Self Acknowledgement and the Burden of Proof

After our third class discussion, regarding the Campbell piece with the vivid stories of rape, the classroom was visibly charged with anger and tension. The article set people off in a similar way as it set off the researchers it described. What I noticed was, with my experience, I had little grounds to identify with the constant anxiety and apprehension many of my classmate described. Self-acknowledgement as a researcher was a major component of the Feminist Research Methodology course and acknowledging the fact I have never experienced the anxieties and fears of my classmates is significant. It saddens me we live in a world that perpetuates this the anxieties they described.

Recently I was informed, by one of my roommates, that a homeless man got into our basement and was trying to appropriate some clothes and food. I want to acknowledge that this obviously a classed issue but this is not about how people of a different economic bracket have victimized me, it is about my lack of security and ability for foreign bodies to enter the privacy of my residence. It is an ongoing issue as o ver the summer I am certain a homeless person stole my matte black Nikes (which upset me because I needed them for work). Reflecting on these events after class made me feel pretty horrible because I was not afraid at all that there was a homeless person who could get into our house. I do not even lock my door to my room. The world I live in is so separate from what I imagine my classmates’ to be (sorry to speak on any of your behalf). In the charged environment of our classroom I hope that my lack of personal experience does not hamper my ability to acknowledge and truly empathize with the issues we all face in different degrees.

Acknowledging this helped me to understand the demand that the persecution of sexual assault change immediately and drastically. People in the class today were clearly upset by the current model of which perpetuates legal secondary victimization but I am at a loss for another equitable way to do this, a method which clearly needs to be implement. I have always heard that the demand for certainty and the burden of proof in law comes from the thought that falsely imprisoning an innocent person is worse for society than allowing some of the guilty to walk away free. Clearly the greatest flaw in this becomes apparent in the current legal approach to assault, as it has become essentially institutionalized with under reporting and traumatic barriers to women. If the laws regarding sexual assault change, I question how it would affect the burden of proof in other cases, a sentiment which I think was overlooked in class that day.