To you comments in comments, I don’t know whether one would call the oppression of women or of children the more painful and critical issue in the world—not that one needs to commensurate about multiple disasters, where, after all, both abused populations are huge—but I think it is clear that of the two, there is even less discussion/analysis/identification of the blatant and universal oppression of children than of women. These oppressions share some key features, such as the default positions of chattel ownership by the male overlords, and perhaps (in the case of children) by the adult overlords.

Sure she does. That’s why I’m for giving her the right to an abortion and to leave her parents’ house freely if she is abused, even if there’s no proof of that abuse.

I bring this up because runaway teens are a big source of fodder for the sex industry, and changing the way we think of teen girls and their rights and their agency would be a good start to altering this trend. We could give them options besides “live on the streets or go back to your parents unless you have actual broken bones, in which case we’ll put you in foster care.”

“She got too drunk at the bar.”
“She was a whore to begin with.”
“She didn’t fight back hard enough; she must have really wanted it.”
“She’s a lying bitch out to totally screw that innocent dude.”
“What did she expect, with those boobs, walking alone at night, walking alone period, walking alone without an assault cannon, 8 bodyguards and a pack of Dobermans?”

Please, when I finally understood that men talked, I began to condemn them.

Too inflamatory? Who says?

What to do? People need to let newspapers know what bothers them about how rape is presented in the paper and why. Don’t just contact the reporter. If the newspaper has a public editor or reader advocate, get in touch with them. Ask for a meeting with the top editors. Write a letter to the editor. Your paper probably will not reform itself overnight, but you may get rule changes in the style book, which dictates the language newspapers use for certain situations, and you may get new directions given to copy editors to watch for certain language that is particularly common and problematic. It’s not much, but it’s a start.

(I’m not suggesting you cannot be pissed off until you take these steps, just saying that newspapers don’t exist in a vacuum and can be subject to community pressure, particularly if it comes from a respected group that works with victims of sexual assault or domestic violence, rather than an individual who can be dismissed as overly sensitive.)

It’s at http://www.nesl.edu/clsr/projects/SDVP/svnews/jlp/public/

Disclosure: I am an alum of the school and currently work there.

I thought I was going to explode when I first found that out!