Monday, November 10, 2008

Homework wk7

Dear Editor,

I am writing in response to your article "OSU Student Held on Charges of Rape." After reading this I was very taken back at by the way in which this article was written. First of all the title of this is very gender neutral. By not telling the audience right off whom was involved and how they were involved you are falling into the trap of a gender neutral society. You are assuming a "man" raped a "woman" because this is what society tells you to assume what happened.  I was also curious as to why you mentioned the major of the young man. How does this have to do with whether he raped this young woman or not? By expressing that he was a "pre-construction engineering management" major it says that he is going to be a prominent member of society where he has a potential to hold a higher status in society.  The word alleged was used in this article in respect to the rape. I understand that one is innocent until proven guilty and I respect that but by using the word alleged you are implying that the woman is lying and are not respecting the victim in this situation. Everyone's side must be heard and in this article the young man's side is portrayed but you are hearing nothing about the young woman's side. The last point I am going to bring up is when it was said that she was not on the list for the party and "shouldn't have been there." This statement in other words says that if she was never there than this would not have happened to and puts the blame on the victim entirely saying it was her fault that she was raped.  I do not believe that this was the proper way to go about writing this article and I hope in the future the attention will be paid to the content and how this information might be portrayed. Everyone deserves to be respected. 
Sincerely,
Danielle

2 comments:

sandi said...

I appreciate your balanced approach in this letter as you make your points while you still assert that "everyones side must be heard"! Good writing!

Sandi

Heather Hoffman said...

I really liked your letter as well! You made a good point on hitting all of the main points we discussed in class and you made a good point that both sides should be respected, not just the males side.