rape

The UN's human rights chief has said the "scale and viciousness" of mass rapes in DR Congo "defy belief", as a report into the attack was released. Navi Pillay said that, even for the region, the incident stood out because of the "extraordinarily cold-blooded and systematic way" it was carried out. Some 300 people were raped by armed militia in the attack in August. Details here
June is almost over, and with nary a comment from this blog on rape. But June is the month we normally discuss this important problem. So to comply with that idea, I'm going to point you to a couple of posts from last year. If you've not read them, please have a look. Especially read the comments. Things got ugly, but they also got interesting. A rape in progress "I am a scientist observing the culture of the Namoyoma people. I am sitting in a shady spot just outside the village, writing up some notes, and I observe a disturbing event. Four men are trying to drag a young woman from the…
A FORMER vicar-general in the archdiocese of Munich has claimed that he was pressurised last month into taking the blame for a mistake made 30 years ago by the then Archbishop of Munich, Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict), concerning the case of a paedophile priest. Fr Gerhard Gruber has now said he did so only after coming under huge pressure from unnamed Catholic Church sources to take responsibility, so as to "take the pope out of the firing line". Story here I'd like to comment more, but I've been told to shut up in matters of the Pope. Well, not really. The truth is that I've not…
... or ... Republicans Attack Franken for Opposing Rape No, no ... maybe this .. Thirty Senate Republicans Prefer Rape over Justice Or perhaps ... Al Franken Does Right Thing: Republicans Get Mad Oh, forget it. I'll never decide on a title for this post. Just watch the story: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
This is why private insurance companies should die--or, at the very least, no American should be forced to give these parasites his or her money: Christina Turner feared that she might have been sexually assaulted after two men slipped her a knockout drug. She thought she was taking proper precautions when her doctor prescribed a month's worth of anti-AIDS medicine. Only later did she learn that she had made herself all but uninsurable. Turner had let the men buy her drinks at a bar in Fort Lauderdale. The next thing she knew, she said, she was lying on a roadside with cuts and bruises that…
Eudy Simelane was a brilliant soccer star, captain of South Africa's national women's team. She was also an out lesbian and an activist for LGBT rights. In April 2008, a group of men attacked her with a sickening brutality. She was gang-raped, beaten, and stabbed more than 25 times. The assault was so vicious that police even found stab wounds on the bottom of her feet. South African authorities believe that the hate crime was a case of "corrective rape," a crime that is horrifyingly common in South Africa. Even in major cities, lesbians live in fear of being targeted for rape. Women who have…
Today is the last day in the month of June, and so the last day that you can click on these awesome blogs, and have the proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders. So click once, or twice, or many many times! The IntersectionOn Becoming A Domestic And Laboratory GoddessAetiologyNeurotopiaBioephemeraThe Questionable AuthorityAdventures in Ethics and ScienceDrugMonkeyBlog Of The Moderate LeftSeattle Grassroots Examinerthe rugbyologistSciencewomen And of course, a huge thank you to the many, many blogs who helped spread this around. Sci hopes that this is just the beginning, that we will be able…
One in four South African men ... said they had raped someone ... three out of four who admitted rape attacked for the first time while in their teens. ... practices such as gang rape were common because they were considered a form of male bonding. ... The research was conducted in both rural and urban areas and included all racial groups. ... the study found that 73% of respondents said they had carried out their first assault before the age of 20. Almost half who said they had carried out a rape admitted they had done so more than once. One in 20 men surveyed said they had raped a woman or…
Have you ever bought an album and discovered a song so dark, so sad that it makes you physically uncomfortable to listen to it? What do you do then? Can you stand to hear it or do you skip the track in favor of something a little lighter? For me, the songs that twist my stomach in knots are the ones with stories of domestic violence, child abuse, or rape. And when I find one of those songs, I force myself not to delete it from my playlists and I pay attention when my iTunes shuffle pops it up. The singers recorded those songs for a reason - to tell us that terrible things are happening…
One of the challenges we faced with our new blogosphere initiative, Silence is the Enemy, was how to mobilize people to do something about the plight of rape victims. It's not that people don't have empathy for rape victims; it's that the experience of living in a war-torn nation where rape and murder are routine facts of life is so foreign and horrifying to us, we tend to tune it out. Part of the way to deal with this is to give people a clear mission - something simple they can do; in our case, donating to Doctors without Borders (as I am for the month of June), or writing to Congress, or…
Last week, a very bad thing happened to me, a life changing experience, the kind of thing many people with blogs would tell everyone about, trolling for sympathy and making everyone feel bad. Well, I am certainly not above doing that, but strategically I've decided to tell only a few people what is going on, and everyone else ... well, I'm going to leave you in a state of wondering. Which, of course, is my own narcissistic way of getting attention. Honorata Kizende looked out at the audience and began with a simple, declarative sentence. ... "There was no dinner," she said. "It was me…
Sheril, Isis, Alice,Zuska and many others have introduced you to the Silence Is the Enemy project, aimed at condemning and reducing sexual violence in places like Liberia, Congo, Darfur and other conflict ridden places in the world. In Liberia, for example, as many as 3/4 of the women have been raped, often repeatedly. And 28% of new rape victims are under the age of 4. Those are girls the age of my daughter and the girls who play on the playground with her. Raped and left to suffer a lifetime of physical and psychological consequences. (At the bottom of this post, please watch an important…
I would like to go into a little more detail about the rape switch which is being discussed here as well as the statistical trend in rape rates in the US being discussed here . It has been shown again and again that large numbers of males will carry out what by anyone's definition is rape, under certain circumstances. Yet at the same time, it seems that in most societies it is impossible to imagine that such a large percentage of men would carry out this heinous act. It is difficult to have much faith in the data for rape frequency, for two reasons. One is definitional and the other is…
This question is shorthand for a larger and more nuanced set of questions that has emerged over the last 24 hours here and here as people engage in this very interesting and important discussion about rape, especially wartime rape and related post-apocalyptic rape cultures. "The switch" is a term I first heard from a student, who wrote a term paper for me on this in 1993. The basic idea of a switch would be supported if more or less randomly (though age biased, likely) selected men, put into a certain situation, tended to commit rape on a much larger scale ... or more exactly, a much…
-Activists concerned by this year's escalation of sexual violence in eastern Congo are trying to turn up the heat on those benefitting--directly or indirectly--from illicit mineral extractions. "Conflict minerals power our entire electronic industry," John Prendergast, co-founder of the Enough Project, told U.S. senators at a May 13 hearing on sexual violence in eastern Congo and Sudan. The Enough Project is a Washington-based organization campaigning against genocide and crimes against humanity, including rape in eastern Congo. Women's eNews
Expanding on the discussion from here ... In the paper Anthropology's "Fierce" Yanomami: Narratives of Sexual Politics in the Amazon, Sharon Tiffany and Kathleen Adams provide the following opening passage: Imagine a society in which one woman in every three is raped, usually by a man she knows, consider the consequences of living in a society where one third of all women are beaten during pregnancy and 35 percent of women using emergency medical facilities are battered . Since wee are anthropologists, readers may mistakenly think that these appalling data were collected in an exotic society…
Please read the following vignette of an actual incident. I am a scientist observing the culture of the Namoyoma people. I am sitting in a shady spot just outside the village, writing up some notes, and I observe a disturbing event. Four men are trying to drag a young woman from the road into the nearby forest, and from what I hear them saying, they intend to rape her. There are also four older women trying to drag the young woman back to the village, and they are yelling that she must go back to her father's house where she will be protected. The battle over this young woman continues…
"I always think someone is following me and wants to rape me. It is better to die." --Darfuri refugee Sometimes there comes a public health issue that's so big, so overwhelming, so heinous, that you just don't know where to begin discussing it. Nevertheless, the conversation should, and must, happen just the same. Silence may be easier, but speaking out is the only way to demystify the taboos and bring attention to what's going on for those who can't bring attention to it themselves. And maybe, just maybe, bring about some change. It's no secret that rape happens during wartime.…
A sexual violence victim recovers in Goma, Congophoto by Endre Vestvik A few weeks ago, the NYT published a horrifying account by Nicholas Kristof of the pervasive sexual violence left over from Liberia's civil war. A major survey in Liberia found that 75% of Liberian women had been raped - most gang-raped. And many of the victims are children: Of course, children are raped everywhere, but what is happening in Liberia is different. The war seems to have shattered norms and trained some men to think that when they want sex, they need simply to overpower a girl. Or at school, girls sometimes…
'Blue dog' conservative Democratic Senator Nelson's list of proposed cuts from the National Recovery and Reinvestment Act was leaked to Huffington Post (the documents are available at TPM). I've never understood the Blue Dogs. While conservatives are full blown batshit loony (Tax cuts today! Tax cuts tomorrow! Tax cuts fo'evuh!), there is at least some kind of ideology there (albeit twisted). What motivates the Blue Dogs? Do they like the power of being spoilers? Does it make them feel good when they can be the ones to make the deal? Do they not realize that 'stimulus' means spending…