Creepiest Google searcher ever, and a confidentiality conundrum
Like a lot of bloggers, weird Google search terms will send people my way. I used the word "thighs" in a blog headline once, and now every week I get a few people who I'm pretty sure are just looking for porn. Awesome.
But here's a Google search term that's also a reminder of how important the conversations about rape and confidentiality are. Yesterday, some came to my blog by searching, "how to find out identity of a rape victim."
On a related note, I'm reading an interesting report by aids-free world on sexual violence during Zimbabwe's election crisis. It's worth your perusal, but I wanted to ask what you think about the "anonymizing" tactic in their photos.
There are photos of women who have experience sexual violence. I presume they are from Zimbabwe, though I don't recall the disclaimer (which narrates what I'm now explaining) saying so. In any case, these women are <em>not</em> the women whose stories are quoted in the report. And these women have been "disguised" by having colorful lines drawn over their face in significant places -- over the eyes and the nose, say. The lines are also clearly a design element. Here's an example:
This is the best one; others in the report strike me as...a little too easy to unmask? You'd have to know the person...but of course that's entirely the point.
Also, what about the aesthetic here? It makes me uncomfortable; it feels a bit like the crime has literally sliced away the identity of the victim. I'm not sure that's the gestalt to go for. Thoughts?
Meanwhile, if the pictures are not of the same women telling stories in the report...is it important that we know they're sexual violence survivors? Is it weird that they are illustrations, public stunt doubles for the stories we know -- but they also have their own stories, that we don't? If so, would including pictures of women who hadn't been raped be any better? Is the solution not to address the issue at all, except to say in a disclaimer, "The women photographed are not the women whose stories are narrated in this report"?
nk
I'd love to hear thoughts on this, especially from those who found the Kristof stuff important. It seems to me that it's worth thinking about. The decision to obscure or anonymize is not the only one, obviously. There's an aesthetic, with implications, to this stuff too... But now I'm rambling. Curious to hear what you think.
Well, that’s one way to deal with a rapist…
From the today's reporting, at the Open Society Institute's event "Accountability for Sexual Violence: Innovative Strategies at Work in Africa."
Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi, cofounder and executive director, African Women’s Development Fund: "....She found a man standing over her daughter, in the process of raping her...She had a machete in her hand. So she did what she had to do. That’s the usual example given of the woman who decided she was not going to wait for the slow wheels of justice. Now we are not going around advocating that women cut off the penises of the perpetrators--"
Voice from the crowd, loudly: "Why not?!"
Farm aid from space
This is the title of my newest Christian Science Monitor article, which is actually about weather-indexed insurance programs in sub-Saharan Africa. All kinds of cool science-and-tech stuff has come together in the last five years to allow big insurance companies to offer super-small insurance policies — low-premiums, comparatively ...
Why German homeschoolers get asylum and torture survivors don’t
I don’t know, actually. Maybe Uwe Romeike got lucky? Maybe asylum is starting to change? Maybe judges like evangelicals? Or white people better than black people? Or maybe we just really, <em>really</em> hate the European Court of Human Rights?
In late January, A US immigration judge in Memphis, Tenn., recently ...
‘How we know waterboarding works,’ by the CIA
Remember that guy who went on ABC and said, “Waterboarding works. One douse, and this al Qaeda guy totally opened up.” (Okay, maybe it went more like this: “From that day [we waterboarded him] on, he answered every question. The threat information he provided disrupted a number of ...
How to: Protest for easier conceal-carry permits (hint: display gun prominently)
The Lead of the Day is from the CS Monitor:
Small groups of armed Californians have been turning up at cafes and coffee shops with handguns holstered to their belts to raise awareness about gun rights and what they call unfair limits on concealed weapon permits.
Sure, they may look ...
Jina Moore
I am a freelance journalist and multimedia producer who covers human rights, Africa and foreign affairs. [More here]