Guest post: ‘A disturbing Tuesday episode’

Sent in by an anonymous reader, the following is a story from a class here at Marquette:

In class today, a professor of mine was lecturing on the building up of public support for the declaration of the Spanish-American War in 1898. He talked about one effective tool used by propagandists, the testimony of a woman freed from a Spanish concentration camp in Cuba:

“She was made out to be a heroine. But it came out later she was a prostitute… [Propagandists] said she hadn’t given in to the Spanish. In fact, she’d refused to perform sexual favors, so she was thrown in prison….”

(Full disclosure: quotes reproduced notes in the margins of my binder, and might be imperfect and out of order.)

Yes, it was dishonest for the woman and her publicists to misrepresent her story. But the professor’s tone and word choice suggested her status as a sex-worker undercut her victim-status. Since she was a prostitute, she could only be expected to do what was asked of her.

Just because the task she was asked to “give in to” was ickier than, say, political capitulation, doesn’t undo the fact that she did refuse and was oppressed for it. The implicit assertion seemed to be that, because of a sex worker’s profession, she has essentially ceded her right to refuse consent of any given sex act.

This is precisely the attitude which marginalizes not only sex-workers, but all those victimized and at risk for sexual assault. (And if interment in a concentration camp for refusal to grant sexual favors, I don’t know what is.) That is, the idea that because the victim “dressed like that,” was intoxicated, in unsavory lines of work, or any other reason, they somehow brought it upon themselves.

And for what it matters, the professor in question is a priest.

 

Thanks, Anonymous, for your story and insight!  And as always, we welcome other readers to send in any thoughts, news, or anecdotes for guest posting!  Thanks for reading