Media missed moral in Schumer’s book
When Amy Schumer published her highly anticipated book, something about the media’s coverage felt wrong.
Reviews heaped praise on The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, a vivid catalog of her harrowing adolescence, her mother’s infidelity, her father’s multiple sclerosis and the sanctimony of the entertainment industry. That felt right. Reporters compiled listicles of the book’s horrific bombshells. Think pieces arrived on how the collection of essays help deepen our understanding of the comedian beyond her raunchy persona. Those, too, felt apropos.
But something felt amiss in the media’s handling of the revelation she made in the chapter
How I Lost My Virginity, in which Schumer describes her first sexual experience: “He was penetrating me. Without asking first, without kissing me, without so much as looking me in the eyes — or even confirming if I was awake.”
Schumer doesn’t call what happened to her “rape.” She doesn’t have to. Survivors should use language they’re comfortable with to process trauma, experts say.
But many media outlets reporting on her disclosure didn’t use the word “rape,” either. Sexual assault experts say they should have.
People wrote: “He took advantage of her when she fell asleep.” A piece from Marie Claire where Schumer discussed the incident
doesn’t mention the words “sexual assault” or “rape” anywhere online. A
Salon post called it “not consensual.”
What do these phrases mean? What is the difference between non-consensual sex and rape? Between rape and sexual assault? What is consent?
“This is a really good opportunity to talk about how media can play a really fundamental role in contextualizing why, even though she might not be calling it rape, it is that,” says Claudia GarciaRojas, co-coordinator of the Chicago Taskforce on Violence Against Girls & Young Women and editor of the media toolkit Reporting on Rape & Sexual
Violence. “When we don’t, it leaves readers room to think it’s not.”
Most of the outlets that wrote about what happened to Schumer lifted language straight from her essay, including USA TODAY, which experts say is appropriate. It’s the right place to start, but we must go further.
One out of every six American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, a statistic that Schumer herself cites in the chapter.
Rape culture is the phrase we use to explain the things we do in society that minimize this violence, normalize this violence and ultimately tolerate this violence.
It’s when Brock Turner’s father can plead for probation for his son, who was convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, because he believes jail “is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action.” Or when Baylor University ignored allegations of sexual assault committed by its football players and discouraged some of the women from coming forward. It’s why it took decades for Bill Cosby’s accusers to be taken seriously.
What happened to Schumer doesn’t fit the picture of rape perpetuated by rape culture. No one jumped out of the bushes. She was with her boyfriend, whom she also had a sexual relationship with after the incident. This made the betrayal confusing, as it can be for so many survivors.
Part of the challenge is that le- gally, and culturally, the language of rape is inconsistent.
The exact legal definition of rape varies from state to state. Some states don’t use the word “rape” at all. It can be called sexual battery or sexual assault or even sexual torture.
This is why the context journalists provide is critical, media watchdogs say. Facts don’t lead to understanding; context does. We find an open door, and then we use it to boost the conversation. Schumer opened it, but few walked in.
RAINN President Scott Berkowitz says one way journalists can help add context to stories like Schumer’s is by including a sentence that cites the FBI’s definition of rape, the closest thing to an official definition: “Pene- tration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”
By this definition, what Schumer described is rape. When the media fail to explain this to readers, it’s dangerous for many reasons, not the least of which is that it diminishes an already fragile trust between the journalists and rape survivors.
“Rape survivors are reading the media all the time,” GarciaRojas says. “If we think about Brock Turner’s rape case, the survivor learned about what happened to her by reading it online. Survivors will not talk to reporters and will not trust the media if they believe the media isn’t writing their stories accurately.”
Most rapes are never reported.
Schumer not only verbalized what happened to her, she did it to an audience of millions.
Schumer wasn’t screaming no. The penetration didn’t last very long. It doesn’t matter. As she writes in the end of the chapter:
“Sex is something you share. My first time didn’t need to be perfect, but I would have liked to have known it was going to happen. Or have been part of the decision. Instead, he just helped himself to my virginity — and I was never the same.”
Schumer says she opened up about her first time because she doesn’t want it to happen that way for your daughter, your sister, your friend.
Amy Schumer did good. The media could have done better.