On Anonymous Non-Victims
Now that it’s become pretty clear to just about everyone in the world except Wendy “All Rape Charges Are Real” Murphy and Nancy “What She Said” Grace that the real criminals in the Duke lacrosse rape shakedown case are Mike Nifong and Crystal Gail Mangum, can anyone offer me a rational explanation of why the identities of Collin “I didn’t do it, buttmunch” Finnerty, David “what mustache?” Evans and Reade “I wasn’t even there, asshole” Seligman are plastered all over the news media but Mangum’s name is not? I understand the general policy of respecting the privacy of real rape victims, but even even that doesn’t really make sense in the case of a stripper, who is unlikely to be any more shamed by being named as a rape victim than the rest of us are to be shamed by becoming victims of any other violent crime, whose victims’ identities do not receive any such protection. Think about it, Mangum’s career consists of stripping for drunk, horny kids, and her panties have been found to contain the DNA of just about every able-bodied male in Durham who doesn’t play lacrosse. What the hell kind of shame could news of a real rape cause to her? If anything, it would provide further shame to her attackers, as it would be evidence that the uberslut from hell will have sex with just about anyone except them. Besides, we’re far past the stage where anyone in his right mind believes a rape occurred. The real story now is that idiot D.A.’s decision to follow up on her obviously false accusation, the falsity of which becomes even more obvious when you Google a name like Crystal Gail Mangum rather than a politically correct euphemism like Duke lacrosse exotic dancer. Now that she’s far more likely to be a criminal than a victim, I say she should be entitled to NO privacy, certainly not any more than her victims got.
Does anyone really think I’m wrong? If so, why? Anyone? Bueller? Mangum?
More here.
January 13th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
Unlike Patterico, I agree with your decision to publish her name — and the links to her rap sheet. The only surprise on the rap sheet was that it didn’t include prostitution.
With “genetic material” (the euphamism of the 21st century) from half of the town either in her body or on her underwear (and how often does she change and launder those?), I’d be very surprised if she wasn’t a hooker.
January 13th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
I’m neutral on this. Trash is trash but the one who gave credibility to the trash is a sinecure-seeking political whore. Should we bring her up front and center and dissect her in order to prove that she is trash? Or marginalize her as anonymous trash and go after the political whore who should be better than he is?
January 14th, 2007 at 9:49 am
NK, if we don’t cease giving her the anonymity we generally reserve for real rape victims, we are implicitly categorizing her among the ranks of real rape victims.
She has nothing, so she can’t be sued, as a practical matter. She could, I suppose, be charged with filing a false police report, but that won’t happen either. Public scorn is the only punishment the young lady will ever receive.
January 14th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
Xrlq is right and you too, Dana. She has a wikipedia entry for crying out loud. I have no problem with “outing” her except in the possible sense of whether she is worth spitting on. Nifong, on the other hand, behaved truly evilly in my opinion. He has not just given prosecutors a black eye — he has given all lawyers a black eye. His name definitely should be made mud and in his case it will hurt.
BTW: Her wikipedia entry shows that one of her convictions was for trying to run over a police officer who had stopped her for drunk driving. I definitely do not wish people dead but at the time I was trolling a post of Patterico’s about a kid who had been shot in Los Angeles for the same thing and wondered ….
January 14th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
While I don’t see why bloggers should refrain from publishing her name, as long as the criminal case against the accused has not been dropped the law is still obliged to treat her as a rape victim, yes? The law should not be making a move based on any subjective reasoning about whether it would shame her or not. Actually, I don’t buy that argument for bloggers, either. It’s more about whether *you* are ashamed to publish ner name–and because you consider her a criminal rather than a victim (and I agree with you), you aren’t. The authorities must act differently.
January 14th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
It’s also also about the actual strictures used to withold her name. Do the authorities crack down on media that publish it, or is it mainly an unenforceable convention?
January 14th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
I don’t think there is any law prohibiting news sources from divulging the names of alleging victims, nor can I imagine any such law would pass constitutional muster.
January 14th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Okay, so we’re talking about 1) the authorities refusing to divulge her name to news sources (right?) and 2) news sources conventionally, but not by law, not printing it.
I don’t see any problem with bloggers publishing the name, but I think your bits about her shame or whatnot are ridiculous and irrelevant. Because of your opinion of her (again, one in which I concur) you’re not concerned about causing her any shame at all, so saying that publishing the name shouldn’t cause her shame is rather irrelevant to you doing it.
January 15th, 2007 at 7:42 am
A bit harsh, X? Prostitutes and strippers ought not to feel ashamed if they’re raped? Any other professions (lawyers?) for which this standard might apply?
January 15th, 2007 at 10:27 am
There is no evidence that this particular prostitute and stripper has been raped — and plenty of evidence that she lied about being raped.
Steve Sturm, your argument sound exactly like the one posited in the Saturday Night Live “Nancy Grace” parody — except in that it was being played for laughs.
January 15th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
In addition to Xrlq’s point, this lady is already a cause celebre with that segment of the population Nifong wanted to seduce so (sarcasm) anonymity (sarcasm) is kind of like pretending to hide behind your own finger.
This is still on topic, honestly: My father, may he rest in peace, was not a Clinton fan but he was a respecter of the office of the President. When Monica Lewinski started going on talk shows and being written up in waiting-room magazines, he said: “So whores can become famous, too?” And that girl was more sinned against than sinning.
January 15th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Anwyn, asking whether the usual rationale for not printing rape victims’ names should apply to strippers is neither ridiculous (until/unless you show it to be ridiculous, as opposed to merely labeling it as such) nor irrelevant (until/unless you can show that Crystal Gail Mangum isn’t really a stripper). That an independent ground exists for disclosing Mangum’s name doesn’t make the other issue a non-issue unworthy of discussion. Just because Miller Lite tastes great doesn’t mean it can’t also be less filing, and vice-versa.
Steve S.: there probably are a few other professions that make you wonder whether the usual “embarassing the victim” rationale should apply. Porn “stars,” for instance. Lawyers, by contrast are not generally known for publicizing their sexuality, so I’m not sure why you think they’re relevant to this discussion. If a lawyer is ripped off by a non-paying client, the aggrieved lawyer doesn’t get any special privacy dispensations. Should he/she?
January 15th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
It *is* irrelevant. You are saying that it’s okay to publish it because it doesn’t shame her. You don’t need that rationalization–you only need to state that you’re satisfied that she’s not a victim and therefore you feel no compunction about printing her name.
Since that’s the already-stated independent grounds, fine, let’s talk about the other–of course the usual rationale for not printing an alleged rape victim’s name applies to a stripper. While the prudence and good judgment of a person who goes into a private audience to take off her clothes for money are seriously questionable, that does not remove from her the protection of the law against having her body forcibly entered by those who paid her for a totally different (presumably legal since I don’t know otherwise) service.
There’s a long line of sight between having people look at your nude body and having people forcibly enter it, on the horror and humiliation scale. You’re equating the shame of the two events. They’re not equitable.
January 15th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
Shorter me:
There’s a long line of sight between having people look at your nude body and having people forcibly enter it, on the horror and humiliation scale. You’re equating the shame of the two events. They’re not equitable.
You make it sound as though any other stripper should also have her name published merely because she is a stripper. In this case, I’ve no problem with anybody printing the name because she clearly made a false accusation, NOT because she’s a stripper. You’re conflating the two reasons.
January 15th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Identifying two reasons is hardly the same as conflating the two. So you agree with one and disagree with the other. C’est la vie.
January 15th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
I used to think I knew how to argue to the point. Damn you anyway, Xrlq.
Yes. Me disagree she automatically protection-forfeiting trash because she stripper. Me agree she make false accusation, protection for rape victim no apply.
January 15th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Good! Now that we’ve teased out the two issues, let’s focus more sharply on the one where we disagree. Start with the general rule that crime victims’ identities are generally not private, even under circumstances where they have a lot more to be ashamed of than the average rape victim does (e.g., where an idiot loses thousands of dollars to a fraudulent scam so transparent only an idiot would have fallen for it). We make an exception in the case of sex crimes only, for reasons that made a lot of sense in the bad old days when rape victims were frowned on as promiscuous, and almost as much sense in more modern times where society doesn’t generally respond that way, but many victims nevertheless feel ashamed and “dirty,” and are less likely to come forward if doing so will publicly mark them as rape victims. There may be other reasons to grant victims of sex crimes a special dispensation not available to other crime victims, but if there are, they escape me at the moment. The main thing is that sex as a taboo is a big part of the reason we treat sex crime victims differently from victims of other crimes. To the extent sex ceases to be taboo, the crime ceases to be distinguishable from other crimes.
I for one would think no less of the average teacher, nurse, janitor, judge, TV anchor, or almost-anything-else because she got publicly outed as a rape victim. After all, she’s the victim, not the perp, so what does the crime tell us about her except that she was unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Still, I understand that the average teacher, nurse, janitor, judge, TV anchor or almost-anything-else doesn’t want to run the risk that others may be less open-minded than I, and think that if they were victims they must have done something to invite the attack, blah blah blah. I certainly don’t want to run that risk if the end result is that fewer legitimate crimes will be reported. But what reason does the average stripper, prostitute, pimp or porn “star” have not to report a rape? Is she really that afraid that news of the rape would cause the rest of us to think she’s … promiscuous?!
Returning to Crystal Gail Mangum, suppose for argument’s sake she really was raped by the three guys she named. Does the fact that she had involuntary sex with three white guys make anyone think any less of her than they would if they knew she had “only” had voluntary sex with the gazillion non-lacrosse players whose DNA turned up where the players’ DNA did not?
Shorter me: sex crimes are special only because sex itself is special. If you’re in the sex business, then rape is just a handy name for physical assault over a business deal gone sour.
January 15th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
Another reason might be the targeting of the accuser by friends of the accused.
But what reason does the average stripper, prostitute, pimp or porn “star” have not to report a rape? Is she really that afraid that news of the rape would cause the rest of us to think she’s … promiscuous?!
I disagree that “stripper” is in the same class of sex business as a prostitute or porn star, and I disagree that rape is just a handy name for a physical assault in that business. Rape remains its own category of assault, and the difference between the TV anchor and stripper may be wide, but one crucial similarity remains: rape is involuntary. One presumes a stripper has vanquished whatever of her modesty would cause her shame at stripping, since she does it voluntarily. It does not follow that she’s not to be shamed by a rape, and moreover, the fact of her employment *might* cause her enough additional shame after the fact of a rape to make her reluctant to report it if the whole world is going to know her name–her REAL name–and associate it with “stripper.”
It’s far sounder policy to base the privacy on the class of crime rather than on the employment of the victim. I’m no feminist, but even a stripper (and yes, a prostitute, in areas where that business is legally protected) retains the right to maintain her own private parts and allow or deny entry as she sees fit–and whatever privileges the law allows to victims of the same class of crime. If you allow it’s valid for the teacher or nurse, it’s got to remain valid for the stripper.
January 15th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
More on the “I disagree rape is just a handy name for physical assault in that business”–physical assault is obviously still just as available an option to a prospective perpetrator as rape. The fact that rape looks like a more attractive crime when the prospect (or malcontent contractor) is a stripper does not make rape the same as physical assault.
January 15th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
I don’t care if she’s a stripper or a skanky ho. She ought to be outed for bearing false witness against these guys, unless it can be demonstrated that she suffers from a serious mental illness. In fact, she ought to be subject to prosecution and sentencing equivalent to what one of these guys would have gotten had he been falsely convicted, and Nifong ought to be charged as an accessory.
Alas, that won’t happen. But, yeah, there are people who still don’t seem to get it. I don’t know. Check with Amanda Marcotte and find out how this occasion for reflection and self-evaluation has caused her to evolve as a person.
January 15th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
“Check with Amanda Marcotte and find out how this occasion for reflection and self-evaluation has caused her to evolve as a person.”
Can I just go swimming in a sewer instead?