As a busy afternoon has faded into a quieter evening, I’ve been unable to get thoughts of the Amanda Knox conviction out of my mind. For those not in the loop, Knox is a 22 year-old American woman who was found guilty today by an Italian court of murdering her British housemate while both were students doing a year abroad in Perugia. Knox and her Italian boyfriend were convicted on what the vast majority of American observers considered to be circumstantial evidence, with no convincing evidence of a motive, and after another man unconnected to Knox and her fella had already been convicted of the crime. The murder of the young English woman, Meredith Kercher, took place in 2007, and the story has been given sensational coverage throughout the European media, particularly in Italy and the UK. The allegations — never proved to the satisfaction of most — that Knox and her beau had killed Kercher as part of a bizarre sexual ritual were captivating; the prettiness of the young women involved and the luridness of the story spun by the prosecution generated tremendous global interest.
In the fall of 2000, I taught a semester abroad in Florence. I traveled with one other teacher and 45 Pasadena City College students, two-thirds of whom were female. The vast majority of Americans who study abroad are women, for a variety of reasons, and our trip was no exception. We warned our students about the attitudes that many Italians have towards young American women; we advised them about the different “street environment” they could expect to find in Florence. But even I, who had traveled extensively in Italy before going as a professor, was stunned by the attitudes we encountered. The reputation of American “girls” as sexually undiscriminating, freed for the first time from the watchful eyes of parents and at least most of their peers, was nearly universal. And while it is certainly true that for the young and not-so-young, travel is almost invariably an aphrodisiac and a notorious compromiser of inhibitions, the beliefs about American women students were grounded far more in myth and media than in reality.
Still, some of the young women on our trip did have flings with the locals; a few did find Italian boyfriends, as Amanda Knox did. There were some heartbreaks and some scares. I half-jokingly told my students, in one of our pre-trip meetings, that I had only three rules for them: No jails, no hospitals, and no unintended pregnancies. We had a couple of students picked up by the cops (and then released, for smoking marijuana with local lads), we had one tragic incident that left one of our guys paralyzed for life from the waist down. It was an eventful trip. But though there was a lot of drinking and quite a few short-term affairs, for the most part our students emerged unscathed. And whatever they were doing, they treated Florence and the rest of the country with respect and the kind of wide-eyed wonder so natural among youngsters from the New World making their first serious visit to the heart of the Old.
I hated the contempt for our students that I so often heard from some in Florence and elsewhere. Though it was often tinged with anti-Americanism (and this while Clinton was still in the White House), it was directed almost exclusively towards our female students — particularly the ones who were perceived as more attractive, or who wore more revealing clothing. The prosecutor in the Amanda Knox devoted extensive time to discussing the defendant’s sex life and her occasionally flamboyant dress, even her taste in (or lack of) underwear. Her diary, replete with the personal details one would expect in a private journal, has been read repeatedly in court. The vulgar British tabloids labeled her “Foxy Knoxy” and “No Knicks Knox”; it was a world-class exercise in cruelty and slut-shaming. Apparently, to the amazement of even Italian legal experts (familiar with the guilty-until-proven innocent style of jurisprudence in that country) the paper-thin case, built more on animosity towards sexually adventurous American girls than actual evidence, worked today. Knox and her boyfriend face a quarter-century in prison, but have a chance to have that reduced on appeal.
Before, during, and after I taught in Florence I never believed that Yanks abroad ought to be above the law. A dual citizen myself, I have no patience for the “ugly American” code of conduct. (I will note, having mentioned my British passport, that tourists from the UK were often far more poorly behaved on Italian beaches and in Italian nightclubs than were students from the States.) At the same time, I have no patience with reflexive anti-Americanism of the sort that many of my students, no matter how polite, ran into all too frequently. And as a feminist professor, I was and am particularly disgusted by the mix of prudish censoriousness towards and predatory fascination with the sex lives of young women from America who come to Italy to study.
When I look at the face of Amanda Knox, I see someone who looks a great deal like many of the students I taught. When I hear the details of her private life discussed with both salacious enthrallment and affected repugnance, I think of the experiences of so many of my students who went abroad with me. When I hear the twisted, groundless narrative that the prosecution offered, something along the lines of “American girl is sexually curious and open about it and she smoked pot: therefore it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump to stabbing one’s prudish roommate to death”, I’m enraged and indignant. What happened to Amanda Knox — and I am nearly as convinced of her innocence as her parents — could have happened to a dozen young women I knew and taught in Italy.
Make no mistake, I grieve the loss of Meredith Kercher and the horrible way she died. But I have little doubt that if Knox had been a little less pretty, a little less sexual, and a little less American, she’d never have spent a day in prison for her roommate’s murder. On her behalf, and on behalf of others like her, I am very angry tonight.
There has been this little place in my heart for her since I first heard the story. I believed that there HAD to be some kind of citizen/territory/justice/clause/embassy/agreement some fancy legal technicality that would let her come back home. I had no idea they were convicted today. I feel sick..
If the story had gotten bigger here do you think they would have sent her back? Why wasn’t it bigger here?
Quite sickening. Having travelled in Italy as a young British woman I am not suprised at what you say. I made my trip with another young woman who injured her knee in a moped accident just before we arrived in Rome, making walking slightly problematic. Rome was a compete nightmare: we had men following us, harrassing us, grabbing at us etc, because, of course, we couldn’t run away. We left Italy quickly and did some camping if France; that was much better.
It made us feel a bit better to have got some prior revenge; while in Sienna, before the accident, my friend and I ran out of food and money on a Sunday. It was the day of the Palio (Sienna’s big horse racing festival) and we met two Italian men in the crowd who offered us dinner. We went to their flat (these days I can’t believe I did this) and they made us a beautiful 3 course dinner after which, hen theyy started to try to get friendly - flirty etc, we ran out of their flat and down the old cobbled streets back too our hostel. Italy felt like a very dangerous place, for more so than Greece, which is often though of as less ‘European’.
Here we go with the bashing of Southern Europeans for their “primitive backwardness” again. Well, you know, they ARE a bit….well….*browner* than us perfect, lily-white Northern types, aren’t they? I mean, what can you possibly expect? And, really, most of them are………Papists! Does anything else have to be said?
As a Southern European, I say one thing: I’m sick of this shit. As if slut-shaming and hypersexualisation of women perceived as “different” don’t occur on a daily fucking basis in Northern cultures, ESPECIALLY in the US. Oh yeah, when YOU do it, it’s, like, totes different…cos y’know, the women YOU exoticise are, like, Southern (& probably at least a little bit brown), so therefore, like, totally more backwards and primitive anyway! Hurray!!
USA!!! USA!!! USAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!111!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!
Isn’t there a famous line in the Bible about motes & planks in eyes? Learn it, because it could have been composed especially for all of you, and stop doing this bullshit.
Also, this is almost beside the point, but for what it’s worth, here in the UK (y’know, a certified Northern [and therefore more truly white, which totally = GOOD!] country), most of the news reports I saw/read about this case were not exactly sympathetic towards Amanda Knox. So stop making this a thing about backward, evil Italians.
And, btw, way for several of you to go down the “I totally spent, like, 2 WHOLE MONTHS in Italy, so I’m, like, A TOTAL EXPERT on EVERY ASPECT of Italian culture.” You know, Matey, I’ve lived in the UK for 10 years now, and I know for a fact that stories like yours happen to all sorts of women with (gulp!) British men, too. My god, just look at attitudes towards sexua assault & rape here. It’s the land of “she asked for it”!
“I have no patience with reflexive anti-Americanism of the sort that many of my students, no matter how polite, ran into all too frequently.”
And, oddly, reading this post of yours goes a long way towards explaining WHY Italians might have some anti-American attitudes. And your labelling it “reflexive” is outrageous beyond belief. Have you looked at the USA’s record on foreign relations over the past 50 years? And yet you act as if there’s no reason for everyone to pick on poor, little you. Get real. And that doesn’t even touch on the attitudes many US citizens display overseas. Yes, Brits are often, though by no means always, more conspicuously obnoxious, what with the puking in the streets and drunken aggression, but Americans do have a deplorable tendency to moan on and on and on about how much better things are at home, and how superior they are doing just about everything. And English-speakers in general tend to waltz into any place in any country, no matter how remote, and blithely assume that they will be linguistically accommodated. I’ve have witnessed Brits and Americans getting annoyed at Spanish people for having the gall to speak Spanish in Spain.
Stop with the freaking victim complex. There are reasons for all of the negativity you dealt with.
Look at your own records: on how you deal with other nations, on dealing with rape, on your attitudes about violence towards women and your attitudes towards foreigners. And get over your damn superiority trip.
Hmm,
I suppose most of what you write about the common attitude towards female American students in Southern Italy is not untrue. Yet when it comes to murder cases I find it difficult to argue guilty or not guilty based on stereotypes - saying that she isn’t guilty because Italians have a stereotypical approach to slut shaming pretty American students is as sketchy as what you accuse the Italian court of.
“The reputation of American “girls” as sexually undiscriminating, freed for the first time from the watchful eyes of parents and at least most of their peers, was nearly universal.”
When I grew up in Europe, I met a lot of High School students on exchange trips. What you describe above is certainly my experience, although the US boys behaved exactly the same (and both US girls and boys were very popular by both my female and male peers and although I, at the time, wasn’t able to benefit from that…). There certainly is both an effect of liberation and a perceived pressure among American youth to exploit the liberties they enjoy on such trips - particularly with respect to alcohol and sex. Being a teenager is usually hard enough, but being a teenager in the US certainly is even harder. In my experience, that perception leads to Americans being given even more slack than natives in the respects at hand rather than the opposite.
Crys T took the words right out of my mouth.
Hugo- I didn’t actually hear the testimony, so I’m not certain as to whether or not she is guilty or innocent. Nevertheless, you make some excellent points.
Crys T- The personal experiences of some female Americans indicates that some, not all, Italian men have issues when it comes to staring, touching, and talking about women. The harassment seems to be greater if the woman is young, traditionally attractive, and fashionably dressed. Being blonde seems to be a factor, also. I’m not sure that you can draw a comparison to daily life in the US. Look, I’m friends with several attractive African American women and they’re simply not being groped several times a week by white American men.
That being said, I always remind people who are about to travel abroad that they will be a guest in that country. They will survive by the good graces of those residents. There are no “constitutional rights” over there. It’s a big world with a lot of diverse cultures. You have to be smart. Women should cover their heads in hardcore Muslim countries. Everybody should not wear olive green or camouflage in the third world. “Free Tibet” t-shirts will not help at customs in China. A short skirt in Italy will get a woman tons of attention above and beyond what she would have received already. Also, don’t EVER take pictures of the police in Ireland.
“I believed that there HAD to be some kind of citizen/territory/justice/clause/embassy/agreement some fancy legal technicality that would let her come back home.”
ROTFL, yes, because American citizens are totes allowed to run around the world committing crimes and the US just swoops in in the end and saves them. Because the USA trumps all foreign laws everywhere. And foreigners NEVER come to the US, commit crimes, and get lost in our justice system. Never ever.
The girl never even contacted the US Consulate when the murder first happened, and all the consulate could do if she HAD would be to make sure she understood the Italian system and that she had representation. They can’t just take her out of the country and pat her on her pretty little American head.
It’s a bit weak to fulminate against stereotyping of all southern Europe when this is an accusation made against Italy. Not “the Mediterranean,” not “brown people,” not “Italy, France, Spain, Greece, and all points south and east”–Italy. You can’t wish away specific bigotry by pretending it’s general. You especially can’t defend a country’s men against their reputation for casual assault by pretending that grabbing a stranger’s tit is a bold protest against rudeness and imperialism. Yeah, men of all nations tend, as a group, to treat foreign women like shit. No, American men are not exempt from the rule. But it is also true that some places are more hostile to foreign women from particular countries than others are, and it is not always racism that causes this perception.
Of course it is racism and not fact that informs a casual dismissal of “the Middle East” or “the Mediterranean” as places hostile to and disrespectful of women travelers, and of course that happens a lot. But that’s not what’s being said in this case. As someone said above, Greece isn’t that bad. I can attest from my own experience that France isn’t that bad–the casual comments I got the year I lived there struck me as no different from what an unlucky woman would experience in the U.S
Italy is actually, from my own experience, from everything I have ever heard from every single person I have spoken to who has been there, and from every Italian woman I have ever spoken to, substantially worse than its neighbors in this one particular regard. And it’s perfectly fine to argue that this simply isn’t true, if you have reason to believe it isn’t. But it’s totally beyond all bounds to argue that even if it is true, so what, because of course, if you hate American arrogance and foreign policy, you’re going to take it out on women’s bodies:
There are reasons for all of the negativity you dealt with.
Come the fuck on. There are reasons why women get molested everywhere. They are not acceptable reasons.
Here is the thing: Is Hugo’s manner in this post self-righteous and prejudiced and self-satisfied in a very obnoxiously American way? Sure it is!
But who got treated like the easy, slutty American whore on his trip abroad?
Not Hugo.
I half-jokingly told my students, in one of our pre-trip meetings, that I had only three rules for them: No jails, no hospitals, and no unintended pregnancies.
Ha ha ha! Oh Hugo, you are a card. If only the women I know who’ve been sexually assaulted abroad had been giving rules against getting raped, they’d have been sure not to break them.
Crys T,
I hear you and felt similar vibes coming from this post as well; though I don’t have personal knowledge of Italy and Italian culture myself and don’t know how to take the allegations Hugo is making, I’ve heard enough misguided essentialist culture arguments to cringe when those kind of allegations are being made.
But do you think that the trial Amanda Knox got was at all fair? I don’t even care to have an opinion on her innocence or not, but all the focus on her underwear and her vibrator and this whole sex game theory that has no evidence to substantiate it is first-class woman hating bullshit. That does not mean that that kind of thing is unique to Italy or the Italian legal system and it certainly does not mean that it’s unique to non-lily white types. (Most of the misogyny I’ve witnessed in my life has come from white people, since I live in a white dominated society.) It’s still a travesty though.
“Have you looked at the USA’s record on foreign relations over the past 50 years? And yet you act as if there’s no reason for everyone to pick on poor, little you.”
*That* is bullshit, though. Individuals cannot be held responsible for all the actions of their government. I wasn’t alive/couldn’t vote for everything that happened before Bush 43 and I opposed him and his policies the entire time. I have had no say in anything my country has done until this last election, so I do not deserve to be treated as if I did. And what does that have to do with slut shaming American girls overseas anyway? Do we deserve to be harassed and picked on and assaulted because some of our fellow citizens act like entitled assholes abroad? Incidentally, I hate loud, obnoxious Americans too.
Sophonisba, I think you know my track record on sexual assault prevention well enough to know that I certainly did a great deal more than offer a lame joke to prepare all of my students for immersion in Italian culture. That prepping wasn’t the point of this post
I’ve been to all seven continents, traveled across Europe with students, and found that at least among its neighbors, Italy is, for all its joys and glories, more sexist than anywhere else. (Can anyone imagine Silvio Berlusconi getting away with what he gets away with anywhere else in Western Europe?)
I’d also like to note that half of the women who went on our trip were, like most PCC students, women of color. We had Asian-American, Latinas, and African-American students — many of whom encountered the double hatefulness of street harassment and virulent racism. Our study abroad program puts dozens of students on planes for the first time in their lives, students who have been carefully inculcated with respect for foreign cultures — but who are also young enough to want to try out new and exciting things away from home.
The photograph titled “An American Girl in Florence” established the reputation of Ruth Orkin:
http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=4983463
She swore it wasn’t posed, except that she asked the woman to walk down the street a second time.
As for the Knox-Kercher incident, I don’t know. The prosecution would have had to make a better case in America or Britain, that’s for sure. I wonder if this will get more play in the American press now that there’s an actual conviction.
Also, my best friend from high school was murdered as her freshman year of college was coming to a close, so I have some (unwanted) experience in being on the side of the victim and if I was among Meredith Kercher’s family I’d be livid that the police were busier fantasizing about Amanda Knox naked than coming up with a plausible explanation for what actually happened to my loved one. Even if Knox was responsible, there’s no fucking way it went down like the twisted wet dream they suggested.
This post reminds of something that I have not thought about in a long time: I taught English in South Korea in 1988-89. While I was there, a woman who worked at the English-language school down the block from mine was brutally murdered in her apartment, which was not quite right across the street from the complex where I lived. The initial stories that ran in the papers, Korean and English, were all about slut-shaming the dead woman: she was American, and you know how “loose” American women are; she had more than one boyfriend, and one of them was Japanese, and so surely this was some kind of jealous crime of passion; and so on. Based on how the papers framed the story, many of the Koreans I knew turned it into a cautionary tale for, variously, Korean women, American women living in Korea, American men who might choose to get involved with Korean women (who might have jealous Korean boyfriends, brothers, fathers, etc.)–better we should all stick with our own and stay chaste while doing it, etc. and so on.
Then the truth came out: Turns out the murdered woman was bisexual and had been consistently, over a period of weeks or months (I am not sure which), rejecting the advances of a lesbian coworker, and it was this lesbian coworker who–I don’t remember the precise details of how she came to be in the dead woman’s apartment–committed the murder. These details came out because a third woman, a colleague of both the murderer and her victim, whom I and a couple of other people from the school where I worked knew casually, was eventually arrested as, and confessed to being, an accomplice to the murder, and she was interviewed by a colleague of mine who was compiling a kind of oral history based on the experience of English-language teachers in Asia.
Well, you can imagine the slut-shaming and homophobic slut-shaming, not to mention just good old homophobia that was unleashed when the story came out. My students, for example, were adamant that I had to get myself hired out as a consultant to the Korean government so I could teach their customs officials how to recognize and turn back gay men and lesbians trying to enter the country. (I don’t remember how they came to decide that I was some kind of expert in this regard.) I left the country before the case was fully resolved, so I don’t know what happened either to the woman arrested as an accomplice or the woman who committed the murder.
I’m willing to buy the theory that, if you come right down to it, Amanda Knox was found guilty not of murdering her roommate but of being a slut instead of a Madonna. Fine. But still, I can testify from personal experience that squicky preoccupations are not the exclusive property of Italians.* Americans can do squicky preoccupations really, really well. I live in western Washington State, where, during the last few days, the news coverage has been all-Amanda-Knox-all-the-time, and not once have any of the news pieces dealing with the Knox case, and there have scads of them, ever dealt, explicitly or otherwise, with the question of whether Knox is guilty or innocent (of murder, not of being female and hot). It’s all been: she’s young, she’s pretty, she’s beleaguered. She’s far from home and she’s behind bars; she’s actually been in shackles. Ooooooooohh.
Last night I was listening to KGO (San Francisco). I was giving the local stations a pass for the evening because, frankly, I was tired of hearing about Amanda Knox. I found out that Knox has been declared guilty during one of the KGO news breaks, and during this news break, I swear to God, I heard a reporter (female) pose to Knox’s younger sister the following incisive query: “Was it haaaaaaaaaaaahhrd for you, waiting outside for the verdict?” The reporter’s voice was breathy and insinuating and made my skin crawl. I turned the sound down turned it up again five minutes later. (Back to Gene Burns…)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it sucks to turn against a woman and to make her life hard and to put her through hell just because she’s attractive, but it’s also stupid to decide, on the basis that a woman is attractive, that she is without flaw, that she is incapable of killing and stealing and mayhem, that she is the possessor of some recondite Secret, and that she can know or embody or symbolize the Truth. It’s idiotic to think that a woman who is pretty operates below the moral level just because she’s pretty, and it’s also idiotic to think that a woman who is pretty operates above the moral level for the same reason. Both versions deprive the woman in question of any personality, and equally effectually blot the significance out of anything she does.
The problem with the Knox case (IMO) isn’t that Knox is a Persecuted Maiden who’s been successfully incarcerated by a coterie of Italian bughears. The problem is that everybody involved, including the observers, be they Italian, British, American or what-all, has been approaching the whole schmear as though Ann Radcliffe’s latest had just left the presses. (”Through a dream landscape, usually called by the name of some actual Italian place, a girl flees in terror and alone amid crumbling castles, antique dungeons, and ghosts who are never really ghosts. She nearly escapes her terrible persecutors, whoseek her out of lust and greed, but is caught; escapes again and is caught; escapes once more and is caught…”)
*blahdeeblah…*
Even in those days people knew they were reading fiction: Jane Austen wrote a novel intimating that Horrid Stories should never be accepted as accurate or trustworthy guides to real life. Apparently she wrote in vain. It’s too bad more people didn’t listen to her; it’s too bad more people don’t ponder that advice.
*My sister, a plump, very pink, curvaceous fair redhead, has been to Italy and has been physically chased down streets and hooted at by men. Fortunately she’s the kind of person who can easily pull the sting out of such events, so no harm came of any of it. I realize that not everybody has that gift (I sure don’t). Nevertheless I can’t help but wonder if the Italian lads would have taken the time to bother my sister–I imagine they could have found other things to do with their time–if they hadn’t been convinced on some level that by chasing her around they were persecuting a Fair Maiden and if they hadn’t found that notion somewhat of a thrill.
Dear all, Yes, of course sexua harassment happens everywhere; it’s just that it happened to me in Italy about a million times more than anywhere else. Yes, our rape laws are horrific, but when I had a broken leg in the UK I didn’t attract groups of random men in the street who would harass me and follow me knowing I couldn’t get away.
This has nothing to do with the colour of anyone’s skin; how do you know what colour I am? How can you make the judgement that I am being racist just because I said I had a terrible experience with many Italian men when I travelled there. Walking down the high street in Brindisi was pretty bad in terms of gawking too btw.
Interesting post on the slut-shaming of American girls traveling in Italy. By the way, now that I’ve posted a couple of times here I suppose I should say thanks for writing this amazing blog - I discovered it recently and now it’s a favorite.
What I keep seeing, though, in the post and the comments and the actual trial we’re talking about, is the relentless “Other-izing” of various people - making them into caricatures whose one or two “most interesting” traits are exaggerated at the expense of all the others, and of their full humanity. It’s pretty clear that this happened to Amanda Knox during her trial, and that’s shameful and led to awful consequences for her if she is actually innocent.
But while I really don’t like seeing adventurous American girls who enjoy sex portrayed as monstrous sluts capable of murder, I’m also wary of generalizing about Italians as vicious slut-shamers with a failed justice system. (I also got that from the NY Times article comments.) Certainly, you could make the same generalization about Americans. We have our own slut-shamers, lots of them, and our own miscarriages of justice. But an American isn’t going to make that generalization because, living here, it’s clear that there are a lot of individual exceptions to it.
It’s not that generalizing about Italians and their justice system will necessarily lead to an event where people get seriously hurt - the potential consequences of that generalization are probably less awful than the potential consequences of the “American girls are sluts” mentality. It’s just that allowing yourself one stereotype makes it easier to start slapping labels on other groups as well, and I think that’s precisely what most people here are trying to avoid doing, because eventually one of those stereotypes will lead to something nasty - as in the case of Amanda Knox.
Having lived in Florence for a year when I was 31-32–i.e. way past my sell-by date as far as most locals were concerned, but still capable of observing the extraordinary sexism and misogyny of northern Italian culture–I say bravo Hugo. La Lubu and Crys T, you can disagree with this judgment of study abroad in Italy, but what’s going on here is *not* hatred of brown people. I found the environs south of Rome much less blighted with this creepy hatred of women.
Now that I’ve entered midlife I think I would discourage American women in their twenties from exchange-student programs in northern Italy. Any other country I’ve visited would be a better bet. Actually I can’t think of *any* good age for an American woman to visit this country. Which is really sad, because for those who care about painting and sculpture, Italy has no equal. And the food, wine, and landscape all rock.
what can we americans, in the land of equality and home of the innocent until proven guilty, do to change the old habits of the Italians?
what they did is unfair! it’s wrong.
maybe im being pessimistic but i feel that this is a more realistic approach. we can talk all day long about the injustices of the world until we’re blue in the face, but until action is taken to try to stop whats going on, they’re just empty words. sorry if it offends anyone but we need to see the whole picture here.
Yeah, Italy is absolutley amazing in so may ways and discounting the the sense of imminent danger, it is my favourite country. I’d love to go back, but I usually travel alone so it’s a no no, even now at the age of 40, when, as someone else has said, I’m way, way past my sell by date in those terms (thank god - life is much easier now!). I guess I will have to wait for a man to escort me…
Also, my friend and I were mistaken for typical Italian girls by some tourists there who were very keen to take our photograph, as they thought we were part of the local scenery! So, unless of course, these people were completely deluded, I really don’t think this has anything to do with the way people look; I’m part South American.
Actually, Hugo, I do think Nicolas Sarkozy would act exactly like Silvio Berlusconi if the former weren’t log-stupid. For the record, I agree with you that Amanda Knox was convicted on flimsy evidence. But Italy’s also a country where unlikely stories turn out…to be true. Who would have believed the stories about Operation Gladio? Banco Nazionale di Lavoro? P2? Roberto Calvi? Michele Sindona? To believe stories like these at first hearing would consign most of us to the Dan Brown league. But they’ve been substantiated and most of them turned out to have understated the details. This is not to say Amanda Knox was not slut-shamed, but a lot of Italian jurists have heard stories like the ones peddled by the prosecutors and ones even more bizarre.
I don’t buy the sex game thing but do believe she and her boyfriend were present when the deed was done. In the States that is accessory to the fact. The girl was raped and had her throat slit. I think she, Amanda, stole the money for drugs, got caught and things escalated from there. The fact she only got 25 years with a chance to appeal is getting off easy.
“Circumstantial evidence” does not mean “bad evidence”. It means it’s not eyewitness evidence. If a parent of a five-year-old walks into the kitchen to find the cookie jar empty, with a series of five-year-old-sized chocolaty handprints all over the jar, and then notices a trail of chocolate-cookie crumbs going directly to the child’s bedroom….well, I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to figure out what happened to the cookies, even though all the evidence is circumstantial.
This was interesting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5wS7LR-a5s
The last part that Hugo put in boldface in his original post above is just nonsense.
Interesting - I wrote a post detailing some of the damning evidence against Amanda (and, for instance, the fact that her allegedly forced confession was not even allowed into the trial) … and Hugo simply deleted it.
“what can we americans, in the land of equality and home of the innocent until proven guilty, do to change the old habits of the Italians?”
This is a joke, right? A parody of blind Ameri-centric attitudes?
It is remarkably sexist and racist of you to assume young white women are incapable of murder…happens all the time here in america! It’s not like she didn’t get a lawyer, was forced to plea deal or it was a speedy trial like would of happened here in the US.
I realize there are arguments on both sides, but there was a knife with Amanda’s DNA on the handle and the victim’s blood on the tip, Amanda willingly and knowingly made a false accusation to the police about a man who (it later turned out) had an airtight alibi, Amanda was turning cartwheels and doing splits at the police station (literally - and that’s not some kind of joke) after the murder. Her confession was not used in the trial - the assertion that her confession was coerced (as an indication of her innocence) is therefore moot. There was quite a bit of evidence, actually, if you look at the case.
Hugo apparently doesn’t even look into any of this - or care one whit. He’s got his ideological blinders on - or his need to act like a hero to women for whatever reason - and that’s what his comments are based on.
More than silly, I think the word “pathetic” is appropriate. But maybe he’ll get laid or get that much-needed confirmation from women if he continues to act like this.
I’ve not been extensively abroad (although my wife has) but as a grad student I had many interactions with foreign students. They generally had a view of Americans (especially American women) shaped by American TV shows that depicted American life in a particular way. Many of the students were, well, quite disappointed to find that life in America is, well, like life in many other places. Many really did think we had a lot more sex in America than we get ;)
So, alas, the view of “the over-sexed American” doesn’t surprise me much … because that is how we (via our television shows) present ourselves to the world.
Nobody’s assuming that Amanda Knox is incapable of murder because she’s a pretty girl.
But the prosecution’s orgy theory was nonsensical from the start and the slut shaming was a strategy to short circuit the obvious logical flaws in the prosecution’s case. By riling up the jury with lurid tales of Knox’s sexuality, the prosecution deflected attention from the fact that there was no particular reason to believe an orgy ever took place. None of the suspects said anything about a sex game. There was no physical evidence of any kind of ritual or BDSM play. Neither Knox nor her boyfriend had any history of violence, nor any known predilection towards group sex, nor any interest in the occult.
There was, however, ironclad evidence that the third suspect, a drifter called Rudy Guerde had sex with Meredith Kercher and left bloody fingerprints in her room. There is no proof that Knox or her boyfriend were ever in Kercher’s room. The DNA evidence from Kercher’s bra clasp also showed traces of DNA from five other people. It sat on the dusty floor in her room for 6 weeks before the police picked it up. (Dust is mostly shed human skin cell, so it’s easy to imagine how cross-contamination could have taken place as police tramped in and out of the room.) Knox lived in the same house and shared a bathroom with the victim and her boyfriend had visited several times, so it’s not surprising that traces of their DNA might have been present. There was a massive amount of blood at the scene, so you’d expect that other suspects would either have cleaned up everyone’s prints, or left some of their own at the scene–neither of which was the case.
Basically, all the prosecution had to on was evasiveness by Knox and her boyfriend after the fact. They claimed to have Knox’s DNA on the murder weapon, but the blade didn’t match the wounds or the bloody knife print on the bedsheets and the alleged trace of Knox’s DNA was so small that the test couldn’t even be replicated. It was her boyfriend’s kitchen knife, which she had used to prepare food before, so the fact that her DNA was on it wouldn’t have been surprising.
Bekabot, you and I must read very different newspapers.
I, too, live in Western Washington. The Knox coverage has been constant around here. I’ve read dozens of articles. No, this doesn’t make me an expert on the case, but I would like to respectfully disagree with this:
“not once have any of the news pieces dealing with the Knox case, and there have scads of them, ever dealt, explicitly or otherwise, with the question of whether Knox is guilty or innocent”
…because it’s simply not true. I know the quality of journalism has gone downhill now that the Seattle Times is the only game in town, but you can still get the PI online.
I do find it highly suspicious that she changed her story, but what really gets me is that her first defense seemed classically American: “I wasn’t there, well, okay, maybe I was, but even so, it wasn’t me, it was actually that big scary person of color over yonder.” Not very original, and also not true.
That man has since sued her for defamation and won.
She changed her story, helped stage a robbery after the fact and fingered an innocent man.
None of us here can possibly know the entire truth, but to me, those are not the actions of an innocent person. I cannot conceive of any aspect of a woman’s sexual history that would make me think she was more or less guilty of murder, but I do think that Amanda Knox was behaving in a manner that makes her appear dishonest, and possibly guilty.
Chrys T: I lived in a suburb of Rome for 6 months as an immigrant from the USSR in the late 1980’s. I was 12 at the time. I don’t claim to know EVERY aspect of the Italian culture, but I can testify that I was constantly harassed, pinched, grabbed and catcalled. I experienced one instance of attempted rape, one of attempted kidnapping and countless instances of men propositioning me. Exposure was an almost daily occurrence. It got to the point where I was genuinely afraid to leave the house unaccompanied, and for the last couple of months there, never ventured outside except in the protective company of a male: my father, a neighbor, a really tall friend. My family never contacted the police because we felt our status in Italy was extremely precarious — a fear not unusual among expatriates, though less common among Americans, Brits, etc. And now that I think about it, the fact that men harassed me and even assaulted me openly and in broad daylight (and other Russian girls, too), that men in their 30’s and 40’s propositioned me loudly from passing cars on the street indicates that this sort of behavior is regarded indulgently in Italy, and the police probably wouldn’t do anything about it.
Though I was not an American at the time, there WAS a political subtext to all this: Soviet immigrants had been streaming through Italy for a couple of years, and the locals were beginning to get really fed up with us, with some of the resentment well-deserved, I must say in all fairness. Nevertheless, as sophonisba pointed out earlier in response to your comment, pinching a woman’s breast isn’t exactly a legitimate form of political expression — and please don’t tell me that you aren’t justifying it when you describe it as understandable.
Since then, I have traveled to over 30 countries. I spent a semester in France. And I can honestly say, I have never experienced anything even closely resembling the behavior of men in Italy. This is the truth — and I don’t care how politically incorrect it is.
————————————————–
All that said, I think that the fact that Amanda Knox changed her story is very damaging. VERY damaging. Most likely, it’s one of those ironic things in the vein of Camus’ “The Stranger”: she did it, but the trial was still a travesty.
Wait, how is racism supposedly involved when all parties are of the same race?
Pedantry stroll:
Aren’t we dealing with the difference between the colloquial uses of “understandable”, which implies a large measure of empathy or sympathy with the act in question, and “comprehensible”, which is a more clinical and evaluative word? The actions of scumbags groping Redisca and her compatriots were comprehensible, but one shouldn’t say “understandable” because the technical meaning of the term is lost under the more common popular usage which implies one has some common feelings with the people. One can comprehend, which is to say that, “I understand why they did that: it’s because they’re entitled cobags operating through a sexist quasi-rapist nativist frame which is tolerated if not encouraged by local authority”.
End pedant stroll.
Akeeyu, we don’t know that Knox helped stage the robbery. Prosecutors allege that she did, AFAIK, they never provided any testimony or physical evidence linking Knox to the broken window. The third suspect, Rudy Guerde, would have had a motive to stage a break-in on his own. He committed an acquaintance rape and murder and he wanted to make it look like a stranger rape/burglary gone bad.
When people say that Knox’s actions were not those of an innocent person, well, by all accounts she was guilty of smoking pot at the time. I read that she was high when she was arrested and interrogated in that state, so it seems reasonable that she might engage in some shady behavior to try and hide that fact, not to mention that she might have been confused because she was stoned. That doesn’t mean she’s innocent, but it sounds like a plausible explanation for some of her more damning behavior to me.
“The personal experiences of some female Americans indicates that some, not all, Italian men have issues when it comes to staring, touching, and talking about women.”
Gee that’s funny: I lived in Ohio when I was in my 20s, and I have vivid memories of being stared at and groped on more than one occasion. Don’t give me that crap about how these things “just don’t happen” in America. They may not happen to YOU. That in no way means they don’t happen at all.
“t’s a bit weak to fulminate against stereotyping of all southern Europe when this is an accusation made against Italy.”
Are you kidding??? This shit ALWAYS comes up whenever any group of people from Northern cultures discuss anything at all about Southern (European or not) cultures. And it’s pretty weak to pretend you aren’t well aware of that. This is in no way a one-off.
“You specially can’t defend a country’s men against their reputation for casual assault by pretending that grabbing a stranger’s tit is a bold protest against rudeness and imperialism.”
You show me where I did this. Oh right, you can’t, because you just made up that idea yourself and then tried to stuff it in my mouth.
“it is also true that some places are more hostile to foreign women from particular countries than others are, and it is not always racism that causes this perception”
You think women who are considered “Other” or “Exotic” by US standards don’t get A LOT of shit? I got news for you: you are wrong. Or I suppose I’ve dreamed all of those “buy a Russian/Asian wife” agencies? Italians IN NO WAY have a monopoly on treating “foreign” women as sex dispensers on legs. And Hugo acting as if they did was outrageous.
“Come the fuck on. There are reasons why women get molested everywhere. They are not acceptable reasons.”
Oh please, stop with the trying to set me up as a straw anti-feminist already! You know good and damn well that I was responding to Hugo’s accusations of “reflexive anti-Americanism” amongst Italians in general, NOT the behaviour of Italian men. And yes, there are many, many, many legitimate reasons why people in other countries may not like America. That they may take it out on individual Americans is regrettable, but, you know what? That is *also* something that the rest of world does not have a monopoly on while Americans remain pure and unsinning. Just ask anyone who looks anything like what most Americans imagine “Arab” is, or who attends a mosque, or has a French accent, or in any way fits the American stereotype of “Hispanic.” I could go on, but you get my drift.
“do you think that the trial Amanda Knox got was at all fair?”
All I know is what was reported in the UK press. And yeah, there was a lot of focus on things about her that should not have had anything to do with this trial (and I repeat: this was the *UK* [ie acceptably Aryan] press). But does anyone here believe that if this incident had occured in the US, and her trial had been held in America, that an American prosecutor would not have tried to play the “but she’s a slut!” angle? Every week or so, I read another report of exactly that tactic being in used in America by American lawyers. I never said that Knox deserved the treatment she’s had: I was angry at Hugo for pretending that this treatment was uniquely Italian when it happens ALL THE TIME in America.
“*That* is bullshit, though. Individuals cannot be held responsible for all the actions of their government.”
See above. And look at the attitudes Hugo has expressed here–and many of the responses. They sure as hell won’t be winning any hearts and minds.
“And what does that have to do with slut shaming American girls overseas anyway?”
Again, I never said it had anything to do with it. I was only angry because a) slut-shaming of American women is something that Americans are themselves are very, very good at, so pretending Italians have some sort of special gift for it is ludicrous and b) pretending that Americans don’t exoticise foreign women and subject them to outrageous treatment while evil, bad Italians do is also ludicrous.
“offer a lame joke to prepare all of my students for immersion in Italian culture.”
“Lame”?? Nice one, Hugo.
“Italy is, for all its joys and glories, more sexist than anywhere else.”
Oh, so you’ve quantified sexism and, through rigorous scientific study, proved this to be true? If not, I call bullshit and put it down to your own subjective opinion.
“when I had a broken leg in the UK I didn’t attract groups of random men in the street who would harass me and follow me knowing I couldn’t get away.”
Then you sure as HELL were not on the streets of any town of any size right after closing time.
“This has nothing to do with the colour of anyone’s skin; how do you know what colour I am? How can you make the judgement that I am being racist just because I said I had a terrible experience with many Italian men when I travelled there.”
This has a lot to do with racism, even if you’re not consciously aware of it: the prejudice that Northern Europeans have for Southern Europeans comes in great part from the fact that most of Southern Europe was under Islamic rule for a number of centuries. In some places, it was the Ottomans, and in others, it was the Moors and the Syrians. This is the primary reason that Northerners consider Southern Europe to be more culturally “backward” and “not quite white.” It’s because we’ve all been (according to them) tainted by our absorption of Ottoman/Moorish culture and (oh, the horror!!) Arab/Turkish/North African “blood.” So yes, this really *is* about racism.
Also, can I say that Northerners trying to minimise their anti-Southern bigotry by claiming “we’re all the same colour” is one aspect of this bigotry that I hate the most? It uses a lot of the same slimy tricks as anti-Semitism in that its perpetrators treat the objects of their attacks in same way a racist treats POC, then tries to claim that their actions can’t *really* constitute bigotry because the object of hatred is also white.
Redisca: I paid attention to what you wrote, but it was quite similar to other women’s stories. Yes, I believe it all really happened to you. I do not question that. But, as I said, I know from personal experience that women in America get catcalled, groped, and sexually assaulted. And I know from reading the news that they also get raped and kidnapped and murdered. I am not saying that these things just don’t happen in Italy, I am just saying that Italy has no monopoly on them. And in fact, the US does pretty well as sustaining these things itself.
I have never, ever said that Italy, or any other Southern European was free of sexism, or was less sexist than Northern Europe or North America. And I don’t deny that the elements that make up sexism may be differently expressed in different cultures. But Hugo was trying to push the idea of “Bad” Italy v. “Good” America, and that is unacceptable.
Yes, in Italy, the hypersexualisation of women may somewhat outweigh the outright woman-hatred that is predominant in English-speaking cultures, but that in no way means that English-speaking cultures are free from hypersexualisation. Hell, every time I look at a feminist blog, there are complaints about how women are depicted, or stories about how women have been sexually assaulted, or how some man or group of men have made a woman’s life a misery due to their incessant staring/stalking/catcalls/etc. All happening in America, to American women, with the perpetrators being American men. So to pretend that Knox’s treatment was somehow due to anything particularly “Italian” is intellectually dishonest, bigoted and demonstrably untrue.
“The problem is that everybody involved, including the observers, be they Italian, British, American or what-all, has been approaching the whole schmear as though Ann Radcliffe’s latest had just left the presses.”
THANK YOU, BEKABOT! That is *exactly* my point!
Whilst I agree with the some of the central points in Hugo’s article, namely that the unneccessary ’slut-shaming’ during the trial was reprehensible and that Italy is generally a very misogynistic culture, I have to strongly disagree with other points he has made. Whilst it is fair to say that there are some issues with the prosecution’s case, it is also true to say that the overwhelming balance of both circumstancial evidence, and Ms Knox’s behaviour after the crime was committed, indicate that she was in some way culpable. She alleges that she has no memory of the night in question because she was high, which is patently untrue. We’re talking about smoking hash, not the eating of the fabled forgetfullness-inducing lotus from Homer’s Odyssey. There is also a significant body of circumstantial evidence which implies that she had some role in the crime, including DNA.
I also think that it is very Ameri-centric to suggest that Italians in particular unduly target American women. As I have already said, Italian men are often very misogynistic and that should not be overlooked. For Hugo to suggest that Italians in particular (or Europeans in general) are fixated on the supposed promiscuity of American females, however, ignores a wide range of American cultural products which I would cite as evidence of the fact that Americans are just as bad. What about films like American Pie or Eurotrip that depict European females as incredibly promiscuous, and Europeans generally as sleazy and prone to criminality? Is it really true that Europeans think of American women as ’sluts’? Perhaps, in some cases it is. But is it not equally to say that Americans, as demonstrated by their own cultural products, depict Europeans this way as well?
Consider also the example of the female ‘band geek’ in American Pie, a recurring character throughout the series who constitutes a personification of the promiscuity that American society attaches to ‘the other’, i.e. those who do not fit with middle-class white American sexual values. In the same film, examples of the ‘promiscuous other’ include a European exchange student, the female band geek, and a sexually-active mother… All are portrayed as ’sluts’ with their promiscuity (as well as that of similiar characters in films like Eurotrip and others) being their central character trait.
If Amanda Knox didn’t do it, then she should hopefully be freed on appeal. It is not sufficient, however, to simply cite the general misogyny that occurs in Italy as evidence to support the theory that she didn’t get a fair trial. To say that her trial was built more on sensational ideas about promiscuous Americans than on evidence is not only unfair, it is untrue and borders on xenophobic since you seem to believe that there isn’t a single male in Italy, including judges, who is capable of putting aside gender bias to objectively evaluate the merits of a criminal case.
Ok Crys T, I did go about on crutches along UK city streets full of the usually drunken moronacy, and no, I wasn’t harrassed by groups of men. Closing time is now at about 6am and not many peiple are around then, so, no, not at closing time, but between 11pm and midnight yes, on several occasions. I find the fact that you are eleveling racism at people because they are making an observation about Italy quite insultine and quite frankly a way to skirt the issue.
On Hugo’s pages I have said that UK laws, police and justice system are horrific with regard to rape; that the UK is generally going to the dogs, and is becoming a horribly small minded country; I have said that I would never live in America, for reasons I will not repeat for fear of causing another cyber skirmish; and I have said that I have experienced a level of sexual harrassment while travelling in Italy which far out weighs anything I have experienced in any other country in both its intensity and in terms of the level to which it was openly tolerated. And for the comments about Italy I am racist, so why not the ones about the UK and the US?
I history of being ‘othered’ does not render a country or group of people beyond criticism.
I mentioned the colour of my skin because you seem to be typicalising the UK and all its citizens as caucasion when that is just not the case. I am not, by the way, trying to deny the racism inherent in the UK either, just in case you wanted to try that tac.
I meant to post this earlier, but end-of-term stuff, combined with accreditation site visit got in the way. Here it is:
An excellent post. I admire the calm with which you respond to the predictable rants that defend the inexcusable in Italy by intemperately attacking the U.S. You hit the nail on the head when you say, “And as a feminist professor, I was and am particularly disgusted by the mix of prudish censoriousness towards and predatory fascination with the sex lives of young women from America who come to Italy to study.”
Your other bolded sentence is exactly right too. You say: “Make no mistake, I grieve the loss of Meredith Kercher and the horrible way she died.” Then you rightly add, “But I have little doubt that if Knox had been a little less pretty, a little less sexual, and a little less American, she’d never have spent a day in prison for her roommate’s murder.”
Good luck to those still running study abroad programs in Italy in getting students to sign up for them while Amanda remains in an Italian prison. For parents of young college women, this is a nightmare. Not that Amanda’s experience is atypical. But as you say, the deep-seated Italian misogyny–the ancient practice of slut-shaming as you call it that combines censoriousness and prurience–directed at American female students–is alive and well. At the least, your blog post should be required reading for all such students and their parents.
thank you so much, Paul! I’ve already had an email or two from folks considering going to Italy. And I don’t counsel an out-and-out boycott; many of the young women I taught in Italy had a marvelous time and enjoyed themselves immensely. But few were immune from what was, to them, a shockingly predatory culture.
matey: “I find the fact that you are eleveling racism at people because they are making an observation about Italy quite insultine and quite frankly a way to skirt the issue.”
Bull, it IS the issue: the type of slut-shaming that Hugo was trying to claim was uniquely Italian happens ALL THE TIME in the US & UK. Therefore, it is NOT some Italian disease and trying to make out that it is is just typically anti-Southern bigotry.
And you didn’t get bugged on your crutches in the midst of crowds of drunken, aggressive Brit men? Yay for you, but a lot of women have, on crutches or no. Maybe the fact that you yourself are a Brit influences their behaviour, but I doubt that: I’ve seen crap happening to local women, too.
“for the comments about Italy I am racist, so why not the ones about the UK and the US?”
Firstly, I don’t know why you’re making this all about you, when the main object of my criticism has been Hugo. Secondly, you are aware that the first response most people with privilege have when they are confronted with that privilege is the sort of indignation that you’re showing me right now? It doesn’t matter what your personal ethnic background is, you’ve grown up in a Northern, English-speaking culture and you’ve imbibed its bigotries. And one of those is anti-Southern bigotry.
Can I also say that I’m thoroughly sick of the “being accused of displaying X-bigotry is SO MUCH WORSE than being subjected to X-bigotry!!!!!11!11!!1!”? It’s old. Find a new song to sing.
“I mentioned the colour of my skin”
Actually, no, you didn’t. And, for the reasons I stated above, it doesn’t really matter.
“because you seem to be typicalising the UK and all its citizens as caucasion when that is just not the case.”
An absolute untruth. I did no such thing. At all. Ever. And I suspect you are well aware of that, but want to shut down my arguments by painting *me* as the racist.
“I am not, by the way, trying to deny the racism inherent in the UK either, just in case you wanted to try that tac.”
WTF???? Where does that even come from?
Pere: “Italy is generally a very misogynistic culture”
Yes it is. Just like the US, UK, Australia, Germany, etc. etc. etc.
Paul: “I admire the calm with which you respond to the predictable rants that defend the inexcusable in Italy by intemperately attacking the U.S.”
Again, rubbish. More privilege-defending, and a blatant disregard of the past 50 years of world history. And in what way exactly has Hugo dealt with any of it? By pretending it isn’t happening.
Not a single one of you has in any way addressed the fact that the slut-shaming that Knox was subjected to is PAR FOR THE COURSE in any number of cultures, including America’s, and is in no way at all exclusive to Italy, which was Hugo’s central thesis in this post.
I guess it’s easier to sneer at me personally that to take on that point. Most likely because you know that if you did, the whole bullshit lie would crumble.
Thanks, Hugo. I listed my own modest blog site incorrectly, so it doesn’t help to click on the icon thingy. I corrected it for this post. It should be
http://ethicsculture.blogspot.com/
where I hope eventually to write my own analysis. Just not before the end of term!
“Not a single one of you has in any way addressed the fact that the slut-shaming that Knox was subjected to is PAR FOR THE COURSE in any number of cultures, including America’s, and is in no way at all exclusive to Italy, which was Hugo’s central thesis in this post.”
Except that several people have described their own personal experiences of particular kinds of sexism being notably *worse* in Italy. Just anecdote, certainly, but you’ve done nothing (e.g. quoted statistics) to refute it bar simply claiming that this is not the case, and that what they think is their own lived experience is merely a reflection of some anti-southern-European prejudice.
Or (it’s not entirely clear) you’re rejecting the idea of making a comparison entirely and trying to say that since other countries aren’t devoid of sexism, it can’t be anything more than bigotry to claim that Italy might be worse in that regard than other places. Which is ridiculous - just because people have been shot in downtown New York does not make it invalid (or racist) to claim that downtown Mogadishu is a wee bit more dangerous.
Crys T,
I find it odd that you keep defending the nation of Italy on the basis of being a “Southern” nation. That’s a bit more than I can swallow.
Italy is farther north than the entire Southern Hemisphere and every nation therein, almost every part of Africa (ok, some parts of Tunisia and Algeria are a bit farther north than the southernmost of Sicily), most of India, much of China… you get the picture. In fact, Rome is right around the same latitude as Chicago and New York City.
Really, the only measure that one could really use to consider Italy as a “Southern” place is in terms of European countries. But, do we really want to start playing the Eurocentrism game again?
Since Crys dismissed my admiration for Hugo’s calm in the face of intemperate anti-american attacks as “rubbish,” accompanying her remarks by more obscure anti-american rhetoric of her own,I have made a real effort to make sense of her posts.
Is the point of your comment to me, Crys, that anti-americanism by Europeans (with their own 500-year history of imperialism and racism), is somehow justified by the history of the last 50 years by which I imagine you are referring to U.S. hegemony and government actions, not the struggles of Americans for civil rights, women’s rights, against war and poverty, and so forth and not something hardly conceivable in Europe, the election of a Black president)?
I am sure you know that whatever her or his wishes, an American prosecutor would not be allowed by law or any competent judge to indulge in the kind of shameless slut-shaming Amanda Knox faced in and out of court at Mignini’s instigation. Of course, misogynistic fantasizing happens in other countries–the English paper News of the World built its whole appeal on the kind of censorious prurience Hugo discusses. But Hugo speaks with experience, confirmed by countless young women who studied abroad in Italy–some of them known to me and more to Hugo–of the particular phenomenon of the way young American female students are treated in Italy. Of course Italy is not alone, although it does appear to be an extreme case, perhaps because of the sheer concentration of American and British students in a city like Perugia. (But see the account of her life in Paris by a young female reporter for the Daily Telegraph (UK)–she called it, doubtless wrongly and unfairly–the “perv capital of the world” in view of the unprecedented amount of flashing and groping she endured.
The element of hair and skin shade does seem to make a difference: young blonde women are much more subject to such predatory harassment in countries where they are rarer. (Talk to any such fair-haired woman who has spent even a few weeks in Italy.) In addition, they have not developed the defenses acquired by Italian women–the haughty look, the avoidance of eye contact in the face of the constant “compliments.” The naive openness of young English and American students abroad is often interpreted as encouragement or consent rather than simple friendliness. Sometimes it is, or such is their reputation among Italian men.
So Hugo is, in my opinion (admittedly unsupported by rigorous research–it is not alone in that!), right in suggesting that the facts of Amanda’s being pretty, young, female, sexual, and American made her very vulnerable to the scapegoating role Mignini picked for her in this case. The strategy worked, of course, not just because of his own personal sexual-satanic fantasies as he projected them on to her, but because it fed into media use of the story to titillate their indignant readers or viewers and build their circulations.
It is also a cautionary tale that no responsible American parent or person running a study abroad program can afford to ignore. That is why I believe Hugo’s piece should be mandatory reading for such parents, and administrators. And especially for young female fair-haired students since these are the women most at risk.
A word about the curious charge of racism. Crys is right that not all Europeans are of the same hue, though–unlike Americans–all are Caucasian (except of course, immigrants from Africa, etc.). This is especially true of Italians. In Italy, the strongest, most open prejudice I encountered in Florence and further north was against Southern Italians, the “Scuri,” the dark people of the South. But as others have observed, American students and others experience much more prejudice in Northern Italy than in the South, in Florence or Perugia than in Naples.
Hugo:
I hated the contempt for our students that I so often heard from some in Florence and elsewhere. Though it was often tinged with anti-Americanism (and this while Clinton was still in the White House), it was directed almost exclusively towards our female students — particularly the ones who were perceived as more attractive, or who wore more revealing clothing. The prosecutor in the Amanda Knox devoted extensive time to discussing the defendant’s sex life and her occasionally flamboyant dress, even her taste in (or lack of) underwear.
My reply:
I’m reminded of that old song remade by Lenny Kravitz, “American Woman,” in which the worst of American society and culture (in the eyes of the rest of the world), imperialism and so forth, was personified by a seductive American woman…
Hugo:
The reputation of American “girls” as sexually undiscriminating, freed for the first time from the watchful eyes of parents and at least most of their peers, was nearly universal. And while it is certainly true that for the young and not-so-young, travel is almost invariably an aphrodisiac and a notorious compromiser of inhibitions, the beliefs about American women students were grounded far more in myth and media than in reality.
My reply:
But to some extent, it is grounded in reality. It is not uncommon for many American adventurous sex-positive women to pursue flings when they go overseas, this has fueled the perception many have of American women when they go over there, especially if a significant enough number of the American women who come to your country as tourists are like that, might that not influence how you see them?
This is not limited to Europe–it is common as well in the Caribbean.
I don’t believe in slut-shaming, but one’s behavior is sometimes not only about the individual woman’s freedom to be adventurous and sex-positive, but it is about the impression she makes when doing so. Like it or not, when Americans go overseas, we are seen as representing our country. How do we treat that responsibility? How will we behave in light of how our behavior and attitudes will affect those who come after us?
I’m a woc, traveled throughout France and Switzerland, not Italy, never had any problems with natives, no catcalling and so forth. Always dressed and behaved conservatively–would have never dreamt of behaving differently, among people who might not know or understand me because of (their prejudices) what they think I’m supposed to represent or who would have made presumptions about me in light of what they think it means to be an “American woman.”
Hugo, what you suggest would be laughable were it not for the fact that it comes from a ‘professor’; had I handed in an essay like this to my english professor I would have been slammed for lack of thought, balance, originality but most of all, incorrectness.
Firstly, the Italian criminal code stresses the innocence of a defendant until proven guilty - no different to the US and most anglo-saxon criminal law judiciaries. Italy is a signatory to the EU Human Rights bill, unlike the US who sees itself as a law unto itself. Knox was found guilty. But, unlike the US judicial where the verdict acts a full-stop in Italy it is nothing more than a pause; Amanda is still regarded to be innocent, at least legally, until ALL her appeals have been exhausted. Unlike the US, where judges are politically appointed or elected, the Italian Justices system is independant and very robust - just ask Berlusconi! Unlike the US where a verdict is reduced to just one word - ‘guilty’ - the Italian jury is required to reconcile their decision in a comprehensive report. Unlike the US were 12 random citizens are appointed as jurors with little or no formal education required of them, the Italian jury is comprised of 6 lay people with a minimum educational prerequisite. In any further appeals the jury members’ educational level will be stepped up. Unlike the US, 2 learned judges form part of the 8 man jury. Unlike the US, Knox gets a fresh trial, yes, another one. And, if her appeal fails she’ll get another bite at the cherry.
What part of the Italian criminal judicail system do you find unfair?
Secondly, Sollecito was defended by argubly Italy’s finest defence lawyers. So was Knox. It was they that raised the challenges against the DNA evidence in open court.
Do you have any concerns or otherwise about their performance in court? Do you believe that she wasn’t fairly and rigously represented?
Thirdly: “the paper-thin case, built more on animosity towards sexually adventurous American girls than actual evidence, worked today.”??? You can’t be serious, [apologies McEnroe]. How convenient of you! Just like the Jew of Malta in T S Eliot’s Portrait of a Lady: ‘You have committed fornication! But, that was in a different country and Besides, the wench is dead”!
Why try climb the Mt Everest of evidence when it’s far easier to coast down the valley of PR spin like that proposed by you?
Serioulsy, you’re saying that Knox was found guilty because of the media’s portrayl of her? That’s it? What about Sollecito? He’s an italian male. But hang on now, I forget, the evidence was ONLY circumstantial. Right! Doesn’t count, does it?
What does count is the one sided account of your experiences and the way American students are treated in Italy. Would it surprise you that your very account holds true in sydney, australia? We, [young males] know only too well what you US gals really want - the very same sought by Swedish, English, Norwegian, French, German and yes, even Italian chicks - a good time and sex! Young australian males have the same disdain and disrespect as any other young male in other parts of the world, EXCEPT, the US where young college males are the very essence of male virtue and human respect. And to think that I belived every I word read in Playboy about those raunchy college encounters.
The Italians have a great saying: ‘Tutto il mondo e paese” [All the world is one country.
Wouldn’t that encaptulate what is really going within our planet? Or is that too simplistic and naive?
Fortunately, I comforted by the comments coming out of the US supporting the verdict as much as I am about Italian comments supporting Amanda. It’s healthy to have open debate and differing views; makes for a robust democracy and interesting life.
But perhaps we should make an effort to base it on facts as they stand and not as we would like them to be.
Interesting…I always try to get a sense of a place and culture before visiting. Most of all I think it wise to be aware of others and what we communicate to them and to behave respectfully. I don’t know what they are thinking and what previous types of interactions that they’ve had with people visiting from my country. I do know that people tend to stereotype.
With that said, prior to traveling to Italy I was well aware of Italian male’s reputations. Their conduct towards women was often described as being overly “flirtatious”, which I interpreted to mean that they indulged in inappropriate and unwanted sexually overt and aggressive behaviors.
So I was at least aware that I may have to deal with more miscreants, fools and idiots, which, unfortunately and sad to say, is NO different than what I’ve had to deal with here in this country.
I’m happy to say that I didn’t personally experience any inappropriate behavior of this kind, despite being guarded. I also didn’t experience or detect any anti-American sentiments, although I don’t doubt they exist. If anything, I found most of the encounters with men to be respectful, courteous and helpful with some instances of more subtle flirtatiousness. So here I was expecting the worst and was pleasantly surprised. The worst behavior that I encountered was demonstrated by an obnoxious and condescending male concierge and a dour, unfriendly female bank teller, but rudeness and inconsideration is not uncommon here in this country.
By comparison, my experiences in Mexico were a mixed bag with some surprises, unpleasantness and scary situations and I did not behave any differently than what I normally would.
I do agree with pioneervalleywoman. I also have “Always dressed and behaved conservatively–would have never dreamt of behaving differently, among people who might not know or understand me because of (their prejudices) what they think I’m supposed to represent or who would have made presumptions about me…”
So, how much help has the US Government provided to one of its citizens in trouble abroad?
Except for the Office of Washington Senator Maria Cantwell, I would say “damn little”. Check out this clip from the State Department briefing on the Monday following the verdict. The State Department spokesman gets his ass kicked by the reporters. He inspires NO CONFIDENCE that the government is helping.
Watch from 1:57 to 15:54
Rest assured the Secretary Clinton is totally clueless too.
http://www.state.gov/video/?videoid=55055085001