the feminist librarian reads

In both the case of the UVA rape and in the case of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri the major takeaway of recent weeks should be that our systems do not work. I am not just referring here to the criminal justice system, which has never worked well for women or for people of color, who are too often reflexively made the suspects (and villains) in the very crimes they report. Those who have been assaulted or raped should feel that telling their stories will not automatically result in their own character assassination and the exoneration of the more powerful figures they have accused. Our police and our courts consistently fail the people they need to serve—those who have the least power, the least authority, who are structurally disadvantaged by dint of their identities.