"Deaf black lesbian accused of chainsaw murder!" screamed the Sydney Morning Herald.

"Gruesome lesbian chainsaw murder shocks US!" echoed The Australian and The Age.

"Chainsaw lesbian faces trial!" announced The Age's follow-up story.

Say, journos, did you mention that the accused is a lesbian? Because I don't think you made it clear enough that she's a lesbian.

For those not familiar with this story: Daphne Wright of South Dakota currently stands accused by the US state of South Dakota of the kidnapping and murder of Darlene VanderGeisen in February 2006. The prosecution's allegations are indeed shocking, and are made all the more horrific by accusations that the defendant dismembered the victim's body with a chainsaw. Pretty terrible stuff, and not the type of thing you want to trivialise. I don't want to trivialise it in this blog entry, and were I a newspaper editor, I wouldn't want to trivialise it there, either. But that seems pretty much what the abovementioned papers have done.

Their articles could almost be forgiven as simple sensationalism if they were just throwing in a few juicy "lesbian" references to attract readers' attention. After all, isn't that what lesbians are for?

And besides, they might argue, this is 2007, and plain old "chainsaw murder" just doesn't cut it anymore. What the punters want is sex! Hot, steamy lesbolicious sex!

Did we mention that the accused is a lesbian?

Unfortunately, it's not even that innocent. All three papers ran articles that opened with the following identical paragraphs:

"THE trial in South Dakota of a deaf, black lesbian accused of murdering a rival and dismembering her with a chainsaw has shocked the rural midwestern US state.

"Daphne Wright, 43, could become the first woman sent to death row in South Dakota, which has not executed a prisoner in more than 60 years.

"Wright is accused of kidnapping and murdering a heterosexual deaf woman, Darlene VanderGiesen, 42, whom she thought was spending too much time with her girlfriend."

Okay, so it might be necessary to mention the defendant's sexuality at some stage in the article, given that the alleged motive was one of romantic jealousy. Her race is also relevant to the story, because the fact that the jury members are all white could form the basis of a possible future appeal. But are these facts about the defendant so crucial that they need to be introduced in the very first sentence? And what's with emphasising the fact that the deceased was heterosexual? I certainly hope nobody's cynically trotting out an "evil queers" angle just to give their story a bit more punch.

The fate that befell VanderGeisen was a most horrible one, and the South Dakota legal system owes it to her family and friends, as well as to the people of their state, that justice is done in this case. And media on both a local and international level have a similar obligation to not mess everything up by prejudicing the trial.

Now, I can't vouch for the intricacies of South Dakota law, but I can only imagine that a whole bunch of papers all across the world running "chainsaw-wielding deaf black lesbian" headlines doesn't exactly help. If that oft-cited guesstimate that one in ten people is queer is close to the mark, then you can statistically expect the same of every tenth murderer. And once you've got that into perspective, it might be easier to not draw so much attention to the orientation of a trial defendant. The events surrounding VanderGeisen's death are terrible enough without their being used to whip up yet more bigoted sentiments for the rest of us to deal with.

(Cheers to forum member Freddiesboy for posting about this earlier.)

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.

Powered by AkoComment Tweaked Special Edition v.1.4.6
AkoComment © Copyright 2004 by Arthur Konze - www.mamboportal.com
All right reserved