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.
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
I don’t want to downplay the possible impact that Genovese’s sexuality had on her being a victim of brutal violence, but it’s worth noting that the popular narrative around the attack is very probably a myth. The “numerous eyewitnesses saw the attack and did nothing” narrative was spun out of wholecloth by the police and regurgitated by salacious reporting in the NY Times. The police claimed, and the Times repeated, that thirty-eight people actually watched the attack for half an hour while doing nothing - none of which could be corroborated by later investigation.
At least one author claims the actual number of eyewitnesses was between four and six, of whom two genuinely refused to get involved. Two of the other witnesses actually did call the police… only to be put on hold, and for no squad car to be dispatched even when they actually got through. And another person rushed out after the stabbing to try and help Genovese, although she was too late.
It irks me no end that this story is still routinely taught in psych classes, because it’s most likely a lie made up by the police to cover their asses and spread by the media to sell papers. There are real, important lessons to take from the way society failed to prevent Genovese’s murder. But we should be careful about the stories we tell about it.
