Mary A. Lynch is a professor of law, the Kate Stoneman Chair in Law and
Democracy, and director of the Domestic Violence Prosecution Hybrid Clinic at
Albany Law School.
By Mary A. Lynch
Surprising as it is to folks like me, who have worked for years
on the issue of violence against women, some Americans are uninformed about how
to talk about sexual assault without offending survivors and their allies. Just
consider President Donald Trump’s tweet last Friday in which he suggested that
a woman’s failure to immediately report an assault cast doubt on her veracity,
or the women on CNN’s recent focus group who shockingly — and callously —
minimized the alleged crime victim’s claims.
This is not complicated or hard, although we pretend it is. Our
problem is that we get freaked out by power and control allegations whenever
sex is used or alleged to be used as a tool of oppression or power. If we want
to progress to a fairer and more peaceful world, we can no longer pretend or
refuse to talk about the pervasiveness of sexual assault of women in our
families and communities.
Here are five simple rules to follow:
• Don’t say, “He said/she said.” That expression itself
contains, in our psyche, the false belief/ excuse that only sexual assault
allegations are difficult to prove or disprove. It also contains the implicit
bias assumption that women lie about sex to obtain power over men. This
assumption may well be a byproduct of our historically sexist laws, which were
meant to protect men by requiring more evidence in sexual
assault crimes than in any other type of crime.
• Don’t speak as if a man’s request for promotion and his choice
to put himself in the public eye gives him a due process right. Given our
historical legal obsession with property rights of white males, it is no
surprise that our cultural psyche gets upset when a man might miss out on a
promotion, but not quite as upset when a woman is sexually harassed into
leaving her job. The U.S. Constitution affords individuals the right to due
process when a constitutionally sanctioned right is at stake. So if, for
example, the state accuses you of a crime, that’s a threat to your liberty and
you deserve due process. It is not the same damage to your life as missing out
on a job promotion.
• Don’t speak as if a man’s reputation is more important than a
woman’s. Yes, it is true for all individuals that rumors and attacks on one’s
credibility or allegations that one was violent, assaultive, deceptive or
manipulative are challenging to defend against. However, it is also harder to
be successful in proving allegations of sexual assault against privileged and
powerful men. In the case of Supreme Court nominee Judge Kavanaugh, remember he
is an adult who has had every privilege and power available in this country.
That doesn’t make his reputation more important. It makes questioning it
riskier. His reputation is not more important than, for example, those of
Professor Anita Hill or Dr. Christine Ford.
• Assume a strong likelihood that the person with whom you are
having your conversation may have been sexually assaulted, fears being dragged
through unwelcome scrutiny, did not report it, and will never tell you all
that. That assumption is consistent with the data. If you don’t know scores of
folks who have been sexually assaulted, then you are not someone in whom your
friends, family and community members have confided (yet) with this
information. Work on becoming that trustworthy confidant.
• Don’t call her the “accuser.” She is an alleged crime victim.
In most cases in which a person describes a criminal act perpetrated by
another, the media uses the term “alleged crime victim.” When this issue is
sexual assault, we suddenly all default to the term “accuser,” which shifts the
burdens of proof and persuasion to the victim/survivor. These terms matter.
We can and will get better at this conversation. We must for our
children, family, friends and community.
No comments:
Post a Comment