Accuser In Duke Rape Case Victim Of Cultural Norms

To the editors:



In her column “Stripper Ergo…Rape,” (Apr. 12), Ashton Lattimore argues that “when women treat each other in…a cruel and disrespectful manner, it opens the door for men to do the same.” Even though the most fair-minded would concur that agreeing to dance at a party full of drunken, under-aged athletes is a risk probably not worth taking, this is hardly tantamount to giving license for the accuser to be raped. Lattimore also fails to recognize that when men and women call other women “sluts” or “hoes,” it is not due to the failure of women to unite, but the result of a culturally ingrained patriarchal state of mind. The tendency of women to “call out” other women is more a matter of protection than intolerance or misguided self-righteousness. A woman calling another woman a “slut,” is equivalent to proclaiming “I toe the sexual line, therefore, I am safe.”

Whether or not this student was technically raped is still undetermined in the legal sense. That said, from a radical feminist perspective, the accuser in this case was essentially raped the minute the lacrosse team captain made the call to “order” her services. She is raped each time she is called a whore, each time a defense attorney reveals something about her personal life, and each time she is used as political pawn by a “well intentioned” person of authority. The Rev. Jackson announced that his Rainbow Coalition will be paying the tuition of the accuser for the remainder of her education, no matter how the case turned out, “so she will never ... again have to stoop that low to survive.” While politically astute, this “gesture” shows that he fails to recognize that all women “stoop” every day just to survive.



PERRY A. THRELFALL-GOHEEN

Richmond, Va.

April 20, 2006