Soraya Chemaly wrote a public Facebook post linking to a news story from Seattle about a woman murdered and cut into pieces and left in a recycling bin. Some of you don’t do Facebook and I wouldn’t want you to miss what Soraya said.

I don’t have time to write about this at the moment, but this awful story is the perfect example of how complicit media are in refusing to face misogyny in our own culture. If this crime had happened in India it would be plastered all over front [pages] as an example of deep cultural misogyny and persistent patriarchy. In the case of the brutal Delhi rape several years ago an analysis of the NYT and the Times of India showed that the dominant theme in the NYT was to reference patriarchy and women’s oppression within India, ie, “The brutal gang rape of a young woman in New Delhi this month has cast a cold light on how badly India treats its women.” This was happening almost simultaneously with the Steubenville rape news coming to light. In that case, the first two dozen articles focused on the dangers of social media and mainly made no, or minimal mention a culture of violence, or traditions, etc. Steubenville was covered in “Sports,” with related discussions, and the Delhi rape in “Asian and Pacific News” as a matter of national difference, etc. Even when the conversation about football culture, status and rape began, it was often tied to local problems with the economy, etc. Women of color as survivors or targets of sexual violence, noted researchers, get minimal coverage when they live in the US, but maximal coverage when they are depicted in terms of the inferiority of men in other countries. In this case, like so other gender-based hate crimes, this one will probably be blamed on technology (social media! online dating dangers, etc.) or this man’s mental instability.

The link between a macho culture around the more violent sports and violence against women right here in the US doesn’t get nearly enough coverage.