Fifty women raped every hour

[Estellesylvia]

In East Congo.

FIFTY WOMEN.

Honestly sometimes I just want to go and live on another planet.

Meanwhile in the UK liberal feminists are fighting to let men into women’s spaces and make sex work a valid career.

www.npr.org/2018/10/05/654675123/denis-mukwege-and-nadia-murad-win-nobel-peace-prize-for-fighting-sexual-violence

www.npr.org/2018/10/05/654675123/denis-mukwege-and-nadia-murad-win-nobel-peace-prize-for-fighting-sexual-violence

Bump!

I think sometimes liberal feminists have used rape in the Congo as a way of deflecting from what happens in the west too.
Eve ensler basically said it was so bad to hear of the men's crimes against women that it gave her cancer which is at the very least in extremely poor taste.

There are Congolese women's groups in the UK so it's important to be active around refugee and asylum seeker's rights in connection to this issue.

And Bradford rape crisis supports a lot of women from the Congo so it's worth donating to them. I certainly do when I can.

It's always good to see a Nobel Peace prize going where it's deserved.
I went to see leymah gbowee speak after she won hers and the way she spoke about women only groups coming together to process the trauma of wartime violence such as rape was very powerful.

Thanks Super I didn’t know about Bradford RC.

thanks both - can you believe I didn't know about this?
and yes, that other planet is looking tempting about now....

They don't really think that being in the sex trade is a valid career choice - if they did they'd be campaigning to get careers advisors at universities to add it to their list of suggestions for all those nice middle class students. They'd consider doing it themselves - men would be told to consider doing it as if it's a valid career choice it's irrelevant if you don't usually have sex with men, it's just a job.

They can't see - or maybe they can - that if it becomes a "career" it will be poor women on benefits who will suffer, it will be them who are forced into prostitution in order to collect their benefits. It certainly won't be those nice middle class students who have to do it.

Stop the world I want to get off.

Those poor women.
The only joy I can see in these reports is in the way these women come together to fight and heal.

There is a documentary on Netflix called The City of Joy, about the abuse in the Congo, the women on there are truly amazing.

inews.co.uk/news/education/swop-brighton-university-sex-workers-stall/
Sorry for the 'sex work' language but quite a high amount of students are commercially sexually exploited.

It's all heartbreaking and I just keep ploughing away with the feminism in the hope of making little bubbles of calm or righteous anger away from it all.

I work with a Congolese woman who researches the issue of rape as a weapon of war and how women support one another to recover.
There's a lot of important work happening but I feel like the issue of being 'illegal' or fearing prejudice against asylum seekers stops women from being more vocal about it within the uk

That’s awful Super. That women are afraid to speak up.

Sadly I fear the word ‘rape’ has lost much of its power to shock and doesn’t provoke the outrage it should. We see it every day in the news. It’s just something men do to women. It doesn’t convey the brutal, bloody, awful violence and pain of the act.

I agree. All sexual crimes, be it M/F, F/M, F/F, M/M, have lost their shock value and according to a private FB group of 20,000 DJs is something that's "part of going out at the weekend". My reply to that saw me removed from said group.

It's most disturbing to me just how integrated into society these abhorrent acts have become, and that attitudes such as the one I mentioned above are becoming so prevalent.

In the group I mentioned, I often spoke to a handful of music professionals from around the world. One was arrested and charged with sexual assault (he put his hand up her skirt). He received a fine and a suspended sentence. His attitude? "If I'd known I was gonna go through this shit I would've done something ""enjoyable"" (this still makes me nauseous) like rape her".

Makes me so angry. One of my children was subjected to sexual crime. The emotional scars I fear will never heal. Also, the trend of victim blaming appears to be getting worse (my local area, Ohio, Sydney as examples).

Finally, I know this is a feminist board, but attitudes towards males who are sexually assaulted range towards laughter, incredulity, disbelief and shunning. Dark ages stuff.

Thanks to you all for great postings and stepping up.

Funny how these Congolese women can't just identify out of being female and yet privileged white men can identify out of being male.

Jesus Simply,those attitudes are disgusting but sadly not surprising.

And absolutely- if only those women could just identify out of being women to stop being raped as that’s all womanhood is after all. An identity.