Ethnocentrism vs. Self-Denial: Respect vs. Second Assault
How is it that Olinaltecans have succeeded in changing their perceptions and we in the United States, despite our feminist movement, punish victim-survivors? We critique other cultures as traditional while applauding ours as modern.
The former is a result of our ethnocentrism and the later is a result of our self-denial. For Olinala, the changes between 1950s and 1980s resulted in a solution to rape while for the United States the damage by the rapist parallels the damage by the people around the victim-survivor.In the United States, besides a physical rape there ensues a second assault on the survivor of rape. “While these second assault comments do not individually match the horror and trauma of the rape, the accumulative effect of prejudicial and antagonistic statements toward the survivor does have a compound effect that is more cruel than the rape attack itself’ (William and Holmes 1981: 2). Its cruelty is in part the fact that lack of understanding and in part that we survivors, depending on these people for support and comfort, experience instead a panorama of ignorant and intrusive treatment.
The second assault is a cultural process of rape that is enacted by the accumulation of negative responses by friends and family who individually duplicate the processual traits of the rapist. The second assault entails isolation and silence; cultural denigration; undermined self-esteem; confusions of control, contradictions, and support. Our insensitivity results in our initial feelings of sympathy for the victim-survivor turning into anger against her/him. We have to blame someone without realizing that either we are blaming the wrong person or the situation is to blame, not a person. Who are these people who wrote these statements for this chapter? They’re my friends, good friends whom I appreciate for their good intentions and honesty.
One of the most deadening aspects of U.S.
life is the assumption that we are better off than we were in the past and better off than other people in the world. This assumption blinds us to the enormous problems we face. This chapter demonstrates that the act of the rapist reverberates throughout our society and that this further traumatizes the survivor. Perhaps, we can learn from Olinaltecans who believe the word of a woman violated and who will never forget nor allow a rapist in their community. Justice for women does exist in some places in this world.References
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