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  #1  
Old 10-24-2003, 02:36 PM
Rudey Rudey is offline
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Another cultural phenomenon: Rape

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/24/in...RAN.html?8hpib

This is so stupid and disgusting that it really makes you question why people say respect the culture. Yeah respect the culture to some extent and then go in and impose your damn will until they realize they're wrong.

-Rudey
--Why don't they just behead the males? It's a part of their culture.


Taken with permission from NYTimes:
A Crime of the Young Stalks France's Urban Wastelands
By ELAINE SCIOLINO

Published: October 24, 2003


IGNEUX-SUR-SEINE, France — The boys were patient, standing in line and waiting their turn to rape.

Their two victims, girls of 13, were patient, too, never crying out, at least that is what the neighbors said, and enduring the violence and abuse repeatedly over five months.

That was three years ago. Late in September, 10 young men, now aged from 18 to 21, were convicted of rape in a closed courtroom in nearby Evry and sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to five years. Seven others will go on trial in November.

The fact that they are being brought to justice at all is highly unusual. The phenomenon of gang rape in France is called something more banal: taking turns.

It occurs — how often is unknown — in the concrete wastelands built as cheap housing for immigrants, mostly from France's former colonies, in the 1950's and 1960's on the outskirts of big cities. Here, according to sociologists and prosecutors, teenage boys, many of them loosely organized into gangs, prey on neighborhood girls.

Many of the boys are raised in closed, traditional families and are hopelessly confused or ignorant about sex; others are simply street toughs. In this world, women enjoy little respect; often girls who appear weak, or wear tight-fitting clothing, or go out unaccompanied by their fathers or brothers, are considered fair game.

To avoid trouble, many girls have taken to wearing loose-fitting jogging clothes, and hidden themselves behind domineering fathers or brothers; others have organized themselves into their own gangs. Many of the Muslim girls have donned head scarves — more for protection than out of religious conviction.

In the basement of No. 4, place Albert Einstein, in this working-class suburb where the rapes took place, a scrawl across a white wall explains why so few cases are prosecuted. "The law of silence is our sixth sense," it reads.

"I've heard too many of these stories, and it's become unbearable," said Samira Bellil, 30, a gang-rape victim, whose book, "In Gang-Rape Hell," was a best seller in France last year. "The word of the boys is often believed. So the trauma is not just the violence but the torment that comes if a girl comes forward and breaks the silence. We have to stop taking sides with the wolves."

Ms. Bellil was gang-raped at age 14. She had fallen in love, and agreed to have sex with her boyfriend. Three of his friends were waiting outside. They kicked and beat her and gang-raped her throughout the night. She waited before reporting the rapes, and did so only after three of her friends told her that they too had been raped by one of her attackers.

The appearance of Ms. Bellil's book last year coincided with the death of a 17-year-old girl named Sohane, who was burned alive by an angry boyfriend in the Paris suburb of Vitry-sur-Seine. A book about that murder is still on the best-seller list.

In the recent court case, the assault on the two girls was either oral or anal; vaginal sex would have stolen the girls' virginity, which apparently was not the goal of the attackers.

"In many cases, the violence of a band of young men against a girl is considered a rite of sexual initiation to prove one's manhood," said Hugues Lagrange, a sociologist at the Center for Scientific Research in Paris who specializes in adolescent sexuality. "In the boys' minds, if a girl's virginity is respected, then nothing bad has happened."

The girls' story seeped out months after the events, according to Laurent Le Mehaute, the lawyer for one of the girls. After rumors circulated at their high school, the director got police involved. At first, the girls denied the story, but eventually identified 18 boys as their rapists.

None of the boys had a previous criminal record. All but one confessed to having sex with the girls, even acknowledging that it was not consensual. The one who claimed his innocence was acquitted.

At the vast housing project where the girls lived and where the rapes occurred, the grounds are clean, even landscaped. The population is multiracial and multiethnic, blending both French-born citizens and immigrants from places like North and sub-Saharan Africa, Turkey and the Caribbean. Nearby are a butcher selling halal meat, an oriental pastry shop and coffeehouse, a laundromat, a health club and a supermarket — as well as drug dealers openly selling hashish.

Prejudice against the girls lingers. "What were the girls doing in the afternoons down in the basements?" asked a woman who lives on the first floor of the building. "Why did their parents let them go there? They know what happens if they follow the boys. They know what happens if they go to the basement."

The neighborhood butcher, from Algeria, talked about the suburb as a world apart. "If a girl goes out, she's going to get into trouble, especially with Arabs and blacks, because they are not used to seeing girls outside," he said. "The boys have needs. Where I come from, it's not normal that a girl goes out at night. If I tell my sister not to go out, she obeys me. This world is not like France."

Both the neighbor and the butcher spoke on condition that their names not be used.

There are no reliable statistics, but Mr. Lagrange estimates that there are more than four times as many gang rapes in France today as there were two decades ago; at least part of the increase can be attributed to more young women coming forward.

Transparency comes at an exceedingly high price. After one of the girls spoke out, said Mr. Le Mehaute, the lawyer, "she couldn't go out anymore."

"People spat on her. There was tremendous psychological damage. Both girls felt humiliated, dirty."

The girl's 39-year-old father became so depressed after the truth was disclosed that last summer he hanged himself. The girl had tried but failed to kill herself the year before by slashing her arms. Both girls were harassed so mercilessly that have since moved away from the project. One lives with relatives, the other in state-run housing.

Last edited by Rudey; 10-24-2003 at 03:36 PM.
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  #2  
Old 10-24-2003, 02:43 PM
decadence decadence is offline
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clarify

I read the article (reportage on France), does the "they" in your post refer to the ethnic males there (specifically the ones who support/do not condemn the rapes)?
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  #3  
Old 10-24-2003, 03:01 PM
krazy krazy is offline
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Yeah.. I am confused too...

Are you referring to the French Culture? I don't think this is French Culture, you see an article like this everyday in the LA Times, and I wouldn't consider it a US culture.
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  #4  
Old 10-24-2003, 03:30 PM
Rudey Rudey is offline
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holy geez,
ok guys i'm referring to the immigrants (99% of which coming from Arab and African countries) that have come into Western (in this case French) society.

-Rudey
--This isn't too hard to figure out so I don't know why i'm explaining it.
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  #5  
Old 10-24-2003, 03:35 PM
twhrider13 twhrider13 is offline
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Sick, absolutely sick. Too bad those poor girls aren't like me--I'd beat the boys up. When you're almost 6' tall, guys don't seem to mess with you quite so much!
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  #6  
Old 10-24-2003, 03:42 PM
swissmiss04 swissmiss04 is offline
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This is f*cking sick...as much as I hate to admit it, I honestly understand why non-Muslims have such unfavorable views of Muslims. Western society hears far too many stories like this, and can't help but make assumptions. Too often culture takes precedent over religious beliefs, which sets a terrible example. Yet these types of people are the first to b*tch about anti-Muslim sentiment in the West.
What I don't understand is 1) why the French government doesn't do more to prevent this kind of crap and 2) Why these sick bastards only got a few years in jail. Maybe the American justice system isn't the only one a bit too lenient towards criminals.
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  #7  
Old 10-24-2003, 03:55 PM
CatStarESP4 CatStarESP4 is offline
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Reading this article just angered me. I think that is very sick indeed.

However, I admire Ms. Bellil for telling her story of what happened to her as well as the other girls who had been through the same thing as she had.


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  #8  
Old 10-24-2003, 04:06 PM
sugar and spice sugar and spice is offline
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Quote:
Originally posted by swissmiss04
This is f*cking sick...as much as I hate to admit it, I honestly understand why non-Muslims have such unfavorable views of Muslims. Western society hears far too many stories like this, and can't help but make assumptions. Too often culture takes precedent over religious beliefs, which sets a terrible example. Yet these types of people are the first to b*tch about anti-Muslim sentiment in the West.
What I don't understand is 1) why the French government doesn't do more to prevent this kind of crap and 2) Why these sick bastards only got a few years in jail. Maybe the American justice system isn't the only one a bit too lenient towards criminals.
Oh, come on. There is plenty of f*cked up stuff that Christian extremists do, and if you were to just Christians only by the worst things that they do -- bombing abortion clinics and killing gays -- you would have a pretty skewed version of what Christianity is like. Anybody who judges any entire religion based on the bad things they read about it is pretty dumb, IMO.

The thing is that stuff like this happens in America, too. All over America? Of course not. But in certain places? Definitely. And obviously this sort of thing doesn't happen ALL over France, as the article made clear. Attitudes towards rape are sometimes not much different here than the people quoted in this article. I was eating dinner with my family last weekend while the people in the booth next to us were discussing the Kobe case. They distinctly used the phrase "Boys will be boys" and said that if girls wear "scandalous clothing" they're asking for it. That's not all that far from "If they go in that basement, they know what will happen," which is in itself not far from the Italian argument that if a girl was wearing pants, she couldn't have been raped, it had to have been consensual. After all, it's not like someone could have forced her to take her pants off . . .

I agree with Rudey though. "Respect the culture" is bullsh*t in cases like this.
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  #9  
Old 10-24-2003, 04:10 PM
valkyrie valkyrie is offline
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I'm not a violent person at all, but I would like to get on a plane and go to France and kick these people's asses -- the guys and the people who claim it's the girls' fault. Attitudes like that piss me off as much as the violence does.
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  #10  
Old 10-24-2003, 04:12 PM
wreckingcrew
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Quote:
Originally posted by swissmiss04
Maybe the American justice system isn't the only one a bit too lenient towards criminals.
*hijack*

So, i'm guessing you are in favor of the Death Penalty then?

Kitso
KS 361 convicts sent to Ol' Sparky(figuratively) in Texas last year
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  #11  
Old 10-24-2003, 04:31 PM
Rudey Rudey is offline
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Sorry but you're wrong. We do not have stoning in our culture. We don't rape women and consider it acceptable; it's large believed to be a horrible crime.

I've lived for 6 years in one of the most fundamentalist islamic countries in the world. Trust me when I say there is absolutely no comparison you can make that Christians in America do the same things.

-Rudey


Quote:
Originally posted by sugar and spice
Oh, come on. There is plenty of f*cked up stuff that Christian extremists do, and if you were to just Christians only by the worst things that they do -- bombing abortion clinics and killing gays -- you would have a pretty skewed version of what Christianity is like. Anybody who judges any entire religion based on the bad things they read about it is pretty dumb, IMO.

The thing is that stuff like this happens in America, too. All over America? Of course not. But in certain places? Definitely. And obviously this sort of thing doesn't happen ALL over France, as the article made clear. Attitudes towards rape are sometimes not much different here than the people quoted in this article. I was eating dinner with my family last weekend while the people in the booth next to us were discussing the Kobe case. They distinctly used the phrase "Boys will be boys" and said that if girls wear "scandalous clothing" they're asking for it. That's not all that far from "If they go in that basement, they know what will happen," which is in itself not far from the Italian argument that if a girl was wearing pants, she couldn't have been raped, it had to have been consensual. After all, it's not like someone could have forced her to take her pants off . . .

I agree with Rudey though. "Respect the culture" is bullsh*t in cases like this.
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  #12  
Old 10-24-2003, 04:46 PM
pirepresent pirepresent is offline
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This article is so sad. At least it seems like they're moving forward a little bit, seeing as how usually the rapists aren't even punished....

valkyrie, I completely agree with you about how the old "they did it to themselves" attitude is more upsetting then the violence. people are sick... and wrong
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Old 10-24-2003, 04:52 PM
sugar and spice sugar and spice is offline
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Quote:
Originally posted by Rudey
Sorry but you're wrong. We do not have stoning in our culture. We don't rape women and consider it acceptable; it's large believed to be a horrible crime.

I've lived for 6 years in one of the most fundamentalist islamic countries in the world. Trust me when I say there is absolutely no comparison you can make that Christians in America do the same things.

-Rudey
Nowhere did I compare what Christians do to what Muslims do. Just saying that if you take the worst of each culture you get a pretty skewed version of what that religion is like. Do I think there are aspects of Christianity that are screwed up? Sure. Do I think that the same is true of Islam? Of course.

Until you have lived as a female in America, I don't think you can understand the rape culture here. Yeah, rape is considered a crime, but to what extent? I have four friends that were raped, and multiple other friends who had near misses. Not a single one reported it, not even to go to the hospital and get checked out. Not one tried to go after their rapists because they knew that they would have to deal with the backlash. And that's out here in hippie suburbia. Using the Kobe case as an example (although I haven't decided whether or not she's innocent, for the sake of the example it doesn't really matter), your sexual history and emotional problems are dragged through the mud, and you are painted as a slut and/or a psycho. If you are a woman with a history of taking antidepressants, attempting suicide, or being in therapy, you might as well throw away the case right now. Ditto for if you were drinking, ever had a reputation for being "promiscuous" or had flirted with your rapist at some point during the night. Nobody I know would be able to deal with that after getting raped. Yes, we do treat rape as a crime -- generally -- in cases where it springs up. But way too often, people try to pretend it didn't happen because they can't deal with the fallout. There are far, far many more rapists in this country that are allowed to walk free than there are ones that are convicted. And sh*t like that described in this article happens in America far more often than most people would like to admit. Like krazy said, you could probably find a similar article in the LA Times pretty easily.

I think a lot of guys don't understand rape culture because they're ignorant of it. Almost none of my guy friends know about their female friends being raped or assaulted. As it is, well over 75 percent of my female friends -- that I know of -- have been a victim of some kind of sexual assault (I'm talking about serious assault, not "some guy grabbed my boobs in a bar) in their life, and not a single one has attempted to press charges. Those stats about 1 in 3 women being sexually assaulted in her lifetime are not made up, and in reality that is only the reported number -- from what I can tell, the actually statistics are much, much higher. I wouldn't say that that means we're doing a great job with rape over here either.


Dude, the way my posts have been today I'll soon be competing with decadence.

Last edited by sugar and spice; 10-24-2003 at 04:57 PM.
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  #14  
Old 10-24-2003, 04:55 PM
Rudey Rudey is offline
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I actually went with a friend to a group session on rape and even listened to a guy talk about how he was raped and kept drugged for an entire day in some apartment with these other dudes who gave it to him pretty hard. I almost cried.

Either way this is more about how some people try to use their culture to excuse certain vile acts. If you behead them like in Mecca, I think they might not like their culture.

-Rudey
--That was even sadder than the movie Wall Street.

Quote:
Originally posted by sugar and spice
Nowhere did I compare what Christians do to what Muslims do. Just saying that if you take the worst of each culture you get a pretty skewed version of what that religion is like. Do I think there are aspects of Christianity that are screwed up? Sure. Do I think that the same is true of Islam? Of course.

Until you have lived as a female in America, I don't think you can understand the rape culture here. Yeah, rape is considered a crime, but to what extent? I have four friends that were raped, and multiple other friends who had near misses. Not a single one reported it, not even to go to the hospital and get checked out. Not one tried to go after their rapists because they knew that they would have to deal with the backlash. And that's out here in hippie suburbia. Using the Kobe case as an example (although I haven't decided whether or not she's innocent, for the sake of the example it doesn't really matter), your sexual history and emotional problems are dragged through the mud, and you are painted as a slut and/or a psycho. If you are a woman with a history of taking antidepressants, attempting suicide, or being in therapy, you might as well throw away the case right now. Ditto for if you were drinking, ever had a reputation for being "promiscuous" or had flirted with your rapist at some point during the night. Nobody I know would be able to deal with that after getting raped. Yes, we do treat rape as a crime -- generally -- in cases where it springs up. But way too often, people try to pretend it didn't happen because they can't deal with the fallout. There are far, far many more rapists in this country that are allowed to walk free than there are ones that are convicted. And sh*t like that described in this article happens in America far more often than most people would like to admit. Like krazy said, you could probably find a similar article in the LA Times pretty easily.

I think a lot of guys don't understand rape culture because they're ignorant of it. Almost none of my guy friends know about their female friends being raped or assaulted. As it is, well over 75 percent of my female friends -- that I know of -- have been a victim of some kind of sexual assault (I'm talking about serious assault, not "some guy grabbed my boobs in a bar) in their life, and not a single one has attempted to press charges. Those stats about 1 in 3 women being sexually assaulted in her lifetime are not made up, and in reality that is only the reported number -- from what I can tell, the actually statistics are much, much higher. I wouldn't say that that means we're doing a great job with rape over here either.
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  #15  
Old 10-24-2003, 04:55 PM
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honeychile honeychile is offline
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Saying that the cited article disgusts and appalls me doesn't even begin to speak of how I feel about this.

But let's talk about the US. I volunteer at a divorce recovery seminar, and I am always surprised when the statistic of 1 out of every 4 females has been sexually molested or raped by the age of 18, while 1 out of every 12 males has been sexually molested or raped by the age of 18. When I question it, there are always those who will make me understand that the statistic works.

Discussion?
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