The venerable Gray Lady this past weekend had a special issue in the The New York Times Magazine focusing on women, "Saving the World's Women: How changing the lives of women and girls in the developing world can change everything."
There were various articles, many written by women-Lisa Belkin, Virginia Heffernan and so forth, but the anchor piece was a book excerpt by New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof.
Kristof very often writes about (and "exposes") atrocities against women around the world-and in our own backyard. I put quotes around the word "expose" because while Kristof writes effectively and with great concern about acid attacks, genital mutilation, mass rape and trafficking in girls and women, these subjects have been covered by feminist journalists, studied in women's studies courses and published by progressive media for decades.
It's no secret that most of the world's illiterate and poverty-stricken inhabitants are women and children who often live in various types of abusive situations from what we in the West think is the extremely heinous 24/7 veiling to what some Westerners seem not to think is so bad: rape as a weapon of war. And yes, a weapon indeed employed by U.S. soldiers.
I am sure it's no accident that Kristof has credulity and authority because has the New York Times as a platform for his international activist reporting (and actual activism--Kristof appears to get involved in local causes and tries to personally help women in the stories he files).
But it puzzles -- even while not surprising -- me that other journalists writing on these topics, female journalists and feminist writers such as Susan Brownmiller with her classic study, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, published in 1975 or the feminist magazine On The Issues, in print from 1983-1999-and now back online, are drowned out by one male reporter capturing all the credit for "exposing" to the world-or at least the U.S. public-the horrible violence that so many women and girls live inside of that is perpetrated by, well, mostly men.
Here's more of what Stephanie has to say.
