Oops! Republican Florida state rep. Kathleen Passidomo made a small gaffe during a debate over a student dress code bill.
Actually, it was more like a gaping lapse in decency. This is what she said:
"There was an article about an 11 year old girl who was gang raped in Texas by 18 young men because she was dressed like a 21-year-old prostitute. And her parents let her attend school like that. And I think it’s incumbent upon us to create some areas where students can be safe in school and show up in proper attire so what happened in Texas doesn’t happen to our students."
 |
In his New York Times article about the brutal rape of an 11-year-old girl by 18 young men and teenage boys in Cleveland, Tex., James C. McKinley Jr. focuses on community concerns about the ruined lives of the rapists and their disapproval of the child victim's "provocative" attire.
Without offering context or explanation, McKinley writes that neighbors said the victim "dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground."
He chose to quote another resident, who said, "Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?"
None of the residents McKinley included in his report expressed any concern for the 11-year-old victim. Instead, he writes that neighborhood residents were asking themselves how their young men could have been "drawn into such an act".
The only traces of sympathy coming from residents in McKinley's story were for the perpetrators.
"These boys have to live with this for the rest of their lives," one woman said.
After reading this "news" story, it isn't that astonishing that someone like Kathleen Passidomo might buy into the rape myth that girls get raped when their mothers allow them to dress like prostitutes.
OK, McKinley didn't use the word "prostitute". And he was restating the heinousness that came from the mouths of neighbors, not asserting his own opinion.
But the story was not framed as a community reaction piece, it was supposed to be a NEWS article.
I doubt that McKinley intended to minimize the brutality of the rape, but he should have known that his story needed either more context or more devotion to the victim's ordeal.
He also should have made it explicitly clear that, however the child was supposedly dressed, the men who raped her are the only ones at fault.
Without offering context or explanation, McKinley writes that neighbors said the victim "dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground."
He chose to quote another resident, who said, "Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?"
None of the residents McKinley included in his report expressed any concern for the 11-year-old victim. Instead, he writes that neighborhood residents were asking themselves how their young men could have been "drawn into such an act".
The only traces of sympathy coming from residents in McKinley's story were for the perpetrators.
"These boys have to live with this for the rest of their lives," one woman said.
After reading this "news" story, it isn't that astonishing that someone like Kathleen Passidomo might buy into the rape myth that girls get raped when their mothers allow them to dress like prostitutes.
OK, McKinley didn't use the word "prostitute". And he was restating the heinousness that came from the mouths of neighbors, not asserting his own opinion.
But the story was not framed as a community reaction piece, it was supposed to be a NEWS article.
I doubt that McKinley intended to minimize the brutality of the rape, but he should have known that his story needed either more context or more devotion to the victim's ordeal.
He also should have made it explicitly clear that, however the child was supposedly dressed, the men who raped her are the only ones at fault.
No comments:
Post a Comment