Quotation marks round words designed to undermine women's stories.
Like in this picture here:
The heading of note here is "Woman beheads 'attacker'".
Now, ok, beheading people is generally not a good thing. And parading the head around the marketplace, which, according to the full article, she did, is also probably not the wisest of choices. Other people may not take it very well and, indeed, didn't since they called the police. But, putting quotation marks around the word attacker automatically implies that the woman is lying.
For the record, in the article the woman says that the man came up behind her while she was cutting grass and attacked her and she cut his head off, presumably in self defense, although the article says it was to preserve her dignity. And in relation to being attacked she had bite marks on her neck and cheek. She also told police that the man had been harassing her for 3 months. The woman in question is in northern India and I know nothing about norther India or the culture of northern India. I presume the 'dignity' comment means that she thought she was going to be raped. So we have an attempted rape victim who fought back being labeled a liar by MSN. Par for the course right.
If she were a man and she beheaded another man because he attacked her- and there were actual physical marks that indicated that there had been some form of violence (bite marks)- would MSN have put quotations around the word attacker? Do victims of muggings who are out walking at night get blamed for being mugged the same way rape victims often are? No. This is the same thing.
On a related note, this is in "today's picks". It is along side the news that Beckham may be returning to football in England, Angelia wants to adopt again (why is this a shock?) and one of the pussycat dolls doesn't think that she is sexy because men don't hit on her. So a woman being attacked and retaliating is on par with not very news-worthy celebrity news?
The world sucks.
12 years ago
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