Sexualizing A Victim; Telling Her Life In Terms Of Salacious Details
By: Autumn Sandeen Monday May 14, 2012 9:52 am
http://pamshouseblend.firedoglake.com/2012/05/14/sexualizing-a-victim-telling-her-life-in-terms-of-salacious-details/The New York Times begins its article Woman Dies in a Brooklyn Fire That Is Deemed Suspicious with this paragraph:
She was 25 and curvaceous, and she often drew admiring glances in the gritty Brooklyn neighborhood where she was known to invite men for visits to her apartment, her neighbors and the authorities said.
In between telling how she — Lorena Escalera — died in a suspicious fire, the article included these details:
[...]
Gary Hernandez, 25, a neighbor, said that Ms. Escalera had worked as an escort and that he regularly saw her advertising her service on an adult Web site.
Many of these may be true — or should I say are considered true by the people making the statements or the article's authors — but are they necessary to the narrative that explains a possible crime victim to the public? The details, and the way the narrative was laid out, told Escalera's story of violent death in a sexualizing, salacious, and dehumanizing manner.
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NY Times Trans Exploitation Completely Unacceptable
Monday, May 14, 2012 - 9:03am by Aaron McQuade, Director of News and Field Media at GLAAD
http://www.glaad.org/blog/ny-times-trans-exploitation-completely-unacceptableThis weekend, the New York Times published an extremely exploitative article about a transgender woman who had died in a fire. The article, about Lorena Escalera, only mentions that she was killed in a fire after telling readers that she was "curvaceous," that she "drew admiring glances" in her "gritty Brooklyn neighborhood," that she "was known to invite men for visits to her apartment," that Lorena was "called Lorena" (as opposed to saying she was "named Lorena" or that she simply was Lorena) and that she "brought two men to her apartment" sometime between late Friday night and early Saturday morning.
[...]
Take the word "transgender" out of the equation.
Would the New York Times ever describe a woman who is not transgender, who had died in a fire, as "curvaceous" - in the first sentence, no less? Would it carefully note that her apartment contained makeup and "women's shoes?" Would it say that she was "called" whatever her name was - especially if police later identified her by that name?
