Why does it have to be "rape victim"

[WhirlpoolGalaxyM51]

I don't understand why they do this. It is also done indiscriminately. Some people say that it's because of legal stuff, but lots of times they will say someone was raped and then other times they are "raped". Some people sat it's factual but to most people it sounds sceptical doesn't it? One is a fact the other is " well that's what she's saying but who knows really ".

Anyone this one today pissed me right off.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-33919483 here]]

She was 10 fgs. There is no question over what happened. No one in their right minds can say that was legal and consensual. This report is in the UK press. Yet they're too, what, squeamish to say outright she was raped because, what, maybe she got pregnant with no sex?

Angry.

A doctor at the Reina Sofia hospital in the capital, Asuncion, said the baby was born with a normal weight of 3.55kg (7lb 13oz).
"The mother is recovering well from the surgery," Dr Mario Villalba told the local Radio Cardinal station.
He said there are two other 12-year-old girls waiting to give birth at the hospital and several other teenagers.
"They are fighting," Dr Villalba said. "You must invest in education. There is nothing else to be done," he added.

Have I read this wrong? Is the "invest in education" regarding the young girls? Educate them not to be raped?

I'm hoping I've misread and it means educating boys/men not to rape them.

Off track, my auto correct keeps changing rape to rare,take,rake... Anything but the word rape.

I don't even understand what "they are fighting" means in that context either.

Just reading the guardian article and am

So much wrong. Eg.

"Unfortunately this case is not unusual for Paraguay, or the region,” Paula Avila-Guillen, advocacy adviser for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said. “It’s something that, very sadly, we see far too often, and that’s due to a lack of access to basic reproductive health services for girls and women, and a lack of understanding of the consequences for a girl of this very young age being forced to carry out a pregnancy.”

Wtf? Is it not the fault of the men who are causing these pregnancies? Are we to believe that if the men knew it were dangerous for them to get pregnant, they would decide against raping these children?

Talk about not naming the problem. Jesus Christ.

Is Avila-Guilien not referring to attitudes to abortion there?
Rather than rape?
Because that's how I read it.
So her "fight" is to change the attitudes to abortion.
And the cases she is talking about are pregnant children cases (although also rape obviously), but her perspective is regarding abortion because that's her job.

Yes, I think Avila-Guillen's comments meant seeing unwanted pregnancies was a regular occurrence, the refusal of the government to allow the termination requested by the girl's mother was due to a lack of understanding of the consequences for a girl of that age (surely it's in fact child abuse to force a child to go through a pregnancy - although one could make the same argument about her being forced to go through an abortion too, there is no good outcome for that child).

That said, she also jumps on the education bandwagon in an alarming way, saying "If women and girls feel comfortable about their bodies, know what is appropriate and are comfortable talking to their teachers and parents they would be able to denounce abuse a lot earlier and feel empowered to say no to abusive situations". Except the girl's mother did report the abuse to the authorities, who appear to have done nothing about it. And how on earth is a 10 year old meant to say 'no' to being raped by someone she has to share a room with?

It would be nice to imagine that in both cases this education includes educating boys and men that rape is wrong (although in fairness I don't think education can do much to deter child abuse).

I understand that her focus is on improving reproductive rights. I get that. But. But. It reads awfully.

The other thing that jumped out was the hospital saying the 11 to had the baby and no adverse health effects. But she's had to carry a baby and then have a cs. That's not nothing is it, iyswim. The state of her body is not as it was before.

A lot of the language around this, even from people who are on the "right" side, is awful. Just demonstrating how entrenched the underlying attitudes are around the world.

Yes, I don't think a hospital in this country in similar circumstances would have stated there were no 'adverse health effects'. For one thing, she's just had a C-section aged 11, so a major piece of surgery. She may be recovering physically quite well from that, children do bounce back quickly after all. But the effect on her mental health must be profound.

EVB (Ending Victimisation and Blame) have written a post on a similar piece in the Daily Mail about the use of the word allegedly.

Here

My dad, the day after it happened to me and I'd gone to the police and everything, very sensitively told me that he didn't see me as a victim but as a survivor. I appreciated that he was so thoughtful about how my self perception could have been affected. I'm not sure it helped me other than that though, that he'd really thought about what to say to me. To me the word victim doesn't mean generally vulnerable, just vulnerable to an absolute arsehole.

I don't see the post that was in response to, velour! I agree though. If some is a victim of crime, that's just a fact. Or another bad thing. They were the victim of a mugging, a victim of a pyramid selling scheme, whatever. A lion escaped and killed 6 people, the victims included x, y, etc.

All of those things are fine and usual and no-one has any problem with them.

It does seem to be a select few things where the victim of crime is slagged off for using that perfectly normal terminology. And it's all value judgements isn't it. With all these nuances. And while people should describe things as they see fit, I really don't think that it helps when others say "oh you're playing the victim card", or "survivor is a preferable term I think" which then sort of puts a hierarchy in, I don't know, how a person "should" react, they should be a survivor not a victim, to be a victim is bad, for some reason. But it's a standard word to describe, I mean the police have a "victims of crime" support line and so forth.

I think (and again stressing that I'm not talking about your dad or about how any person describes their own experiences) that it's often used in conversations about these issues to discredit, minimise, obfuscate, distract, when women who have been victims of these crimes use that perfectly normal everyday language to talk about it.

eg the Met Victim support and advice are people contacting them and complaining about their wordings? Or is it reserved for women when they talk about sex crimes.

Actually, I think children are "allowed" to be described as victims of sex crimes as well. And elderly people. So that's odd. Yet again I suspect it is just women and girls in their childbearing years who are victims of sex crimes (or are talking about them) who get told not to use certain words and so on.

oops sorry Whirlpool, I didn't RTFT :) just in response to the title

I think perhaps when people use "survivor" it's to assign a greater degree of seriousness to the crime - we use "survivor" to indicate mortality being threatened usually. Maybe it's misguided but at least well intentioned.

It wasn't anything that you said I was trying to guess at the content of the deleted post!