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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsA Rape a Minute, a Thousand Corpses a Year. Hate Crimes in America (and Elsewhere)
This piece is incredible. The introduction (The Longest War) would make a nice blog post on its own. The rest of it is a brilliant summary of a civil rights issue that has been treated as inevitable, or even the natural order of things, for far, far too long.
By Rebecca Solnit
Here in the United States, where there is a reported rape every 6.2 minutes, and one in five women will be raped in her lifetime, the rape and gruesome murder of a young woman on a bus in New Delhi on December 16th was treated as an exceptional incident. The story of the alleged rape of an unconscious teenager by members of the Steubenville High School football team was still unfolding, and gang rapes arent that unusual here either. Take your pick: some of the 20 men who gang-raped an 11-year-old in Cleveland, Texas, were sentenced in November, while the instigator of the gang rape of a 16-year-old in Richmond, California, was sentenced in October, and four men who gang-raped a 15-year-old near New Orleans were sentenced in April, though the six men who gang-raped a 14-year-old in Chicago last fall are still at large. Not that I actually went out looking for incidents: theyre everywhere in the news, though no one adds them up and indicates that there might actually be a pattern.
There is, however, a pattern of violence against women thats broad and deep and horrific and incessantly overlooked. Occasionally, a case involving a celebrity or lurid details in a particular case get a lot of attention in the media, but such cases are treated as anomalies, while the abundance of incidental news items about violence against women in this country, in other countries, on every continent including Antarctica, constitute a kind of background wallpaper for the news.
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Here I want to say one thing: though virtually all the perpetrators of such crimes are men, that doesnt mean all men are violent. Most are not. In addition, men obviously also suffer violence, largely at the hands of other men, and every violent death, every assault is terrible. But the subject here is the pandemic of violence by men against women, both intimate violence and stranger violence.
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We have far more than 87,000 rapes in this country every year, but each of them is invariably portrayed as an isolated incident. We have dots so close theyre splatters melting into a stain, but hardly anyone connects them, or names that stain. In India they did. They said that this is a civil rights issue, its a human rights issue, its everyones problem, its not isolated, and its never going to be acceptable again. It has to change. Its your job to change it, and mine, and ours.
niyad
(113,090 posts)bench scientist
(1,107 posts)meow2u3
(24,761 posts)Especially gang rapes. Victims are targeted because they're women and the crime is intended to intimidate women into silence. That qualifies many rapes as hate crimes at best and domestic terrorism at worst.
redqueen
(115,103 posts)smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)seabeyond
(110,159 posts)redqueen
(115,103 posts)She managed to include so much.
Hope the trip goes smoothly.
redqueen
(115,103 posts)Seems to me this is an important issue.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)Yet like most threads informing and asking that this subject be addressed, it is getting very little attention.
If there were a pattern as BIG as this occuring in any other demographic, I think the response would be a lot different.
ismnotwasm
(41,968 posts)As the article points out, violence against women is so the norm, that prevention is focused on women 'protecting' themselves, and ignores the larger issues of the whats who and whys and hows of perpetrating violence and what can be done to end it---not just avoid it and treat it as some sort of natural consequence of being a woman.
redqueen
(115,103 posts)one of those which gets media attention, as described in the article, it would get attention.
But for some reason if the subject is the big picture... the pattern of dots which is almost a stain... I don't know... maybe if's just too much?
I certainly do not understand. But it is a civil rights issue. We can't keep letting only individual cases get treated as if they deserve attention. We have to start making the pattern the issue.
coffeenap
(3,173 posts)I will be sharing it with my college-age daughter and her friends, many of whom are budding activists for women's rights.
redqueen
(115,103 posts)but this is a painful reality to have to recognize...
I'm glad you find it informative and useful. I can say that much.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)Thanks! I have had a very anger filled day (which is unusual for me these days) so I won't go off on a rant, but this did get me going quite a bit.
ismnotwasm
(41,968 posts)Damn.
redqueen
(115,103 posts)I hope we start making the effort to deal with the cause, instead of seeing only the symptoms.
Heidi
(58,237 posts)okaawhatever
(9,457 posts)redqueen
(115,103 posts)OldEurope
(1,273 posts)It's even more disturbing as your fellow DUers are cheering about how women are "allowed" to die in combat now, too.
redqueen
(115,103 posts)I shared my thoughts on that in a different thread.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022254604
OldEurope
(1,273 posts)horrifying fact: much too often those scumbags get away with it, like this http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022257155