Bride Kidnapping in the News

kidnap2.jpg from Noriko Hayashi's "Grab and Run: Kyrgyzstan's Bride Kidnappings"-- Newsweek (Web)
http://www.newsweek.com/grab-and-run-1634

US Media Representations of Bride Kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan

by B.F.

In her 2001 article “Feminism versus multiculturalism”, Leti Volpp argues^[1] that minority women are frequently portrayed as “victims of their culture”. That is, Western accounts of violence against minority women tend to paint minority women as lacking in agency, and completely under the control of “cultural” forces (which somehow do not affect white, Western women). One particular problem to which this applies is that of bride kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan (and Central Asia in general). There have been a few representations of this phenomenon in US media in the past ten years, most of which have confirmed Volpp’s thesis. I will examine these representations in depth, and argue for change in US media reporting of foreign violence against women. In particular, we will see that there is some misrepresentation of bride kidnapping in US media, and that there are many parallels that can and should be drawn between bride kidnapping and violence against women in the United States. Because this is inherently a women’s issue, we will be referencing work from feminist media studies and feminist anthropology.

Bride kidnapping is a phenomenon in Central Asia, and Kyrgyzstan in particular, that has gone through an “apparent resurgence”^[2] since the decline of the Soviet Union. It tends to involve the abduction of a woman by a man for marriage with or without her consent. The nonconsensual ones (the ones that are the topic of this paper) often involve “three or four men, a car and vodka”.^[3]The woman is often captured during the day as she is walking down the street, or alternatively, she is lured out of her residence at night to be abducted. This is often a traumatic experience for the victim of the kidnapping. Kidnapped women are frequently raped or face threats of rape if they do not accept the marriage.^[4] Furthermore, if a kidnapped woman escapes, she is often rejected by her family and village, either because she has dishonored Kyrgyz tradition^[5], or because the kidnapping itself dishonored her family, and the only way to restore honor is to go through with the marriage^[6], or possibly for some other reason, depending on the analysis. Bride kidnapping can be viewed through a broader lens of a desire to go back to “traditional” Kyrgyz customs after gaining independence from the Soviet Union.^[7]

There are several reasons why bride kidnapping is a particularly interesting phenomenon to consider in the context of US media representations of violence against foreign women. There has not been so much reporting done on bride kidnapping in the first place, compared to many other reports of “conflicts” of women’s rights with multiculturalism. For example, there have been many more discussions in the Western media of various institutions banning the wearing of hijabs. Because of the relative lack of reporting on bride kidnapping, I imagine that there is also a less “self-aware” reporting. That is, the reporting that we see is not filtered through a lens of awareness of minority women’s rights, which might come about from discussions about a phenomenon that is reported on more frequently. Thus, I think that by studying a less well-known phenomenon, we can see more directly the ways that news institutions themselves view violence against women perpetrated in other countries.

In “Feminism versus multiculturalism”, Leti Volpp gives one perspective on how minority women are represented in the West. She writes that “incidents of sexual violence in the West are frequently thought to reflect the behavior of a few deviants – rather than as part of our culture”, whereas acts of violence in the Third World “are thought to characterize the cultures of entire nations.”⁸ She argues that the consequences of this representation is that women (particularly those from non-Western cultures) are deprived of agency in Western culture. That is, they are portrayed as victims, and not as people who have power to change their situations.

In my opinion, one of the major contributions to this characterization of non-Western women is the way that they are represented in Western media. My aim is to study in the particular case of Kyrgyz bride kidnappings how this is done. By looking at specific reports about bride kidnappings in the US media, I will describe the ways in which the reports support Volpp’s ideas. We will see that the representations of Kyrgyz women serve to preserve a cultural hierarchy that places the West at the top.

My method of research is as follows. I have studied three news reports on Kyrgyz bride kidnapping from the United States. The first is a website published by PBS including an article about bride kidnapping, a video, and some facts and pictures; this was published online in March of 2004. The second source is an ordinary news article published in the New York Times written by Craig S. Smith and published in April of 2005. Finally, my third source is a 2013 photo essay by Noriko Hayashi published on the Newsweek website. I want to use these reports from the last ten years to look at how modern US media portrays violence against women in other cultures, to confirm Volpp’s thesis about representations of “other” women.

All of the news reports studied included pictures of Kyrgyzstan and Kyrgyz people along with the text. In many ways, the way they use photography already marks a distinction between Western people and Kyrgyz people. They almost always depict women in “traditional” dress, often in situations that emphasize their cultural distance from the Western world. The PBS report, for example, includes many pictures of Kyrgyzstan, none of which have anything to do with the subject of bride kidnapping. Most of the pictures are of rural scenery; one of them is a picture of a woman milking a mare. All of this serves to exoticize Kyrgyzstan to the Western eye, emphasizing the differences between the experiences of the intended readers of the news and the subjects of the reports.

In some ways, there is nothing wrong with these choices of pictures. Bride kidnapping is a primarily rural phenomenon in Kyrgyzstan, and perhaps the more westernized Kyrgyz people, who might be easier to identify with for viewers of PBS, are not very likely to be kidnapped. However, I want to argue that while these depictions may be realistic, they may not always be relevant. This is an important distinction to make in these situations. There are two ways in which we are influenced by news. First of all, the facts that we learn from the news can affect the way we think about things. But, secondly, the way that news reports frame stories is just as important as, if not more important than the facts presented. While the pictures of rural Kyrgyz people we can find on the PBS website may be representative of what things really look like, the question that really needs to be asked is what purpose these photographs serve. To me it appears that they only serve to exoticize Kyrgyz people, and thus provide a way to separate the situations from Western readers of the article from those of the subjects of the article.

The Newsweek article studied relies even more heavily on photography than the PBS report. It too contains many pictures of people in traditional clothing, but now the pictures are more focused on people than landscapes. They are mostly taken indoors, and in all but one of the photographs, the subject of the picture is a person or group of people. These photographs mostly depict people in traditional dress, just as on the PBS website. However, what is most striking about the pictures here is that the people portrayed always look dejected, with their faces usually turned away from the camera. This is different from the representations of the PBS website in that everything is not as clearly focused on the cultural differences between Kyrgyzstan and the West. However, the dispirited people depicted in the photographs do invite the viewer to think of Kyrgyz people as victimized. This is in line with Volpp’s analysis of depictions of minority women: they are often portrayed as victims, and as lacking in agency.

We see that the Newsweek article too frames the suffering of Kyrgyz women in a particular way. By portraying Kyrgyz people (women in particular) as victims, it deprives them of agency. Again, it is certainly true that a large portion of Kyrgyz women are “victims of their culture” in some sense, but by framing this suffering in a context only of victimization, the essay paints a very one-dimensional picture of what the situation of Kyrgyz women is like.

The news reports also tend to unquestioningly take the stance that there is a “correct” culture, i.e. the Western one, and that non-western cultures should aspire to be more Western. This is very evident on the PBS website, which invites readers to answer the question “Should the international community intervene when cultural traditions clash with modern notions of women’s rights?”^[8]This makes it clear that the authors are painting a cultural hierarchy. One should ask oneself why the “international” (presumably this means Western) community should be intervening in Kyrgyz affairs. Certainly nobody asks whether the international community should intervene when women are raped in the United States, even though this is something that happens systematically.

The short documentary film that can be viewed on the same website poses near the end the question of the morality of bride kidnappings given that many of the abducted women end up happy in the resulting marriage. This particular question is often portrayed as a unique ethical problem facing the people of Kyrgyzstan. The New York Times article I studied spends many paragraphs describing the violent kidnapping of one woman against her will, and then ends up with a few short sentences about how she is happy with the arrangement now. I think that these descriptions serve to portray other cultures as particularly violent compared to Western ones. Furthermore, by noting that there clearly is some ethical dilemma at hand here, but not asking Kyrgyz people for their opinions, they implicitly make the claim that it is the duty of Western people to make judgments about the morality of events in other countries.

At this point, I think that I have established that the portrayal of Kyrgyz women in major US media outlets has to some extent deprived them of agency by depicting them as victims of their culture. This is not an unusual phenomenon; Volpp discusses it in some generality in her paper. It has also been studied in some other specific cases. For example, Reimers describes in her paper “Representations of an honor killing” how very much the same phenomenon has occurred in Sweden regarding discussions of honor killings by Kurdish immigrants^[9]. She comes to the conclusion, very similarly to me, that Swedish representations of these killings contribute to a picture of Swedish culture as “superior” to Kurdish culture. She writes that “the purported difference between ‘them’ and ‘us’ intersect with a nationalistic and colonial discourse.”^[10] I now want to look more closely at how portrayals of Kyrgyz women serve to elevate Western culture above other cultures, and in particular describe how this in itself can be seen as an act of violence against the women of Kyrgyzstan.

One analysis of violence is put forward by Patricia Hill Collins, in her paper “The tie that binds: race, gender, US violence.” She argues that violence is often defined in a way that benefits people who are higher up in some social hierarchy, and that the acceptance of these definitions leads to a perpetuation of those hierarchies.^[11] One example she gives is that “American soldiers who killed people during the Gulf war were excused and even celebrated,” whereas “civilians killing police in inner-city neighborhoods remain vilified.”^[12] From these observations, Collins argues for a broader definition of violence, which should better take into account the suffering of socially disadvantaged people. She writes that violence can “be viewed as a group-based institution of abuse”^[13]; this will be an important frame of reference for my analysis.

To elaborate on this idea, we can note that even according to traditional definitions, violence can be conceptualized as an act that limits another persons freedom, albeit usually physically. However, from a point of view of analyzing injustices, there is no clear reason to limit one’s definition of violence to the physical. To make a distinction between abusive acts that are physical and ones that are not physical does not seem entirely justified. In fact, such an approach could possibly serve to make abuses against people in oppressed positions seem less noteworthy than other abuses. It is frequently the case that minorities are portrayed in a stereotypical way in the media, while people in privileged positions can play many different roles. By claiming that media representations cannot constitute acts of violence, we are thus supporting a definition of violence that supports already existing hierarchies. It is in this context that I will examine the violence implicit in US representations of Kyrgyz bride kidnapping.

I think that it is appropriate to apply an analysis similar to that of Patricia Hill Collins to the reports on bride kidnapping studied here. As we have seen, the role of Kyrgyz people in the reporting done on bride kidnapping is always limited to providing facts and experiences, but they are never asked for their own analyses of the culture behind bride kidnapping. This upholds a cultural hierarchy that says that people from the West tend to be more neutral and disinterested than non-Westerners. People from other cultures are depicted as too bound by their culture to think rationally about moral questions, while Western people are able to look at things from a neutral perspective, either because they somehow are capable of diassociating themselves from their culture, or because the culture that is there is a culture of rationality from the beginning.

Furthermore, the portrayal of Kyrgyz women as victims rather than agents perpetuates certain Western ideas about “other cultures.” Volpp writes the following about the distinction between agents and victims.

The binary assumption that women in the West have choice, and that those in immigrant and Third World contexts have none, in part reflects the limits of our language in describing choice: Either one is an agent, or one is a victim. This binary also reflects historical representations of the West as the site of rugged individualism, and the East as the repository of passivity and culture.^[14]

That is, the portrayal of Kyrgyz women as victims upholds a long-standing tradition in the West of denying non-Western women agency. This is certainly an act of violence in the sense of Collins; it is a systematic abuse of a large group of underprivileged people. It is interesting to note that the way that women in non-Western cultures are portrayed as victims of their culture stands in stark contrast to the way that violence against Western women is portrayed in the United States. A complaint often raised about US news coverage of rapes in the United States is that they fail to take into account cultural conditions that are conducive to rape.^[15]

In light of this analysis of violence, I hope that it is clear how the representations studied here indeed do constitute an act of violence against Kyrgyz people, and Kyrgyz women in particular. Geopolitically, rural Kyrgyz people are typically not in a position of power, and the way that they are portrayed here only perpetuates this. They are portrayed as people to feel sorry for, not as people to identify with, or as people with their own agency.

I now want to discuss how news reporting can be transformed to depict the situation of women in Kyrgyzstan without painting them in a way that furthers Western cultural dominance over the East. Recall that there are two main aspects to the way that someone is represented in the news: the facts given, and the way that these facts are framed to give a complete picture of the situation. Of course there is a large amount of overlap between these two aspects; the choice of facts presented clearly contributes to the way that reports frame people. That is, for any given event, there are many facts about the event that can be presented in the news, and only a small number of these facts can be given. In any case, what needs to be changed is the framing of the reports. All of the news articles I have read do report accurate facts (to my knowledge), and I do think that it is important for people in the United States to be aware of the situation of women in Kyrgyzstan, but I do not think that the way that the women are portrayed represents them fairly. One way to ensure that women are portrayed fairly is to report through a transveral lens.

Transversal politics is a form of analysis which “emphasizes coalition building that takes into account the specific positions of ‘political actors.”’^[16] Handrahan writes about transversalism that it “involves maintaining a starting/standing point/perspective coupled with the flexibility to recognize, but not homogenize, other starting/standing point/perspectives.”^[17] We want an analysis that firmly acknowledges that all people are different in their backgrounds, their points of view, their identites, and so on, while simultaneously allowing for empathy between people with different backgrounds. One way to achieve such an empathy is by emphasizing abstract similarities between different people’s positions, while still acknowledging the potentially large differences between them as well. I believe that such an approach would be well-suited for descriptions of bride kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan.

There are many abstract similarities between Kyrgyz bride kidnapping and the problems that affect women in the United States. For example, one pervasive problem in the United States is sexual assault on university campuses.^[18] Abstractly, I think that there are many similarities between bride kidnapping and campus rape. First of all, they are both acts of violence that affect mostly women. Furthermore, the victims (and perpetrators) are often young, and there is often alcohol involved.^[19] Finally, the perpetrators are often acquaintances of the victims. Note that I do not mean to equate bride kidnapping with campus rape. What I want to show is that US media outlets can and should emphasize that there are similarities between the sexual violence faced by young women in Kyrgyzstan and in the United States, while still acknowledging the (vast) differences. Such an approach would serve to humanize Kyrgyz women, instead of victimizing them.

We now turn to the discussion of the ethics of bride kidnapping from earlier. We noted that one of the questions often brought up in reports on bride kidnapping is how to approach the phenomenon given that many of the resulting marriages actually end up happy. It is often portrayed as a cultural curiosity that Kyrgyz women can choose to be happy with people who have committed acts of violence against them. However, I would argue that there are certain similarities between this and the phenomenon of women who choose to remain with their abusive spouses in the United States. Again, there are many differences between the specific situation of spousal abuse in the United States and bride kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan, but perhaps by looking at the similarities we can understand better the situations of women both in the United States and in Kyrgyzstan, and more importantly, it would allow for more connection and empathy between the women in the different situations.

Of course, there are certain aspects of bride kidnapping that are not quite analogous with any phenomena in the United States. For example, we have noted that some reporters view the increased amount of bride kidnappings since the fall of the Soviet Union as a way for a Kyrgyz national identity to assert itself. This might be difficult to relate to a US context. However, we must keep in mind that the important thing is not necessarily to paint all violence against women as being similar or even analogous, but just to always remind people that foreign women cannot (and should not) be viewed entirely as victims without agency, and that while their situation is different from those of the audience of the news, it can still be understood and related to the personal lives of the audience. We must also keep in mind that there is no one “Western” experience; there are many types of people in the West who face many different kinds of oppression. Still, by connecting the suffering of Kyrgyz women to suffering that is at least geographically closer, if nothing else, to the audience of the news, we can hope to evoke at least some additional understanding.

We have seen that the way that bride kidnapping is reported on in the US media is flawed in many ways. It depicts violence against Kyrgyz women in a way that portrays Kyrgyz women only as victims, and not as agents. This is a common feature of media portrayals of non-Western women as well as Western minority women both historically and in the present. The result of these portrayals is a preservation of a cultural hierarchy that places the West at the top, and regards other cultures as inferior and oppressive. This stands in contrast to the way Western media depicts violence against women occurring in the West, with Western perpetrators. In order to portray the people of Kyrgyzstan in a more respectful way, we must turn to a transversal reporting of their situation, and try to connect their lives to the lives of Western people.

Works Cited

Akiner, S. (1997). Between tradition and modernity: the dilemma facing contemporary Central

Asian women. In M. Buckley (Ed.), Post-Soviet Women: From the Baltic to Central Asia (pp. 261–304). Cambridge University Press.

Armstrong, E. A., Hamilton, L., & Sweeney, B. (2006). Sexual assault on campus: A multilevel, integrative approach to party rape. Social Problems, 53(4), 483–499.

Collins, P. H. (1998). The tie that binds: race, gender and US violence. Ethnic and Racial Studies,

21(5), 917–938.

FRONTLINE/World: Kyrgyzstan - The Kidnapped Bride. (2004, March). http://www.pbs.org/

frontlineworld/stories/kyrgyzstan/thestory.html.

Handrahan, L. (2004). Hunting for women: bride-kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 6(2), 207–233.

Hayashi, N. (2013, November 4). Grab and Run: Kyrgyzstan’s Bride Kidnappings. Newsweek.

Reimers, E. (2007). Representations of An Honor Killing: Intersections of discourses on culture, gender, equality, social class, and nationality. Feminist Media Studies, 7(3), 239–255.

Smith, C. S. (2005, April 30). Abduction, often violent, a Kyrgyz wedding rite. The New York

Times.

Volpp, L. (2001). Feminism versus multiculturalism. Columbia Law Review, 101(5), 1181–1218.

Werner, C. (2009). Bride abduction in post-Soviet Central Asia: marking a shift towards patriarchy through local discourses of shame and tradition. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 15(2), 314–331.

Worthington, N. (2008). Progress and persistent problems: Local TV news framing of acquaintance rape on campus. Feminist Media Studies, 8(1), 1–16.

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Footnotes:

[1] Volpp, 2001.

[2] Werner, 2009, p. 316.

[3] Handrahan, 2004, p. 209.

[4] Handrahan, 2004.

[5] Handrahan, 2004.

[6] Werner, 2009.

[7] Akiner, 1997 says that after the dissolution of the Soviet union some Kyrgyz women “feel the need to return to their ‘authentic’ roots; Handrahan, 2004 writes that bride kidnapping “has come to be understood as a fundamental ‘Kyrgyz tradition’ neither imposed nor transported but home-grown on the jailoos (mountain pastures) of the Tien Shen mountain range.” ⁸Volpp, 2001, p. 1186-1187.

[8] “FRONTLINE/World: Kyrgyzstan - The Kidnapped Bride,” 2004.

     [9] Reimers, 2007.

     [10] Reimers, 2007, p. 251.

     [11] Collins, 1998.

     [12] Collins, 1998, p. 922.

     [13] Collins, 1998, p. 921.

     [14] Volpp, 2001, p. 1211.

 [15] Worthington, 2008, p. 13 gives an example of even a relatively “progressive” report on a rape which still “focused so much on the specifics of the scandal without reference to broader social structures that facilitate violence against women.

     [16] Collins, 1998, p. 930.

     [17] Handrahan, 2004, p. 211.

     [18] See Armstrong, Hamilton, and Sweeney, 2006 for an in-depth analysis of rape at one university.

 [19] Handrahan, 2004 gives an analysis of the importance of vodka in Kyrgyz bride kidnappings, and Armstrong et al., 2006 discusses in depth how alcohol shapes sexual assault on US university campuses.

Reporting on Campus Assault at Cornell

Sexual Violence, Media and Feminism:

A Local and Industry-Wide Perspective

By Anonymous

            Various local media outlets, including the student publication The Cornell Daily Sun, covered a sexual assault[1] that occurred in spring 2013 and was reported to the police. The details of the story itself as well as the consequences of insensitive media coverage were explosive. Beyond the individual harms such stories can cause the victim, flawed media[2] coverage of sexual assault can serve to perpetuate sexist understandings of rape and oppressive gender norms. A significant portion of this paper will outline a set of feminist criteria by which The Sun’s sexual assault reporting should be judged. It will also consider explanations for bias in such reporting and propose feminist solutions.

Background Information

            Media sexual assault coverage has been problematic even before modern times. Historically, media only deemed violence against women worth covering in a racially biased context, or when the rape of a white woman by a black man was named as the reason for lynching (Benedict, p. 25). The mainstream press did not cover rapes diverging from this racial stereotype until the 1950s (Benedict, p. 27), with consistent media coverage of sexual assault only emerging in the 1970s (Kitzinger, p. 15). Even then, sexual assault coverage was riddled with overtly gendered and racial bias, with victims depicted as “the wives, daughters, or ‘coeds,’ symbols of white America, ‘taken from their men by rapists” (Benedict, p. 39).

Feminist activism has resulted in major improvements in the tone and framing of rape coverage in recent decades, but biases still linger. Reporting consistently fails to provide an accurate depiction of the most common types of rape (Simpson and Cote, p.165) and the rapes media do cover tend to stereotype the victims and create stories more in line with rape mythology[3] than the crime’s reality (Benedict, p.14-18). Even reports that have been praised for reporting on sexual assault in a proactive, in-depth way — such as the Pulitzer-prize winning Ziegenmeyer-Schorer report in 1990, which described a rape survivor’s first year of recovery— have come under attack for embodying various biases about rape that are uncommon, like stranger rape (Simpson and Cote, p. 157). The Ziegenmeyer-Schorer report thus shows that attempts to rid media coverage of myths and stereotypes is a long road indeed, with “even the most careful reporting … [running] afoul of biases” (Simpson and Cote, p. 159).

Feminist Significance

            At its most basic, feminism aims to end “sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression” (bell hooks). Media coverage of sexual assault is anti-feminist when it stereotypes female victims, manipulates their stories for mass appeal and as a result, treats both the victims themselves and all women unjustly, impeding their autonomy by placing blame for rape on their actions, not those of the perpetrator. Rape is different from other crimes in that the way it is perceived and interpreted reflects deep-seated societal beliefs about gender roles and sexual relations (Benedict, p.4). The way media covers violence against women both reflects public opinion — as well as public misconceptions — about sexual assaults and shapes the way people continue to perceive sexual assaults. This mechanism is primarily at play when media upholds and continues to spread rape myths, which, through their dichotomous portrayal of rape victims as either virgins attacked by monstrous perpetrators or as temptresses who lured their rapists (O’Hara, p. 248), undermine the realities of the pervasiveness of rape and the nature of the crime — it is a crime, one of opportunity, not of passion or of sex (Benedict, p. 16). Far from being monsters or deviants, male rapists are friends or casual acquaintances, known to the victim than not (Simpson and Cote, p165). Rape myths also place the impetus on women to constrain their independence to prevent rape — not to go certain places or do certain things or stay out at certain hours — because male perpetrators are monsters, not in control of their own urges, strangers in the night that could be lurking anywhere. When media coverage of rapes emphasizes the victim’s agency over the agency of the perpetrator, or through language and framing of a story minimizes the damage the crime has incurred on the victim, it serves to enforce what Meyers describes as “social structures and values that deny male violence against women … a serious, systemic problem rooted in misogyny and patriarchy” (Meyers, p. ix).

            Feminist scholars have concluded that the process by which news stories are selected by media to be covered is inherently biased. Reporters’ selection criteria of ‘unusualness’ allows reporters to internalize societal gender, race and class biases and results in coverage that focuses on crimes against whites over crimes against minorities (Meyers, p.99-100). Black female victims of rape experience this bias in media coverage in an intersectional[4] way, subject to both sexism and racism. Media is less likely to cover the rape of a black woman, and when they do reporters are more likely to question the victim’s claims (Kitzinger, p. 30). In addition, when media does decide that a black rape victim is “credible and worthy,” they portray her in such a way that they erase her race, granting her “honorary whiteness” (Kitzinger, p. 31). Interlocking sexism and racism in media coverage of the rapes of black victims show us “society’s biases and prejudices. It tells us who is valued and who is not, whose life has meaning and whose life is insignificant, who has power and who does not” (Meyers p. 98).

Research Question

            How does the media perpetuate rape myths in its sexual assault coverage? “Alleged Rape Victim Details Attack to IPD” by Kerry Close, an account of the rape of a Cornell student as told to local police that was published in The Cornell Daily Sun on April 4, 2013, is proof that when it does occur it is not deliberately done. Just six months previous to the publishing of this article, the Cornell campus had seen a spate of sexual assaults occur over Labor Day Weekend 2012. The campus was in crisis over the issue of rape culture and the University launched several working groups to combat what was seen as a widespread problem. The April 4 article was the first sexual assault reported since the three sexual assaults that had been reported the previous semester.

“Alleged Rape Victim Details Attack to IPD” recounted how a Cornell student woke up at 4:45 a.m. to find she was being raped, as well as the sequence of events leading up to the crime — the victim’s actions that night, the fact that the victim’s girlfriend fought the rapist off, the way the perpetrator entered the building (he was in the victim’s girlfriend’s house playing drinking games with some of her housemates) and the way the victim’s girlfriend took pictures of the rapist so he could be identified. Adapting media guidelines for ethical sexual assault reporting to a feminist perspective on the issue (Garcia-Rojas; Simpson and Cote p. 160; Benedict p. 259), [SH1] “Alleged Rape Victim Details Attack to IPD” can be evaluated by five criteria.

1.      Contextualizing: promotes incorporating broader contextual and statistical information into single-event stories in order to portray institutionalized structures that allow for sexism and sexist oppression.

2.      Framing: emphasizes neutrality in the way the story is told through focusing inquiry and investigations on the perpetrator rather than the victim. This perspective allows for the correction of media’s sexist focus on the victim’s actions, which frame the story as if her actions played a role in her rape.

3.      Language: encourages using language that is truthful to the crime at hand, without implying that rape or assault is sex or using words like ‘assault’ in a way that detracts from the victim’s claims. This focus aims to focus reporter attention on the gendered bias that has been entrenched even in our system of language.

4.      Level of detail included: attempts to portray the extent of the crime that was committed. Not including graphic details of rape in the same way as other crimes is sexist, minimizing the suffering of predominantly female victims.  

5.      Anticipate the impact of publication: ensures the published product does not harm who have been rape victims; in particular, protecting the anonymity of the specific victim in the case. This is crucial to allowing women the possibility of choice — allowing them to heal and live a life defined beyond the status of victim.   

Feminist Analysis

            Close’s article could have been further developed to allow for a feminist understanding of rape, both the specific rape at hand as well as rape as a reflection of sexist norms. Firstly, the crime at hand — acquaintance rape — could have been contextualized much better, adding information to demystify the myth that rapes are perpetrated by a stranger emerging from the bushes in the night. An important statistic that could have been included is the fact that half of rape victims in 2010 were raped by an acquaintance (Garcia-Rojas, p. 31). Moreover, the article failed to address the severity of college campus rape culture — the fact that one in four or one in five women will be the victims of completed or attempted rape while in college (Armstrong, Hamilton and Sweeney, p. 483). The article could have gone on to explain the institutionalized sexism that allows for rape to occur, such as the variety of “individual, organizational and interactional levels” at college campus, including university policies that push drinking off-campus and social expectations that college kids will drink and party (Armstrong, Hamilton and Sweney).

            Another significant issue in media sexual assault coverage that can be seen in a more minor form here is how the assault is framed. It is seen in The Sun’s coverage through the focus on the victim’s actions the night of the assault — her going to a bar earlier that evening, the amount of alcohol she drank (two beers, a shot of tequila, and a whiskey and coke) and her state of intoxication (“moderately intoxicated”) (Close, p. 1).  These descriptions, while not particularly important to the rape itself — since rapes are not caused by women drinking or going to bars but by rapists wanting to rape women (Benedict, p. 16) — serve to victim-blame by directing excessive focus on the victim’s actions that night, implying that the places she went or the things she drank contributed to her being raped.

            For the most part the article uses clear, simple language that serves to emphasize the crime being a rape rather than referring to it by any terms implying consent was involved. Yet there are three areas where language could have been used more effectively and sensitively. One sentence of the article reads, “At about 4:45 a.m., the victim woke up and realized she was being raped” (Close, p.1). This passive formulation of the crime quite literally constructs the sentence so that it conceals the rapist; it also serves to put the focus on the victim in relation to the crime rather than the perpetrator (Garcia-Rojas, p. 15). Although the author likely structured the sentence in this manner — in the victim’s voice — because the reporting was based off of a report given by the victim to police, a better sentence might have read “A man entered the bedroom and raped the sleeping victim, which she woke up to at about 4:45 a.m.” In addition, the term ‘victim’ is used about 20 times throughout the article. Those who have undergone sexual assault prefer the term ‘survivor,’ as it gives them more autonomy over the trauma they have suffered. Moreover, though ‘alleged’ is used only twice in the article, it is used in the most visible places in the article, the headline and the first sentence. Because legal charges had been filed against the perpetrator, Peter Mesko, at the time of publication, instead the same concepts could have been attributed as “police say,” so as to not undermine the victim’s words (Garcia-Rojas, p. 11).

            The article, while providing an extremely detailed account regarding the victim’s actions that night, fails to provide much information about the rape itself, other than the victim waking up to the rape and saying, “I don’t like that, stop!” (Close, p.1). The lack of graphic detail, while possibly due to the reporter’s squeamishness, the lack of access to the details and The Sun’s status as a student-run newspaper, may have served to minimize the severity of the rape and, as a result, the victim’s suffering (Garcia-Rojas, p. 12).

            The final criterion — considering the impact of publication — is also the most troubling aspect of The Sun’s coverage of the April rape. The level of detail included about the victim, her girlfriend’s living situation and her girlfriend’s housemates’ group of friends, allowed for the victim to be identified through the media coverage. This is particularly egregious because privacy for survivors is an “essential condition for taking steps toward recovery” and allowing them to be given the choice whether to give or withhold their name is important, “profoundly” so (Simpson and Cote, p. 163). Simpson and Cote write that the journalist who denies or invades privacy of rape survivor interferes right to try to recover from assault (Simpson and Cote, p. 164). Ultimately, while all five criteria are important considerations in media sexual assault coverage, the issue of the victim’s identity is the most crucial consideration — and is the area in which insensitive coverage can lead to the most devastating personal impacts.

Issues raised by literature

            Feminist media studies analyses in this area have identified structural problems in the media industry, arguing that the way news media apply standards of newsworthiness is inherently biased. Although, when selecting stories to pursue, reporters cite valuing audience interest, the degree to which the story affects many lives and the timeliness of the issue, Meyers found that instead, the criteria of “unusualness” seems to override those factors. This means in practice, reporters only consider rapes newsworthy if they involve a serial rapist, the rape of someone very old or very young, or what reporters consider unusual circumstances (Meyers p. 93). Without a standard approach to evaluate newsworthiness, unusualness allows reporters to rely on rape myths as well as gender, class and race biases in selecting stories to pursue. As a result, media coverage of sexual assault is skewed, with a disconnect between the stories about rape that are being told and the realities of the pervasiveness of acquaintance rape, the rarity of interracial rape, and so on.

            Individual cases of media reporting all-too-often fail to live up to the five criteria of feminist-minded sexual assault reporting mentioned above. In addition, although police spokespeople are often considered reliable, neutral sources, while advocates for rape victims are seen as biased because of their close work with those affected by the crime, such a perspective fails to consider the reality that no person can ever be truly neutral. Much like the feminist concept of situated knowledge, police spokespeople’s statements are as affected by their values and assumptions as advocates for rape victims (Meyers, p. 100).

My own analysis

            While feminist media studies have reached a general consensus on the consequences of biased media sexual assault coverage, they diverge in their analysis of why it occurs. Some scholars argue that media reporting is a results of reporters internalizing rape myths without even knowing it (O’Hara, p.247); other scholars more explicitly designate it as a form of social control over women — dictating the actions that are acceptable and the punishments for divergence (Meyers, p. 9). Some point to the lack of gender and racial diversity in most newsrooms across the country (Benedict, p. 202-203), in particular the lack of female writers covering rape stories, which is likely due to the fact that rape is a crime story and the crime desks are largely male-dominated (Benedict, p. 5). However, dissenting scholars note that rape stories can still be flawed even when written and supervised by female editors (Worthington, p.3). Though all of these factors are play a role, the most compelling reason for rape myth-prone media coverage is a variant of Meyers’ argument: although reporters go into the field for a variety of reasons, ultimately they want to tell good stories — stories that are captivating and universal, that will matter beyond the confines of their locality. Stories that follow the familiar rise and fall of rape mythology better fit the idea of a good story and capture the imagination than the realities of rape, which are far more insidious and frightening. The trope of the stranger in the bushes is more palatable than the uncle with the wandering hands at family gatherings.

            On the whole, while media studies summarize the roadblocks preventing more progressive media coverage of sexual assault, including the way competition, deadlines and journalistic traditions inhibit divergence from rape myths (Benedict, p.7), solutions are scarce. Educating reporters about feminist media criticism (Worthington, p.2) and increasing their awareness about specific reforms needed (Benedict, p. 259) have been some of the ideas bandied around. But individual reforms cannot serve to target the structural inequities in media sexual assault coverage, which hinge upon Meyers’ astute identification of the “unusualness” criteria of newsworthiness as a methodology — or lack thereof — exposing the process of story selection to biases.       

Critical engagement with the literature

            There is no doubt that the media has a tendency to align rape victims into stereotypes of female behavior, either blameless virgins or alluring temptresses, “imposing these shared narratives … on the sex crimes they cover like a cookie-cutter on dough” (Benedict, p. 24).

Yet rapes do occur that fit these stereotypes, even if just partially, which presents a bind for reporters — whether to alter reality to avoid a polarizing portrayal, or to report the facts even if they play into Benedict’s virgin/vamp dichotomy. Although women who meet a man at a bar and have one too many drinks are not culpable in a resulting rape, the events of that night are part and parcel of how the crime occurred. There is a distinction between reporting the truth of a situation and claiming that women must not go out to bars or drink, and although it is a tricky line to tread it is one worth treading. Suppressing true stories that mimic rape myths is as damaging as suppressing true stories that are completely at odds with rape myths, since both hijack public discourse about gender. Gender bias can only be eliminated in sexual assault reporting by providing broad, comprehensive rape coverage, to expand ideas of rape beyond rape myths and portray the true terrain of such crimes.

Conclusion

Gender, race and class biases and tendencies towards rape myths exist in sexual assault reporting. One solution, a transformative feminist approach, requires local media cover every sexual assault, including attempted rapes, reported in their area. Since sexism is based on unequal valuation of people in society (bell hooks), and news coverage shows whom society values in selecting stories to tell, combating systematic institutionalized sexism in media requires such a move. If combined with proper education about sexual assault coverage grounded in feminist teachings, such a strategy will result in stories being told that more adequately represent the true risk of sexual assault in one’s community. Although such a move will still not truly represent the number of sexual assaults occurring in that community, as over 80% of rapes aren’t reported to the police (Simpson and Cote, p. 163-4), it will portray a more expansive, nuanced picture of sexual assaults and help to combat rape mythology.

The second solution, a reformative feminist approach, is similar to other proposals in that it requires reporters to be aware of their own biases (Cote and Simpson p.223-5, Meyers p.124, Benedict p. 251), but does not ask them to suppress information that backs up virgin/vamp stereotypes or rape myths, since asking such a thing is sexist — suppressing the validity of women being virgins or vamps. Feminism does not ask for women to not be either; rather, it asks for women to have the possibility to choose a wider range of possibilities of being. This feminist perspective can be applied through reporters drawing out the contradictions inherent in these stereotypes. This means subverting rape myths — the victim as both a loyal friend and a flirt — and questioning them — asking, like one reporter did, why women who consume alcohol are to be blamed for the rape (O’Hara, p. 254).

Only by expanding the conception of who gets raped — not the virgin or the vamp, which most women wouldn’t identify with, but the friend, sister, pet-owner — can we as a society combat the misconception that rape is about passion, lust, the actions of the victims or the perpetrator’s mental or drug/alcohol-related incapacities. Once rape mythology is revealed as farce and rape is understood as an act committed by friends, family and acquaintances, once victims are understood as having no culpability, can we move closer towards eliminating sexism, sexist exploitation and sexist oppression.

Works Cited

Armstrong, Elizabeth, Laura Hamilton, and Brian Sweeney. "Sexual Assault on Campus: A Multilevel, Integrative Approach to Party Rape." Social Problems 53.4 (2006): n. pag. Web.

Benedict, Helen. Virgin or Vamp: How the Press Covers Sex Crimes. New York: Oxford UP, 1992. Print.

Crenshaw, Kimberle. "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color." Stanford Law Review 43.1241 (1993): n. pag. Print.

Close, Kerry. "Alleged Rape Victim Details Attack to IPD." The Cornell Daily Sun[Ithaca] 4 Apr. 2013, 129th ed., sec. 120: 1+. Print.

Hooks, Bell. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Cambridge, MA: South End, 2000. Print.

Meyers, Marian. News Coverage of Violence against Women: Engendering Blame. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1997. Print.

O'Hara, Shannon. "Monsters, Playboys, Virgins and Whores: Rape Myths in the News Media's Coverage of Sexual Violence." Language and Literature 21.3 (2012): 247-59. Monsters, Playboys, Virgins and Whores: Rape Myths in the News Media's Coverage of Sexual Violence. Web. 27 Nov. 2013.

"Reporting on Rape and Sexual Violence: A Media Toolkit for Local and National Journalists to Better Media Coverage." Ed. Claudia Garcia-Rojas. Chicago Taskforce on Violence Against Girls and Young Women, n.d. Web.

Ross, Karen, and Carolyn M. Byerly. Women and Media: International Perspectives. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004. Print.

Worthington, Nancy. "Progress and Persistent Problems: Local TV News Framing of Acquaintance Rape on Campus." Feminist Media Studies 8.1 (2008): n. pag. Web.

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[1] The term sexual assault will be used to refer to any type of sexual contact occurring without the recipient’s explicit consent, as defined by the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women. The term will be used interchangeably with the term rape, and both will refer to rapes that are perpetrated against women, the scope of this paper. Although rape occurs within relationships, such as marital rape, this paper focuses exclusively on acquaintance rape — rape by a person who is known to the victim — and stranger rape, rape that is committed by someone unknown to the victim. Rape is understood in this paper as a forced violation of another person’s body, an act that is antithetical to sex and, in fact, can best be understood as sexual humiliation for the victim (Benedict, p. 254).

[2] Media, although it can refer to a wide array of mediums of mass communication, will in this paper only apply to newspaper coverage.

[3] [3] Rape myths are a variety of “prejudicial, stereotyped or false beliefs, prejudices or stereotypes about rape, rapists and rape victim[3]s” and encompass a variety of ideas about how rape occurs, including scenarios in which — through their actions that night, the drinks they consumed or the clothes they wore — victims are framed as liable for the violence they encounter; whereas the perpetrator is framed as being crazy and therefore, less culpable (O’Hara, p.247).

[4] Intersectional feminist activism studies the way in which systems of oppression are interlocked and thus how oppression can be suffered through multiple aspects of identity (Crenshaw, p. 1243). For example, black women experience oppression uniquely to the way a black man or white woman would.