Lynn Parramore on Twists in Dominique Strauss-Kahn Story

Lynn Parramore, on the initial skepticism with which many of us have long greeted reports by women that they've been raped: 

Attacks on the credibility of women who bring charges of sexual assault is something we should greet first with skepticism. Such attacks often carry an implicit assumption that a woman -- especially if she is poor, associates with unsavory characters, lives in a dodgy neighborhood, etc. -- may have deserved what she got and is not entitled to our sympathy or to legal protection. Important questions about class, gender and economic status raised in such cases demand our attention. In this instance, the fact that a poor, immigrant woman living in the Bronx knows a drug dealer or fudged the facts in order to gain asylum seems to me neither surprising nor indicative that she is not entitled to basic human rights.

And I agree.

And, as an aside, but an entirely pertinent one, see David Sirota today at Salon on the skyrocketing pay of top executives, and the attempt of corporations to hide the disparity between what the old boys at the top (who come in both genders, but are still predominantly male old boys) are paid, vis-a-vis what everyone else takes home.