Today Gawker has a post about
the alleged sexual assault of a Google employee at a tech conference by a Twitter engineer. Gawker's headline reads "Googler accuses Twitter engineer of sexual assault on her blog." Right there, we're off to a bad start. Because
her blog post is not, really, at all about "accusing" someone of sexual assault, but rather stating the simple fact that she was assaulted (he put his hand down her pants after she turned down his advances), naming the person who did it, and saying rather eloquently that it's part of a broader problem of guys excusing their bad behavior based on the setting:
It’s not the first time something like this has happened to me, at all. It’s not the first time it’s happened to me at a tech conference. But it is the first time I’ve spoken out about it in this way, because I’m tired of the sense that some idiot can ruin my day and never have to answer for it. I’m tired of the fear. I’m tired of people who think I should wear something different. I’m tired of people who think I should avoid having a beer in case my vigilance lapses for a moment. I’m tired of people who say that guys can’t read me right and I have to read them, and avoid giving the wrong impression.
...It is not my job to avoid getting assaulted. It is everyone else’s job to avoid assaulting me. Dozens of guys succeeded at that job, across the week. In the pub, in the stairwell, on the MARTA, in my bedroom.
One guy failed, and it’s his fault.
The commenters make the bad start even worse, by (typically) questioning her behavior (which, in a move that makes me want to give her a medal, she bravely documented), attire, and decision to name her assaulter. The author of the Gawker article feels compelled to pull out the "Innocent until proven guilty" refrain, and laments that the victim in the case couldn't vent her trauma without naming the perp. But why should she? "Innocent until proven guilty" doesn't really apply to the victim in the case since, to her, there's already pretty clear-cut evidence that the person at hand is guilty. Remember, this happened to her. It's the legal system that's meant to reserve judgment. Moreover, if you think it was "tasteless" of her to name the guy, or some other BS the commenters are spewing, ask yourself whether you would not do the very same thing if a crime were committed against you: If your house was broken into by a neighbor, and you wanted to blog about it, wouldn't one of your purposes surely be to warn others that this neighbor isn't to be trusted? This is not a case of kiss and tell--it's a case of a victim, simply and without malice, documenting her assault.
