The Expectation of Disbelief
Egalia, writing at Tennessee Guerilla Women ("Duke Rape Scandal: Disbelieving Women"), offers "snippets" from a piece by Jesse Jackson about the Duke Rape Scandal ("Duke: Horror and Truth").
The Jackson piece is good, but here I'd rather emphasize Egalia's potently distilled introduction:
Jesse Jackson weighs in with a calm and rational voice on race, sex, class and the Duke rape scandal. Jackson reminds me of some of the reasons I am always inclined to believe a woman when she says she has been raped. This country reeks of misogyny, as well as racism and classism, and so has a very long and a very shameful history of disbelieving women, especially poor and black women.
In my view, the expectation of disbelief is one of the primary reasons that so few women report rape. As a member of the class of people that is so commonly disbelieved, I choose to believe women until there is a very good reason not to.
Yeah, I believed/believe Anita Hill too.