Amanda Hess, a blogger for Washington City Paper, wrote a sharp deconstruction (11/30/09) of Chicago Tribune advice columnist Amy “Ask Amy” Dickinson’s victim-blaming response (11/27/09) to a woman who wanted to know whether she was a victim of rape:
Were you a victim? Yes.
First, you were a victim of your own awful judgment.
Hess points out Dickinson’s disparate treatment of victim and perpetrator:
You don’t say whether the guy was also drunk. If so, his judgment was also impaired.
Or as Hess translates: “Your judgment was ‘awful’; your rapist’s judgment was merely ‘impaired.'”
The most stunning part of the advice column, though, was when Dickinson urged the letter-writer to give the man who raped her a call:
You must involve the guy in question in order to determine what happened and because he absolutely must take responsibility and face the consequences for his actions, just as you are prepared to do.
Hess responds to this “destructive, dangerous, and negligent” advice:
Obviously, rapists should not be consulted on questions of consent. As this column makes clear, we should all probably refrain from consulting Ask Amy as well.
UPDATE: Those interested in asking Amy Dickinson to retract the advice in her November 27 column can sign a petition that does so here.
I’d be taken aback by this, but I have no more aback to be taken, after seeing this horseshit in the corpress for decades.
I think it shows the perverse and perverted power of popular culture that this woman felt compelled to write an advice columnist about this, don’t you?
I think we should also ask theives if they have stolen from us, and murderers if they murdered. Why haven’t we thought of this before?
Amy should be fired. She is in no way qualified to give advice to rape victims. Furthermore, her advice is harmful.
Question–What is ‘Fox News Watchdog’? It merely repeats what FAIR has said as far as I can see. I had thought–& hoped–that it was the equivalent of ‘Wal-Mart Watch’, but it shows no signs of such action. So, I am wondering if it’s not yet another befuddlement Fox News is good at.
Absolutely awful advice. I hope she gets pilloried for this.
What an incredibly ignorant and insensitive answer. She’s obviously never had the misfortune of having rape happen to her or someone she knows personally.