Blog Archives
Raping Children under Pretext of Marriage
Saudi Arabia: A Hepatitis B infected 65-year-old man married an 11-year-old girl. Soon she’ll be infected.
Yemen: A 10-year-old was forced to marry a 30-year-old deliveryman. He took her out of school and beat her regularly. (Due to some smarts and luck, she later became a ten-year-old divorcee.)
Saudi Arabia: A father married off his 13-year-old daughter to a man in his 50s because he wanted dowry money to buy a car.
Afghanistan: A 14-year old was married off to satisfy an obligation. Abused, used as a servant, and forced to sleep in an outbuilding with animals, she eventually (and famously) ended up on Time Magazine’s cover with a severed nose as punishment for fleeing her abuse.
One Saudi social worker told Al Riyadh that she knows of three thousand cases where girls, 13-years-old and younger, were forced to marry men old enough to be their fathers or grandfathers. Or as Eman Al Nafjan at change.org described it, “forcing children to be raped under the pretensions of marriage.”
All of this is ironic as staunchly pious Muslim states somehow forget their religion: The Quran gives females the right to consent to marry. But forcing children to marry removes their say. Early Islam actually had a feminist air, and many Muslim feminists are working to return to that more woman-positive time.
Fortunately, a movement against child marriage is rising in Saudi Arabia. If you would like to read more, go to change.org, where you can also sign petition.
Hopefully, one day the right to consent to marry will not be just an empty promise.
Georgia Platts
Related Posts: Early Islam’s Feminist Air
Don’t Reject Your Culture, Even When It Mutilates You
Cultural Relativism: Must We Be Nazis to Criticize Them?
Share this:
Rape Victims Shamed Into Suicide. In Pakistan. In America.
Assiya was sixteen when a “family friend” sold her to two Pakistani criminals who beat and raped her over the next year. Eventually the criminals traded her to the police in exchange for pinning one of their robberies on the girl.
Assiya had thought her troubles were over. But instead, the officers took their turn beating and raping her for several days before letting her go.
The police weren’t worried Assiya would tell. She was expected to commit suicide, as sexually assaulted girls had always done to rinse the dishonor of sexual assault from their families.
But instead, Assiya did the inconceivable. She accused her attackers.
This story is shocking. Why would anyone, or any culture, expect a raped girl to commit suicide? As though the shame were hers.
Yet sometimes America doesn’t seem so very different.
Cut to the U.S. where fourteen-year-old Samantha Kelly’s mother told police that her daughter had sex with eighteen-year-old Joseph Tarnopolski. He was arrested, though it’s unclear whether the charge was statutory or forcible rape.
After a local Fox News affiliate identified Kelly by name, she was bullied so much at school that she finally committed suicide. Yet another reminder of the stigma victims can face when they report this crime.
It’s sad to see that even today, in Pakistan and in America, rape victims can be shamed into killing themselves.
Georgia Platts
Popular Posts on BroadBlogs Cheerleader Ordered To Cheer Her Rapist, and Other Stories Are Women Naturally Monogamous? Sex: Who Gets Screwed?
Share this:
Rand Paul Supporter Wants Apology. Like Rapists, Batterers: It’s Her Fault
She made me do it!
How many times have we heard that?
We’ve probably all seen video of Rand Paul supporter, Tim Profitt, stomping on a woman’s head for expressing her right to free speech. (If you haven’t, see video here).
Now he says she should apologize for making him stomp on her head.
This is right in line with a man who insists the Yale Women’s Center brought the “no means yes” rape threats on themselves: “The sole purpose behind this building is to give hatemongering academic feminists a base to spread their propaganda and recruit new members… (the frat) most likely did it because feminazis always go out of their way to harm men… it might explain the motivation behind their actions.”
Oddly, these are not uncommon sentiments.
Rapists share a similar viewpoint: She dressed provocatively! She made me rape her.
The attitude echoes among wife batterers: She didn’t have dinner ready! She bought the wrong brand of beer! She made me beat her.
They all share the narcissistic quality of distorting themselves into an image of perfection, while projecting their own failings onto others. In their book, women constantly make men do terrible things to them.
In a world where men are given greater privilege, less-evolved men simply expect to have greater license. It’s natural, to be expected. Women must obey their husbands or be disciplined (beaten). Men have more right to women’s bodies than women do themselves. Uppity women who want change can expect torment for their efforts. And sometimes, when you’re bigger and stronger, and you can stomp on a woman’s head: might just makes right.
Georgia Platts
Popular Posts on BroadBlogs
Men Are Naturally Attracted To Unnatural Women
Yale Fraternity Chants “No Means Yes.” Men? Or Scaredy Cats?
“Cock” vs “Down There”
Surprises in Indiana University Sex Survey
Sex Lessons from Mom and Dad
Share this:
Mind of a Rapist: Trying to Bridge a Gap between a Small Self and a Big Man
“I was in control for the first time of my life. I just felt like I had a little more power for once.”
“It could have been anyone. It could have been a guy. I was just mad.”
The first quote comes from Cary Stayner, who raped and murdered three young women in Yosemite. The second is from David Burpee, who raped a 17-year-old after having a fight with his girlfriend over getting fired.
Different rapists have different motives. These two are characteristic of the “Walter Mitty” type.
Walter Mitty is a fictional character. He’s an ordinary, ineffectual man who tries to bridge the gap between who he is and who he wants to be by imagining himself in situations of grandeur: a wartime pilot, an ER surgeon, a killer.
Walter Mitty rapists do something similar. They see themselves as less than the “big man” they yearn to be. And they have limited notions of what men are. To them, masculinity means power, dominance, aggression, violence, virility. They use rape to bridge the gap between their sorry selves and the dominant men they seek to be, whether it’s not-so-powerful Cary Stayner or David Burpee getting a tongue lashing from his girlfriend because he can’t hold down a job.
I was reminded of the Walter Mitty rapist after the Yale frat-boy chants of “No means yes, yes means anal,” near the women’s dorms and the Women’s Center.
What’s the connection between rape-threatening frat boys and the Walter Mitty rapist? The intent is the same: both are trying to create personal identities as superior and “manly.” The process of achieving that goal is the same: expressing sexual dominance. The degree of harm is the only difference.
But does rape really create superiority? The dehumanized act actually points in the opposite direction.
Georgia Platts
Share this:
Yale Fraternity Chants “No Means Yes.” Men? Or Scaredy Cats?
The boys (not men) of Yale’s Delta Kappa Epsilon (DKE) chanted, “No means yes! Yes means anal!” at the Women’s Center on campus last week. See video.
What was their motive?
When people do things like this – put others down – they’re trying to create an identity for themselves and for the people they are targeting.
“No means yes.” While rape has a sexual component, it’s mostly about power. In this chant, the guys were celebrating images of men overpowering women. “Yes means anal”? If she says yes, then do something she didn’t ask for (and presumably wouldn’t want) turning even “yes” into rape.
Chanting in front of the Women’s Center – a safe space for women who have been assaulted or abused – makes that message stronger.
Afterwards, the frat offered an apology that let them off the hook. And which actually helps them to feel powerful: We can do anything so long as we apologize.
How sorry are they? Frat boys shouted the same slogans in front of the Women’s Center in 2006. In 2008 a different fraternity bellowed their love of “Yale sluts” in the same location.
Here we have boys desperately trying to assert their manhood. Intimidating women to create a sense of male superiority that doesn’t exist in nature – otherwise they wouldn’t need to try so hard. It all screams “insecurity!” There must be a big gap between the men they want to be, and the boys they seemingly are, to make that much effort.
Guys in frats are often pressured to hurt women to prove their manhood. “Bros before ho’s.” Sociologist, Michael Kimmel, studies men. And he says that many of these pledges don’t want to do the hurtful things to women that they are pressured to do.
But aren’t men supposed to be strong, confident, courageous? Don’t men follow their conscience instead of following the crowd?
What we see here is not courage but bravado. Trying to appear more brave than they really are.
This is supposed to prove their manhood?
Are women that threatening? Really, these guys are just scaredy cats.
Georgia Platts
Related post: Ever Wanted To Be A Woman? What Men Say
Share this:
Cheerleader Ordered To Cheer Her Rapist, and Other Stories
In 2008 a high school cheerleader joined her friends for a post-football game party. But the fun turned into a nightmare when, she says, four young men sexually assaulted her. A grand jury initially declined to indict, but Rakheem Bolton was eventually charged and pled guilty to simple assault.
Bolton was also on the basketball team. But the 16-year-old refused to root for him. So school officials ordered her to cheer Bolton on, or go home. When she refused, she was cut from the squad.
After suing the district attorney, the school district and the principal, an appeals court ruled against her.
The school had no problem with her attacker playing on the team. Too important to win! Cheerleaders, however, won’t gain the school any glory.
The courts often see the world through the eyes of the powerful, too.
Who gets punished? Well, who’s powerful?
Case 2: Child Abuse Called “Art”
“Hypothetical question: How would you feel if, as a young teenager, your father asked you to strip down naked so he could film you talking about your confusing, puberty-warped body? Oh, you wouldn’t like it? Really? What if he called it ‘art’?” Asks NYU LOCAL reporter, Keyana Stevens.
New York University purchased the archives of artist, Larry Rivers. But one of his daughters wants to destroy the film entitled “Growing,” telling the New York Times that her father’s coercion in making those films led her to develop anorexia. “It wrecked a lot of my life, actually.”
But she had no control. And initially NYU refused her request.
Only public outrage turned things around, leading NYU to reject that part of the collection.
Case 3: DA Sends Abusive Texts to Abuse Victim
In the midst of prosecuting a man accused of domestic violence, District Attorney, Kenneth Kratz began texting the “hot, young” (as he put it) victim hoping to start a sexual relationship.
Experts called the messages disturbing and unethical, given the power differential between the prosecutor and the young victim. Not to mention heaping abuse on top of abuse.
At first Kratz seemed likely to avoid punishment. State legal regulators said his actions were not technically misconduct. The state crime victims’ rights board, which Kratz had chaired, wasn’t investigating. And Gov. Jim Doyle stayed silent.
Once again, publicity and shame came to the rescue: Kratz chose to resign.
When it comes to punishment, too often the powerful don’t have to worry as the powerless suffer. Except those rare cases when shock and publicity intervene.
What a sad state of affairs.
Georgia Platts
Source: “DA keeps jobs despite texting “hot, young nymph” violence victim.” San Jose Mercury News. September 17, 2010
Popular Posts on BroadBlogs
Rape Victims Condemned and Dismissed: Then and Now
Why Are We More Offended By Racism Than Sexism?
Share this:
Rape Victims Condemned and Dismissed: Then and Now
In 1970 Jerry Plotkin and three others gang raped an acquaintance. Plotkin pleaded not guilty: He was a sexual libertine; he did what he wanted without limits. Through innuendo he implied that his victim was a libertine, too. Proof: she’d had sex without marriage.
The jury acquitted: A woman who’d had sex outside of wedlock could not be raped.
A rape victim condemned, her suffering dismissed.
Turning back 20 years earlier, an article from the 1952-53 Yale Law Journal explained why rape was illegal: “Women’s power to withhold or grant sexual access is an important bargaining weapon… it fosters, and is in turn bolstered by, a masculine pride in the exclusive possession of the sexual object… whose value is enhanced by sole ownership.”
The victim’s pain dismissed.
Discounting rape reaches far into history – at least when women are prey. In the Old Testament (Judges 19:22-29) we find depraved men pounding at the door of a Levite’s home, demanding a male guest be turned out to be raped. The Levite refuses, sending out his virgin daughter and his guest’s concubine, instead:
23 No, my friends, don’t be so vile. Since this man is my guest, don’t do this disgraceful thing. 24 Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine. I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to them whatever you wish. But to this man, don’t do such a disgraceful thing.
25: So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go. 26 At daybreak the woman went back to the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there until daylight. 27 When her master got up in the morning … 28 He said to her, “Get up; let’s go.” But there was no answer.
No distress arises as the concubine’s “husband” turns her out to be raped or finds her dead. If anyone has been harmed it is him, his property defiled.
If you think we’re past these attitudes, think again.
A lack of compassion continues in the Middle East. Instead of nurturing a victim through her trauma, she faces an honor killing as punishment for the sin of being attacked.
In today’s India, female rape victims can be subjected to a “finger exam” to see if her hymen is intact, or whether her vagina is “narrow” or “roomy.” A focus on virginity leaves her suffering of no import.
In the U.S., things are better. But problems remain. Helena Lazaro was raped at knifepoint at a car wash. She has spent 13 years trying to get her case properly investigated. But her attacker remains loose while authorities fail to test her rape kit. Currently, 180,000 rape kits are left untested nationwide, creating more rape victims.
Meanwhile, too many women are blamed for a crime that is committed against them.
Rape victims undergo depression, anxiety, and even post-traumatic stress disorder. Many become sexually dysfunctional.
Rape is the crime women most fear outside of murder. But you wouldn’t know it by the way victims are ignored and condemned.
Georgia Platts
Source:
Susan Griffin. “Politics: 1971.” The Power of Consciousness. HarperCollins. 1979
BroadBlogs 