. 1 .

Rape Myths, Language, and the. Portrayal of Women in the Media

In spite of the attempts by feminists and psychologists to explain. away rape myths ovm: the last two decades, studies have fuund that tho~e myths aie still alive and welL 1 In his 1gSz book, Men On Rape, Tll)lothy Beneke interviewed a large iample of men and found that many not only blamed fumale victims fur haVing. been taped, but admitted to being tempted to eommit rape themselves:• Other stodies conducted in 1!)87 that victims are· $till widely blamed for inviting while pe!'petrators are seen Mlustful. men driven beyond endurance.3 In 1991, The New York Times featured an article >bout rape victims who blame themselves.' A telephone survey of 500 American adnlts .taken for Time. magazine in May 1991, found that 53 percent of adults over age Sf\y and 31 percent of adults between thirty-five and li>rty believe that a woman is to be blamed for her' rape if she dressed provocatively." And at the end of 1991, Newsweek pointed .out that the public's disinclina· tio!! to believe either Anita Hill during the Justiee· Clarence Thomas hearings on sexual harassm.mt or Patricia Bowman, who said she was raped by W>.lliani Kennedy Smith, ..show the lengths skeptics will go to deny the possibility of sexual ~!fense. •• Because rape myths continue to hold such sway, and because they lie at the of my discussion in this book, they must he explained again.· ·

rape;

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Virgin or Vamp

The Rape Myth> Rape is Sex This most powerful myth about rape lies at the root of all the others. It ignores the fact that rape is a physical attack, and leads to the mistaken beliefthat.rape does"not hurt the victim any more than does sex. The idea that l-ape is a sexual rather than an aggressive act encourages people not to take it seriously as a crime-an attitude frequently revealed in comments

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defense attorneys and newspaper wlumnists. {" Xf it's inevitable, just relax and enjoy it," said Clayton Williams in 1990, when. he was ·candidate for governor of Texas."1) Rape crisis 'counselors and researchers define rape as an act of violence in which sex is us~ as weapon, and point out that a woman v.'Ould no mor_e "like» rape _than

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she would like being mugged or murderbnrhood friends, colleagues, therapists, policemen, bosses--not seedy loners lurking in alleyways. 16

The Assailant Is Usuall![ BUick or Lower Class This essentially racist l'erception leads to the widely held misconception that most rapes are committed by black men against ~hite women, or by lower class men against higher class women-« conception bolstered by the press, which tends to give these stories more l'lay than ·other kinds of rapes {see the next chapter). It is true that proportionally more rapes are committed by the urban poor, but the majority of rapes oecur between members of the same class and raceP According to a U.s.· Department of Justice study conducted between 1973 and 1987, 68 percent of white wpmen and 8o percent of black women are raped by men of the same race. The study also found that. 57 percent of all rapists are white, 33 percent black, and the rest are either of mised or

other races. 18 Women Provoke Rape Be seen as sex rather than violence, a woman's sexuality is still seen largely as the property i>fher present or future husbaod, "rape victims is seeo having been "spoiled" or "dirtied"• by an assault. Among Muslims, for example, a woman who has been raped is .sometimes disowned by her fiance or family for having brought' them shame by, becoming sullied and thus unmarriogeshle. St. V'meenl's Has- · pita! Rape Crisis Ceoter iu New York has bad to shelrer rape·victims from the threat of murder by th~ fal:nl\ies for these reasons. 22 Victims

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of nonsexual c;rimes are never seen -in this way~ Rape Is a Punishment for Past Deeds · This myth ~pplies to all sorts of victims,. of both crimes and at:eidents. It is as ancient as the idea of .late itsell; yet plays a living part iu people's thinking about tragedy. The myth may be a defense mecbaoism: If we believe that victims briug on their misfortnnes becanse of past bad behavior, then we can convi~ce ottrselv·es that we are immune by virtue of having been "good." This is. no~ rational thinking, of conrse. but therapists and counselors who work with victims of tragedy llnd this sort of protective mythologizing very Common. The tru!h is that almost crimes aod accidents happen entirely at random and have nothiug whatsoever to do with the past behavior, personality, or beliefs of the victim. Yet over and ovex: agaio; the victim of a is at:CUsed of having brought on !he crime, if not because of ber actions at the time of the assault, . then becaUse of her lifestyle before it. ·

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mpe

. Won:en C111 Rape for Revenge · The idea that women like to use accusations of rape as a tactic for revenge, or simply to get attention, has been popular for thousands of years. In Susan llrownmiller's dellniti>Ce history of rape, Against Our Will, she pointed out · The most bitter irony of rape, I think, has 'been the historic roasculim> lear of lhlse accusation, alear that has found expression in mole folklore

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Virgin or Vamp ,

sinee the Biblical days ofJoseph the Israelite and Potiphar's wife, 23 that was giyen new life· and meaning in the psychoanalytic doctrines of Sigmund Freud and his !Ollowers, and that has formed the crux of the legal defense against a rape cljarge, aided and abetted hy the set of eviden· tiarY, standards ,(consent, resistance, chastity, corroboration) designed with ·one ooiiOOtive purPose in mind: to prOtect 'the male .agaitlst a scheming. lying. vindicthte woman.«

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The tendency of women to lie about rape is vastly exaggerated in popular opinion. The FBI finds that 8 percent of reported rapes are unfounaed, but other researchers put the figure at only,_ percent." A recent police study of three Califomia cities disclosed that the rate of uafounded rnpe reportS rao at.!~ than 1 percent, half the FBI's count.,.. The reality is that the. usual n:action of a woman to her rape is not to report it at all because she is afraid of not being believed and because it brings down upon henuch injustice .and insensitivity on the part of the police, her friends, the judicial system, and the press. XI The me· dia·s invasive treatment of Patricia Bo~3n, the woln~ ytho accu:red William Kennedy Smith of rape, is a case in point. (Womt)n also refuse·. to report rape out.of fear of retaliation from the assailant."") A woman willing to· risk such humiliation an.d trauma for a lie is rare indeed. · One function of all these myths, and perhaps the reason why they . persist to this day, is to protect nonvictims from feeling vulnerable."' If · people can blame a crime an the victim, then they can find reasons why that same crime w:ill not happen to· them. A way to do this is to hold a crime victim up to a set of old-fashioned moral standards far more rigid than normally applied in everyday life, ro that the victim is bound to Jail and look like a "bad" woman. For example, Jennifer Levin was widely blamed for going into Central Park at night with Robert Chambers fur ser as if young men and women had· not been sneaking off to the park together for decades. lndeed, sex crimes in general 'have the power to bring out some of the most hypocritical of double standards .bout the behavior of men and women, victims ('them/ and

are

nonvictims ('us'}.

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As • result the rnpe myths, a sex crime victim tends to he squeezed into one of tWO images-she is either pure and innocent, true victim attacked by monsters-the "virgin" of my title--r she is a wanton fe.'

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male who provoked the assailant with her sexuality-the ..vamp." These two puritanical images are a.t least as ancient as the Bible. They can be found in the ~tory of Eve _as temptress and corntptor (the "vamp). and in the later VictO:rian ideal of woman as pure and unint~rested in sex:

RapeMytk, Language, and lhe Portroyal ofWornen in the Media

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(the "virih>"). Indeed, rape is often seen as a punishment for women , , who dare to be sexual at all. :JO Whether any one victim is labeled a "virgin" or a "~p," and wltich myths 'are brought into play, depends both 'on the characteristics of those who are discussing the"""" and on the circumstances ofthe crime itself. Coin,!: over the vas.t amount of sociological literature on this subject-studies of how people .react to rape seenarios-I have idenoned eight factors that lead the public, and the press, to blame the victim for the rape and to push her into the role of"vrunp. • · · 1. If she knows the assailant. (Victims receive more S)'lllpathy if the assailant is a stranger.31) . ~. If no weapon is used. (StUdies show that the public is more inclined to believe a rape happened if a weapon was used.30) 3· If she is of the sall\e race as the asSailant. (Victims tradition- . ally attract the most sympathy if they are white and their assailants black. Blacks raped by whites tend to receive more press attention than black,on·black crime, which receives the least of alL33) 4 If she is of.the srune class as the assailant. (She Ml1 be blamed less if the assallant is of a lower class than she."") 5· If she is of the sattte ethnic group a5 the assailant. (If preju-

dices to do with ethnicity or nationality Clltl be called in to slur the assailant, the victim will benefit. 35) 6. If sbe is young. (Older women tend to be seen as less pro. vocative."") 7· If she is "pretty.· (Studies have found that· although people tend to be biased against attraetiv:e rape victims, they are biased in fawr of a~tractive assailants. 37· The idea is. that an attractive man does not need I'D rape becanse he can get all the women he wants, a reJlection of the • assailants are ~otivated by lust" myth. This !lndingapplied tellingly io the Chambers/Levin case.) 8. ·If she in any way deviated from the traditional female se;i role of being at home with fumily or childl'rising, therefore, that the public and the press tend to combine the bias in our language, the traditional images of Vlomen, and rape myths into a shared narrative about sex crimes that goes like this: ThE: "Valllp" version: The by her looks, behavior or generall:g loose mMality, drove the man to such. extremes of lu•t that he was wrnpelled to commit the crime.

been

woman;·

The ·-vir.gin n verSion: The man, a depraved arul perverted monster, sullied the innocent victim, who is now a W.rtyr to the flaws of $0Ciely.

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VIrgin (If" Vamp

Both of th.se narratives are destructive to the viCtims of rape and tx> public understanding of the subject. The vamp version is destructive because it blames the victim of the crime instead of the perpetrator. The virgin version is destructive because it perpetuates the idea that ~men can only be Madonnas or whores, paints women dishonestly, . . and relies OJ). portraying the suspects as .inhuman monsters. Yet, my research bas shown that reporters tend to impose these shared narrative..,;..which are nothing but set of mental and verbal eli~n the sex crimes they cover. like a cookie-cutter on dough, .forcing the crimes ·. into proscribed shapes, regardless of the specifics of the case or their own beliefs. They do this through their choice of vocabulary, the slant of their leads, and the material they choose to leave. out or put in, ,.,;d they often do it unconsciously. The problem with this shared narrative, however, as Joan' Didion put it iri au Apri11g8g leclure at the Columbia . School of Journalism iil New York. is that it "gets between the reporter and the acttiru situation." It leads, she said, to telling "tiny lies." ·Journalists continue to portray sex crime victims in these two fulse images because they are· fureed to by the rape myths. If a reporter 'publishes less-than-flattering details of a rape .victim, then those details. are immediately used against her. If a reporter chooses tx> suppress those details in order tx> protect the victim.from being i>ersecuted by them,. . then the reporter is buying into the virgin image and committing biased journalism at the same time. As long as the rape myths hold sway, ' journalists are going be continue to be .fuced with tbe excrutiating choice between painting vietims as virgins or vamps-a choice betvl·een lies.

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