This Sunday in the New York Times Magazine there ran a piece about the state of depression in female soldiers. (It can be viewed at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/magazine/18cover.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=magazine)
I have very mixed feelings about the article, most of which I have trouble attributing to the actual problem described in the piece, or the way it is written. Author Sara Corbett mentions herself in a reporting context many times in the piece, but never offers her opinion-- a feature that I feel is almost detrimental. At first read, I'm struck by the ubiquity of the word "alleged", as each time rape, depression, or anything negative affecting the women comes up. While I understand the technicalities of having to include this word, I found it distracting, and in the case of the first woman who's story was told, downright misleading.
As Corbett explains the story of Army Specialist Suzanne Swift, who went AWOL from her troop and then blamed it on her "alleged rape", all the red-tape words make it seem that the author (and therefore the reader should) believes the story of rape to be a lie. When the reader is reintroduced to Swift at the end of the 16 pages they finally see the psychlogical impact of the experience, and only then can start to believe her claims.
Interupting Swift's story are the results from a number of interviews Corbett conducted with female soldiers, as well as statistics regarding rape, depression, and how they're affected by gender when it comes to wartime politics. The overarching theme of the piece seems to be arguing that women are more vulnerable to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), due to the combination of witnessing war violence, and experiencing rape. But what Corbett fails to offer is much of a solution; while she advocates a women's center in California for the discharged female soldiers to rehabilitate from their PTSD, she doesn't seem to have much to say on any methods of preventing rape, or in-army PTSD screenings.
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Yes, I also find the word "alleged" to be misleading in its colloquial connotation. We all know that, denotatively, the word "alleged" means "legally unresolved" but the colloquial meaning of the word is much closer to "so-called." As in "Justin is her boyfriend––allegedly––but when I saw them together he was acting like he never even met her!"
One also never seems to find "alleged" used elsewhere so ubiquitously. One never reads "the seven-year old was traumatized by the alleged rape. The child further alleges that she was also denied food by the alleged rapist."
More subtly, if you remember the case of the little girl Abeer-- the 13 year old Iraqi who a US soldier raped and murdered after tying up her family and burning them to death. Almost every major news outlet called her a "woman." If a US soldier raped and killed a 13 year old American girl, do you think the headlines would read "US soldier rapes and kills woman"? I seriously doubt it.
So what can we glean from this? What are the racial and gender complexities surrounding the presentation of sexual victimization in the media. Is "girl" the marker of ipso facto innocence, whereas "woman" is the marker of ipso facto suspicion? Does the American media have a reason for calling the 13 year old a woman, other than poor research? (And if it's poor research, then why did bloggers have the girl's passport photo and date of birth simulataneous to these erroneous broadcasts?)
Or was this a cynical instance of censorship? Call the girl a woman because raping a woman is a lesser crime than raping a girl and we want to bury this story.
Have you ever heard anyone say that raping a woman is a lesser crime than raping a girl? I haven't. But it's clearly the case. It's interesting that women in childbearing years are often blamed for their own abuse. Children and the elderly are often given a pass (although if the elderly woman has a youthful presentation, she is usually a less sympathic victim.)
The older I get the more difficult it gets to parse gender descriptions in media, to make any real sense of it. Or maybe it becomes more painfully clear...
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