And yes, I mean that literally. Read this report about a series of attacks in a predominately gay neighborhood in San Francisco, where gay men are being robbed, beaten and then raped by guys screaming at them and calling them faggots.
Mark Welsh said he was attacked as he walked from work to his car
"I was attacked from behind and hit in the back, neck and shoulder, which knocked me to the ground ... As I fell to the ground, they proceeded to kick and punch throughout most of my body."
Throughout the beating and robbery Welsh said his attackers "kept calling me a faggot, many a time."
When they finished robbing him they sexually assaulted him.
Two other attacks fit the same pattern - beatings, robberies and then rapes.
"The gravity of the situation, where men have been - for lack of a better term - raped, that's new. That's something that we've never had before," said Sgt. Chuck Limbert.
I think it's a whole new level of sick hypocrisy too.
- Log in to post comments
"For lack of a better term"? What is that supposed to mean-- that when men rape other men, it isn't really rape?
Showing, once again, that rape is about power, not sex. And what a funny quote from the police. If there's a "better term" than rape for forced intercourse, I'm not sure I want to hear it.
It shows nothing of the sort, actually. If rape were not "about" sex at all, it wouldn't include sex, and it's silly to say that rape is inherently "about" one thing as opposed to another. Rapists have a variety of motivations, from boredom to frustration to a desire to show off for friends, but one thing they almost always also have in common is an erect penis. "Power" is a non-explanation.
It would be just as viable to say that these men are repressed homosexuals who hate their sexuality so much that they feel the need to exercise it on unwilling participants of whom they are profoundly jealous for not sharing their inhibitions.
"for lack of a better term" -- wow, what a jerk.
In South Africa, they've *finally* revised the legal definition of rape so that it is no longer restricted to forced vaginal intercourse, and includes, for example, forced sodomy. At least some people seem to agree that sexual assault isn't more or less severe depending on precisely which body parts are involved.
Gretchen, while I will aver that a rapist's motives are complex and vary from case to case, I disagree that power is not the primary factor. Many psychologists, for example, divide rapes into two types: power rapes and anger rapes. The former is mostly about the victim--rape meant to put a victim "in their place." The latter is mostly about the rapist--bolstering their ego by diminishing someone weaker. In both cases, however, the rapist achieves their ends the same way: by physical and psychological domination of the victim.
Here, these victims were not merely sexually assaulted, but were also brutally beaten and subjected to verbal taunts. Even if I accepted your conjecture that the assailants are repressed homosexuals, it would not change the nature of the attacks, since it is clear they wanted much more than sex. They set out to dominate and humiliate their victims--and they did it, in part, by sexually assaulting them.
In some jurisdictions, the criminal offense of "rape" is defined in such a way that it can only apply to a man assaulting a woman. I know that in Georgia, OCGA 16-6-1 defines "rape" such that the victim must be female (although the attacker can apparently be any "person").
Unfortunately, attacks like this one may have to be charged under a different statute, like sexual battery, even though "rape" may be the best word to describe them. That's probably why Sgt. Limbert was being careful with his language.
How long before the ADF comes out against the free whistles as an example of the government supporting "degenerate lifestyles"?
If there's one thing that defines what kind of monsters these people are, it is that direct, unadulterated descriptions of what they do make for fetching and shocking headlines.
I hope you guys would also be infuriated if when some (or hopefully, all) of these men are caught and convicted of crimes, they went down for a crime other than rape. Anything else would be playing the "oral sex isn't sex" or some other kind of bullshit word game.
I question this. Rape is the exertion of power over another person by the most thoroughly violating means possible. It usually involves a penis, as you point out, but when that penis is used as a weapon penetrating another person's body uninvited (in openings that are hugely sensitive, both in a physiological and culturally-determined sense), rape is no more equivalent to sex than screaming is to singing. The mechanism may be the same (penis in anus/air causing vocal cord vibration), but the intent, the use of that mechanism, makes for a whole different end result. As I see it, of course.
A perfect analogy Boltgirl
There was a woman here who was sexually assaulted by a group of lesbians some time back, and I think it was not just by inserting various objects like bottles into her orifices, but also by biting or slicing off her nipples. The crime redefined the definition of rape to include penetration by any object, not just a penis. The victim was so traumatized she later took her own life. Homosexual rape is still rape where I live, according to this:
There is no offence of homosexual activity in Philippine law. Homosexual acts carried out in a public place could fall under "grave scandal" penalised by Article 200 of the Revised Penal Code (1983 Report of the Law Reform Commission of Hong Kong on Laws Governing Homosexual Conduct).
"There is actually no discrimination over criminal offenders in the Philippines. Everyone is punished for committing any form of crime regardless of sexual orientation." (Swedish Foreign Office/RFSL survey)
On 30 Sept 1997 the Philippines introduced a law allowing spouses and men to sue for rape. "Through this law we ensure that no woman - including wives - or man is subjected to sexual acts against her or his will" President Fidel Ramos said. The law reclassifies rape as a "public" crime which permits anyone to file a suit on behalf of a victim. The definition of rape is expanded to include oral and anal sex as well as insertion of objects into sexual organs. (RW, quoted in IB/4/97, page 31)
source
Rape is all about power, sex is just the weapon that's used to excert that power over someone else - one of the fastest, most brutal ways, to excert domination, and to lessen the victim.
No human being deserves to be raped, and I'm sad to hear that this has happened. We may have, however, just found the closest "gentlemen" to deserving it themselves, and I'll be happy when I know that they will be in jail, living in fear that they may be subjected to that which they did to others.
I'm also glad to hear about the phillippines, and BoltGirl - that was a very good point. You could see rape as usually involving sexual organs, but not being about sex. Rape could occur with an object and someone's anus, neither of which are sexual organs on anybody. (If we consider someone's anus to be erotic, then I would suggest that the skin, ears, etc, would qualify, so by sexual organs I'm referring to the genetalia.)
There have also been cases where women have raped men. It is much less prevalent and reported even less. However, does not mean it is not there. Very few men will admit to being raped after all.
Most of these comments deal with the physical act of rape. There is also psychological and emotional rape as well. It would appear that all three happened to Mark Welsh in the above article.
Any violent act which does not occur for material gain is "about power" in some way or another. What I'm saying is that that by no means sums it up, and it certainly doesn't negate that sex is a big part of it. The modern denial that sex has anything to do with rape is disturbing to me because it seeks to make rape entirely a political issue (discrepancies in power being the essence of politics). But if that's the case, why are the majority of rape victims women at their peak of fertility? Why do animals other than humans rape each other as well? Why do women who are raped have a higher chance of getting pregnant than women who have consensual sex? Women certainly want to have power over men, too-- why do they hardly ever rape them?
The "aboutness" of rape is an effort to gain control of the idea by defining it. But it doesn't actually serve any explanatory purpose. Why does sex have to be shielded from ugliness, violence, and non-consent? Why does sex cease to be sex when it becomes scary? That doesn't make sense to me. It smells powerfully like social constructivism-- like if we can only rescue sex from the jaws of rape, then we don't need any explanation for rape other than "power." But if it's not true, then it's not going to be any help in actually stopping rape from happening.
K-- To make it clear, I don't object to the part that says "about power." I object to the "not sex." I've been raped (sorry to play that card), and it was absolutely about both.
The modern denial that sex has anything to do with rape is disturbing to me because it seeks to make rape entirely a political issue (discrepancies in power being the essence of politics).
And you have, in this very sentence, found why such denial exists in the first place. To feminists, things like rape aren't simply heinous actions that grow out of vestigial bio-cognitive flaws, they're just yet more evidence for the Evil Patriarchical Conspiracy to keep women down.
I think it's a whole new level of sick hypocrisy too.
I'm not sure what you are referring to by hypocrisy. From the National Center for Victims of Crime:
In other words, the perpetrators in this case probably weren't themselves homosexuals, but they used rape to humiliate the victim.
Gretchen said -
The modern denial that sex has anything to do with rape is disturbing to me because it seeks to make rape entirely a political issue (discrepancies in power being the essence of politics).
I agree whole heartedly. By relegating rape to a purely political issue, we make it impossible to stop. Until we understand that unlike homosexuality, rape actually is a form of sexual deviance, and recognize that from a public policy standpoint, it will continue to plague us. Yes, often times rape is also about power, but it is far from the endall, yet it is considered such all too often.
K-- To make it clear, I don't object to the part that says "about power." I object to the "not sex." I've been raped (sorry to play that card), and it was absolutely about both.
Please don't apologize for "playing that card" as it were. Please don't take this as arrogance, but I have been sexually involved with a lot of women. At least half of them have been the victims of some sort of sexual assault, sometime in their lives. While I am thrilled to see the incidents of sexual assault are diminishing, it is still a much larger problem than most people realize - even those who have been assaulted.
The more women and even men, who are willing to talk about it, the better. Even today, in our increasingly, open society - people are afraid and embarrased to talk about it. In large part because others just don't want to hear about it. It is just too easy to roll ones eyes whenever a woman talks about their expierience with being sexually assaulted. Marginalising a horrific, traumatising expierience.
So please, don't apologise for mentioning it. You went through it, you have a perspective few of us here have - expierience quite relevant to the discussion at hand.
This just in from Focus on TEH GAY.
FBI Finds Few Sexuality-Based Hate Crimes
from staff reports (from Focus on TEH GAY: http://www.family.org/cforum/news/a0042352.cfm)
quotes: "And once again, sexual orientation as a category of hate crimes comes in well
behind crimes based on race and religion," said Caleb H. Price, a gender issues
analyst for Focus on the Family. "The problem is, when gay activists come to
the table to play their victim card -- they are bluffing. The card isn't even
in their hand."
See? Gays are NEVER victims. Homosexuals don't exist. This event never happened, nothing to see here, move on along, please.