The indictment of IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on sexual assault charges has cued up some tried-and-true media narratives about politics, international affairs and important men and their bad behavior: Powerful men feel awfully entitled to treat women poorly. Americans are prudish (especially about sex). The French are arrogant (about everything). And any woman who says she was raped might be lying and probably did something wrong.
Not long after DSK was arrested, the hunt began for information about the woman he is accused of assaulting. We learned she is a “chambermaid” in the $3,000-per-night suite where DSK stayed; we learned she is an immigrant and a Muslim. She’s a single mom. And ... that’s it. Even after invasive questioning of her friends, neighbors and relatives, reporters haven’t been able to dig up much dirt.
But the press and the public nevertheless remain concerned about the personal details of her life. More progressive media outlets have been careful to note that she wears a headscarf, which is apparently proof positive of her chastity. The New York Post insinuated she has HIV or AIDS (a claim her lawyer denies). French publications printed her name and the name of her daughter. They included quotes about her relative hotness (she either isn’t very seductive or is very pretty, depending on the paper you read) and the size of her breasts and buttocks. French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy, writing in the Daily Beast, suggested that she’s lying because, he says, hotels typically send in a “cleaning brigade” of multiple housekeepers, and the accuser in this case was doing her job alone — an argument that’s a close relative of “Well what was she doing there anyway, and why was she wearing that?” As for the other women who came forward and said DSK tried to rape them or coerced them into sex, Levy dismissed them as “pretend[ing] to have been the victim” and of attempting “to settle old scores or further their own little affairs.”
Writing in the American Spectator, political commentator Ben Stein joined the chorus, saying that DSK is probably innocent because he’s an economist and economists don’t rape people, and after all, these accusations are coming from a maid. Rumors are swirling in France that the woman is a prostitute — prostitutes, apparently, are alternately deserving of and immune from rape. And according to one French poll, 60 percent of the French public believes that she’s part of an elaborate setup to sink DSK’s political career.
But the biggest problem isn’t that the French press and public seem to have taken victim-blaming and conspiracy-theorizing to new levels of unhinged. The problem isn’t that, all evidence aside, she and other accusers are alternately painted as sluts or virgins, because it’s just easier to either jam the facts into the “She’s a whore” narrative, or imply that if she wears a headscarf, she must be sexually conservative. The problem is that we consider any of that relevant.
All kinds of women are the victims of sexual assault. Sex workers. Nuns. College students. Little girls. Old women. Women who have had no sexual partners and women who have had 100. Women who are walking alone at night and women who thought they were safe in their own beds. Women who wear headscarves and women who wear miniskirts.
Very few men, on the other hand, are rapists, but the small number who are tend to sexually assault a lot of women.
So why are we so interested in what a victim did, or what she looks like, or what her sexual history is? None of that makes her more or less likely to be assaulted. The scary truth is that women are raped because they had the bad luck of being stuck in a room with a rapist.
That is not particularly comforting information. It’s nice to imagine that if we just don’t go to particular places or don’t wear particular things, we’ll avoid being assaulted, but that’s not the case. Media focus on an alleged victim’s behavior reinforces the idea that her sexual past is a relevant issue. It’s equivalent to reporting a robbery case by investigating whether the victim ever treated friends to dinner. It doesn’t indicate that he was more likely to hand over his wallet when there was a knife to his throat.
There aren’t many people whose private lives can withstand the kind of intense scrutiny leveled at women who say they were raped. And so it’s not surprising that sexual assault is one of the most underreported crimes in the country.
In American courts of law, the accused is presumed innocent until found guilty, and DSK will be treated according to that standard. The media aren’t required to play by those same rules, but they are ostensibly interested in fairness and accuracy. Focusing on the biography of the accuser belies those interests. It also sends a clear message to rape survivors: If you report the crime, every detail of your life can and will be used against you, if not in a court of law then in every newspaper from here to Paris.
Jill Filipovic is an attorney and the editor of Feministe.
Not long after DSK was arrested, the hunt began for information about the woman he is accused of assaulting. We learned she is a “chambermaid” in the $3,000-per-night suite where DSK stayed; we learned she is an immigrant and a Muslim. She’s a single mom. And ... that’s it. Even after invasive questioning of her friends, neighbors and relatives, reporters haven’t been able to dig up much dirt.
But the press and the public nevertheless remain concerned about the personal details of her life. More progressive media outlets have been careful to note that she wears a headscarf, which is apparently proof positive of her chastity. The New York Post insinuated she has HIV or AIDS (a claim her lawyer denies). French publications printed her name and the name of her daughter. They included quotes about her relative hotness (she either isn’t very seductive or is very pretty, depending on the paper you read) and the size of her breasts and buttocks. French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy, writing in the Daily Beast, suggested that she’s lying because, he says, hotels typically send in a “cleaning brigade” of multiple housekeepers, and the accuser in this case was doing her job alone — an argument that’s a close relative of “Well what was she doing there anyway, and why was she wearing that?” As for the other women who came forward and said DSK tried to rape them or coerced them into sex, Levy dismissed them as “pretend[ing] to have been the victim” and of attempting “to settle old scores or further their own little affairs.”
Writing in the American Spectator, political commentator Ben Stein joined the chorus, saying that DSK is probably innocent because he’s an economist and economists don’t rape people, and after all, these accusations are coming from a maid. Rumors are swirling in France that the woman is a prostitute — prostitutes, apparently, are alternately deserving of and immune from rape. And according to one French poll, 60 percent of the French public believes that she’s part of an elaborate setup to sink DSK’s political career.
But the biggest problem isn’t that the French press and public seem to have taken victim-blaming and conspiracy-theorizing to new levels of unhinged. The problem isn’t that, all evidence aside, she and other accusers are alternately painted as sluts or virgins, because it’s just easier to either jam the facts into the “She’s a whore” narrative, or imply that if she wears a headscarf, she must be sexually conservative. The problem is that we consider any of that relevant.
All kinds of women are the victims of sexual assault. Sex workers. Nuns. College students. Little girls. Old women. Women who have had no sexual partners and women who have had 100. Women who are walking alone at night and women who thought they were safe in their own beds. Women who wear headscarves and women who wear miniskirts.
Very few men, on the other hand, are rapists, but the small number who are tend to sexually assault a lot of women.
So why are we so interested in what a victim did, or what she looks like, or what her sexual history is? None of that makes her more or less likely to be assaulted. The scary truth is that women are raped because they had the bad luck of being stuck in a room with a rapist.
That is not particularly comforting information. It’s nice to imagine that if we just don’t go to particular places or don’t wear particular things, we’ll avoid being assaulted, but that’s not the case. Media focus on an alleged victim’s behavior reinforces the idea that her sexual past is a relevant issue. It’s equivalent to reporting a robbery case by investigating whether the victim ever treated friends to dinner. It doesn’t indicate that he was more likely to hand over his wallet when there was a knife to his throat.
There aren’t many people whose private lives can withstand the kind of intense scrutiny leveled at women who say they were raped. And so it’s not surprising that sexual assault is one of the most underreported crimes in the country.
In American courts of law, the accused is presumed innocent until found guilty, and DSK will be treated according to that standard. The media aren’t required to play by those same rules, but they are ostensibly interested in fairness and accuracy. Focusing on the biography of the accuser belies those interests. It also sends a clear message to rape survivors: If you report the crime, every detail of your life can and will be used against you, if not in a court of law then in every newspaper from here to Paris.
Jill Filipovic is an attorney and the editor of Feministe.