The DSK Rape Victim is Everything but a Victim, According to the Media

June 8, 2011 By

The media response to the Dominique Strauss-Kahn rape charges is predictably horrific. The salacious gossip can maintain itself for weeks: the victim lives in a complex for HIV-positive residents (no wait! She doesn’t); wears hijab; and is “pious and respectable.” No, you say, she’s not unattractive—she’s actually got great breasts?

A full 57% of French citizens claim that Strauss-Kahn, who was set to unseat Sarkozy in the upcoming election, was set-up at his Sofitel Hotel. This, of course, is particularly concerning because the victim is Muslim.

The case has shed renewed light on France’s growing Islamophobia and general intolerance toward overt religious expression, but also on the problem of its politically, socially and economically marginalized Muslim and Arab communities and the discrimination they face. Amid speculation about whether Strauss-Kahn preyed on his victim because she is a Muslim woman who wears hijab or because he knew that her class and position made her less likely to report the crime, it’s interesting to note the extent to which her external expression of religion is being used to both lend her credibility (as her Guinean family suggested it should) and undermine her accusation.

Reading the comments of pieces that mention the victim’s religion, it’s interesting to note that of her many marginalized identities—immigrant; possibly HIV-positive; Guinean; young, single mother; black—her Muslim faith is the only one that opens the floodgates for conspiracy theorists and unconscionable victim-blaming. (There is obviously a more insidious kind of victim-blaming by the likes of Ben Stein and Bernard-Henri Levy, but I’m referring to the kind of comments that flatly deny the victim’s claim to truth on the basis of her religion, as opposed to the usual culprits of class or sex). Many of these comments reflect mistrust of Muslims and, by extension, a willingness to withhold judgment on Strauss-Kahn until the victim’s “motives” have been made clear. As one commenter says, “She probably is just a poor woman from Guinea who just wanted to work hard to support her daughter. I remember a few innocent students from Saudi Arabia who just wanted to learn to fly planes.”

This is, after all, a political case; so it’s not shocking that a lot is being made of the victim’s and defendant’s externalities. The dichotomies include French vs. immigrants, Jews vs. Muslims, and the standard rich vs. poor. And I don’t mean to suggest that any or all of these were not factors in Strauss-Kahn’s bad, bad decision to select a victim because—let’s face it—the grids of inequality in cases like this one are compelling enough to discuss for weeks.

But exceptionalizing this case the way the media has, with the many conspiracy theories and speculation of political motive (she must have been invested in the French election, tried to seduce him, etc.) belies America’s own denial of a strong rape culture. Rape happens every day, everywhere. And though it’s much easier to believe that there was a terrorist plot to seduce the head of the IMF, the fact is that someone we trust with what is literally the whole world’s future likely did something wholly vile and inexplicable.

The assumptions that come with the Sofitel maid’s external expression of Islam—she was pious, so she wouldn’t have seduced him; she was extremist, so it was a plot to kill him—only further demonstrate how far we are from what matters here: she was a victim of rape, first and foremost. In our discussion of class, race, ethnicity, background, religion, politics, and money, we seem to have let slide a more important discussion of the kind of culture that engenders victim-blaming, and, more importantly, victims of rape.

Check out an earlier post on the DSK case here.

Filed Under: News, Politics Tagged With: , , , ,

Sexism and Islamophobia: An Under-Reported Link in Strauss-Kahn Coverage

May 25, 2011 By

This was written by Kevin Healey and originally published on the USC blog Trans/Missions.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s religious identity has made news since 1991, when the Jewish Tribune reported that each morning he asks himself how he can be “helpful to the state of Israel.” He should have refuted the quote, he says, since it has only emboldened critics who deride him as “a leading French Jew” and a “devout Zionist.” Such views, coupled with allegations of aggressive womanizing, would surely trouble his political future. Just a few weeks before his arrest on rape charges, he told Liberation that he anticipated three problems for his Presidential bid: “Money, women, and my Jewishness.”

Indeed, after his arrest French officials argued that “the thought of a trap” or “smear campaign” could not be ruled out. Columnists suggested anti-Semitism might be a factor, citing comments from right-wing opponents like the National Front’s Marine Le Pen, who condemned his behavior as “pathological.” Noting the relative lack of concern for Strauss-Kahn’s accuser, The New Yorker’s Philip Gourevitch quipped, “It seemed a good measure of the depth of France’s political malaise that it took a Le Pen to show solidarity with the working woman against the Socialist Party’s favorite son.”

And what about that “working woman”? Mainstream sources offer mostly brief descriptions: She is a 32-year-old, French-speaking immigrant from Guinea, a single mother living with her teenage daughter. Many reports mention her religious background but only in passing, describing her as a “good Muslim,” a “devout Muslim,” who “wears a headscarf.”

But as her neighbors and family invoke her religion in her defense, online discussions seethe with sexism and Islamophobia. At Free Republic, alongside discussion of whether his alleged victim is attractive, one commenter suggests “Strauss-Kahn should insist on Sharia rules. Four male witnesses or it never happened…” Another asks rhetorically, “Would a muslim [sic] lie to bring down one of the most powerful infidels on earth?” Indeed one commenter argues that “the maid might be in the employ of… some Muslim extremist group” that wants exploit escalating tensions by keeping Sarkozy in power.

As media coverage shifts to the rising backlash against the chauvinism of Strauss-Kahn’s defenders, journalists should remember that in France, as in the U.S., sexism is rarely separable from racial and religious prejudice. While journalists rightfully dismiss conspiracy theories from anonymous bloggers, they would do well to heed the insights of scholars and op-ed writers who highlight the relationship between male chauvinism and anti-Muslim prejudice in French culture.

Joan Scott, author of The Politics of the Veil, argues that it is misguided to cite the “headscarf ban” as evidence of French commitment to gender equality, as one columnist does in a retort to Gourevitch’s above-mentioned quip. In fact, French elites have often rejected feminism as a “foreign import,” arguing that women’s power lies in their willing sexual objectification. Proponents of this view see “the sexual modesty implicit in the headscarf as proof that Muslims can never become fully French,” says Scott. Thus the headscarf ban encapsulates both misogyny and anti-Muslim prejudice, not their opposites. “How ironic, then, that the victim of Strauss-Kahn’s alleged sexual assault was a Muslim,” Scott writes.

It is understandable that media coverage should expound on the implications of the demise of Strauss-Kahn, an international figure, for French politics and for Jewish communities around the world. But it would only compound the tragedy of this working woman’s fate if coverage ignores the link between sexism and Islamophobia that his alleged attack has thrown into sharp relief.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: , ,