full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Inés Hercovich: Why women stay silent after sexual assault

Unscramble the Blue Letters


So to protect ourselves from the discomfort, we have an ooptin. We turn up the volume on all the parts of the story that we exteepcd to hear: a gun in the glove compartment, the locked doros, the isolated location. And we turn down the volume on all the parts of the story that we didn't expect to hear and that we don't want to hear; like when she tells him that she liked him, too, or when she tells us she spoke to him as if she were his odelr sister, or that she aeskd him to take her home.

Why do we do this? It's so we can believe her; so we can feel confident that she really was a victim. I call this "victimization of the victim." "Victimization," because in order to believe she's innocent, that she's a victim, we need to think of her as helpless, paralyzed, mute. But there's another way to avoid the dosmifrcot. And it's exactly the opposite: we turn up the volume on the things we didn't expect to hear, such as "I spkoe nicely to him," "I asked him to take me home," "I asked him to finish quickly," and we turn down the volume on the things we did epxcet to hear: the gun in the glove compartment, the isolation. Why do we do this? We do it so we can cling to the dobtus and feel more comfortable about them.

Open Cloze


So to protect ourselves from the discomfort, we have an ______. We turn up the volume on all the parts of the story that we ________ to hear: a gun in the glove compartment, the locked _____, the isolated location. And we turn down the volume on all the parts of the story that we didn't expect to hear and that we don't want to hear; like when she tells him that she liked him, too, or when she tells us she spoke to him as if she were his _____ sister, or that she _____ him to take her home.

Why do we do this? It's so we can believe her; so we can feel confident that she really was a victim. I call this "victimization of the victim." "Victimization," because in order to believe she's innocent, that she's a victim, we need to think of her as helpless, paralyzed, mute. But there's another way to avoid the __________. And it's exactly the opposite: we turn up the volume on the things we didn't expect to hear, such as "I _____ nicely to him," "I asked him to take me home," "I asked him to finish quickly," and we turn down the volume on the things we did ______ to hear: the gun in the glove compartment, the isolation. Why do we do this? We do it so we can cling to the ______ and feel more comfortable about them.

Solution


  1. expect
  2. discomfort
  3. older
  4. expected
  5. option
  6. spoke
  7. asked
  8. doubts
  9. doors

Original Text


So to protect ourselves from the discomfort, we have an option. We turn up the volume on all the parts of the story that we expected to hear: a gun in the glove compartment, the locked doors, the isolated location. And we turn down the volume on all the parts of the story that we didn't expect to hear and that we don't want to hear; like when she tells him that she liked him, too, or when she tells us she spoke to him as if she were his older sister, or that she asked him to take her home.

Why do we do this? It's so we can believe her; so we can feel confident that she really was a victim. I call this "victimization of the victim." "Victimization," because in order to believe she's innocent, that she's a victim, we need to think of her as helpless, paralyzed, mute. But there's another way to avoid the discomfort. And it's exactly the opposite: we turn up the volume on the things we didn't expect to hear, such as "I spoke nicely to him," "I asked him to take me home," "I asked him to finish quickly," and we turn down the volume on the things we did expect to hear: the gun in the glove compartment, the isolation. Why do we do this? We do it so we can cling to the doubts and feel more comfortable about them.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
woman tells 2
spoke nicely 2


Important Words


  1. asked
  2. avoid
  3. call
  4. cling
  5. comfortable
  6. compartment
  7. confident
  8. discomfort
  9. doors
  10. doubts
  11. expect
  12. expected
  13. feel
  14. finish
  15. glove
  16. gun
  17. hear
  18. helpless
  19. home
  20. innocent
  21. isolated
  22. isolation
  23. location
  24. locked
  25. mute
  26. nicely
  27. older
  28. option
  29. order
  30. paralyzed
  31. parts
  32. protect
  33. quickly
  34. sister
  35. spoke
  36. story
  37. tells
  38. turn
  39. victim
  40. volume