An In-Depth Look at Sapphire’s "poem for Jennifer, Marla, Tawana and Me"

A Poem for jennifer, marla, tawana, and me written by Sapphire, shows how she believes society judges and scrutinizes the lives of women who claim to be victimized by men. These women are made to relive the horrible ordeal over and over in order to convince the public that they are the real victims. She shows how the public and the media believe that if a woman is victimized there must have been a reason for it happening.

Many women who have been victimized never tell anyone, in fear that no one will believe them. “What could I do but be silent; the first question they will ask me will be about my past.” (112) Sapphire shows how society tends to judge a woman by her past experiences and associates and searches for reasons to justify the victimization. After all, if a woman is raped there has to be a reason why it happened, she must have provoked it. Women feel that it is better to stay silent then to speak and have to endure the sense of being victimized again. To Sapphire, a woman that has been raped and abused cannot just simply say “I’ve been rapped”, and be believed.

The victim’s whole life will be explored and dissected from the very beginning. Was she a party girl? Did she drink too much? Was she wearing provocative clothing? Does she have a promiscuous past? She must convince everyone; the authorities, her family, the media and the public that she has been violated. Tawana Brawley had a boyfriend in jail, enjoyed partying as every teenager does, and unfortunately had an abusive stepfather. It was insinuated that she made up the whole story of being raped and degraded by 6 Caucasian police officers just to avoid being beaten by her stepfather.

As in the case of Tawana Brawley, Jennifer Levin and Marla Hanson were also forced to suffer all over again at the hands of the police and the media. Jennifer happened to enjoy forceful sex-play, because of this it was presumed to be her fault that her boyfriend choked and killed her during one of their sexual escapades. It’s overwhelming for the victims and their families to deal with the constant scrutiny. It is not enough that these women are victimized and humiliated by their abusers. After Marla rejected the sexual advances of her landlord and demanded her security deposit back he hired two black men to slash her face. During the trial she was crossed examined by a defense attorney who alleged that she was a racist and a prostitute who used men to further her modeling career. They are “twice victims, smeared and cut open by The Post, The Daily News, and The New York Times. (111)

Sapphire feels that these women should be treated as victims and protected; instead society protects the rights of the perpetrators and searches for a reason to place blame on the women. Even in her own case, Sapphire wasn’t supposed to be home playing hooky with a boy, so of course it was her fault that he tried to choke her life away. Her father would blame her and not look at her as a victim and sympathize; he would only beat her for having a boy in the house. “A woman must be a good girl, virgin, myth of a thing in order to be raped. Any other kind of woman brought it upon herself, it was her fault.”(111) The writer in this poem is obviously living every woman’s pain through