Female War Reporters Hide Sexual Abuse To Continue Getting Assignments

[marmar]

From Columbia Journalism Review, via AlterNet:


Female War Reporters Hide Sexual Abuse To Continue Getting Assignments

By Judith Matloff, Columbia Journalism Review. Posted June 7, 2007.



As more female reporters cover conflict zones, they face the same hurdles as their male counterparts and then some. In the macho world of overseas journalism, those who face sexual abuse often choose to say nothing at all.

The photographer was a seasoned operator in South Asia. So when she set forth on an assignment in India, she knew how to guard against gropers: dress modestly in jeans secured with a thick belt and take along a male companion. All those preparations failed, however, when an unruly crowd surged and swept away her colleague. She was pushed into a ditch, where several men set upon her, tearing at her clothes and baying for sex. They ripped the buttons off her shirt and set to work on her trousers.

"My first thought was my cameras," recalls the photographer, who asked to remain anonymous. "Then it was, 'Oh my God, I'm going to be raped.' " With her faced pressed into the soil, she couldn't shout for help, and no one would have heard her anyway above the mob's taunts. Suddenly a Good Samaritan in the crowd pulled the photographer by the camera straps several yards to the feet of some policemen who had been watching the scene without intervening. They sneered at her exposed chest but escorted her to safety.

Alone in her hotel room that night, the photographer recalls, she cried, thinking, "What a bloody way to make a living." She didn't inform her editors, however. "I put myself out there equal to the boys. I didn't want to be seen in any way as weaker."

Women have risen to the top of war and foreign reportage. They run bureaus in dodgy places and do jobs that are just as dangerous as those that men do. But there is one area where they differ from the boys -- sexual harassment and rape. Female reporters are targets in lawless places where guns are common and punishment rare. Yet the compulsion to be part of the macho club is so fierce that women often don't tell their bosses. Groping hands and lewd come-ons are stoically accepted as part of the job, especially in places where Western women are viewed as promiscuous. War zones in particular seem to invite unwanted advances, and sometimes the creeps can be the drivers, guards, and even the sources that one depends on to do the job. Often they are drunk. But female journalists tend to grit their teeth and keep on working, unless it gets worse. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/52626/

[LaurenG]

1. Woah, that is no way to try and make a living...

Poor lady. :(

[Warpy]

4. It's a perfect way to make a living

It's those men who want deballing. She was doing her job, she was in the right place at the right time. That pack of jackals who called themselves men were the ones in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Ever wonder why hate crimes legislation never specifies gender?

[LaurenG]

5. Well

I agree that she should be able to work wherever she'd like. That is a frightening thing.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[noamnety]

3. silent k&r (nt)

[KoKo]

6. Article makes good point about "training" reporters for what they might encounter.

Says only the BBC does training and that it would have been helpful for one correspondent who felt guilty that she was followed back to her hotel room by someone she just interviewed.

Training and some self-defense techniques should be required for all overseas reporters. Not that it would help in an extreme situation...but that with all the cutbacks in Media resources for foreign departments that there's little attention paid to the issue and no money to do training for self protection in situations that these people find themselves in. Men can be raped as well as women so it would be good for all to have some preparedness about they might expect in situations they haven't been in before. Customs of some countries and dangerous situations that most Americans wouldn't be aware of would seem to be a start in finding a way to deal with some of this. :shrug:

[Morgana LaFey]

7. NO! What needs to happen is

NOT an emphasis on women accommodating and adjusting to men's brutality and predatory natures by getting "training" but for there to be a world-wide sustained anti-misogynism movement and campaign. One that says: any and all violence against women MUST STOP as NO LONGER ACCEPTABLE. Something with teeth in it, like maybe death to those who engage in anything remotely close to a gender hate crime. Prison terms for sexual harassers. I'm against the death penalty, but with the latest missing young woman in Kansas City, something snapped with me: I'm fucking tired of men and their predatory natures, their sense of entitlement that gives them ANY idea they have some right by nature of their birth to prey on women.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. Men need to apply peer pressure to men who are harrassers or worse

and to raise their sons to know that women are human beings and deserving of the same rights as them.

As one who has rarely had a male escort, I resent (and usually fail to follow) the dictum that women should not go out alone after dark. I rather prefer making it illegal for men to go out without a female escort. :-)

"B-b-but," I hear the men protesting," that would cramp my style."

Well, yeah. Now you know how it feels.

[Morgana LaFey]

10. BRILLIANT! Absolutely, positively BRILLIANT.

Let's DO "cramp their style," and high time. HIGH TIME.

[provis99]

9. I'd like to hear of a female reporter shooting one of these scum

Maybe not to kill him, but shoot him where it counts. And getting applauded for her acts, not punished. Then publicize this worldwide, as a warning to other miscreants. Just a thought.