Raping Asian girls worse than raping white girls because it 'harms their marriage prospects' :o

[OTheHugeManatee]

Link

A judge has just ruled that a man who raped Asian under-13s should receive a longer sentence, because the victims' families were now worried about their marriage prospects. In other words, damaging these girls' property value in the marriage 'market' actually counted in terms of assessing the damage done by raping them.

I think this is horrific. Not just because virginity should have no bearing on the value of a girl or woman, but also because implicitly it seems to support the notion that underlay the belief of the Rotherham rapists that white girls were 'trash' who could be abused freely because they were already devalued. Like it's OK to rape white girls because they have no trading value.

I get that feminism coexists quite uneasily with cultural diversity, and this is a very difficult area to navigate, but really feel like this needs a feminist response.

I'm pretty sure that a judge would take into account any culture like a strict Catholic culture and the wider implications the same as s/he has done in this case.

Equality isn't giving everyone the same when they don't have the same starting point. But then again it's quite easy to say that everyone should have the same when you have started off in a higher off place.

The heavier sentencing isn't to do with the fact she's Muslim it's to do with the wider implications on her life now.

Or it could be nothing to do with her religion or culture it could be because the attacker has previous for it and they haven't been able to find him guilty yet so they've come down harder.

That's how they determine sentencing, not every burglar gets the same sentence.

I don't think anyone is trying to deny the fact that there may be culturally specific suffering experienced by women from particular minorities who have been raped. But I think the principle still stands, that rape victims must be seen as equal in the eyes of the law, and this ruling runs counter to that.

Yes it's not just horrific because it places the horrific experience of rape second to the value placed on virginity – but because it identifies the culturally defined "future" a girl can expect if she hasn't been raped, as having some kind of preferential value.

The only thing "better" about being expected to marry into your own religion/community as a pristine virgin according to your parents' wishes, is that it's culturally condoned. Objectively, it sucks. It's telling all Asian girls that that's what is best for them. But what if they want to marry someone else, or have sex before marriage (as is their legal right), or are gay, or would rather spend their life single and celibate?

Oh yes that would mean they were actually individual human beings with an independent right to be who they like. Can't have that can we.

The whole thing stinks, it's wrong on so many levels, insulting to both white and Asian women, and by extension to all women.

BrandNew - all victims of rape and sexual assault deserve to be seen as individuals and anything that minimises or lessens the effect on some victims because of their ethnicity cannot be right.

Would you say that, because I am not a virgin, being raped would cause me less emotional and psychological damage than it would cause a virgin? Would my pain be worse than someone who has had more sexual partners than me?

I think every victim's pain is unique and terrible, and to look at one group and say 'your pain is less than their pain' - that is a vile thing for the judge to say, and I am appalled that anyone would defend unequal treatment.

When you talk of white supremacy, are you suggesting that white victims of rape and sexual assault are responsible for, and should pay the price for, what has been done to other ethnic groups? that's like saying inequality is fine if it punishes historical wrongs or even current ones. Would,you say that to a white rape victim's face? "You don't deserve true justice because of what white people have done to other races."

Its a sinister twisted macabre version of the Madonna/whore complex

Exactly. We should challenge any assessment of the harm done by rape that's based on the idea that rape is bad mainly because it reduces women's value to men as marriageable property. Especially if that assessment carries the force of a judicial ruling.

Signed petition.

Yes it's basically saying "Asian community, we want to show how right on we are by honouring your traditions even if they are misogynistic narrow-minded bigotry. Individual rape victim, well you're a women so this isn't about how you feel. Your value has been defined by your community's and potential future husband's attitude to virginity, not by you, an individual who has endured a rape."

signed and shared

thank you for creating this petition OP.

Rape is criminal because it's an horrific violation of an individual woman. Not because it reduces her trading value to other men.

So fucking wrong

& yes, thank you so much for creating the petition OTheHugeManatee.
Great work.

Signed and shared - this is rage worthy.

Particularly when it's rape. Imagine. A man rapes you and then - if he is punished at all - a judge factors in how much you're now worth to other men and if they'll be less likely to want you.

Exactly, and it is saying to women "and it is right and respectable that that is how you are valued".

No. All women should have equal value, to each other and to men, in the eyes of the law, on the basis of being an individual human being.

We can only take at face value the reasons the judges clearly stated, in the trial and then the appeal, rather than assume they are lying.

Aggravating circumstances that affect sentence are always something the criminal has done to aggravate his crime, not something the family and community of the victim have done, or are expected to do, to the victim.

To compare, if you look at murder, the law does not treat you more or less leniently depending on the culture of who you murdered and how important the murder was to the mores of their community. It says a life is a life is a life. Imagine if a judge said "I'm giving you a heavier sentence because you murdered a Welsh person, and Welsh people are more bothered about losing their loved ones."

Fucking outrageous.

^^ OTheHugeManatee

We own our bodies. We are not to be bought and sold, like used cars, or scrapped as worthless junk.

And ANOTHER thing. It's racist cultural stereotyping. You can be Asian, Muslim and still not adhere to the traditional cultural norms referred to here. Though that attitude to women as property that must not be despoiled very much does go on, it doesn't mean every Asian person/family is like that. Some are open-minded, prefer their daughter to make her own choices, recognise her rights in law to marry freely etc. and they are being grossly misrepresented.

BigChoc, impact on the victim does play a part in sentencing, I think, not just aggravating factors such as abduction alongside the rape.

Bosky, as I said upthread, I disagree with the judge.

In murder, the victim is dead: there can be no variance in impact on the victim.

I agree murder is a very different crime and the victim is dead. It was an analogy. The point is, however, this ruling isn't about the impact on the victim as an individual, but about the impact according to the expectations placed on her by others and their feelings about her value.

If what I described happened with a murder, it would be the exact same process.

Just...wow. It's not great for anyone's future prospects to get raped really is it?!

Bosky, here is the full review, which also mentions the direct impact on the girls with respect to their schooling (point 8) - it's not just about the marriage prospects, although these are included, IMO wrongly.

www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/r-v-ul-nasir-judgment.pdf

The girl suffering problems at school and shame over what happened could absolutely apply to any school-aged rape victim, of any culture.

To make it specifically about her culture and her father's worries about her "marriage prospects" is to officially approve that culture for placing shame and disapproval on her. It is also to imply that such attitudes are simply to be expected and accepted in the Asian community.

I don't deny that that attitude happens; it is just not the business of the law to distinguish between the importance of different girls' suffering on that basis.

I think he should've been in jail for way more than 7 years, one of those girls was 9, FFS.