Labels: rape, Republican men, sick motherfuckers, The Republican War on Women

In response to a string of at least 10 unsolved sexual assaults in Brooklyn, New York police are reportedly stopping women on the street who are wearing clothing they say is revealing and advising them to cover up if they don’t want to be raped. The Wall Street Journal reports on the disturbing message police officers are allegedly spreading:

Lauren, a South Slope resident, was walking home three blocks from the gym on Monday when she was stopped. The 25-year-old, who did not want her last name to be used, was wearing shorts and a T-shirt when she claims a police officer asked if she would stop and talk to him. He also stopped two other women wearing dresses. [...]

“He pointed at my outfit and said, ‘Don’t you think your shorts are a little short?‘” she recalled. “He pointed at their dresses and said they were showing a lot of skin.”

He said that such clothing could make the suspect think he had “easy access,” said Lauren. She said the officer explained that “you’re exactly the kind of girl this guy is targeting.”

Labels: just another outrage, rape, sexism

Oh, she wanted it.

She wanted it bad.

That’s what every hard-working, God-fearing, young widow who breaks her back doing menial labor at a Times Square hotel to support her teenage daughter, justify her immigration status and take advantage of the opportunities in America wants — a crazed, rutting, wrinkly old satyr charging naked out of a bathroom, lunging at her and dragging her around the room, caveman-style.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s reputation as a thrice-married French seducer loses something in the translation.

According to the claims of the 32-year-old West African maid, what took place in the $3,000-a-day Sofitel suite had nothing to do with seduction. If the allegation is true, Strauss-Kahn’s behavior, boorish and primitive, is rape.

Was the chief of the International Monetary Fund telling other countries to tighten their belts while he was dropping his trousers? Lawyers for the 62-year-old Frenchman, who had been a leading Socialist prospect to run against Nicolas Sarkozy next year, seem ready to rebut any DNA evidence by arguing that sex with the maid who came in to clean his room was consensual.

[snip]

Strauss-Kahn’s French defenders are throwing around nutty conspiracy theories, sounding like the Pakistanis about Osama. Some have suggested that he was the victim of a honey-pot arranged by the Sarkozy forces.

Bernard-Henri Lévy, a friend of the accused, says he is outraged at the portrayal of Strauss-Kahn as an “insatiable and malevolent beast.” He wrote on The Daily Beast: “It would be nice to know — and without delay — how a chambermaid could have walked in alone, contrary to the habitual practice of most of New York’s grand hotels of sending a ‘cleaning brigade’ of two people, into the room of one of the most closely watched figures on the planet.”

At least he didn’t mention Dreyfus.

For years, I’ve stayed at the Sofitel and other hotels in New York City, and I’ve never seen a “brigade,” simply single maids coming in to clean.

In Washington, they have now nicknamed the street that separates the I.M.F. and the World Bank, where Paul Wolfowitz lost his job over financial hanky-panky with his girlfriend, the Boulevard of Bad Behavior.

These are the two institutions that are globally renowned for lecturing the rest of the world on discipline and freedom, when it’s the West that’s guilty of recklessness and improvident behavior. First in finance, then in sex.

People who can’t keep their flies zipped lecturing other people.

Labels: just another outrage, rape

Two Memphis boys, aged 7 and 9, alleged to have raped a 2-year-old girl last August were placed in protective custody on Monday.

Shelby County Juvenile Court Magistrate Dan Michael turned the boys over to the state's Department of Children's Services after the prosecution asked that they be put in custody for treatment rather than punishment.

The boys' attorneys, James Sanders and Samuel Jones, had both asked that the boys be allowed to receive rehabilitative services from the state while in their own homes.

Sanders, who represents the 9-year-old, said there were "clearly no winners" in the situation.

"You've got a victim who certainly is going to probably bear the scars of this incident for years to come," he said.

"And you've got two young, alleged perpetrators who are going to have to carry the burden of this offense with them for years to come.

Labels: hack journalism, misogyny, rape

Labels: Anthony Weiner, Democrats with balls, rape, reproductive rights

It says nothing about Egypt but that they’re a patriarchy that this happened. It says nothing about the claims of the protesters otherwise, and it may not say anything about the future of women. It definitely says nothing about whether or not this people or that people can self-govern. It simply says that when we raise men from the cradle to think of women as the gender that serves and is dominated, rape will become an expression of power and dominance. Gang rapes happen here. They happen pretty much everywhere, because patriarchy is a worldwide injustice. Rapes are about this oldest injustice, and this ugly spot on the stain of all humanity. Crowds of men, struggles over power, women as objects. It’s a formula that leads to this. The leg to kick out from under that to prevent this is not struggles for government control, which are part and parcel of being human. Or people hitting the streets, demanding their rights. The leg to kick out is the worldwide belief that women are second class. Then and only then will rape stop.

Labels: bloggers, feminism, rape

U.S. House Republicans have received a great deal of attention over the past week since seeking to qualify the crime of rape with the term “forcible” in a high-profile piece of legislation. Such a distinction could create classes of rape victims, with “forcible rape” victims somehow being ordained as worse off than victims of statutory rape, date rape, rape by coercion or deception, rape of the disabled or mentally impaired… You get the picture.

But what if rape victims could no longer be referred to as “victims” at all? What if people who have endured this horrible – and already chronically underreported -- crime could only be called “accusers”?

Georgia Republican state Rep. Bobby Franklin (of gold-standard-wannabe fame) has introduced a bill to change the state’s criminal codes so that in “criminal law and criminal procedure” (read: in court), victims of rape, stalking, and family violence could only be referred to as “accusers” until the defendant has been convicted.

Burglary victims are still victims. Assault victims are still victims. Fraud victims are still victims. But if you have the misfortune to suffer a rape, or if you are beaten by a domestic partner, or if you are stalked, Rep. Franklin doesn’t think you’ve been victimized. He says you’re an accuser until the courts have determined otherwise.

To diminish a victim’s ordeal by branding him/her an accuser essentially questions whether the crime committed against the victim is a crime at all. Robbery, assault, and fraud are all real crimes with real victims, the Republican asserts with this bill.

Labels: assholes, fear and loathing, misogyny, rape

Labels: abortion, House Republicans, rape, reproductive rights, sick motherfuckers

Labels: rant, rape, sex crimes, wikileaks

Labels: faux feminism, movies, rape, Why Is There Even Argument About This

LONDON, March 30, 2009 – Ground Zero for the so-called 'war on terror' is a nation where gays and lesbians live in real terror every day. Among the suffering of gay Iraqis is the regular threat (and carrying out) of rape and murder. In July, CNN reported on the case of a young gay man abducted for ransom and raped daily for more than two weeks.

More than 100 prisoners in Iraq are facing execution. Many of them, says an underground gay rights organization in the country, are believed to have been convicted of the 'crime' of being gay, the UK-based Iraqi-LGBT group revealed this afternoon.

According to Ali Hili of Iraqi-LGBT, the Iraqi authorities plan to start executing them in batches of 20 from this week. There is, said Hili, at least one member of Iraqi-LGBT who are among those to be put to death.

And the London-based group, which believes that a total of 128 executions are imminent, is calling on the UK Government, international human rights groups and the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva to intervene "with due speed" to prevent "this tragic miscarriage of justice" from going ahead.

"We have information and reports on members of our community whom been arrested and waiting for execution for the crimes of homosexuality," Mr Hili told UK Gay News.

"Iraqi-LGBT has been a banned from running activities on Iraqi soil," he revealed.

"Raids by the Iraqi police and Ministry of Interior forces cost our group [to the extent of] diapering and killing of 17 members working for Iraqi-LGBT since 2005.

"The death penalty has been increasing at an alarming rate in Iraq since the new Iraqi regime reintroduced it in August 2004.

"In 2008, at least 285 people were sentenced to death, and at least 34 executed. In 2007 at least 199 people were sentenced to death and 33 were executed, while in 2006 at least 65 people were put to death.

"The actual figures," Mr. Hili suggested, "could be much higher as there are no official statistics for the number of prisoners facing execution."

Labels: gay rights, medievalism, Middle East, rape

An Iraqi police official in the northwestern city of Tall Afar said Thursday that a military officer and three soldiers had admitted to raping a Sunni woman and recording the act with a cellphone camera.

The four soldiers told an investigative committee convened by the Iraqi army that they sexually assaulted the woman nearly two weeks ago, according to Gen. Najem Abdullah, a police spokesman in Tall Afar.

The soldiers' statement follows another Sunni woman's assertion this week that she had been raped in Baghdad by members of Iraq's predominantly Shiite security forces. Iraq's Kurdish president and its Sunni vice president said Thursday that a judge should investigate her case, which the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has dismissed as groundless.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said in a statement that the courts were "the only legitimate place to examine such allegations" and that the government should avoid steps that would "inflame sensitivities and create mistrust."

Talabani's stance, echoed by Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, is sharply at odds with Maliki's insistence that the 20-year-old Baghdad woman who contends three Iraqi policemen raped her Sunday is a criminal who fabricated the story to exacerbate sectarian tension and undermine a U.S. and Iraqi security plan to pacify the capital.

Labels: Iraq, rape

As I write this, Oprah is on Channel 4 (one of the MBC channels we get on Nilesat), showing Americans how to get out of debt. Her guest speaker is telling a studio full of American women who seem to have over-shopped that they could probably do with fewer designer products. As they talk about increasing incomes and fortunes, Sabrine Al-Janabi, a young Iraqi woman, is on Al Jazeera telling how Iraqi security forces abducted her from her home and raped her. You can only see her eyes, her voice is hoarse and it keeps breaking as she speaks. In the end she tells the reporter that she can’t talk about it anymore and she covers her eyes with shame.

She might just be the bravest Iraqi woman ever. Everyone knows American forces and Iraqi security forces are raping women (and men), but this is possibly the first woman who publicly comes out and tells about it using her actual name. Hearing her tell her story physically makes my heart ache. Some people will call her a liar. Others (including pro-war Iraqis) will call her a prostitute- shame on you in advance.

I wonder what excuse they used when they took her. It’s most likely she’s one of the thousands of people they round up under the general headline of ‘terrorist suspect’. She might have been one of those subtitles you read on CNN or BBC or Arabiya, “13 insurgents captured by Iraqi security forces.” The men who raped her are those same security forces Bush and Condi are so proud of- you know- the ones the Americans trained. It’s a chapter right out of the book that documents American occupation in Iraq: the chapter that will tell the story of 14-year-old Abeer who was raped, killed and burned with her little sister and parents.

They abducted her from her house in an area in southern Baghdad called Hai Al Amil. No- it wasn’t a gang. It was Iraqi peace keeping or security forces- the ones trained by Americans? You know them. She was brutally gang-raped and is now telling the story. Half her face is covered for security reasons or reasons of privacy. I translated what she said below.

Almost immediately, Shiite leaders lined up to condemn the woman and her charges as propaganda aimed at undermining the new security campaign. Sunni politicians offered the woman their support. Whatever the truth of the accusation, though, it played to sectarian fears on both sides.

For many Shiites, the charges appeared to be an attempt to smear them and attack the Shiite-led government; for Sunnis, the woman’s account only highlighted what they already believe to be true — that the Iraqi government cares little for justice and promotes a Shiite agenda.

Bitter exchanges between politicians of different sects were relayed to millions on television, interspersed with clips of the woman telling her story, her face veiled, just the tears in her eyes visible.

The Americans, who have advisers that work with the Iraqi National Police, found themselves caught in the middle and with no answers. The woman claimed that the Americans rescued her from the officers and gave her medical treatment. The American-backed, Shiite-led government said the Americans would show the woman’s claims to be false.

The American military said only that they were investigating the charges.

That was also the first response of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who issued a statement soon after the woman appeared on television on Monday, promising a full investigation and the most severe punishment for anyone involved.

Only hours later, however, Mr. Maliki reversed himself. His office released a second statement after midnight local time on Tuesday, this one calling the woman a liar and a wanted criminal and going on to praise the officers involved.

“It has been shown after medical examinations that the woman had not been subjected to any sexual attack whatsoever, and that there are three outstanding arrest warrants against her issued by security agencies,” the second statement said. “After the allegations have been proven to be false, the prime minister has ordered that the officers accused be rewarded.”

I hate the media and I hate the Iraqi government for turning this atrocity into another Sunni-Shia debacle- like it matters whether Sabrine is Sunni or Shia or Arab or Kurd (the Al Janabi tribe is composed of both Sunnis and Shia). Maliki did not only turn the woman into a liar, he is rewarding the officers she accused. It's outrageous and maddening.

No Iraqi woman under the circumstances- under any circumstances- would publicly, falsely claim she was raped. There are just too many risks. There is the risk of being shunned socially. There is the risk of beginning an endless chain of retaliations and revenge killings between tribes. There is the shame of coming out publicly and talking about a subject so taboo, she and her husband are not only risking their reputations by telling this story, they are risking their lives.

No one would lie about something like this simply to undermine the Baghdad security operation. That can be done simply by calculating the dozens of dead this last week. Or by writing about the mass detentions of innocents, or how people are once again burying their valuables so that Iraqi and American troops don't steal them.

It was less than 14 hours between Sabrine's claims and Maliki's rewarding the people she accused. In 14 hours, Maliki not only established their innocence, but turned them into his own personal heroes. I wonder if Maliki would entrust the safety his own wife and daughter to these men.

This is meant to discourage other prisoners, especially women, from coming forward and making claims against Iraqi and American forces. Maliki is the stupidest man alive (well, after Bush of course…) if he believes his arrogance and callous handling of the situation will work to dismiss it from the minds of Iraqis. By doing what he is doing, he's making it more clear than ever that under his rule, under his government, vigilante justice is the only way to go. Why leave it to the security forces and police? Simply hire a militia or gang to get revenge. If he doesn't get some justice for her, her tribe will be forced to... And the Janabat (the Al Janabis) are a force to be reckoned with.

Maliki could at least pretend the rape of a young Iraqi woman is still an outrage in todays Iraq...

Labels: Iraq, rape