Reading the comment thread on my previous post made me nostalgic, but not in a good way. It’s instructive, and depressing. Frankly, I don’t think I’ve seen a more perfect example of double victimization since the pre-rape-shield days.
I’m angry about this, and I make no apologies.
Rank misogyny abounds in the comments and in the press, disguised as head-shaking concern over “credibility.” The alleged rape victim is on trial before the Dominique Strauss-Kahn trial even begins. If anything bears out my earlier observation that “previous chaste character” is at the very core of the unfolding events in New York, it is the commentary—the double-sided, oh-so-thoughtful commentary—wherein various folks of various politics uphold the rights of DSK, that white, wealthy scion of privilege scarfing down his truffled pasta in uptown Manhattan with his adoring wife by his side.
The object of his attentions isn’t faring as well. But of course, there’s simply no contest here. She is a Black chambermaid, originally from Guinea; a Muslim, and possibly mixed up in a criminal scheme or two (but wait! presumption of innocence! what happened here?), and who may have embellished her application to stay in the US.
Right on cue, “sources” now claim that she’s a prostitute—and, in a slap against the union that has staunchly stood up for her through all of this, the same “sources” claim that the union was pimping her out.
All this, before the DSK trial even begins—if it does. The prosecutor, too, seems to be part of the consensus: character, not forensics, is all that matters.
Everybody is innocent until proven guilty. But that goes for the chambermaid as surely as it does for DSK. The lies she told? Well, consider another narrative:
She wanted to live in the US, and embellished her application. She allegedly cheated on her income tax. She may have criminal connections in the drug trade, but of course she hasn’t been charged let alone tried for that. Her imprisoned boyfriend, who knew what an almighty sh*tstorm was brewing, apparently suggested that she back off. Perhaps he was worried that the drug stuff would surely come to light, what with DSK’s private dicks all over her. No way, she could have said. He raped me and I’m going to make him pay for it.
No, you haven’t really come very far after all, baby. Everybody knows such women can’t be raped. The forensic evidence, however damning it may prove to be, is irrelevant. Women lie. I suggested earlier, not so tongue-in-cheek, that there should be some way of marking them as fair game, so men know with whom it is legally safe to have their way.
But, of course, they are already marked.
I’ll conclude by sharing my own fantasy at this point, which I dedicate to the object of DSK’s desire: