chuckle since this article came to our attention!
Apparently several of the thugs are adults:
Five suspects are students at Cleveland High School, including two members of the basketball team. Another is the 21-year-old son of a school board member. A few of the others have criminal records, from selling drugs to robbery and, in one case, manslaughter. The suspects range in age from middle schoolers to a 27-year-old.
This has me sick to my stomach. The poor girl – and her mother…oy!
P.S.: I’ll be waiting for Naomi Wolf’s piece defending the rapists!
The New York Times responds, trying to save face but all they are doing is defending the piece:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_.....ape-victim
Don’t you just this explanation?
The Times responded Wednesday evening to The Cutline: “Neighbors’ comments about the girl, which we reported in the story, seemed to reflect concern about what they saw as a lack of supervision that may have left her at risk,” said Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokeswoman for the paper. “As for residents’ references to the accused having to ‘live with this for the rest of their lives,’ those are views we found in our reporting. They are not our reporter’s reactions, but the reactions of disbelief by townspeople over the news of a mass assault on a defenseless 11-year-old.”
Where to begin with this? I almost feel like rewriting the whole NYT piece with the scenario being a black person who was assaulted by a white NYC police officer. Imagine such a piece, referencing casual commentary about how the black victim was dressed and “Where was his mother?” at the time of the assault? As well as commentary by the police officer’s friend’s and family’s concern about how this incident will affect the rest of the police officer’s life?
P-lease!!! Such an article is understood to be offensive and yet this article on the gang rape of an 11 year old is defended as just reporting the facts???? Sounds like the New York Times needs MORE WOMEN REPORTERS AND EDITORS BECAUSE THEY JUST DON’T GET IT. Anyone know what there numbers are? I’d love to know just how women are represented at the NYT in all positions going up to the highest.
I read this article this morning on AOL news, and I was astonished. Henrietta, thank you for mentioning what would happen if this article had been re-worded, and instead of this being a crime against a young girl, it had happened to a black person. People would be up in arms! Don’t they see the hypocrisy? I was appalled. Truly disgusting.
Yttik, thank you for this. your statement needs to amke it in mainstream discussion.
“Where were their fathers? Who lets rabid children roam the neighborhood unattended??! But of course I’m not really blaming parents, I just get so sick and tired of hearing how a girl’s mother has to keep her on a short leash so she isn’t victimized. If there are that many male predators roaming the streets, perhaps we should have a curfew for them and demand they restrict their activities so it’s safe for girls to leave their homes?”
Henrietta, the comparison with a race incident is always very revealing. but the sensitivity for racism has not come by itself. Ida B Wells – Barnett is the person who needs to be credited for changing the attitude and designing all the strategies which eventually became very successful.
Do not underestimate that part of the reason sensitivity to racism grew was, IMO, because of huge money backing obama’s candidacy for the presidency. Once a “black man” was supported by the corporate elite for the most powerful position in the world, white men (who always held that position) developed a new found respect for the AA community, in general.
It’s about money and power, which is how most men define success and what it means to be a man that should be respected. As long as women don’t have real power, they will never get the respect necessary from men to be viewed as their equals.
Kathleen, I do believe our country has been sensitive about race for some time now, way before Obama came into the spotlight.
Marille, your words about Ida B. Wells are inspiring and help me to imagine the hard work, courage and patience the whole process must have required, in terms of re-educating an entire nation about race and racism. I am easily frustrated just from convos about gender and sexism with friends and family! So I must remember the brave women who came before me who fought racism and sexism with steady resolve.
Henrietta,
Our country has always been more sensitve about racism than it ever has been about sexism, but I beg to differ with you that this “sensitivity” was not impacted in a major way when obama obtained the kind of corporate support he received to the tune of almost a billion dollars. No woman has ever been given anywhere near that kind of financial backing, not even Hillary, who clearly was far more qualified than obama to be president. When they backed obama, the power elite made it politically correct for pundits, politicians, and the American people, in general, to publicly call out racism without hesitation whenever there was even a hint of it and even when NONE existed (obama certainly played the race card to his political advantage every chance he gets).
Like it or not, the harsh truth is that kind of support has yet to happen when it comes to sexism and I am convinced it has a lot to do with obama’s receiving the “nod” from the predominately white power elite as worthy of their support for the presidency. Men have historically always given their respect to any man who has this kind of clout.
Despite women’s gains in achieving the experience men have always told us we lacked in order to run for political office and be taken seriously as a candidate (even though most women surpass the men in qualifications), they never have been given that kind of backing from the male dominated corporate elite.
That’s not a coincidence, that’s the predominately white men recognizing that women are catching up, they are quickly becoming the minority, and so they’d rather support the less qualified black man than the more qualified woman for president. The majority of men (and definitely the power elite) do not want a woman to be president, because they still believe that is an exclusive male preserve of power and prestige. Once a woman gets that exalted office, it will be a sea change forever in how women are viewed in society.
Sadly, what women found out during the 2008 primary and general election is that, rather than fighting alongside women and demanding the eradication of sexism, like the women suffragists did, when they stood up against racism and fought for the blacks to have the right to vote too, we’ve found, instead, that we are dealing with the same kind of sexism from black males as we’ve gotten from white males.
Now the issue turns to race….
http://abcnews.go.com/US/gang-.....d=13095476
Henrietta, the link got me only the first page. are the rapists now the victims and black panthers are coming for support?
Signed!!
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