Sexual Assault and Rape: Chanel Miller's Powerful Statement.

This video above is a short animated film issued by the woman that was raped behind a dumpster after a frat party at Stanford University. The case received a lot of attention, especially after the judge that heard it, as the rapist requested a trial, handed down a six month sentence.  For the longest time her name was simply Emily Doe or, as she says, the "unconscious" woman and other such terms.

The Judge was eventually recalled and the victim we now know, was Chanel Miller and she has written her account of the rape and the subsequent trial. The rapists name was Brock Turner who was a star athlete and potential Olympic swimmer.  This animated film is short but I would like to strongly  urge anyone reading this to watch the 54 minute CBS 60 minute video below.  If you don't have time to watch it all at once, please return to it; it's important to watch it all. I realize millions of people including myself are aware of this case and Ms. Miller's statement but this is the first time I have watched or read it in full.

"RAINN - the rape, abuse and incest national network, the largest anti-sexual violence organization in the US - puts the figure at one in six US women being the victim of an attempted, or completed, rape. Every 92 seconds, an American is sexually assaulted. Out of every 1,000 sexual assaults, 995 perpetrators will walk free."

In the comments section to the animated film above I wrote:
"My wife and me watched your longer statement from 60 minutes. You are an amazing person Ms. Miller and I hope that one day I might have the honor of meeting you in person. I am about to put both video's up on my blog as we have a readership in numerous countries around the world. Thank you so much for not allowing this experience to crush you and instead using it to give strength to all the women who have had similar experiences and suffered in silence due to the complete failure of society to address the problem. Brock Turner's behavior has a lot to do with his class privilege in capitalist society and the patriarchy and racism on which it is built. The media, art, sport, most forms expression in our society let people like Brick Turner know that he is special, he has special privileges and women are there for his entertainment; his actions are not open to question. I had intended perhaps to watch just a little of the 60 Minutes video but it was just too powerful. Thanks again."


 In the courtroom of honor, the judge pounded his gavel
To show that all's equal and that the courts are on the level
And that the strings in the books ain't pulled and persuaded
And that even the nobles get properly handled
Once that the cops have chased after and caught 'em
And that the ladder of law has no top and no bottom

And he spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished
And handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance
William Zanzinger with a six-month sentence

*Bob Dylan The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll

Charles Blow Explains Why Blasey Ford Never Told the World About Sexual Abuse

This NY Times columnist makes sense as we are in the middle of the Trump nightmare. And think of the women that Trump raped. Yes, I believe if you intimidate, threaten, manipulate threaten a persons employment, career etc if they won't yield to your sexual advances that's rape.

Book: Missoula and The Epidemic of Campus Rape

In a response to the previous blog on the Superbowl, sexual violence, the business of sports and its commodification and how it is used to build nationalism and militarism, a women on social media who read it suggested that we read the book below. I have not read it but will buy it and read it.  The review I found with the book on Google and it is a description, it didn’t have an author’s name, but it sounds like a book worth reading and promoting, thanks to a reader for suggesting it. Richard Mellor

****************

From bestselling author Jon Krakauer, a stark, powerful, meticulously reported narrative about a series of sexual assaults at the University of Montana -- stories that illuminate the human drama behind the national plague of campus rape  

Missoula, Montana, is a typical college town, with a highly regarded state university, bucolic surroundings, a lively social scene, and an excellent football team -- the Grizzlies -- with a rabid fan base.   The Department of Justice investigated 350 sexual assaults reported to the Missoula police between January 2008 and May 2012. Few of these assaults were properly handled by either the university or local authorities.

In this, Missoula is also typical.   A DOJ report released in December of 2014 estimates 110,000 women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four are raped each year. Krakauer's devastating narrative of what happened in Missoula makes clear why rape is so prevalent on American campuses, and why rape victims are so reluctant to report assault.  

Acquaintance rape is a crime like no other. Unlike burglary or embezzlement or any other felony, the victim often comes under more suspicion than the alleged perpetrator. This is especially true if the victim is sexually active; if she had been drinking prior to the assault -- and if the man she accuses plays on a popular sports team.

The vanishingly small but highly publicized incidents of false accusations are often used to dismiss her claims in the press. If the case goes to trial, the woman's entire personal life becomes fair game for defense attorneys.   This brutal reality goes a long way towards explaining why acquaintance rape is the most underreported crime in America.

In addition to physical trauma, its victims often suffer devastating psychological damage that leads to feelings of shame, emotional paralysis and stigmatization. PTSD rates for rape victims are estimated to be 50%, higher than soldiers returning from war.  

In Missoula, Krakauer chronicles the searing experiences of several women in Missoula -- the nights when they were raped; their fear and self-doubt in the aftermath; the way they were treated by the police, prosecutors, defense attorneys; the public vilification and private anguish; their bravery in pushing forward and what it cost them.  

Some of them went to the police. Some declined to go to the police, or to press charges, but sought redress from the university, which has its own, non-criminal judicial process when a student is accused of rape. In two cases the police agreed to press charges and the district attorney agreed to prosecute. One case led to a conviction; one to an acquittal.

Those women courageous enough to press charges or to speak publicly about their experiences were attacked in the media, on Grizzly football fan sites, and/or to their faces. The university expelled three of the accused rapists, but one was reinstated by state officials in a secret proceeding.

One district attorney testified for an alleged rapist at his university hearing. She later left the prosecutor's office and successfully defended the Grizzlies' star quarterback in his rape trial. The horror of being raped, in each woman's case, was magnified by the mechanics of the justice system and the reaction of the community.   Krakauer's dispassionate, carefully documented account of what these women endured cuts through the abstract ideological debate about campus rape.

College-age women are not raped because they are promiscuous, or drunk, or send mixed signals, or feel guilty about casual sex, or seek attention. They are the victims of a terrible crime and deserving of compassion from society and fairness from a justice system that is clearly broken. 

Patrick Kane and the Rape Culture of Professional Sports

Once again, another professional athlete has been accused of rape. This time Patrick Kane, a world-renowned NHL hockey player with the Chicago Blackhawks is being investigated by suburban Buffalo police for an incident that took place last weekend.

This is not the first time Kane has been questioned for his outlandish behavior. He previously was convicted in 2009 for "roughing up" a cab driver along with his cousin. But, of course, he was only 20 years old at the time so he received a light sentence. After all, boys will be boys right?

Now 26, Kane was more recently commended by the Blackhawks organization for having "grown up" after they won the Stanley Cup in June. His response: “I know you said I’ve been growing up, but watch out for me the next week.” 

Many people have raised the issue about Kane's work hard, play hard approach to life. In particular they point out that he has not always exercised good judgment while drinking excessively. Some have said that he has a serious drinking problem. It is important to recognize, however, that not all alcoholics are rapists and not all rapists are alcoholics. Alcoholism should never be allowed to be used as an excuse for such actions. When Kane responded to having "grown up", he did not slur his words. He was stone cold sober when he adamantly stated that people should "watch out" for him.

What does the Blackhawks organization have to say now that they have egg on their face? Nothing. Complete silence. This is a legal matter, and since there is an ongoing investigation, they don't want to say or do anything that might jeopardize Kane's future, their on-ice success, (they have won 3 out of the last 6 Stanley Cups) and most importantly, their ability to make as much money as fast as they can. (Since this article was first written, Rocky Wirtz, the Blackhawks owner, has said Kane's behavior is "disappointing" while he (Wirtz) remains "hopeful." Hopeful for what? That this will all go away and Kane will be skating on the ice for the Blackhawks in October? Perhaps, if sports were not run on the basis of profit, his position might be a little different.

Athletes like Kane do not act the way they do solely in an individual vacuum. They have been enabled and encouraged to behave the way they do from an early age, as if it is their birthright. In fact,  ss I write this, it has just been announced that a group of fans/"activists" will be demonstrating on behalf of Kane and the falsely accused. 

One woman comments, "Why does it take rape and horrible events of sexual violence  to bring the outrage forward. It starts so much sooner - from the construction of gender and adoption of a gender identity form birth. Rape and violence are the end result of this and the result of  mass collective failure to recognize and expose this. Rape and physical violence are largely acts of enforcement of power and collective male authority over women and women identified persons. The rape of children and women is a mass phenomenon. The tiny moments of "little deaths" and daily rape of our minds and bodies are rarely even noticed let alone analyzed and brought to public consciousness."

She goes on to say, "In this sense, the historical world-wide everyday experience of oppression and violence by women, and people who identify as women, is absurd. It can only take on meaning in my mind if inserted into a discussion of the purpose it serves to maintain the social relations based on and in material economic relations of exploitation and dominance, competition and profit. The very same social relations are manifested as violent and life-destroying racism, homophobia, hatred and violence against the old and the disabled and on and on we go, it seems forever.

The unique aspects of woman hatred are displayed in more ways than we can imagine in our thoughtful moments. Economic exclusion, economic marginalization, objectification and ownership of our bodies, colonization of our thinking and our voices and lived experiences is often manifested in the internalized oppression and self-hatred when women as a group compete with and turn on our own.

The deformation of our bodies, denial of our rights to reproductive freedom, instances too numerous to detail. But physical and sexual violence against women, the logical result I guess of all the above, is the ultimate enforcer of ownership and  power, and remains the most difficult to understand, except as an act of enforcement." 

Already we are seeing the local media in Buffalo printing an interview with the bar owner where Kane met the "alledged" victim. He says that he has "no skin in the game" when he starts "slut shaming" her. However, this is not true. He benefits from taking Kane's side, By showing loyalty to him, he ensures that a valued customer will continue coming to his bar with friends and spending money there.

Of course, Kane does not stand alone in his behavior. Throughout the history of human civilization in every society and culture, women have been subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment including rape, assault and being used as a cheap source of labor. Our modern day society in the U.S. is no different. Rapists come from all different backgrounds and communities but those sociopathic rapists who are wealthy have more power and control when it comes to social relations and interactions between men and women. This is not to excuse the behavior of working class men who commit such egregious behavior. They should be held fully accountable for their actions as well. Rather, it is to point out the double standards which exist when it comes to law enforcement and the criminal justice system.

Is Patrick Kane being falsely accused or being denied due process, some people will say? Well let's consider that question for a minute. The odds that you will be falsely accused of rape are basically the same as the odds that you or someone in your family will be struck by lightning. Meanwhile, being raped is a societal problem which affects millions of people. In essence, he has received preferential treatment by law enforcement. If he was black and living in poverty, I can guarantee you that at the very least he would be in jail.

Imagine how this is affecting entire families who are fans of Patrick Kane and the Chicago Blackhawks. What do parents, both mothers and fathers, say to their daughters? Many kids look up to professional athletes. Gone are the days when sports was primarily observed by men. Today, entire families go to the games including women and their daughters. What message are we sending to over half of our population if we ignore, dismiss or excuse this type of behavior? No, we have to be honest with our kids. That doesn't mean revealing every salacious detail especially to younger children, but we have to come to terms with this both as individuals, fathers, brothers, sons and uncles.

Kane is not alone among professional athletes and entertainers in his behavior towards women. There have been a long line of athletes who have failed to respect women. But in this writer's opinion, we fail if the only thing we do is to shine a line on a dark subject in an attempt to promote a better understanding of this issue. It's so commonplace and pervasive that something has to be done to address the issue. More often than not, many women are either traumatized and/or do not have the necessary resources to fight back. If they do resist, in the majority of cases they receive settlements in exchange for not pursuing criminal indictments. 

What can we do to change this so more woman are not subjected to such inhumane treatment? Since this frequently happens throughout the world, we can organize campaigns in our local communities whose objectives are to generate considerable negative publicity for all the athletes involved and the organizations who support them. We can stop attending the games in person or watching them in person, boycott sponsors, not go to autograph signings and not purchase any merchandise. Will everyone support this type of campaign? Absolutely not. There are people who are misogynistic, and those for whom sports plays a defining role in their lives who will not walk away. However, I am fully confident that there are many women, and to a lesser extent men, who will not tolerate this type of behavior and support such a campaign.

Ultimately, though we need to take the profit out of playing sports. By doing so, it would remove the major conflict of interest which exists between treating people humanely and doing whatever it takes to win and make money. It's a question of priorities and women especially can no longer afford to have their needs play second fiddle.

 

The Mysterious Murder Of A Nun Who Knew Too Much

This is a very long article and we have a link at the bottom to the rest of it.  We urge readers of this blog to read it all. It is yet another expose of the utter corruption of the Catholic Church, or Vatican Inc.  We have often pointed out that the Catholic Church is the only religion with its own state.  The Vatican has diplomatic representatives  in the legislatures of any country it has a presence.   This article also reveals how the Vatican Inc is connected not only to national governments and politicians but also municipal bodies, the police, the education system, the military.  It is complict and has been complicit throughout its existence, in murder, rape, theft and a whole ghost of other crimes. it is truly a horrific institution.

***********************

Buried In Baltimore: The Mysterious Murder Of A Nun Who Knew Too Much

by Laura Bassett 

lbassett@huffingtonpost.com

5-14-15 

On a frigid day in November 1969, Father Joseph Maskell, the chaplain of Archbishop Keough High School in Baltimore, called a student into his office and suggested they go for a drive. When the final bell rang at 2:40 p.m., Jean Hargadon Wehner, a 16-year-old junior at the all-girls Catholic school, followed the priest to the parking lot and climbed into the passenger seat of his light blue Buick Roadmaster.

It was not unusual for Maskell to give students rides home or take them to doctor's appointments during the school day. The burly, charismatic priest, then 30 years old, had been the chief spiritual and psychological counselor at Keough for two years and was well-known in the community. Annual tuition at Keough was just $200, which attracted working-class families in deeply Catholic southwest Baltimore who couldn't afford to send their daughters to fancier private schools. Many Keough parents had attended Maskell’s Sunday masses. He'd baptized their babies, and they trusted him implicitly.

This time, though, Maskell didn't bring Wehner home. He navigated his car past the Catholic hospital and industrial buildings that surrounded Keough’s campus and drove toward the outskirts of the city. Eventually, he stopped at a garbage dump, far from any homes or businesses. Maskell stepped out of the car, and the blonde, freckled teenager followed him across a vast expanse of dirt toward a dark green dumpster.

It was then that she saw the body crumpled on the ground.

The week prior, Sister Cathy Cesnik, a popular young nun who taught English and drama at Keough, had vanished while on a Friday-night shopping trip. Students, parents and the local media buzzed about the 26-year-old’s disappearance. People from all over Baltimore County helped the police comb local parks and wooded areas for any sign of her.

Wehner immediately recognized the lifeless body as her teacher. "I knew it was her," she recalled recently. "She wasn’t that far gone that you couldn’t tell it was her.”

                             “You see what happens when you say bad things about people?”


Cesnik was still clad in her aqua-colored coat, and maggots were crawling on her face. Wehner tried to brush them off with her bare hands. "Help me get these off of her!" she cried, turning to Maskell in a panic. Instead, she says, the priest leaned down behind her and whispered in her ear: “You see what happens when you say bad things about people?”

Maskell, Wehner understood, was threatening her. She decided not to tell anyone. “He terrified me to the point that I would never open my mouth,” she recalled.

Jean Wehner in 1970. (Photo: Jean Wehner)

Two months later, the police announced that a pair of hunters passing through a dump outside of Baltimore had stumbled upon the body of the missing nun. Cesnik had choke marks on her neck and a round hole about the size of a quarter in the back of her skull. An autopsy confirmed she had been killed by a blow from a blunt object, probably a brick or a ball-peen hammer. But no one came forward with information about the murder, and the police never solved it.

Over the past year, however, Wehner and other Keough alumni have begun piecing together their memories and talking openly for the first time in decades about the traumatizing things that happened to them in high school ­— events they believe are connected to Cesnik’s murder. And a group of them has launched their own investigation in hopes of answering the questions that continue to vex the police: Who killed Sister Cathy -- and why?

Gemma Hoskins set a bowl of Doritos and a plate of sugar cookies on her dark wooden coffee table and passed out typed copies of the January meeting agenda. One by one, her guests took their places around the oriental rug in her pale-yellow living room. “I’ll start by introducing everyone, because we have a few new faces here,” Hoskins said.

Tom Nugent, a former Baltimore Sun reporter, secured a prime spot in the wooden rocking chair in the corner. A retired Baltimore police detective the group calls “Deep Throat” settled into an armchair next to him. Teresa Lancaster, a Keough alum and Baltimore-area attorney, sat next to her husband, Randy, on the oatmeal-colored sofa. Hoskins and another former Keough student, Abbie Schaub, pulled up chairs from the dining room to form a circle.

Hoskins, 62, is spirited and irreverent, with cropped, dyed red hair and a tendency to carry around snacks for people -- a habit that's lingered since her days as a Harford County "Teacher of the Year." Today, she lives with her labradoodle, Teddy, in a duplex in Halethorpe, Maryland, a working-class suburb of Baltimore. Hoskins was a senior at Keough in 1969 when Cesnik disappeared. Now, she is at the center of the effort to find out who killed her. “I think I’m Nancy Drew,” she joked recently.

Gemma Hoskins (right), is a retired elementary school teacher who attended Keough from 1966-1970. She leads the amateur detective group investigating Cesnik’s murder. Abbie Schaub (left) is a retired registered nurse who attended Keough from 1966-1970. She is working with Hoskins to investigate the murder. (Photos: Abbie Schaub and Gemma Hoskins)

Cesnik was like a real-life version of Maria, Julie Andrews’ character from “The Sound of Music,” Hoskins recalled: warm, exuberant and strikingly beautiful. The nun played guitar and wrote musicals for the girls to perform on stage. She took her students to see the 1968 movie version of “Romeo and Juliet” after they read the Shakespeare play. She invented creative vocabulary games to push the girls to teach each other new, obscure words.

Cesnik lived in a modest apartment in Southwest Baltimore with another nun, and her students would occasionally drop by in the evenings or on weekends to chat, sing and play music. “She was the reason I became a teacher,” Hoskins said. “I’ve never met anyone like her.”

Around 7:30 p.m. on November 7, 1969, Cesnik told her roommate, Helen Russell Phillips, that she was going to swing by the bank and then shop for an engagement gift for her cousin. According to media reports from the time, she cashed a $255 paycheck at a bank in Catonsville, Maryland, then drove to the Edmondson Village Shopping Center, where she bought buns at Muhly's Bakery. When she hadn't returned home by 11 p.m., Phillips called two priest friends, who drove to her apartment and called the police. Later that night, Cesnik's brand-new green Ford Maverick was found unlocked and illegally parked a block from her apartment, even though she had a designated parking spot behind the building. There was no sign of the nun anywhere.  Continue reading at  Huffington Post Politics

Rape in the Military

Movie

Richard Mellor

I just watched The Invisible War, a film about rape in the military.  Statistics on rape in the military, like rape in civilian society are hard to pinpoint exactly because of how narrowly rape is defined and because most people that are victims of sexual assault don’t report it.

The documentary follows the lives of a number of women who were raped by commanding officers or fellow recruits and whose lives were altered forever by it, not simply due to psychological trauma but physical injury as well. 

Pretty much all the victims explain that their treatment at the hands of military authorities was worse than the rape itself.  Victims were told that they need to “stop crying over spilled milk” or as one woman who was raped was told, the perpetrator simply “Capitalized on an opportunity you provided to him. That’s not rape and you need to know that.”.  A soldier can get four or five years for selling drugs but two weeks extra duty for rape, one military investigator said.

One victim who was raped by a fellow officer at the prestigious Marine Barracks in Washington DC was asked what sexual favors she had performed to get there.  It was assumed she would be available as she encouraged it by jogging in running shorts and other such behavior.  Boys, girls and alcohol don’t mix she was told yet the repeated drinking events were mandated. Her case was dismissed because there were no witnesses, there was only her and the perpetrator and “He wasn’t talking.”

Women are warned that filing false claims or if such accusation cannot be proven, they face a possible loss of rank, denial of benefits a court martial perhaps; in a number of cases the perpetrator threatened to kill the victim if they spoke up.    More than one of the women in the documentary was charged with adultery as the rapist was married but the victims weren’t.

It’s no wonder then that in the US military, 33% of survivors didn’t report their rape because the person they reported to was a friend of the rapist and 25% of servicewomen didn’t do so because the person to report to was the rapist. According to the DOD, 80% of sexual assault victims don’t report the crime.  Given that an estimated 200,000 women in the military have been assaulted when the unreported cases are included it’s close to one million.

One victims rights advocate pointed out that 40% of homeless female veterans were raped while serving and that one of the reasons its so traumatic is that these women who were very idealistic about entering the military in many cases felt such a deep sense of betrayal as they looked on their fellow male recruits as family, as their brothers.  The PTSD rate for women raped in the military is higher than males who have been in combat the movie explains.

In a way, why would we not expect such behavior, the military is such a macho world.  “Masculinity can’t be victimized” one advocate says because if you are victimized as a male then you are not masculine, you are weak and points out that in many ways it is worse for men and some 20,000 are victims.  People are worried about gays in the military but “It’s not gays raping” she says.  Rape is about power and humiliation, the perpetrators are hetero males but most importantly they are violent criminals.

All through this film I felt the sense of helplessness these women must have felt given that their concerns were not taken seriously; “We were treated like cattle” says one victim. I remember the Tailhook Convention case back in 1991 which caused a stir but never changed anything and one of the victims of that horror shared her experience.  She described getting off an elevator and walking down a corridor at the hotel and there were some 200 men in the hallway but as she made her way they began to grab her, pull at her clothes, her skirt, her panties forcing her down to the floor.  The response she got when she went up the chain of command to report the incident was, “That’s what you get for walking down a hallway with drunk aviators.”

Like all undemocratic and oppressive institutions, the response to the epidemic of rape in the military is to cover it up and to introduce worthless non-solutions mostly designed to “help women deal with rape better” says one victim.  The new female director of the military’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, which like most corporate Affirmative Action Departments is designed to protect the corporation rather than aid the victim, says with pride that if a victim doesn’t get results from her commander she should go to her Congressman for help. 

Can you imagine telling a rape victim to call her Congressman in the civilian world, one woman says.  You go to the police, there are the courts, the prosecutors; there is a judicial system although in civilian life too, rape is not given the attention it deserves and its definition is very narrow.  In the military though you are at the mercy of an individual in command who has no understanding of what it is and how to deal with it and no incentive to do so if he or she did; whole careers are at stake.

As I sat through this and the blatant disregard for human life and personal health, I couldn’t help thinking about a few things.  One is the prisoners in Guantanamo and the horrors they have been subjected to by US military industrial complex. Then there are the victims of the wars fought for defense of corporate profits.  We owe it to the young men and women in this documentary and in our military to tell them the truth, that Operation Iraqi Freedom and the absurdly named War On Terror are not about freedom at all but aggression and plunder.  And how many thousands of women who are unfortunate enough to be in the path of this war machine suffer similar and much worse fates than those American women whose reasons for joining the military were honorable; to do what they believed was right.  The documentary points out that the average sex offender has 300 victims; being sent to a war zone, where the military rules, must be a gift from the gods for them.

The military is not a force for defense; it’s an offensive force, one that defends the interests of US capitalism and the 1%. No nation is going to invade the US and they know it. It is not an honorable institution as such an institution would not treat its veterans, (Regardless of our views on wars, those who send our youth to fight them are different from those who go; they are the murderers and they abandon the damaged goods when they return) the way it does.  It is a macho, violent institution.

Lawsuits will not change the culture in the military.  It would be better to not have commanders determine the merit of criminal cases but that alone will not stop it either. Military personnel should have the right to form unions independent of the state and it’s authority.  It is not an accident that officers are overwhelmingly chosen from the upper middle class and the bourgeois and instead all officers should be elected by the troops they command. Military spokespersons point out in this documentary that women are “Too sympathetic” when it comes to rapes and that they “Can’t see what’s going on”.

The same fears apply when it comes to the higher ranks of the military, those from working class backgrounds could never be trusted; they would always be suspect having strong links to the ranks.  The Vietnam war proved these fears of the US ruling class to be justified as more than a few officers met their deaths at the hands of their ranks.

The Invisible War is worth watching for the information in it alone but the victims are real, genuine people and you feel a strong bond with them including the one male victim interviewed.  That they were betrayed by a corrupt institution they believed in is bad enough; unfortunately appealing to the US Congress, its men or women or the courts will not bring much satisfaction either.  Soldiers are workers’ in uniform and as workers we must appeal to them as our class brothers and sisters defending their right to organize, to have power over their own lives and the right to a future outside of fighting the 1%’s wars.

There were a number of books mentioned in the documentary but I can only recall two of them: The Lonely Soldier and Betrayal in the Ranks

Rape Victim Sentenced -- For Being Raped

raped and initially sentenced for having sex out of wedlock

by Jack Gerson

It doesn't get much worse than this. Last week, a 24-year-old Norwegian woman who had been raped in Dubai by a co-worker was sentenced to 16 months in prison for having sex outside of marriage. I am not making this up.

We need to condemn the legally sanctioning of rape in Dubai and beyond that the  generalized oppression and victimization of women there. We need to condemn the mass gang rapes in Tahrir and elsewhere in Egypt, and support the heroic Egyptian women who have banded together to fight them. But  it's not just a problem in Dubai, nor the entire Arabian peninsula, nor Egypt. There are the out of control gang rapes in India and elsewhere in South Asia -- as discussed on this blog; see

http://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/2013/01/mass-protests-against-sexual-violence.html

and

http://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/2013/01/arundhati-roy-on-rape-in-india.html


There are the gang rapes carried out for years by Central African militias and armies, and those by militias on all sides of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. And then there's the Catholic Church's enforcement of marriage as legalized rape in Ireland, tellilng generations of Irish women it was their religious duty to endure sexual slavery. (For those who haven't yet read John Throne's brilliant novel on this subject, The Donegal Woman, I urge you to do so.)

We can't help but notice that the ruling families in Dubai -- and Saudi Arabia, and the other emirates wallow in oil-drenched opulence, control multinational construction conglomerates, own world-class football (aka soccer) teams, etc.  They are "our" allies. The enlightened democracies of North America and Western Europe will not lift a finger to change that awful situation.

But it's too easy to look at this, say "Shame! Shame!", and look past what's going on right in our own backyard. And this reinforces a smug complacency and thus a tacit complicity in the shameful prevalance of sexual violence against women right here in the U.S.:

The epidemic of rape in the military -- it has taken decades for this scandal to break, and still nothing concrete has been done about it.  Gang rapes and all manner of sexual baiting in high schools across the country -- winked at for years and years ("boys will be boys"). Sexual harassment on the job from bosses and managers. As Sana Saaed explained in a Guardian op ed piece that we reprinted  earlier this month, focusing on mob sexual violence in Egypt, India, and Africa is too often used to avoid looking at the sexual violence in our own society -- see

http://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/2013/07/sana-saeed-guardian-how-we-other-sexual.html

So yes, we need to massively publicize and protest the atrocity that continues to be perpetrated on the Norwegian rape victim in Dubai. But that must lead us to deepen our resolve to expose the truth about the prevalance of sexual violence in the U.S., and to put an end to the system that produces and reproduces it.

Note: Just as I was about to post this piece, dispatches from Dubai came across the web reporting that Dubai's ruler has pardoned the Norwegian rape victim. Some of these stories are accompanied by a video of a visibly relieved victim smiling and even laughing about the news.  "All's well that ends well", or so CNN et al would have us believe.  But what's really going on here? Well, Dubai is a global tourist resort, a vacation spot for many Europeans, and the news that they can be jailed for casual sex and will be jailed if they're raped is exceedingly bad for the tourist trade. The uproar around this case was enough to make Dubai's bosses realize that. We are very glad that the Norwegian rape victim is now free. But nothing much has really changed. Not in Dubai, where those laws are still on the books and where women -- especially domestic servants imported from Asia -- remain prey to sexual violence. Nor elsewhere around the world. It's urgent to oppose it everywhere, and it's critical that we understand that the fight against sexual violence and oppression, like the fight against racism, must be in the forefront of the fight to transform society.

Sana Saeed, Guardian: How We 'Other' Sexual Assault to Ignore Our Own Norms of Abuse

by Jack Gerson

We reprint a Guardian op ed by Sana Saeed that pulls no punches about how rape is used to terrorize women in Egypt, and how mob sexual violence in particular is an open tool used to discourage women from taking part in demonstrations and other political activity. But she also takes on the racist and chauvinist media propaganda prevalent in the West that sexual violence against women is mainly attributable to religious and cultural roots: Islam, Hinduism, Middle East, Indian subcontinent. But as she discusses, Egypt and India have no monopoly on sexual violence -- we need look no further than the U.S. (especially, but not only, the U.S. military).

How We 'Other' Sexual Assault to Ignore Our Own Norms of Abuse by Sana Saeed (Guardian, 7/7/13)

On 30 June, as “the Coup That Must Not Be Mentioned” was being celebrated in Tahrir Square, Cairo, news of over 80 reports of mob sexual violence and harassment emerged as a reminder of an ugly undercurrent behind the two-and-a-half-year-long anti-regime uprising. Sexual harassment and violence in Egypt is a daily occurrence – an epidemic, even – with 99.3% of women (pdf) claiming to have suffered some form of it.

Mob sexual violence, however, carries a certain brand of particularity as a near-explicit political tool used to discourage women, who make up nearly half of the total population, from attending demonstrations. Maria S Muñoz, co-founder and director of the anti-sexual assault initiative Tahrir Bodyguard, traces the advent and use of organized mob sexual assaults to the days of Mubarak, pointing to the 2005 assault of journalist Nawal Ali by hired “thugs” during a demonstration. Despite being aware of the risk of attending political demonstrations, women, Muñoz notes, “have continued to share the public space in protests, becoming an essential part of the opposition’s voice and presence.”

The culture of sexual violence and harrassment, in Egypt, has received considerable media attention, often highlighting the efforts of groups such as Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment/Assault, HarassMap and Tahrir Bodyguard as people-powered initiatives tackling sexual violence and harassment head-on. Despite this, it is apparently still difficult to have an honest discussion over why it happens.

On 5 July, US author Joyce Carol Oates (whom I know primarily from her having never written this) decided to join in with the sea of insta-Egypt Twitter experts and opined:

If 99.3% of women reported being treated equitably, fairly, generously–it would be natural to ask: what’s the predominant religion?
— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) July 5, 2013

Despite the brevity of “Oatesgate”, the rhetorical question of a well-respected literary figure highlights popular characterizations of sexual violence and harassment when it takes place elsewhere. Rarely does sexual violence and harassment in our own societies – as it is perpetrated, prosecuted and cultured – allow the sort of cultural reductionism that seems to come with ease when sexual violence is associated with “the other”.

When a 23-year-old physiotherapy intern is brutally gang-raped and beaten in Delhi, we speak of “India’s woman problem”; when an incapacitated 16-year-old student is raped, photographed and filmed for six hours by peers – who share the images on social media – the incident is treated as an isolated act of unfortunate deviance and not part and parcel of a larger endemic culture that normalizes rape and the appropriation of women’s bodies as public property.

Child groomers of Muslim and South Asian backgrounds become cultural ambassadors raised on a steady diet of “savage” notions of sex embedded in anti-white biases and misogyny. Revered coaches and university administrations hiding decades of child sex abuse, on the other hand, become their own victims.

Thus there are no protests, no calls of a “woman problem”, no “natural” inquiries into the predominant religion when a country has ranked 13th in the world for rape, 10th for rapes per capita (pdf) and where 26,000 military service members reported sexual assault in 2012 alone. There are no popular anthropological undertakings by stiff-haired anchors of the inner secrets and dark forces of American culture, religion and society. No white American woman asks why the white American male hates “us”.

None of this is to provide a level playing field for discussing sexual violence. It is to highlight how understanding of sexual violence is reliant on how it is reported and how this, in turn, is reliant on who is involved. In the case of Egypt, the extent to which there is sexual harassment and violence is abysmal and even unique in how it occurs. Yet, this violence did not emerge overnight, nor does it occur in a political and socio-economic vacuum. It is the result of decades of state, legal and political decay. It is the result of a state that itself has created a culture of acceptability of violence and torture, often sexual, inside its own walls.

In the explicit act of violating bodily sovereignty, there is an active search for the conquest of power and control in a space where these have become vulnerable. This requires no sermon, book or belief to legitimize it; it only needs submission.

To read this article on the Guardian website, please go to:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/07/sexual-assault-norms-abuse/print