Picture a band of well-armed women, dressed in irregular military fatigues, torches in hand setting homes ablaze, firing machine guns willy-nilly at civilian targets, children too, scooping up personal valuables from houses along the way, and rounding up all the young, good-looking men in the village, forcing them to perform whatever sexual demands the women require. Sounds like an image from another planet or a forced seen in a bad porno. It doesn’t sound like anything we have heard or read about recently. Reverse the genders and re-read the paragraph.
Why is it that in civil wars and armed insurrection, rape seems too often to be a part of the outrage? Why is it that in certain cultures, the right to force sex with the woman of your choice is considered “normal”? Where is the notion of sisters, daughter, mothers and grandmothers? Where is the belief in the sanctity of personal rights and the right to live without a constant threat of physical harm and deeply painful (at every level) ignominy of physical intrusion? And why are the victims so often viewed as luring perpetrators.
In certain Middle Eastern cultures, an unveiled woman, or a woman without a male family escort, is viewed as a fallen women, taunting male sexual appetites. In other primitive societies, a woman’s desire to do anything other than being a wife and homemaker is viewed as an invitation to sexual exploitation… or even death. In other nations, child brides are sacrificed to vastly older “husbands,” some of which brides are so young that they can be seriously injured by their elderly “partners” forcing unwanted sex on a terrified child.
A recent United Nations survey of 10,000 men across nine sites in Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Papua New Guinea produced some startling results about the prevalence of rape within many of these cultures. A quarter of those surveyed admitted to having committed rape! Almost none of those crimes were reported, because the consequences to the complaining woman are often horrific. Here is an excerpt from that report:
"Men begin perpetrating violence at much younger ages than previously thought. Half of those who admitted to rape reported their first time was when they were teenagers; 23 percent of men who raped in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, and 16 percent in Cambodia were 14 years or younger when they first committed this crime.
"Of those men who had admitted to rape, the vast majority (72-97 percent in most sites) did not experience any legal consequences, confirming that impunity remains a serious issue in the region.
"Across all sites, the most common motivation that men cited for rape was related to sexual entitlement — a belief that men have a right to sex with women regardless of consent. Over 80 percent of men who admitted to rape in sites in rural Bangladesh and China gave this response.
"Overall, 4 percent of respondents said they had perpetrated gang rape against a woman or girl, ranging from 1 to 14 percent across the various sites. This is the first time we have data from such a large sample of men on the perpetration of gang rape."
In India, meanwhile, there have been a series of gang-rape cases that have riveted Indian citizens to their news sources to see the results. The innocents rate from foreign tourists – who really had no issues reporting the crimes – to better-educated women willing to take the social chances of reporting. Last December, another gang-rape occurred in New Delhi that shocked the nation… that perhaps should not have been so shocked at a crime that is often committed almost daily across that nation.
“The [23-year-old] woman was returning home from a movie with a male friend and boarded a private bus with a group of men, mostly working-class migrants who the police said had been drinking. While the bus circled Delhi, the men attacked the pair, knocked the woman’s friend unconscious and took the woman to the back of the bus and raped her, sometimes using a metal rod. The two were dumped off on the roadside, naked and bleeding.” New York Times, August 10th.
The victim died two weeks after the attack. She didn’t have to face the opprobrium that would normally attach to an accuser. The four perpetrators were convicted as prosecutors clamored for an example-setting death penalty. “ ‘These monsters should be hanged,” her mother, Asha Devi, told a news channel as the family left for court on [the] morning [of August 10th]. ‘When I saw her in the hospital later, she burst into tears and said, ‘Mummy, they beat me up very brutally.’ ’ Her father, Badri Nath Singh, agreed.” NY Times. Friday the 13th (of August) was not the perpetrators’ lucky day: the prosecutors got their death penalty sentence. The four defendants are appealing.
While we are shocked by these crimes, as well we should be, we really need to look at our own house, as sexual assaults in the military, for example, are prevalent and anything-but-under-control. “The number of sexual assaults reported to the US Navy rose dramatically over the last year, officials have said… The Navy says about 1,100 assaults were reported in the year ending this month, an increase of 50% from 726 last year… The growing rate of military sexual assault has drawn congressional and White House attention in recent months.
“Across the entire US military, an estimated 26,000 service members reported sexual assault in 2012, up from 19,000 the previous year, according to a US Department of Defense report released in May.” BBC.co.uk, September 11th. Some say there has been no increase in assaults… that outrage has finally pushed more women to report what has been going on for years in all of our services. The normal chain of command is fighting tooth and nail to keep outside oversight away from the military. Women continue to face attacks and have to deal with a pretty obviously unsympathetic and overwhelmingly male set of military commanders above. In the end, we are all lessened by these unforgiveable acts of violence against the innocent, and it is high time that those opposing reasonable controls and regulations to stop this violence must be removed from that decision-making process.
I’m Peter Dekom, and some things just make my blood boil.
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