17 year-old Juliane Koepcke was sucked out of an airplane in 1971 after it was struck by a bolt of lightning. She fell 2 miles to the ground, strapped to her seat and survived after she endured 10 days in the Amazon Jungle.
After ten days, she found a boat moored near a shelter, and found the boat's fuel tank still partly full. Koepcke poured the gasoline on her wounds, an action which succeeded in removing the maggots from her arm. Out of 93 passengers and crew, Juliane was the only survivor of the LANSA flight 508 crash that took place December 24th, 1971.
🔗Her story in her own words: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17476615
Juliane Koepcke is a Bad Ass!
Her book gives a small insight into how female survivors are treated: not as heroes, but as hypersexual psychopaths who, in her case, are relentlessly guilt-tripped and blamed for the catastrophic death of their loved ones ... all while the media is busy drawing sexualised cartoons and getting off on an underage girl's body.
^^^ Building off the above reply with some examples....
This was the first thing that stuck out to me, in her book:
If Juliane was a 17-year-old boy, her judgment calls & survival skills probably wouldn’t be passed off as a mere mistake/fluke. If she was a guy, people would lap that shit up and call her a Fine Boy Scout™.
Next is this passage:
“Now Father has lost his wife...” this thought never crossed Juliane’s mind, because she had no way of knowing if her mother was alive or dead. Juliane couldn’t find her mom after the crash. But notice how the media somehow managed to center the plight of a man in a story about *checks notes* a girl who braved the wilderness alone for 10 days after losing her mother in a plane crash.
Some media outlets floated the idea that, in addition to witnessing her mother’s death, Juliane had seen other struggling survivors as well & neglected to help them. This is false. It just goes to show that girls are villainized for taking care of themselves instead of taking care of everyone else—even when they’re all alone in the middle of the jungle, fighting for their own survival.
Juliane also came under scrutiny for her emotional state, after her rescue. Because she was traumatized and in shock, she didn’t react “appropriately” to her situation or grieve for her mother the way people expected her to.
As seen above, some voices in the media pathologized her understandable trauma response, treating her like a deranged sociopath.
^^^ This shit speaks for itself. Reminder that Juliane was just a child, a teenager.
Lastly, there actually is a 1974 movie about Juliane directed by Giuseppe Maria Scotese, starring Susan Penhaligon. The movie is called Miracles Still Happen. This is how the movie marketed her story:
And here’s how the media covered it:
So yeah. In conclusion, men are trash. And to wrap things up, I’ll leave you with this extremely tasteful comic strip by a (male) artist.
thank you so much for this valuable addition!! this is exactly what i was talking about!
