“We are neither whores nor doormats.”

[Cleita]

Christiane Amanpour reported this story on “Sixty Minutes” yesterday.

<snip>

The New French Revolution

Samira Bellil wasn't asking for trouble, but trouble came to her. She's the granddaughter of Algerian immigrants and she's written a book about surviving the hell of the Paris ghettos.

"I was gang raped by three people I knew, and I couldn't say anything, because in my culture, your family is dishonored if you lose your virginity,” says Bellil. “So I kept quiet, and the rapes continued. The next time, I was pulled off a commuter train and no one lifted a finger to help me. …Everybody turned their head away. They were all looking out the window.”

When Bellil's family discovered that she had been raped, they weren't sympathetic. They threw her out onto the streets. But she's since discovered that what happened to her was not the only case.

“There was a trial in Lille where a 13-year-old girl was gang raped by 80 men. Sometimes, it’s 80, or 50 or 10. It’s absolutely terrible,” says Bellil. “In the case of Argenteuil, it was horrible. A young woman was raped in a school. Of course, everybody knew, but they're so afraid of these young men that they prefer to close their eyes. That's the price of peace in the ghettos.” <snip>

More….http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/13/60minutes/main617270.shtml

I’m truly shocked. I don’t know what it’s going to take to change the acceptable abuse of women in certain cultures, however, this is deplorable. Abuse of women in the Islamic world is directly attributable to the lack of rights women have in these countries and the excessive entitlement of men in these cultures making women totally dependent on them for their survival.

Now I am not blaming Islam, because these customs pre-date Islam, however, I do blame anyone who is an authority figure, who doesn’t change what is happening. Will the change have to come from within the Arab/Muslim world or are we going to have to form an organization for the protection of women, like Amnesty International, to force change within these cultures? Any thoughts DU’ers. No flames please. This is a serious matter.

[redqueen]

1. It's a crying shame

I've heard it said that this neo-con fundamentalist crap is a backlash against the women's rights movement. If so, it's time to double if not triple our resolve.

Is it not a bit late to still hope for change from within the culture?

I think a separate organization already exists.

[democracyindanger]

2. Vanity Fair

did a long story about the plight of Muslim women in the Paris projects a couple months ago, much more indepth. The biggest obstacle, according to the VF piece, is the victims' silence out of fear, not to mention the insular nature of the projects.

I don't think VF puts things online, unfortunately. But find an old issue if you can. Somebody following BBV may have it--the same issue had a story on Bev Harris.

[kittykitty]

3. I'm glad Christianne is back!

But it is a terrible story. It's too bad it's had to spill out of the middle east and now permeates other countries. Wonder when we will hear similar stories from Michigan?

[Eloriel]

4. We've got plenty of work to do right here

And I mean that NOT in ANY way to dismiss or minimize or even take the focus off the problems you report. (I too saw Amanpour's report last night. She did a great job reporting on a horrific problem. THIS IS IN FRANCE, fer Chrissake!)

Anyway, sexism and the oppression of women is all of a piece. This isn't a set of "isolated instances," it's part and parcel of a global problem, and that global problem includes the United States.

Same with the pervasive racism that fuels this war and the atrocities happening on a daily basis. It's all of a piece with the racism here in the U.S.

Here's an excerpt from an astonishing interview with a vet who recently returned from Iraq (almost typed 'Nam) and recounted his experiences, and I think it will demonstrate the inherent racism involved:

Atrocities in Iraq: 'I killed innocent people for our government'
By Paul Rockwell -- Special to The Bee
Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, May 16, 2004
http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/9316830p-10241546c.html

snip

Q: What experiences turned you against the war and made you leave the Marines?

A: I was in charge of a platoon that consists of machine gunners and missile men. Our job was to go into certain areas of the towns and secure the roadways. There was this one particular incident - and there's many more - the one that really pushed me over the edge. It involved a car with Iraqi civilians. From all the intelligence reports we were getting, the cars were loaded down with suicide bombs or material. That's the rhetoric we received from intelligence. They came upon our checkpoint. We fired some warning shots. They didn't slow down. So we lit them up.

Q: Lit up? You mean you fired machine guns?

A: Right. Every car that we lit up we were expecting ammunition to go off. But we never heard any. Well, this particular vehicle we didn't destroy completely, and one gentleman looked up at me and said: "Why did you kill my brother? We didn't do anything wrong." That hit me like a ton of bricks.

Q: He spoke English?

A: Oh, yeah.

----

IOW, the fact that the Iraqi spoke English made him more "like us" and less NOT "like us," more human, more worthy of his and his brother's life being saved. (I am not faulting this Marine or calling him a racist -- I'm pointing out an example of the kind of racism that is part and parcel of this war, that is part and parcel of the dehumanization of "the enemy" that has to occur for ANY war if we're sending folks to kill other humans.)

The initial and continued "tolerance" for this war here in the U.S. is also directly tied to that same innate racism. They are brown-skinned people, less worthy as humans than we are. I also fault racism (along with our own isolationism and narcissism and many other faults) with our standard lack of interest in the horrors that occur in so many other places around the world. We just don't care -- and a part of the reason why is simple racism.

Put another way: if there weren't a strong, silent, pervasive strain of racism shot through our entire culture, there would have been far less tolerance for the war than there was going in. Far less tolerance for the civilian casualties as the war progressed, etc.

Okay, back to women's rights and sexism.

Just today I've seen several threads here with photos about Kerry's daughter's dress at Cannes. A thread like that is GOING to attract sexist remarks; in fact, there's an argument to be made that a thread like that is sexist to start with. And sure enough, roughly half the posts were sexist through and through. Some were offensive in the extreme -- did they get deleted? Only one, and I think that was more due to the fact that he was a freeper.

My objection isn't against sexual attraction or even sexiness -- it's about oogling women as a group sport -- or even individual, private sport. I have come to see this as at the very heart of the continuing struggle for women's rights everywhere in the world. And yet, here it is in all its ugliness right here on DU. I didn't even see many women complaining about that thread, so pervasive and "normal" does it seem to objectify women and engage in group oogling.

Don't doubt for a minute that the horrific stats on rape and other violence against women, wage disparity, difference in treatment in Social Security, the attacks on our reproductive freedom don't have EVERYTHING to do with the kind of abject and inherent disrespect those kinds of threads (the objectification inherent in group sport or even individual drooling over women's bodies or body parts) convey. It sets the stage for women to be seen as "less than," as "things" or "objects" -- or at the very least "objectifiable" -- whose role it is to serve as men's playthings, who inherently don't merit equal treatment. After all, if they're people who don't warrant respect about their bodies, they for damn sure don't need equal pay, or protection from violence against them as a class, or a whole host of other things men enjoy automatically and usually invisibly ("male privilege").

And attitudes here in the U.S. not only are exported elsewhere, but also help determine the kind of official attention the rapes and other horrific treatment of these Muslim women in France get. If people here cared more, it would be easier to stop what's happening there -- more people would contribute or get involved or raise their voices in consternation, or the people and government of France would be more responsive because they'd been exposed to constantly evolving respect of women in geneeral and their rights.

I'm not blaming the U.S. for these problems, I'm saying that improvement anywhere helps everywhere -- especially where one of the nations in this world whose rights for women are among the best and whose "culture" is so widely exported around the world is concerned.

It's all of a piece. There is no separation, except artificially.

Among all the other things we need to do, we need a very muscular new Women's Movement, one which gets back to the basics.


Edit: And just as I suspected, you can see how important Women's Issues are to progressives these days by the number of posts to this thread.

[Cleita]

5. It is a global problem, which includes us.

I had a thought of an organization that could set up shelters for abused women worldwide. I know in some Islamic countries it would take the form of receiving these women as refugees in another country. Let's face it these women are slaves, even though it is the men in their families that own them, their status is no better than that of a slave. We need an underground railroad, like in the south before the civil war, to bring these women to safety.

I can't do much myself, as I am too old. I was hoping some of the younger women, who can, could come up with a plan and an organization to get something like this initialized and working. We can no longer ignore the use and abuse of women even though it seems so remote and happens in other lands.

We too have our share of abused women treated like domestic slaves in this country. The attitudes are bolstered by religion in many places. We need to reach these religious leaders and community leaders to start making change happen.

[Karenina]

12. That's a WRAP!

Fabulous, Eloriel! :toast: :loveya: :toast:

[redqueen]

13. Bravo!

Sadly, as another poster already commented, these things happened here in the not too distant past.

We have a long, long, loooooooooong way to go, sisters.

[cheezus]

6. keep in mind

that it wasn't until fairly recently that this was acceptable in our own backyard

[markomalley]

7. I feel their plight but...

...with our actions taken over the past 3 years, we as a country have lost all moral authority to say anything to anybody about any "defect" in somebody else's culture. If we do, the object of our disdain would be perfectly justified in asking, "and just who do you think YOU are to tell us how to run our lives..."

It was nice when we could take a moral stand on an issue like this. But, now, we can't...

thanks a lot shrub...

[markomalley]

8. postscript...

...hopefully the UN can do something about it...

[Cleita]

9. I was thinking along those lines of an international coalition

of women to right these wrongs, perhaps something like Greenpeace but run by and for women. Yes, the USA, alone cannot point fingers anymore. We have forfeited our position as an advanced society thanks to Shrub.

[Cleita]

10. Kick for the left coast.

:kick:

[Scout]

11. kick 'cuz this deserves it