Confession; from time to time while driving to work, especially if NPR is running a story I am not particularly interested in or is in the middle of one of their “beg fests”, I will switch the radio to one of the somewhat crude, but entertaining, talk shows on the rock channels. Forgive me.
This morning was one of the times I made such a switch. Too embarrassing to tell you which show I was listening to, but the topic that caught my attention was a discussion of the report that British actress Charlotte Lewis says filmmaker Roman Polanski raped her in 1982 in Paris when she was 16. What struck me was a comment by one of the hosts of the talk show. He said Ms. Lewis would have no credibility simply because she had appeared in Playboy. At least the co-host asked why this mattered.
Why the hell do so many people think that if a beautiful woman chooses to model, whether for a magazine or as a subject for an artist or in a movie or for that matter in a live performance, it makes her testimony questionable? For that matter, what does a woman, or any person’s, lifestyle, directly have to do with their credibility. I can understand questioning someone’s credibility if they have a history of speaking falsely. But to question their credibility just because they live a life different from some norm; prejudgment based solely upon unjustified bias.
Is Still Here
A perfect example of “blaming the victim,” and generally those victims are women. For some reason, a woman’s sexual history has been fair game for defense attorneys to use in court against them! Fortunately, there are now laws in place to prevent just that, unless the defense can prove that it’s honestly and truly relevant to the case.
I think it’s important to address this issue, and want to thank you for the great post. (BTW, if it was Howard Stern, for shame!
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No, it was not Mr. Stern! Was not a whole lot better, but not that crude.
People are assholes and simplistic in their thinking. They think one automatically equals the other even though they have no legit basis to draw from. You tell enough people one thing and soon they start to believe it. Not unlike mass hysteria.
Mass hysteria; that does seem like what so much “public opinion” runs on these days.