NCJ Number
161177
Journal
Law and Social Inquiry Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Dated: (Fall 1994) Pages: 1023- 1056
Date Published
1994
Length
34 pages
Annotation
In a 1991 incident at a boarding school in Kenya, more than 70 young women were raped and 19 others died from suffocation in the crowded dormitory where the attack took place, is analyzed in terms of the representations of the event in the print news media in the United States and Kenya.
Abstract
The analysis revealed that how the press constructed the identities of rapists and victims relied on nationally specific stereotypes, myths, and scripts of rape and its relationship to differences of culture, race, and rationality. Accounts in the Untied States simultaneously explained the rapes by emphasizing difference and foreground legal constructions of rape identities that consider experiences of rape as essentially similar. The analysis suggested that issues raised in the Kenyan press, including the relationship between sexual practices and rape and the government's role in furthering sexual violence, directed attention to complexities of rape and power omitted by the narrow legal models pervasive in the United States media and scholarly representations of rape. The analysis concludes that addressing rape more effectively entails exposing limited representational practices and also attending to a broader range of understandings of rape and rape identities in various contexts. Footnotes