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sterling8 's review for:
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town
by Jon Krakauer
Sadly, it seems like there's always something about rape in the news, which makes this book perpetually timely.
As per usual, Krakauer has picked a controversial topic to investigate and bring to life through specific examples. In this case, he focuses on a series of rape cases in the college town of Missoula, Montana. Krakauer informs us that Missoula is not out of the ordinary in the amount of rapes reported in a given year and wants us to know that Missoula is not an outlier, but probably close to the norm in how a lot of rape cases are treated.
Krakauer focuses mostly on two cases of rape, both of which have football players accused as the perpetrators and in which both girls knew their attackers. Alcohol was also involved in both cases. Krakauer uses extensive interviews and quotes from the victims and also pieces together a good part of the politics of the town and its criminal justice system. He points out how the victims were shamed and disbelieved by most of the community, which chose to back the players on its very popular football team.
I don't think this is Krakauer's best work. He gets pretty caught up in details, to the point that the two trials become somewhat tangled together because he doesn't deal with the evidence gathering portion chronologically but discusses both cases's development at the same time. In addition, I think that Krakauer's broader argument is somewhat lost in the trial details. It would be easy to think how dysfunctional this one community was and feel safe in the assumption that it's the exception, because of the intense focus on these specific cases. Krakauer takes a break partway through the book to discuss the perception of rape as a crime between strangers and to discuss how almost 30% of men in a particular study admitted to sexual coercion of some sort as long as it's not defined as rape.
To me, Krakauer's call to action was a bit muddy. He clearly shows that the criminal justice system did not serve the two young women that he focused upon fairly. He spends some time refuting a lot of the mythology around rape. But I felt that even so, his scope seems somewhat limited. He focuses on young, white college girls. The idea that the criminal justice system might fail poor, uneducated women and women of color even more badly never comes up. And he focuses more on the sports culture than the patriarchal culture that's the bedrock of our society, maybe because he has a hard time really confronting the issue that many men badly misunderstand what rape is. He pulls his punch in the end.
As per usual, Krakauer has picked a controversial topic to investigate and bring to life through specific examples. In this case, he focuses on a series of rape cases in the college town of Missoula, Montana. Krakauer informs us that Missoula is not out of the ordinary in the amount of rapes reported in a given year and wants us to know that Missoula is not an outlier, but probably close to the norm in how a lot of rape cases are treated.
Krakauer focuses mostly on two cases of rape, both of which have football players accused as the perpetrators and in which both girls knew their attackers. Alcohol was also involved in both cases. Krakauer uses extensive interviews and quotes from the victims and also pieces together a good part of the politics of the town and its criminal justice system. He points out how the victims were shamed and disbelieved by most of the community, which chose to back the players on its very popular football team.
I don't think this is Krakauer's best work. He gets pretty caught up in details, to the point that the two trials become somewhat tangled together because he doesn't deal with the evidence gathering portion chronologically but discusses both cases's development at the same time. In addition, I think that Krakauer's broader argument is somewhat lost in the trial details. It would be easy to think how dysfunctional this one community was and feel safe in the assumption that it's the exception, because of the intense focus on these specific cases. Krakauer takes a break partway through the book to discuss the perception of rape as a crime between strangers and to discuss how almost 30% of men in a particular study admitted to sexual coercion of some sort as long as it's not defined as rape.
To me, Krakauer's call to action was a bit muddy. He clearly shows that the criminal justice system did not serve the two young women that he focused upon fairly. He spends some time refuting a lot of the mythology around rape. But I felt that even so, his scope seems somewhat limited. He focuses on young, white college girls. The idea that the criminal justice system might fail poor, uneducated women and women of color even more badly never comes up. And he focuses more on the sports culture than the patriarchal culture that's the bedrock of our society, maybe because he has a hard time really confronting the issue that many men badly misunderstand what rape is. He pulls his punch in the end.