"Whether They Deserved it or Not"

I noticed a sad, unfortunate theme: women have been questioned, degraded, and dismissed when it comes to raising their voice about sexual assault before the #MeToo movement even came to light. Using The Chicago Defender’s newspaper clippings and images from the years 1950-1980, I created a piece that highlights the history of sexual assault and violence against women; either by people in power and then are essentially ostracized for it, or are dismissed or undermined for even making such claims.

In red, I vigorously emphasized key words that resonated with the theme of sexual violence against women to represent anger, frustration, and hopelessness--and racism. The article I used as the heading--Girl Names Cop in Sex ‘Assault’--caught my eye immediately because of the quotation marks around the word assault, which instantly dismisses the young woman’s claims of sexual assault against a man of higher authority. I harshly highlighted those specific quotation marks in red, multiple times, to bring awareness. By adding other key words (i.e. rape, assault, victim, pressure, dignity, frustration) and distressing them accordingly, I wanted to emulate a feeling of hopelessness and repression.

Using the article What The People Say: A Rape Is A Rape (1952) in the upper left-hand corner, I decided to essentially summarize the obviously dismissive and demeaning undertones that Mr. James Trumbull used by blackening out all the words, but highlighting the ones that got the point across. It reads “Surely, for women, rape is unfortunate, whether they deserved it or not”.