What Does it Take to Get People Outraged Over Sexual Assault?

Liz Gorman's post about being sexually assaulted has sparked a new debate about what women should tolerate. (Photo: …From guys who insist that "no" doesn't really mean "no" to lawmakers who say that women should stay in abusive marriages and institutions that discourage victims from reporting rape, society seems to say that domestic abuse and sexual assault are things women are supposed to grade along a curve and tolerate, depending on the severity of the situation. When saying "no" isn't an option -- as was the case for many of the women who were assaulted by higher-ranking soldiers at Lackland Airforce Base in San Antonio, Texas -- keeping silent can seem easier, a way to limit the damage or avoid another violation.

But when Liz Gorman, a 25-year-old photographer in Washington, D.C., was groped by a stranger in broad daylight last week, she fought back with a personal essay that has sparked a new debate about why women put up with sexual assault at all.

Related: Lauren Luke's powerful PSA urges victims of domestic violence not to cover it up

"I was in Dupont Circle at 3:30 p.m. yesterday and was sexually assaulted while walking. In my hometown, in a nice neighborhood, in broad daylight, in public," she wrote at Collective Action D.C. last week. "I'm a city girl; I walk fast and have rules. A man pulled up behind me on his bicycle and reached up my skirt. He put his finger into my vagina through my underwear. He laughed and biked away. That was it."

But instead of ignoring the incident, she got mad. She ran after him, and she called the police. They responded within minutes but, though a witness saw her chasing the suspect and confirmed what happened, the guy got away.

"I went on with my day: I had lunch with my mom and then drinks with some of my closest friends well into the evening," Gorman wrote. "I received many messages of support and encouragement, and I'm really grateful to have such wonderful people in my life. But one thing that has bothered me is referring to what I did as 'brave.' I was simply walking while female. I guess I didn't realize what a battle it still is out there and how much work we still have to do."

The Washington Post republished Gorman's essay and, if anyone doubts that walking while female is still a battle, a comment by a Post reader pretty much proves Gorman's point.

"Big Deal! A man put his finger into your vajayjay thru your underpants. He obviously didn't get it very far in, did he? But so what? Did he break something of yours?" wrote erq682 at the Washington Post's Crime Scene blog. "Your outrage is analogous to that of a small shopkeeper who has just seen someone lift a candy bar. Your problem is not that you were groped but that you were groped by someone you didn't want to grope you. Meanwhile, the DC Police should spend their time and resources on real victims of real crimes, rather than politically correct whiners."

Never mind that Gorman's attack fits the new legal definition of rape. Other readers took Gorman to task for thinking that her experience was important. Still others wrote that she should pray rather than complain, or that she should just accept what happened to her and move on. Some pointed out that the fact that she could have lunch with her mother and go out with her friends meant that she wasn't really hurt.

"This article shouldn't have made headline news," laurelle5432 wrote. "The Post is taking a very sensitive subject and making it seem trivial with Ms. Gorman's fairly vanilla violation."

That a violation could be too "vanilla," or not important enough to report simply because the victim could still function afterwards, is exactly that kind of thinking that allows the abuse to continue. At Lackland Airforce Base, one airman who admitted that he had "illicit sexual contact" with one woman avoided punishment through a plea deal, and then later admitted that he had actually assaulted 10 women -- but prosecutors can't touch him because those 10 women have refused to come forward. At least 12 instructors at the base have been accused of "either rape, sodomy and aggravated sexual assault, among other offenses" against at least 31 women, The Nation reported. One victim testified that her attacker told her to "keep it to herself" after he forced her to perform oral sex on him.

Gorman agrees that what happened to her could have been much worse. "I grew up in D.C.," she told Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak. "I know all kinds of other stuff is happening all over the city." It's the fact that Gorman wrote about her own experience in her own words that makes her essay so controversial and so shocking to so many people.

When we talk about sexual assault from a distance, grading the severity of a victim's experience -- it wasn't "really rape," she wasn't "that hurt" by it -- we make it easier to ignore. It becomes something that happens "to other people." But writing about it in the first person? You can't ignore the fact that someone was affected. And it becomes that much more difficult to justify telling a victim to "get over it."

Is sexual assault something we need to talk about in the first person in order for our outrage to have any impact?

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