Rape is still a weapon. And sometimes the world will look away.

[hholiday]

A really excellent opinion piece by Nimco Ali, from The Five Foundation, which works to end FGM, is in today's Times. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/one-lesson-of-october-7-apparently-rape-isnt-always-rape-ccglsdhzl https://archive.ph/84yld#selection-1509.74-1509.137 She is drawing parallels between feminist campaigners' failures to acknowledge the rape and sexual violence against Jewish women on October 7 with the diminishing of FGM:

But, as a black woman who has spent years challenging the way violence against women is sometimes softened or excused in the name of culture or politics, I have seen this selectivity before. For years some activists insisted on framing FGM as a “cultural practice” that simply required understanding rather than calling it what it is: violence against girls.

There are also obvious parallels (which she doesn't go into) with Muslim rape gangs and crimes by men who say they are women - both also get downplayed/ ignored because it's not politically expedient, to the extent that in the BBC's reporting of male violence against a woman just this week, it can be impossible to tell who the man is.

So-called liberal feminist movements have really failed all women by their cowardice in the face of male violence by the 'wrong' kind of men - she makes this point so much better than me here:

For years activists have repeated the slogan “Believe women”, but principles mean nothing if they collapse when the victims are Jewish. If the rape of Israeli women can be denied, questioned or ignored because it is politically inconvenient, then every woman in every conflict zone is less safe.
Because the message to the world’s warlords and terrorists becomes clear. Rape is still a weapon. And sometimes the world will look away.

I wonder if women will ever recover from this, tbh - the ability just to name male violence, because if we can't name it, how can we ever challenge it? It feels like the world has taken a really depressing step back over this... be good to know what others think.

Multi-culturalism is bad for women and children, it always has been, the blind adoption of it by Omnicause Feminists has betrayed feminisms core objectives.

When the feminist's decided to make feminism intersectional, they threw the
concern's of women under the bus, in favour of promoting every other cause but the one they should have concentrated on.

I know how Israel treats women, I know how Hamas treats women, I know what side I'm on. I know what the Theocracy in Iran has being doing to women, I know what side I'm on. Any women who doesn't has no busy calling themselves a feminist.

Every time a man is convicted of a crime and he is referred to as 'she' in any article about it, it dilutes the fact that this is violence against women not by women.

What's worse is this crime against womenkind is mainly being pushed by women, it's self sabotage.

I wonder if women will ever recover from this, tbh

As do I, I'm having trouble seeing a way back from this considering we're not only fighting male dominance but female stupidity.

Agree. Intersectional feminism along with sex positive feminism have done a lot of damage.

.....because it reduces people to 'identities' within a fixed and systemic hierarchy. It is both very theoretical and detached from the everyday reality of human experience and relationships.

And if 'woman' is merely an identity then anyone who shares in that identity is also a woman...if one follows through with the logic. Although people are not quite so keen on people being able to identify into race.

October 7 was a turning point for me. Rape is not and will never be an act of resistance yet so many people turned a blind eye to what had happened because the victims were Israeli.

I remember trying to explain why I disliked intersectional feminism on here years ago. Posters were arguing with me about it and it was from a good place. I think how it was originally used by Crenshaw was right, it described a very specific problem black women in America faced, but it expanded to a nonsense degree. It became simultaneously expansive and reductive. I tried to point out that as an ethnic minority women with a high household income and a safe and happy home etc etc trying to suggest that I am more of a victim than say a white kid from a council este from a chaotic family is a bit insane. Yet thats where we are.

Fundamentally we either believe rights (and therefore responsibility) are universal or we don’t. Race (religion) grifters/activists rely on this oppression narrative to basically make a living, it’s very much connected to third worldism now. It’s a shame because a very serious point was lost to nonsense.

The weird thing now is crimes against you can be dismissed by your associations. So Iranian women who are raped and murdered by the IRCG can be ignored because protesters are seen as siding with “imperialists”. I guess though it was ever thus, I’m just surprised that in an age where we have so much information at hand that people don’t think “oooh those guys over there look like the bad guys”. It’s extraordinary to me we have people comfortably ensconed in the west who seem support religious facism.

Sorry thats a bit chaotic but I’ve been ruminating about this for a while, the utter minimisation of crimes against females. A crime against a child is no less because of her colour or the colour of the man who hurt her. Yet people get shitty sentences for saying stuff like “oh I didn’t know rape was wrong”. The sheer destruction wreaked on a child because she was subjected to the horror of FGM is no less because she’s black.

You can support a Palestinian homeland without denying rape. I think of the Israeli women who were raped and tortured and I also think of the Palestinian women around these men as well. What kind of monsters are they in their own homes? How many men go a-raping of a day and are just lovely and respectful husbands at home. If all you care about is Palestinians then surely that must have crossed your mind too.. or perhaps sexual violence against Palestinian women doesn’t count either unless it’s an Israeli who’s responsible?

I don’t get it tbh, I just don’t understand how you can ignore or deny it and still feel you are a righteous person.

I appreciate your thoughtful post @Bringemout

It helps to clarify some of my own thinking about being uncomfortable witnessing intersectionality being used a a kind of Top Trumps of privilege vs oppressed status. The most concerning aspect was how it was used to shut down discussion especially in relation to women and girls, but also wider geopolitics.

In discussion with colleagues, Palestine = always good guys and Israel = always bad guys. No breaking down of those constituent groups of people allowed. It is indisputable that Netanyahu and IDF have devastated and destroyed Gaza killing tens of thousands in response to 7th Oct. However, trying to discuss Hamas tactics of using their own wives and children as human shields or what kind of society a Hamas government would create for a Palestinian state (including for its women) doesn’t even get off the ground. Those kind of comments are verboten.

Great post.

Google anything to do with domestic or sexual violence in Gaza and you will get the distinct impression that it’s the Israelis fault. Theres careful avoidance of holding Palestinian men to account for their own behaviour, they manage not to use the word men at all in the article. If thats not an example of identity politics being insane I don’t know what is. If Dh and I were living under the strain they do in Gaza we’d probably argue more, he wouldn’t suddenly turn into a man who beats and rapes me.

http://www.mdgfund.org/story/striking-out-against-gender-based-violence-gaza

Read that, they are careful to start off with Israel. To me as someone from a minority community I fully understand that when women are oppressed in my community it is because of cultural mores. Not colonialism etc etc. It’s telling there that 37% of women identify domestic violence as the primary safety and security concern but only 2% would go to the police. I assume because the police would say it’s a family matter because domestic abuse is just tolerated.

Honour killings, FGM, rape within marriage, these are all seen as part of a mans right in a lot of the world. It doesn’t help women at all to ignore it so you can be anti-racist. We need to go back to universal values, if you wouldn’t want it for yourself or your own daughter then you should be able to say you wouldn’t want it for any woman.

I also think theres a push to accuse Israel of reproductive violence (i.e. poor access to healthcare) because it’s another plank in the genocide claim. But no-one wants to speak about the actual violence inflicted on women. Or the women who had to trade sex for aid in Gaza.

I simply cannot comprehend the willful blindness toward Oct 7th.

Dr. Orli Peter @orlipeter, psychologist who is helping Nova survivors, in an open letter to Mamdani's wife:

"Dear Ms. Rama Duwaji, You publicly liked social media posts describing the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas as “collective liberation.” You also placed a heart next to an Instagram post claiming that the reports of mass rapes on Oct. 7 were a “hoax.”

For the past two and a half years, I have been treating survivors of October 7, helping them slowly rebuild shattered lives and broken nervous systems. Some were suicidal. Others could barely speak.

There follows descriptions of effect on victims.
Some of the people sitting across from me in therapy had witnessed rapes and executions so brutal that their nervous systems simply shut down. Words stopped working.

These people did not simply survive war. They survived mass and socially sanctioned sadism. Subsequent investigations by journalists, forensic teams and international bodies documented widespread sexual violence that day.

x.com/i/status/2033169605472952709

"...socially sanctioned sadism."

The level of violence perpetrated by Hamas was inhumane and sickening, the attack was truly worthy of the word atrocity and yet the useful idiots in the west, especially the self-identifying feminists, continue to ignore that it happened, deny that it happened, and lie and say it didn't happen. 🤬

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire

The step in between must be to make you deny atrocities, this countries zombie army is one step away for committing atrocities. 🤮