Where Is the Outrage? Lesbian Twitter Engineer Rapes and Beats her Wife

The Daily Beast

When NFL player Ray Rice beats his wife, the media is outraged and demands action. When a Twitter engineer beats her wife, the media shrugs.

“I want you to know how difficult this was to report. I didn’t think anyone would believe me, as is often the case with rape victims…. I never anticipated that hitting your bottom would hurt me or my family.”

This disheartening court statement from an alleged rape victim is, to be blunt, unsurprising: the many logistical challenges and emotional turmoil of reporting a rape, especially when a loved one is the attacker, is unfortunately common. Getting rape prosecuted has long provided its own set of deeply frustrating difficulties, from belligerent questioning of accusers to blatant refusal to investigate claims.

It is also not particularly surprising—but still extremely upsetting–that the alleged rapist in this case has insinuated the accuser made her claim for monetary gains. Nor is it surprising that the employer of the accused has neither fired the alleged perpetrator nor denounced the trial.

What is surprising is that the alleged rapist is a well-regarded feminist and LGBT advocate, Dana McCallum, a transgender woman who was named by Business Insider as the fifth-most important LGBT person in the tech world. She is a senior engineer for Twitter, which stated “We don’t comment on employees’ personal matters” when McCallum was charged with five felonies earlier this years: three counts of spousal rape, one count of false imprisonment and one count of domestic violence.

McCallum ultimately pleaded guilty on Tuesday to two misdemeanors: one count of domestic violence with corporal injury to the spouse and one count of false imprisonment. The District Attorney’s office insisted on a guilty plea when she attempted to enter no contest. From a legal standpoint, the case is resolved, but the aftershocks in the way we think about rape and assault will reverberate for a long time.

Or at least they should. Unfortunately, the relative silence around McCallum’s trial, let alone the issue of woman-on-woman rape and sexual assault, is deafening and disturbing. In researching for this article, I posted queries in multiple forums for female journalists for resources or recommended experts for female-on-female rape. I received only one response. I’ve seen only a handful of articles reporting on the McCallum case and they are generally absent of any criticism.

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Source: The Daily Beast | Emily Shire