Jennifer Gaytan on "Policing Gender Lines"

In chapter 6: "Policing Gender Lines" of Andrea Ritchie's book, she focuses on the overpricing of women, gender nonconforming people, and people who didn't dress like their assigned sex. She explains that this ideology was based upon what it meant to be a "real woman" in a white supremacist world. A women needed to be white, gender conforming, and upper class to be treated like a "lady."

The fact that she focuses her paper on the over-policing of women and gender non-conforming people is very interesting because when people talk about the over-policing of a group of people, they talk about black men and people of color. However, women and people who don't associate with their assigned sex often get ignored. Ritchie explains that if a person is not dressing or acting like the sex that they are being categorized in. In several stories in the chapter, many people talked about their experience with the police and how they were wrongly arrested for not conforming to the law's thought.

Also, Ritchie talks about the fact that during encounters with police officers, women are often abused. They are either sexually, verbally, or physically abused and harassed. They do this to try and maintain the gender norms already in place because in our society a man is supposed to be more tough and the women is seen as a man's object and very fragile. Therefore, male police officers believe they can do whatever they want to them and it's okay. Not only are women abused, but so are gender non-conforming people. They are often criminalized because they are seen as deviant and not normal.

To apply this into the real world, I read a news article that closely relates to the topic. Anna Chambers, a 19-year-old woman was raped by two NYPD detectives after she was caught smoking marijuana in her car. The two detectives handcuffed her and in the police van asked what she would do so she won't go to jail and that's when they began their attack. They both took turns in abusing her and then she reported it and got a rape kit done to prove it. However, this wasn't the end of the story.

When in the hospital, she was visited by 9 police officers demanding that she doesn't report it and exclaiming that won't be the last time that she would have encounters with the police. The two detectives justify their actions by saying that the sex was consensual and saying that Chambers was posting provocative photos on social media. This news article makes me so uncomfortable because cannot even trust the authorities who are supposed to be there to serve and protect. However, they seem to be doing the opposite and taking advantage of their badge.

Here is the link if you want to read further:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5116565/Woman-tells-nine-NYPD-cops-visited-rape.html

It is important to discuss why this is happening and what we can do to stop this from happening? Why isn't this kind of behavior talked about as much as the police brutality and killings happening to men?