For the Blame the Victim Files.
A police officer in the States played the 'shame the potential victim' by displaying female high school students' MySpace profiles to their school assembly and then analyzing them as being "slutty."
But wait it gets worse.
The officer then told the 1,000 teens amassed at the school assembly that he passed on the student's pictures to a sexual predator who would masturbate to her picture.
Apparently this display was provoked by the story of a teenage girl who was tracked through her MySpace account and was then raped and shot. In the world according to the officer, the girl students' page is inviting people to do the exact same things to her.
WTF?
Yes teaching about internet safety is important for teens especially as many of their parents are likely to be clueless about the technology. But the only lesson that the female students of this assembly received was to not trust the police to keep them safe. And the boys also learned an important lesson. Through his tirade the officer legitimized the most common excuse for rape that rape apologists and rapists use, the victim was asking for it.
We're teaching our children well.
Via Feministing
5 comments:
WTF just doesn't capture my reaction to this. I suspect that the parents in this case are only outraged because of the sheer blatentness and misogyny of the officer's comments. The same parents might not see anything wrong with the Lisa ad, for example.
Gahhhhhhhhhhhhh.
I just do not have the words. That is so wrong. So so so so so wrong.
Sometimes there is just no fathoming the odd things that happen in the US. It's not all like this, but they have some freaky freaky business going on over there, and it's a whole other level of nasty.
As a side note, the Christian thing in the US has a huge influence on the perception of sexual violence, and the idea that women must be very careful about how they use or misuse their 'charms'. I'l leave that there. It's a very disturbing place.
barvasfiend - except as Anna rightly points out ALAC has done so with their 'Lisa' advert which gives all the same messages.
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