hollis (they/them) currently studying classics and archaeology.

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fuckyeahlesbianliterature:

notfuckingcishet:

ladysaviours:

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elizabitchtaylor:

I learned about the murder of Kitty Genovese in two separate psychology classes, at two separate universities. It was studied as an example of the “bystander effect”, which is a phenomenon that occurs when witnesses do not offer help to a victim when there are other people present.

I was told by my professors that Kitty Genovese was a 28-year-old unmarried woman who was attacked, raped, and brutally murdered on her way home from her shift as manager of a bar. I was told that numerous people witnessed the attack and her cries for help but didn’t do anything because they “assumed someone else would”. Nobody intervened until it was too late. 

What I was not told was that Kitty Genovese was a lesbian who lived more or less openly with her partner in the Upper West Side and managed a gay bar. 

Now… is it likely that people overheard Kitty’s cries for help and ignored them because they thought someone else would deal with it? Or, perhaps, did they ignore her because they knew she was a lesbian and just didn’t care?

Maybe that’s not the case. Maybe it was just a random attack. Maybe her neighbours didn’t know she was gay, or didn’t care.

But it’s a huge chunk of information to leave out about her in a supposedly scientific study of events, since her sexuality made her much more vulnerable to violent crimes than the average person. And it’s a dishonour to her memory.

RIP Kitty Genovese. Society may only remember you for how you died, but I will remember you for who who were.

this was one of the first lessons I had in psych too and we were never told about this either nor was it in any of the reading materials

Honestly, the Kitty Genovese case has been wildly misreported since the beginning, mostly by people who were trying to make  point and ignored the actual facts.

The common myth that “thirty-eight people heard what happened and did nothing” is false: one man shouted from his window to “leave that girl alone!” two people called the police, and one woman actually left her apartment to help; she was holding Genovese when emergency services finally arrived. However (and relevant to the OP’s point about how homophobia played a role in the case) one of the witnesses was a man named Karl Ross, a friend of Genovese’s. He saw what was happening, but hesitated to call the cops, first calling a friend, then fleeing his apartment, and then finally calling the police. Ross was also gay. In the 1960s- pre-Stonewall, but very much within the culture of police homophobia- why wouldn’t a gay man have hesitated to call for help? They were as likely to arrest him as come to Genovese’s aid. Even if they didn’t target Ross then and there, there was a significant risk of exposure that went along with contacting any kind of authorities.

(x)

Not only that, in he 1960s the police were consistently harrassing gay bars and they were as likely to harm Genovese further as come to her aid.  

There was actually a book recently released about this! I haven’t read it, so I can’t vouch for it, but if you want more information on this:

In “No One Helped” Marcia M. Gallo examines one of America’s most infamous true-crime stories: the 1964 rape and murder of Catherine “Kitty” Genovese in a middle-class neighborhood of Queens, New York. Front-page reports in the New York Times incorrectly identified thirty-eight indifferent witnesses to the crime, fueling fears of apathy and urban decay. Genovese’s life, including her lesbian relationship, also was obscured in media accounts of the crime. Fifty years later, the story of Kitty Genovese continues to circulate in popular culture. Although it is now widely known that there were far fewer actual witnesses to the crime than was reported in 1964, the moral of the story continues to be urban apathy. “No One Helped” traces the Genovese story’s development and resilience while challenging the myth it created.

“No One Helped”: Kitty Genovese, New York City, and the Myth of Urban Apathy by Marcia M. Gallo