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Category: Rape Culture

New Black Panthers to Vist Duke

I’m hesitant to comment too much on this one, because I’m not going to jump on the bandwagon that says the Black Panthers of the 1960s were violent hate-filled pushing-it-too-far dangerous black men who we should universally renounce.

But these aren’t the Black Panthers of the 1960s. These guys sound more than a little bit… off (to put it gently). And I think it’s fair to say that their presence in Durham probably isn’t especially helpful to the situation. Thoughts?

Thanks to Will for the link.

Why a “Contraceptive Mentality” Can Save Lives

Seems the Converts’ Zeal thread has attracted one of the “contraceptive mentality” types who can’t seem to see any value whatsoever in the Vatican’s recent tentative moves to recognize that maybe their absolutely-no-condom policy is harmful to people in countries ravaged by AIDS. Seems Tony can’t quite believe that there could be any value whatsoever to relaxing the Church’s position on condoms where one spouse has AIDS or HIV; he feels that the spouses should just suck it up and never have sex again.

But, via Qusan at State of the Qusan, here’s an example of why that might not work out so well in practice:

Kenyan women’s rights activists have condemned an MP who told parliament that women usually say “No” to sex, even if they mean “Yes”.
During a debate on a new sex crimes law, Paddy Ahenda said Kenya women were too shy to openly say “Yes” and warned the law could prevent marriage.

Twelve of Kenya’s 18 female MPs walked out in protest, saying Mr Ahenda and other MPs were “trivialising” rape.

Many Kenyans are alarmed by a huge rise in the incidence of sexual abuse.

“This is a nation that should be in shame because its leaders are laughing at offences committed against women and children,” said Kenya National Commission on Human Rights official Catherine Mumma.

‘Impediment to marriage’

Several male MPs feared that the bill went too far and could lead to a spate of false accusations by women. *

“If the bill is adopted the way it is, it will prevent men from courting women and this will be a serious impediment to the young who would want to marry,” said Mr Ahenda.

“In our culture, when women say ‘No’, they mean ‘Yes’ unless it’s a prostitute.”

The AFP news agency reports that many of his male colleagues laughed and applauded his comments.

So here we have an example of a culture in which women aren’t really going to have the option of nobly foregoing sex with their husbands lest they fall prey to a “contraceptive mentality.” Oh, no — this is a culture where forced sex is considered “courting,” because “no” really means “yes,” so even if she refuses, there’s no such thing as rape, because of course, of course she really meant yes!

Erm, unless she’s a prostitute. Which means, apparently, that she can mean no when she says it. I’m still trying to figure that one out.

But back to this condom thing. The Catholic Church is an enormously powerful institution and has its hands in all kinds of relief organizations serving the countries and continents most affected by AIDS. Yet until recently, they wouldn’t even entertain the thought that condoms could have any value in prevention, so they stood in the way of AIDS education that promoted condom use. As a result, you have a lot of women in countries with fucked-up attitudes like those on display in the Kenyan Parliament at the mercy of men who view them as property. Women are expected to be pure, but men can fuck whomever they please — which means that even good girls who remained pure until their wedding nights and faithful to their husbands are contracting AIDS from those very husbands — who visit prostitutes with impunity. And without any contraception, these women are also getting pregnant and passing HIV to their children.

Outside of abstinence, condoms are the single most effective form of AIDS prevention available. Comprehensive AIDS education that takes into account cultural taboos and the disparity of power between men and women can be effective in controlling the spread of the disease (Thailand, for instance, home to a large sex-tourism industry, has had success in doing so). It is enormously damaging to the very populations the Church is trying to assist with poverty relief, vaccinations and sanitation programs to discourage the use of the one truly effective weapon against uncontrolled HIV infection.

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* This doesn’t really have anything to do directly with the subject of the post; I just wanted to highlight this as a perfect example of the whole “those lying sluts” phenomenon. If we acknowledge that women have autonomy and can say no, if we then make it a crime to violate that autonomy by forcing a woman to have sex against her will, men will be the real victims because women will falsely accuse them of rape. So, better not make rape a crime, then.

Sigh.

Read this AP account of a horrific attack on a Hispanic teenager in Texas by two slightly older white teenagers, and think about what they’re avoiding saying:

SPRING, Texas – Two white teenagers severely beat and sodomized a Hispanic 16-year-old boy who they believed had tried to kiss a Hispanic 12-year-old girl at a party, authorities said.

The attackers forced the boy out of the Saturday night house party, beat him and sodomized him with a plastic pipe, shouting anti-Hispanic epithets, said sheriff’s Lt. John Martin.

Could it be the word “rape,” by any chance?

This boy was raped, but the AP squeamishly avoids the term. The story goes on to say that the attackers were charged with aggravated sexual assault, which is the charge that seems to cover forced penetration with an object rather than a penis. Had the victim been female, the story would have said that she was raped.

What could the reason be for the AP to use the term “sodomized” rather than “sexually assaulted” or “raped?” Some belief that men can’t be raped? Or that rape is a crime of sex rather than of violence, so that if there wasn’t any possibility that the victim invited it by dressing provocatively or some such?

Also, the use of a term that also describes consensual sexual relations between gay men to describe a violent sexual assault serves only to perpetuate the myth that there’s something unseemly and deviant about consensual homosexual sex (not to mention the acts that heterosexual couples indulge in that also fall under the definition but few associate with the term anymore). You certainly never hear of the press using the terms “intercourse” or “sex” or “lovemaking” to describe a rape of a woman by a man.

And it’s not just this case that the press avoids the term — I remember that in the Abner Louima case, the press used the “sodomized with a broomstick” formulation. Perhaps, by avoiding the term “rape,” the press can distance itself from the blame-the-victim narrative it lapses into so easily in coverage of women who’ve been raped. In this case, there’s a bit of that, but it’s quickly displaced — first to the rapists themselves, then, sadly and probably predictably, to the girl that the victim tried to kiss:

Sheriff’s Lt. John Denholm said investigators believe the attack was prompted by the age difference between the 12-year-old girl and the 16-year-old boy.

“The two suspects were being mean and vicious and looking for any excuse to stomp somebody,” he said.

Denholm said the 12-year-old girl and her older brother witnessed the attack, but made no effort to stop it.

Because it always has to be a woman’s fault. She’s twelve, for God’s sake, and these two thugs beat, raped and poured bleach on a 16-year-old boy, and somehow, she or her older brother (age not specified, note), were supposed to stop this?

The victim, sadly, has only a 50-50 chance of survival due to the severity of his injuries.

Imprisoned and Deported for Rape

For being raped, that is.

Sixteen-year-old Isma Mahmood was deported to Pakistan last month after serving six months in shackles and handcuffs in a prison in Saudi Arabia. Her crime: being raped by a Saudi man.

Some crime.

“It’s difficult for me to talk about what happened to me, from rape to prison and from prison to deportation,” Isma said in the office of a rescue trust in Karachi where she sat with her sister Muna, 18, who was also deported.

Isma’s parents, originally from the central Pakistani city of Multan, were trafficked to Saudi Arabia around 20 years ago. “Though both of us were born there, we are Pakistanis,” Isma said.

Human rights groups say that hundreds of people, particularly young women, are still trafficked from South Asia every year, with many going on to face a life blighted by physical and often sexual abuse.

This is a good example of how things like trafficking have generational impacts. Yet too many countries — including the United States — don’t have proper procedures for dealing with trafficking victims. Like in this case, they’re often charged with prostitution and then put through an unsympathetic criminal justice system, or simply deported. Of course, the criminal “justice” system in Saudi Arabia doesn’t even approach just.

The women prisoners were mostly Pakistanis, Indonesians, Bangladeshis and Nigerians. Most of them came to Saudi Arabia through trafficking networks and were charged with prostitution, she said.

“No one would believe what it was like,” Muna said.

“When I used to protest against the ill treatment they beat me on my back,” Isma added. “We were chained all during this period. The only time jail officials removed the chain was during lunch or when anyone went to the bathroom or at prayer time,” she said.

“Once a jail official offered me help and assured me I would be released if I agreed to sleep with him … There was a Pakistani woman who was over 40 years old and developed Aids in prison, but she remained in chains before she was deported to Pakistan,” she added.

Read the whole thing.

How To Stop Rape, Part 2

Just consider “rape” an “undefinable buzzword.”

First we had Bill Napoli and his simple rape and sodomized religious virgin exception. Now we have Rep. Joel Dykstra (R-Lincoln County) explaining what he thinks about the lack of a rape and incest exception. This appeared in the Two Rivers Times, which unfortunately does not have an online version to which I can link:

“I think ‘rape and incest’ is a buzzword,” said Rep. Joel Dykstra about not including those conditions in the abortion bill. “It’s a bit of a throwaway line and not everybody who says that really understands what that means. How are you going to define that?”

I think we need to let Kansas off the hook and start asking what the FUCK is wrong with South Dakota?

How To Stop Rape

Thank you, Ann Coulter, for this wonderful insight:

And if you are a girl in Aruba or New York City, among the best ways to avoid being the victim of a horrible crime is to not get drunk in public or go off in a car with men you just met. While we’re on the subject of things every 5-year-old should know, I also recommend against dousing yourself in gasoline and striking a match.

That’s right: If only these women wouldn’t go out in public and drink, they wouldn’t be physically harmed.

Now, obviously, all people should do what they can to prevent themselves from being the victim of a crime. In fact, the vast majority of us already do that. But how come when a guy gets killed, no one is saying, “Well, he really shouldn’t have gone to a bar”? Because men are entitled to live their lives like normal human beings, in the public sphere. Women, apparently, are not.

I probably take special offense to Coulter’s comments here because I can relate to the New York grad student who was brutally murdered. She was out in a neighborhood that I frequent. I also go out with my friends, often, around Manhattan. She was about my age, and probably lived a similar lifestyle. What she was doing when she was abducted and killed — hanging out with her friends at a bar — isn’t all that much different from my average Friday night.

The implication, then, is that I’m stupider than a five-year-old for going out and doing what just about every other 22-year-old in this city does to unwind after a long week. But because I’m a vagina-owner, I’m somehow courting fate.

Whenever a gun is used in a crime, there are never-ending news stories about how dangerous guns are. But these girls go out alone, late at night, drunk off their butts, and there’s nary a peep about the dangers of drunk women on their own in public. It’s their “right.”

Um… do you really not see the difference here, Ann? People use guns to kill other people. People aren’t using drunk women to kill other people — they’re killing the women. Perhaps we should be a little more upset at the murderers and the rapists than at the women who had the audacity to go out into public alone.

Yes, of course no one “deserves” to die for a mistake. Or to be raped or falsely accused of rape for a mistake. I have always been unabashedly anti-murder, anti-rape and anti-false accusation — and I don’t care who knows about it!

But these statements would roll off the tongue more easily in a world that so much as tacitly acknowledged that all these messy turns of fate followed behavior that your mother could have told you was tacky.

In other words, sure, I don’t think anyone should be raped or murdered, but I’m having a hard time saying that because, well, they kinda do deserve that. Sluts.

It shouldn’t be necessary to point out that girls shouldn’t be bar-hopping alone or taking their clothes off in front of strangers, and that young men shouldn’t be hiring strippers. But we live in a world of Bill Clinton, Paris Hilton, Howard Stern, Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman,” Democratic fund-raisers at the Playboy Mansion and tax deductions for entertaining clients at strip clubs.

This is an age in which the expression “girls gone wild” is becoming a redundancy. So even as the bodies pile up, I don’t think the message about integrity is getting through.

Yes, it’s the girls’ fault that female bodies are piling up. Not the fault of, say, the people killing them. I mean, what do you expect when you go out at night?

Speaking of doing really dangerous stuff and courting death, I can’t wait for Ann Coulter’s column next week where she criticizes Roman Catholic nun Sister Karen Klimczak, who operated a halfway house for recently released convicts and was murdered by one of them last week. Because that’s just stupid.

Two Duke Lacrosse Players Arrested

And charged with kidnapping and rape.

Now, all the threads on the Duke case have basically gone the same way: One group of people says, “We believe her;” one group says, “But those ‘boys’ could be innocent!” and another group (which tends to overlap with the first group) just wants to discuss the various issues of race, class, entitlement, etc that this case brings up — and talking about that, of course, is interpreted as “convicting” the entire lacrosse team.

Read More…Read More…

More Troll Perfection!!!

Oh, GDave just gets better.

Not content to rest on his laurels for achieving perfect trollitude, now he graces us with this little gem:

GDave Says:
April 17th, 2006 at 2:55 pm e
The previous commentary was posted where it was posted due to your not having a commentary post space on the appropriate blog. That’s on you.
Also, you failed to answer the question (go figure): What will you say when, as is likely, this rape ALLEGATION turns out to be a RACIST HOAX?
Stop being easily sidetracked by the feminist, gay, green or nazi statement. I’M BLACK. Neat-o. The question, and the point, remain.
Answer the question.
Tawanna Brawley redux, anyone?
O ye educated ones, please remember something for us zygotes (i’m just a lowly MIT grad, afterall)- when this DOES turn out to be a HOAX, when the accused collectively sue their accuser and win, and Mike Nifong the D.A. (stands for dumbass) loses his bid for reelection, remember how MILLIONS of people saw this outcome from miles off…except for you, and realize that you really aren’t that bright after all.
Remember that for us zygotes, will ya? Thanks!

Oh, GDave. I’m all aflutter. You’ve created an even more perfect trolling experience and really have just gone above and beyond the call of duty.

I mean — first, you lash out at us for not having a commentary post on the appropriate “blog.” Chills! Ah, but what makes this even more fabulous a feat is not just the combination of shifting blame for your own failure to see the little comment window at the bottom of the post and the misuse of terminology — oh, no! — no, what makes this trolling perfection is the addition of letting us know that you, blame-shifting, lingo-misusing GDave, are a graduate of MIT.

I’m all tingly.

But you, GDave, you are on a higher plane. You, dear sir, have slipped the surly bonds of earth and touched the face of the trolling GOD — because you not only try to cloak your ignorance by claiming an MIT degree (while simultaneously mocking us for our educations), you bring out the big guns:

The zygotes.

Oh, GDave. You’re giving me a moistie.

An Exercise in Illogic

“We don’t know all the facts about the alleged Duke lacrosse rape, but …”

That’s more or less how most commentators have introduced their remarks on the case that has reduced the Durham, N.C., community to prayers, tears and recriminations.

Let me interpret the code for you: Men are bad.

I see. So when someone says, “We don’t know all the facts, but…” what they’re actually saying is, “Men are bad.” Gotcha. Should come as a surprise to all the people who are pulling out that line to defend the Duke lacrosse players.

Even though we don’t know what happened, we’re not going to let the absence of facts interfere with our indictment of a team, a coach, a school, but more to the point – of boys.

Ah, those boys. How old are those crazy kids again?

About the only thing to emerge with any clarity since a black exotic dancer claimed that three white lacrosse players raped her last month is our willingness to believe the worst about males.

You mean how when someone says they’re a victim of a crime, we usually believe them? Like how when someone says, “My house got robbed” we don’t immediately respond, “Now wait a minute here… I’ll bet this sleazy character is trying to commit insurance fraud!”

Doesn’t mean that everyone who says they’re a victim actually is. But more than 95% of the time, they aren’t lying.

As for our willingness to believe the worst about men, it ain’t feminists who are making gender-essentialist arguments about rape (Men are naturally brutal beasts! They couldn’t help it! They just lacked chivalry to control their baser urges!). Oh, and pointing out that 99% of rapes are committed by men isn’t “believing the worst” about them. It’s recognizing that this is an epidemic. It’s one that most men don’t take part in, but it’s still not worth ignoring.

That belief is all the more rewarding if the males happen to be white, as well as athletes, and especially if they’re perceived to be privileged. If there’s one thing we can’t bear in this country, it’s spoiled white boys who think the world owes them a good time.

…which is why we elected one of them to lead us.

Whatever transpires in the days and months ahead, what’s most stunning isn’t the revelation that a group of young men, lubricated by testosterone and brew, might become sexually aroused by a woman displaying her wares, but that we assume without evidence that they acted on their basest instincts.

The idea that males can’t control themselves and that females can’t be blamed – ever for anything – has been taking shape in the culture for the past several decades and now is firmly embedded in the zeitgeist. Reaction to Duke’s sad chapter is but the inevitable full flowering of the anti-male seeds planted a generation ago.

Again, who has been saying this? Hint: Not feminists.

I think Ms. Parker needs to look at her pals at Townhall and in the conservative movement if she’s looking to answer that question.