To the Editor:
In “Powerful and Primitive” (column, May 18), about the Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Schwarzenegger-Shriver dramas, Maureen Dowd quotes Bill Maher as saying, “If you’re going to go after the household help, get a ‘Yes,’ first.”
Not good enough. If the charges against Mr. Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, are true, then that is rape.
But coercion takes many forms, some of them quite subtle. With such a wide gap in power and status as that between a politician-movie star-international businessman, for example, and a nanny-housekeeper-maid, a “yes” might mean that someone is dazzled by the proximity to such “grandeur” or is worried about maintaining her employment or being disparaged when she looks for another job.
Of course, the heart has been known to jump the socioeconomic chasms, but only when all the participants can ultimately declare themselves openly as partners in a relationship can we assume an equality in the initial decision. Having to hide the truth about yourself, and particularly about your children, is a sure marker of powerlessness.
Rightly, a great deal of sympathy is directed toward Maria Shriver and her children. But I don’t envy the conversation that the former employee in the Schwarzenegger-Shriver household is having with her 14-year-old son right now. We don’t know her story, but we have heard enough other tales to know that under such circumstances, a “yes” is not always a “yes.”
ROSANNE WESTON
New York, May 18, 2011
The writer is a social worker.
To the Editor:
Re “I.M.F. Chief May Claim Consensual Sex” (news article, May 18): The report about the alleged rape by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, like other media accounts, quotes the victim’s lawyer as saying the housekeeper had no “agenda,” and is “not a woman of pretense,” as if a credible allegation of sexual assault is the exception rather than the rule. Yet sexual assault of women at work, particularly those who work in isolated settings, is both common and underreported.
These accounts remind us that longstanding stereotypes doubting rape victims’ credibility continue to dominate popular opinion and prevent meaningful reform.
JULIE GOLDSCHEID
Flushing, Queens, May 18, 2011
The writer is a professor at the CUNY School of Law.
Note from KBJ: Let me get this straight. "No" always means no, and "Yes" sometimes means no. Got it, guys?
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 