Grocott's reporting on Anti sex crimes week - a crime in itself?

Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Last week was anti sex crimes week and in today’s Grocott’s Mail (27 April 2010) they had a centre spread about the week’s events. I was disturbed by the reporting in some of the stories, namely the articles entitled “Skirting the Issue” and “Every Single rape is personal.” The “Skirting the Issue” article seemed to report in a manner that defied the entire point of the week. The symbolism of the short skirt protest was to show that women are not objects and no matter what they wear, it should not be an invitation for rape or any other form of unwanted attention. The writer of this story seems to have missed this point and spends almost the entire article talking about how “some exposed thigh can be quite nice.” She goes on to make jokes about people who notice other people’s bodies as being “bodyist” and “disgusting.” The writer also makes it seem like the short skirt protest was about protesting against people looking at other people’s bodies. She also claims that “the body should be irrelevant.” I’m sure that this is definitely not a point that the protesters were aiming to make. In fact, the opposite is true. The body, our bodies, are enormously relevant and that is what the anti sex crimes week was about: Fighting to protect our very relevant bodies, and protesting the violation of them. Of course, you can’t look at a person and not see their body. That would be impossible. But how you act towards their body is what is important. Everyone’s bodies should be treated with respect. They should be respected by the owner of the body as well as by others, not just in the way it is treated, but also in the way it is spoken about. I find it hard to understand how someone who took part in this protest could report in this manner, missing the point totally and painting a picture for the public which is an image that the anti sex crimes week is trying to break down. She definitely seems to be skirting the actual issue.
The column, “Every single rape is personal” is a confused and mixed account of rape in light of race, the media’s reporting of rape, a rape scene, a recent rape in Grahamstown and some weird metaphorical images of a being in bubble wrap. Firstly, the writer fails to make the intention of her column clear. It is a jumbled garble of the topics mentioned above. She starts the column with a shocking account of the way in which rape is related to race. I find it shocking and hard to believe that 16 years after the abolishment of apartheid, a highly educated young woman can still be perpetuating such grossly misleading stereotypes and although she attempts to say that rape isn’t about race (which indeed it isn’t), she has made it about race. She then goes on to talk about how the media dehumanises rape victims and makes the public immune to the issue. The writer seems to have a specific instance in mind, and in order to make her column clearer, maybe she should have made reference to an actual media article or incident where rape was reported as a racial incident. Otherwise, she should not have brought race up at all.
Rape can happen to anyone, anywhere, anytime. No matter what their race or relationship to one another is. This is what should have been made clear, not the fact that in her mind, it is uneducated black men who rape their family members. I’m quite certain that there are many highly educated white men who also rape. The fact is not that they are black or white, educated or uneducated. The fact is that they raped someone and that is the issue.
Yes, she is right in saying that we mustn’t let the media make us immune to these issues, but I think that rape definitely should stay in the headlines. It is something that people need to continuously be made aware of. Rather I think that the media needs to report on rape differently. We get taught that we need to report objectively and unemotionally. But how can you report objectively and unemotionally about something that is so subjective and emotional? If reporters wrote their stories in this way, readers/ audiences wouldn’t be as immune to the same boring, monotonous reporting of really serious issues. If audiences could be given a story written in a human way, in a way that makes them think “that could have been me” then maybe they would be more sympathetic towards this issue.
The writer then gives a rape scenario, focussing more on creating her imaginative, metaphorical little scene than anything else. After the scenario, towards the end of her article, she randomly squeezes in a two liner about the matric girl who was gang-raped in Grahamstown last week. The way she writes it confuses the reader as to whether the scenario relates to this girl’s rape or not. Shouldn’t this rape rather have been the main focus of her story? Focussing on a real young woman, who got raped on our doorsteps? She has successfully contributed to the dehumanising process of the media, that she complains about in her column.