notes.husk.org/likes images.

bbredux:

One of the better comments on the Jezebel thread re Chrissie Hynde. I haven’t read Jezebel regularly since maybe 2008? I stopped reading when a group of commenters piled on a rape victim for not handling the trauma and aftermath of her rape “correctly.”

Reblogging this b/c of the NPR interview. 

Can the media stop revictimizing victims of rape and sexual assault? 

And can the media stop salaciously reducing women to the violations of their bodies at the expense of everything they have contributed to society? The (male) NPR interviewer could have focussed his questions on her cultural legacy (damn triumphant considering the music industry’s notorious sexism and misogyny) instead of delving into her rape after it had already been dissected in other news outlets—especially since she initially made it clear that she didn’t want to discuss it in the interview. Isn’t her saying that she’d rather not speak about specific passages in the book enough? It would have been really easy for the interviewer to shift gears and change the topic at that point—it was a short piece on Morning Edition. But no. He proceeds to read passages to her describing the assault after he goads a lukewarm okay out of her that sounded more like frustrated resignation.

Asking point-blank about her rape seems a little heavy for Morning Edition’s usually light or newsworthy fare and the length of the segment was nowhere near enough time to explore such a serious issue with any kind of nuance.

You can disagree with Chrissie Hynde for the way she has chosen to handle her situation without shaming her. The two are not mutually exclusive. It is common for victims of rape and sexual assault to take on a portion of the blame in order to psychologically survive an assault. For many women, the complete loss of control of a situation and the fact that you were cruelly treated like a piece of meat is too painful to face.