Amy's "Apology" Misses the Point and Misstates the Facts

Dear Amy,

Once again, you are the victim of your own awful judgment.

First, you dispensed some of the most ill-informed advice possible to "Victim? in Virginia," a young woman who asked whether she had been raped when a guy had sex with her despite her telling him she didn't want to. You started off by telling Victim? that she had been "first" (and, the reader was made to assume, foremost) a victim of her own "awful judgment." You never proceeded to say that the woman was even secondly a victim of the male in question, you neglected to call what happened to her rape or sexual assault (instead calling it "sex that shouldn't happen"), and you directed her to involve the guy to "determine what happened." Perhaps you missed when she told you quite clearly what had happened?

Then, when a veritable storm of protest erupted, you refused to respond publicly for nearly two weeks. Instead, you sent one angry critic an email filled with wrath and condescension at her (well-founded) accusation that you are a rape apologist.

In the public response that you finally issued yesterday, you toned down your indignation, yet still claimed that you never blamed the victim. You grudgingly admitted that your response to Victim? "was too harsh," but assured us that your benevolent intention was simply to urge her "to take responsibility for the only thing she could control." Well, if that's not victim blaming, I don't know what is.

You said that you counsel your daughters on how to stay safe. In a world in which rape is an unfortunate reality, that's a necessity. We should all be taught best practices for balancing risk reduction with living our lives fully. But the appropriate time to give guidance about how to stay safe is before a rape occurs. If you tell a survivor things like, "Getting drunk at a frat house is a hazardous choice," after the rape, it's no longer guidance -- it's blame.

Your half-baked apology is a smokescreen designed to shut your critics up. Unfortunately, it's not going to work, because the "apology" reveals the fact that you utterly fail to understand what people are angry about.

Remember, we live in a culture that goes out of its way to discredit victims of rape instead of blaming perpetrators. Was she dressed provocatively? Lesser sentence for the rapist. Was she on top when it happened? Couldn't have been rape. Was she too good looking? Well, you know, boys will be boys. Was she drunk in some random guy's bedroom at a frat party? Obviously she should have known what she was in for (that last one would be your contribution to rape culture, though it is by no means yours alone).

In this context, even tentatively tiptoeing down the road of, "You could have prevented this," is offensive and damaging. How does telling Victim? she should have acted differently help her to heal? Perhaps you don't realize how traumatic rape can be. I don't think Victim? needs to hear that she should avoid getting drunk at frat parties: she already told you she made a bad decision, and I'm sure she's been berating herself about it since it happened. What she needed to hear was a clear, simple statement that yes, she was raped, and the person to blame is her rapist.

Some of your defenders have likened Victim?'s situation to getting mugged while walking alone down a dark alleyway at night. Anyone who puts themselves in that situation, they reason, needs a wake-up call. But that's an unfit comparison. In a woman's world, going to bed alone in her own locked home can be risky. Simply being a woman is risky. Why? Because violence against women is tolerated, and often --  as in your column -- not called by its proper name.

Its proper name, by the way, is rape. It won't help your cause to insult the intelligence of the significant masses of people who found fault with your column, by fibbing about what you originally wrote. There's a convenient little Internet trail that discredits your defense, "I told her that she had been raped." No you didn't.  You really, really, did nothing of the kind. Hence, the righteous anger.

What's ironic is that, in seeking to make this all go away without taking the time to consider the problems with your original column, you've now given people even more material to become enraged about. You can't prove that you got it all right the first time around when your apology summarizes Victim?'s dilemma as, "After saying in advance that she didn't want to have sex, she did have sex." No, she did not have sex. Sex was forced upon her. Semantics? Maybe. But important ones.

In closing, Amy, I'd like to give you a piece of your own advice, the only bit I actually agree with: go to RAINN's website to learn about the subject on which you're speaking. Because, at the moment, you have proven yourself woefully unqualified to give advice to rape victims.

As a journalist with a powerful voice and a large audience, it's your responsibility to swallow your pride, consider why your column hit such a nerve, and embrace an opportunity to correct misconceptions about sexual violence. Write a new column for next week that retracts your blaming statements and makes clear that what happened to Victim? was rape.

If Amy refuses to do what's right in her next column, the Chicago Tribune, which employs Dickinson, should step in. They are as accountable for her column as she is; after all, they edit and print it. Let's keep the pressure on both Amy and the Tribune to right their wrong -- both need to send a crystal clear message that they support rape victims and not the people who blame them.

To tell Amy, and her editors at the Tribune, what you think of her rape victim blaming, sign the petition here.

Photo Credit: Alex Poldavo