Lena Dunham has failed women of colour by discrediting Aurora Perrineau’s rape allegations
Dunham has repeatedly said that women alleging rape must be believed, but it seems that doesn’t apply when women of colour accuse white men she’s friends with
Perrineau, a biracial actress, has to go through not only the denials of her accused assailant, but the public derision of prominent feminists. Women like Dunham who have so vehemently supported the exposure of sexual harassment in the media, change course when the victims of this culture are non-white. In keeping with a historical trend, this watershed moment for feminism has left certain women behind.
A number of intersectional feminists have noticed this problem. Jane Fonda explained that the reason Harvey Weinstein’s victims were believed is that they were generally white and famous, a truth that has resulted in the intensified oppression of women of colour for centuries.
Abusive men know that non-white women are less likely to be believed when they make accusations of sexual assault, so they often actively target them.
Additionally, the various harmful stereotypes that women of colour have to constantly contend with make their stories of sexual assault much more difficult to tell. Black women are overtly sexualised, fetishised and objectified in the media. South Asian women are expected to be modest and demure, while Eastern Asian women are expected to be passive and submissive.
All of these damaging and limiting expectations make it so much harder for non-white women to talk about sexual assault and especially to publicly accuse men of sexual misdemeanours or rape, because any claim is seen through a distorting lens and unjustified aspersions about their own sexuality.
Women of colour are also expected to be grateful for sexual attention, with white men sometimes having the audacity to frame their sexual assault as open-mindedness – patting themselves on the back for being sexually involved with a person of colour.
The complicated layers of this mean that men are more likely to deny the accusations of women of colour, not only because they know these women won’t be believed by society at large, but also maybe because they can convince themselves that the crime they’ve committed isn’t a crime at all. They justify their violence on the basis that black women must want sex and that Asian women wouldn’t ask for it if they did.
annaxmalina
turnnoffyourmind
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