Why do we care?

For the last week, it’s been difficult to check the news without hearing about Annie Le, the woman at Yale who was murdered last week. The details are tragic—a young woman, days from her wedding, strangled, and the likely suspect at the moment is a co-worker of hers. At the very least, there appears evidence that the murder was not random. The medical examiner is not releasing information at the moment confirming whether or not Miss Le was sexually assaulted prior to her death.
The story is obviously sad. But what separates it from the dozens of other stories about women who are victims or attempted or completed violent crimes? If you watch the news, you’d think that Miss Le was a unique case—that the motivation for the coverage is the rarity of such an event.
We live in a society where the people most likely to hurt or kill women is the men that they know. A third of all women who are victims of homicide are murdered by their husbands or former husbands (interesting side note, intimate partner violence is one reason why women's health care costs on average are so much more than men's). If one backs up a step to include women’s friends and acquaintances, you can account for almost everyone who would hurt them. In virtually 90% of sexual assaults, the perpetrator is an acquaintance of the victim. Random violence is the exception rather than the norm.
So why are we hearing so much about Miss Le? In theory, I think greater coverage of violence against women is a good thing. But I’m troubled by the tone and motivation we see in this case. Is it that she’s beautiful? Talented? A Yale student? About to be married? I honestly don’t know. Given the photo montage that CNN and other channels have compiled, they obviously expect us to react viscerally to her beauty and youth. Last week I heard that she’d recently written a piece in the Yale newspaper about how street smarts can help you avoid being the victim of crimes, such as muggings and assaults. I’m not sure why this detail is relevant to the case. Again, I’m struggling to understand the motivations here. Also disturbing was the media’s aggressiveness in asking about whether Ms. Le was sexually assaulted prior to her death. Do we grieve for victims of rape that die, but not those that live? Is it out of empathy or morbid curiosity that we ask?
It’s an interesting contrast to look at the recent “Craig’s List killer” story, about the BU medical student who is accused of killing several masseuse/sex workers that he contact online and met in Boston hotels. There, we know so little about the victim—the entire focus has been on the perpetrator; a medical student with a girlfriend—the unexpected killer. We look for clues in his behavior to explain his actions.
Today, the coverage on the story focused a little more on Mr. Clark, the top suspect. A white male, evidently in high school he was a member of an Asian awareness group. This is the most suspicious detail that the media has been able to dig up yet; rather weak, if you ask me.
I would hypothesize about the treatment of the suspected perpetrators, I would say that society wants to demonstrate their deviance from the norm. By highlighting their differences from the average, society can continue in its habitual existence without needing to reform. The blame lies on the individual’s internal abnormalities. The average perpetrators make us the most nervous. That BU med student, and Mr. Clark, look an awful lot like normal guys. A lot of their colleagues describe them as “nice guys—the kind that would never do this kind of thing.” Now, that should scare us a bit. If violence against women has become so ingrained in our culture that normal individuals act on it, society will need to have a crisis of conscience and massive change in its standards. I doubt that such a small number of crimes will catalyze this; it’s a conclusion with a lot of implications and responsibilities (we’ve been able to ignore it this long). But, if these stories keep getting coverage, even if it’s only the ones that involve highly educated, attractive perpetrators and/or victims, maybe something will get started.
I’ve tried not to watch or read about this story; I do find it very sad. But I find particularly sad because Miss Le is representing a much larger population of victims than is immediately apparent. After September 11, 2001 Catharine MacKinnon, one of my heroines and a great advocate of women’s rights in the legal sphere (domestically and abroad) wrote a piece wondering why the government had responded with such strength to that attack, when the same number of women with killed by their husbands annually, and their lives went without notice. This essay is included in her book, “Are women human?” provocatively arguing that if the rights that we grant all humans are not granted to women, that implies that they have sub-human status. Great read.
I’m open to refute. If someone wants to challenge my decision to frame this as violence against women, I’d love to hear it. I wonder how often a man is strangled by a colleague. And whether the question of sexual assault would be such a focal issue. Or how often those stories get ignored as well. But I’m most interested in how we can begin to address the violence (against women and men) head on, perhaps specifically using opportunities created by the media.