Missing White Woman Syndrome is real.

[lightningandsnow]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome

I live in Toronto, and I see this happening right now.

About a week ago, Stefanie Rengel, a pretty, middle-class, popular, caucasian teenage girl was stabbed to death.

The local media has been all over it. It's been front page news for the last week non-stop. Massive candlelight vigils have been helds in her honor. The facebook group in her memory has thousands and thousands of people in it. People are outraged.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be. What happened to this girl was a terrible tragedy.

But, consider this:

A few years ago, Lien Pham, an Asian-Canadian sex worker, was strangled to death in her home. You know what the mainstream media response was?

*Crickets chirping*

That's right, a big fat NOTHING.

The only record I can find of Lien Pham ever even existing was in an article about a sex worker activist in Toronto, who knew Lien Pham personally.

[bunkerbuster1]

1. K&R'd. I didn't know about the wiki entry. I've bitched about this issue for ages

I'll continue to gripe about it.

In the meantime, the corporate media continues to ask the question, in the immortal words of Blazing Saddles' Sheriff Bart: "Where the white women at?"

[raccoon]

2. Even if she hadn't been Asian-Canadian, the fact that she was a sex worker would

make her less newsworthy in the eyes of the MSM.

[Evoman]

3. Name one of Pickton's victims?

Can't? Exactly. Apparently, prostitutes aren't real people to the rest of us.

I agree with you. Although, allow me to play devil's advocate for a second....what about Tamara Keepness? She was a Native American girl who went missing and she was on the news for a long time.

[mogster]

4. I agree with you, devils advocate

Let's not fight racism this way, it's not worth it to put two random victims up against it's other and make them into icons, the picture is much more complicated than that. They both lost.

[Marrah_G]

9. So true Evo- check my post below

[lightningandsnow]

13. You have a point...

perhaps it's more an issue of her class/profession than her race.

Still, the fact that her murder got zero media attention is disturbing.

[hfojvt]

5. The media, however, does not create the candlelight vigils

The victim's friends do. Then a massive event is considered newsworthy.

[midlife_mo_Jo]

6. That girl could be anyone's daughter

As a mother, when I read something like that, it freaks me out.

Reading about a young woman who was a sex worker would have made me feel very bad for her, but it wouldn't have freaked me out as much because I don't picture my daughter as a sex worker. I would think, "Oh, that's terrible. I wonder if one of her clients killed her?" See how I wouldn't think, "Oh, my goodness, that could have been my daughter?"

There's the identification factor, of which race is only one component. That's why it's much bigger news, imo.

[undeterred]

7. When I lived in Chicago there were

prostitutes and homeless women missing from a "bad" neighborhood for almost two years before the police put it together that there was a serial killer. If this had been happening in the university neighborhood less than a mile away they would have been all over it and it would have been a "serial killer" by the time there was a second victim.

[Marrah_G]

8. It's more a matter of class

I know of a RI serial killer who murdered women who lived a rough life. The one I have a connection to was Young, White, Pretty and PREGNANT... she was also dismembered.

Nobody outside RI ever heard of this and even then it was just a few articles in the local paper.

Google: Stacey Goulet- Woonsocket, RI.

She was missing for a year. No one gave a shit but her family and a couple great detectives that never let up.

[rhiannon55]

10. My niece has been missing for four years

and the only reason her case stays open and she gets any (albeit limited) media attention is because my sister is relentless in her search for her. Angie is a young (early 30's, now) white woman, but she was poor, and not slim and blonde. My sister has had to almost beg for help finding her.

[K Gardner]

11. I'm so sorry, Rhiannon... truly and deeply sorry for your family's pain and sorrow. n/t

[rhiannon55]

12. Thank you, K

Ambiguous loss is so hard to deal with. We used to hope to find her alive. These days, we just hope to find her.

[lightningandsnow]

14. I'm so sorry to hear that.

[LisaL]

15. A sex worker's murder, even if she were white, probably

wouldn't attract that much attention.