WHITE SPACE: CAMPUS RAPE in the MEDIA a Thesis Submitted To
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WHITE SPACE: CAMPUS RAPE IN THE MEDIA A Thesis submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of j the requirements for the Degree poll ^ |y\ Master of Arts - & 5 5 In Human Sexuality Studies by Jillian Crystal Salazar San Francisco, California May 2017 Copyright by Jillian Crystal Salazar 2017 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL I certify that I have read White Space: Campus Rape in the Media by Jillian Crystal Salazar, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Arts in Human Sexuality Studies at San Francisco State University. Rita M. Melendez, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Sexuality Studies Assistant Professor of Sexuality Studies WHITE SPACE: CAMPUS RAPE IN THE MEDIA Jillian Crystal Salazar San Francisco, California 2017 Using Critical Race Discourse Analysis, this study examines how campus rape is covered in the New York Times. Four case studies were analyzed involving rapes on college campuses. The race of the victims affected the media coverage: when victims were Black, stories were published during the trial, when victims were not Black, the stories were published after the trial; descriptions of perpetrators focused on their status as athletes not as rapists. Media discourse surrounding campus rape exacerbates racist stereotypes about Black men and Black women while eliciting sympathy and public action for victims who are white or have proximity to whiteness. Keywords: racism; white supremacy; rape; sexual violence; critical race theory; critical discourse analysis I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this thesis. Chair, Thesis Q^mnittee Date PREFACE AND/OR ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I dedicate this thesis to the survivors of the cases that I researched. I poured over your cases, dug beneath the media portrayals of you and tried my best to amplify your words—the ways you wished to be portrayed. I hope that I did you justice. I hope the public will approach future cases with care and remember that there are people attached to these stories. You are all so much more than your stories. I would also like to thank my incredible readers, Darius Bost and Rita Melendez. Thank you for the care you spent reading pages, and offering critiques and suggestions. My research would not have been possible without your keen eye for detail and pushing my work further than I could have ever imagined. I also owe deep gratitude to Jessica Fields, Calli Johnson, Nicholas Newton, Michelle Parra, Spencer Ruelos, and Avry Schellenbach, all of whom offered crucial feedback and suggestions while this project was in the formative stages. To my writing partners Alicia McPherson, Kathleen Morrison, and Solana Willis, your commitment to show up, shut up, and write together were invaluable. I hope I am half as inspiring as you all were to me. Thank you. Thank you to my friends and family, all of whom had to make sacrifices for this thesis to happen. Sophia, Gabe, Jesse, Juj, Dominique, and Molly, thank you for your patience and support. I couldn’t have done it without you. To Igby and Derrick, thank you for being my constant companions from start to finish. v TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables...........................................................................................................................vii Introduction.................................................................................................................................1 How Does the Media Relate to Campus Rape?..........................................................6 Overview of Case Studies............................................................................................ 8 Methodology............................................................................................................................ 17 Use of the New York Times.........................................................................................17 Collection Procedures.................................................................................................18 Analytic Procedures.................................................................................................... 19 Findings.................................................................................................................................... 21 Timing of News Coverage......................................................................................... 21 Descriptors of Victims and Perpetrators...................................................................22 Discussion................................................................................................................................ 26 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 36 References................................................................................................................................ 41 LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1. Overview of Cases..............................................................................................9 2. Data Collection Details.......................................................................................18 3. Timing of News Coverage.................................................................................22 4. Florida A&M University Victim Descriptors...................................................23 5. Florida A&M University Perpetrator Descriptors............................................23 6. Penn State University Victim Descriptors........................................................24 7. Penn State University Perpetrator Descriptors................................................ 24 8. Duke University Victim Descriptors................................................................ 25 9. Duke University Perpetrator Descriptors....................................................... 25 10. Stanford University Victim Descriptors...........................................................25 11. Stanford University Perpetrators Descriptors...................................................26 1 Currently the issue of rape on college campuses draws wide support from the academy and beyond with a wealth of articles, books, documentaries, and news coverage on the topic. The attention to the issue of rape on college campuses has grown steadily since the 1980’s when the topic caught the attention of academics and women’s magazine writers. The existing literature agrees that the focus on campus rape stemmed from the women’s movement in the 1970’s (Belknap & Sharma, 2014, p. 181). The women’s movement established “gender-based abuses” as legitimate social problems in the 1970’s (Belknap & Sharma, 2014, p. 181). As existing literature explains, once the foundation of abuses based on gender was laid by feminists in the 1970’s, feminists in the 1980’s were able to show how rape perpetrated against college women was also a legitimate social problem (Belknap & Sharma, 2014, p. 181). Notable literature pointing to the rape of college women at epidemic levels include Karen Barrett’s Ms. Magazine 1982 article “Date Rape: A Campus Epidemic” and Robin Warsaw’s 1988 book I Never Called It Rape (Barrett, 1982; Warshaw & Koss, 1988). The media frenzy over rape on college campuses converged with the new attention to date rape. This was the first time in history that white feminists wrote about the possibility of getting raped by someone known to the victim. The article in Ms. from 1982 states, For once we were actually dealing with everybody’s favorite racist stereotype, a black man who jumped out of the bushes and attacked women. The victims got a lot of support, because everyone agreed that this was a bad thing. But the public perception of rape continued to be that it was something done by minorities, poor 2 people, outsiders. The next step, the real challenge, was to try and get the same support for women being victimized at parties by their peers (Barrett, 1982, p. 130). When Ms. refers to victims’ “peers,” they are referring to white middle and upper class men. Black men who were strangers were not the only potential rapists, now it was considered an epidemic that fellow white male students could rape white women students. The discourses surrounding campus rape grew out of white feminist scholarship that ignored the writings and contributions of women of color (J. C. Harris & Linder, 2017, p. 84). In her book, At the Dark End o f the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—a New History o f the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise o f Black Power, Danielle L. McGuire highlights the work of Black women in the fight against sexual violence. She writes, “Decades later, when radical feminists finally made rape and sexual assault political issues, they walked in the footsteps of generations of black women” (McGuire, 2010, p. 46). While the contributions of the feminist movement in the 1970’s and 1980’s cannot be understated, it is important to recognize that the roots of their activism began with Black women decades earlier. In her book Killing Rage: Ending Racism bell hooks (1995) notes, “There will be no feminist revolution without an end to racism and white supremacy. When all women and men engaged in feminist struggle understand the interlocking nature of systems of domination of white supremacist capitalist 3 patriarchy, feminist movement will regain its revolutionary progressive momentum”