Cultural Sexism: What If Amanda Knox Had Been Andrew Knox?

[ismnotwasm]

These phrases, as reported by ABC News's Diane Sawyer, have been used by the media to describe Amanda Knox, the American study abroad student who, while living in Perugia, Italy, in 2007, was charged with murder. Specifically, she was charged with killing her female roommate, who was found in their apartment in a state of partial undress with her throat slit. After four years in prison, Knox's conviction was overturned. She is now back in the United States (although the acquittal itself was overturned last month, and Italy wants her to return for a retrial.)

Obviously, I have no idea whether the prosecutor's argument against Knox, including the charge that the murder resulted from sex games gone awry, has a shred of truth to it. Here's what I do know: If Amanda Knox had been Andrew Knox, the breathless and prolonged excitement around his sex life would be greatly diminished, or absent altogether. If Amanda had been Andrew, he wouldn't have been labeled "a sex-mad flatmate" in the media.

No, just as Frank Bruni writes in last Sunday's New York Times, the "veritable drumbeat of sexual shaming" heaped on Amanda Knox amounts to sexism run rampant.

While he finds the case constructed against Amanda Knox to be "profoundly flawed", it's the sexism Bruni focuses on. As he puts it: "For men, lust is a tripwire. For women, it's a noose."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/05/09/181856012/cultural-sexism-what-if-amanda-knox-had-been-andrew-knox

[redqueen]

1. Have to give this a kick.

And share my favorite parts.

In the cooking version, the women are not as passive in terms of survival behaviors as in the hunting version. Yet, as cooks, they nevertheless become victims of men who steal the products (cooked tubers) of their labor; they end up in need of protection by males from males.

The key question is: When will we as a society evolve beyond the telling of these sexist stories, about Amanda Knox and countless others?