Newsworthy. Via paper or plastic? @ Flickr.
During ”30 Rock” last night, I saw a couple of news-teasers wherein anchorman Chuck Scarborough informed us that “a sexual predator stikes again, story at 11.”
I planned to watch the news, anyway, and the story, reported by Pei-Sze Cheng, was about some creep who has been physically assaulting boys (11 to 15 years old) in the Gramercy area. (You can see the story here.) The predator’s MO is to come up behind a boy and, in Cheng’s words “[grab] his rear-end.” Let me put aside my quibble with the word choice there and think about this for a second. Grabbing someone’s butt (or their anything) without their permission = assault. I’m totally down with that. The dude in question has allegedly perpetrated five such assaults, and he should be held accountable. This is gross and wrong and criminal, no two ways about it.
But as I watched this story, though, I wondered: would this be a heavily promoted story if the assault victims were girls or women? Because even if we’re limiting our definition solely to ass-grabs, I’ve been sexually assaulted at least five times. And not once has it made the news. Neither have the vulgar propositions, sexual threats, subway rubs, handsy barflies…shall I go on? If I reported the behavior (to school authorities, the police, transit authorities, whoever), I was more likely to receive a look of disbelief and a feeble explanation that “there’s nothing we can do,” than assistance with filing a formal complaint, or the suggestion that I go to my local media outlet.
My guess is this story is being told because the victims are 1) underage (won’t somebody think of the children???) and 2) male (and thus deserving of bodily sovereignty); and because the perp is also male, and possibly Teh Ghey! Cheng describes the perp as “this fiend.” The dudes who grabbed my ass? They were, at worst, “jerks” who thought I was pretty but “didn’t know how to tell [me].”
While I’m glad that sexual assualt is being recognized as such, I long for the day when women, thousands of whom deal with this–and worse–every single day of their lives, get similarly sympathetic treatment from the media. Can you imagine if every sexual predator got a one-minute story on the news? We’d have to set up a 24-hour network.
i agree whole-heartedly. i’ve only been living in nyc for a year now, and i’ve long since lost count of how many times “men” have hit on me. cat calls, whistles, bad pick-up lines, hoots and hollers, taps on the shoulder, hand, arm, and back, general comments on my physique or my “attractiveness,” amongst a myriad of other things. do they want us to do that to them? should i go walking down the street yelling “HEY! NICE PACKAGE! I WANT ME SOME OF THAT!” followed by whistling or growling? ugh, it’s so disgusting.
and don’t even get me started on the subways. sick guys just breed there.
sort of kills the fantasy that if men were treated like women are, they would “love” the sexual harassment and feel empowered by it.
Which is why I sometimes daydream about acting like lucklys wrote. Like having National Gender-Bias Reversal Day. What might that change?
Ah yes, I can’t imagine that Chuck Scarborough (the pompous ass) would have given two shits about the fact that a man dryhumped me on the packed downtown 6 train about fourteen months ago. Neither did the other people on the subway, for that matter. Basically, a lot of people (especially some guys) consider anything less than penetration =/= sexual assault.
I would also venture a guess that if this was happening in the South Bronx instead of Gramercy, it would also not be on the news.
“I would also venture a guess that if this was happening in the South Bronx instead of Gramercy, it would also not be on the news.”
Absofuckinglutely right. I shoulda pointed that out. Hey look, I found my classist/racist-glasses! They were right there on my face the whole time!
Those of us who were “born girl” (to steal I phrase I heard Latoya Peterson use last night) deal with this shit because the culture tells us it’s our lot in life by virtue of the bodies we inhabit. FUUUUUCK.
Hey, Chuck Scarborough? There’s this essay I’ve got saved on my hard-drive you might like to read sometime. It’s about a thing called Not-Rape. I’ve saved it for my daughters and son to read, I’ll happily print you a cop– oh, not interested? I don’t believe it.
labeled, I sent that essay to my boyfriend to read and he could not figure out how the stories contained therein had any relation to my experiences growing up white and upper middle class in the suburbs. It was a *headdesk* situation.
For general edification, Latoya’s excellent, difficult essay “The Not Rape Epidemic” can be found here.
KittenFluff: Damn. It must’ve just made you want to shake him. (Shaken Boyfriend Syndrome, ON THE RISE in the Upper East Side! Story at 10.)
It’s because the victims were kids. The story would be similarly sensationalized if the victims were underage females. But hey, once you’re 18, you’re on your own! Dry-hump away, pervs of the world…
I disagree Kivrin! Street harassment of girls starts much younger than 18. I experienced my first walk-by breast cupping at 15. My sister was first propositioned by a stranger at 13. No news stories!
I don’t think so, Kivrin. Almost all of us has a story to tell about the casual sexual assaults we’ve experienced since girlhood.
*crickets*
oh shit i shouldn’t have read that not rape article, because now i am full on crying at my desk for the SECOND time today…
Sorry, JDR. Be comforted, as Happy Hour is almost upon us.
oh and it’s gonna be a doozy today PhD. If any of you tries to post a feminist critique of drowning our sorrows in the bottle, I’m just gonna have to skip it, cuz I don’t have the headspace…
@JD Regent, SarahMC: Eek, I didn’t actually mean that women aren’t harassed ’til after 18. I was talking about this news story and the fact that the public is always oh-so-outraged by sexual predators who attack children–boys and girls. But once the girls hit puberty, the public loses interest. Like, “Well, now you’re just gonna have to fight the perverts off, because you have tits now.” I picked 18 as a generic age for womanliness, but you’re right — most of us develop (and attracted unwanted sexual attention) before that.
Am I making any sense?
BTW, JD Regent, did you or your sister report the inappropriate behavior you experienced at 15 and 13? Because I gather that the only reason the Scarborough guy was talking about the latest sexual predator is because somehow this shit got reported. Do you think that the police and news outlets in general would ignore the story of five 11-to-15 year-old girls who reported sexual harassment? Or do you think that girls do tell their parents, who don’t go to the police or news outlets simply because the victims are daughters instead of sons? (Not trying to be confrontational — I’m honestly interested in how you think this stuff plays out when girls are involved.)
Kivrin, like I said earlier, society tends to blame girls for the unwanted sexual attention (i.e. harassment/assault) they receive. People think “that’s just the way it is” – that it’s something we’re supposed to put up with or take as a compliment. I do believe it’s taken more seriously when boys are victimized because, as boys, they are “supposed” to be above being treated the way girls are.
Kivrin — hell no. I didn’t even report my rape as an adult, much less not-rapes as kids. PS — I get you on the “child predator” thing. Interesting when girls start being considered women for the purposes of not considering her a child victim…
“Pei-Sze” was read by me as Pie-sized.
Mmmm, pie.
If women actually reported everything that happened to them, we’d need to at least double the police and court systems to handle it all.
@DM: If women actually reported everything that happened to them, we’d need to at least double the police and court systems to handle it all.
If the police did anything more than laugh us out of the station…
sarahMC, in reference to your comment about latoya peterson, were you at the yes means yes reading in DC last night?
**not last night, thursday night.
DFTR, I was. Were you? I’m putting a post up about it soon.
yes! i was there too! it was SO AWESOME. i was especially impressed with latoya. i talked to megan from jezebel for a bit and was totally tongue tied and nervous. did you ask a question or anything? i probably noticed you but didn’t know who you were.
I was sitting in a booth all the way in the back. I didn’t ask a question but I talked to Megan for a little while afterwards and got my book signed, hehe. Too bad we didn’t know to look for each other; we probably saw each other at some point.