******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. *****************************************************************
Everyone is conflating the issue of sexual violence against women with the question of the attackers' culture, their religion, immigration, etc. It has gotten to the point that one poster submitted an article penned by the leader of a notoriously anti-Muslim organization in the UK, and others on the list are explicitly making the issue about the attackers' (presumed) religious and ethnic backgrounds. How anyone -- including Marxists -- can turn the issue of a dark-skinned person engaging in rape in Germany into an issue of whether or not the religious beliefs of people in other parts of the world encourage rape is mindboggling and, by definition, xenophobic. It assumes that immigrant groups in any part of the world are simply extensions of the cultures they or their ancestors lived with in different contexts, ignoring the fact that immigrant communities are very much a part of the communities in which they live -- and, in cases like this, in which some of them carried out at least one rape. The fact that women are attacked anywhere by anyone is disgusting -- and as I pointed out, along with the articles that have been posted by Andrew and John Passant, that culture of rape has a long history in Germany alone, and in particular in party culture (Oktoberfest, fraternities, etc). Rapes may not happen at the same rate in every part of the world. But as far as what happened in Cologne, that kind of sexual violence -- gang rapes by party-goers -- is unfortunately infrequent in many parts of Europe and North America. Others seem to think that making this analogy is itself disrespectful to women and their experiences in some way. Why? That is exactly what happened here: party-goers decided to get drunk, rowdy, and rape-y. Somehow, the same terrible crimes that are pervasive in youth party culture were re-written into a story about hundreds of Arab men forming a horde, rampaging through the streets of Cologne raping every white woman in sight. That is, outside of being ridiculous, so obviously racist and reminiscent of the kinds of rumor-mongering about Africans in the United States, that I am astonished that others on the list would embrace such a narrative. I'm also surprised at how instinctively defensive others on the list have been. Merely pointing out that racist tropes are being used by the far-right to exaggerate this crime (from one rape and pervasive sexual harassment by thirty men into hundreds of rapes by thousands of men) is being conflated with defending or downplaying the crime itself. Rape is always wrong -- and so are racist and xenophobic explanations for rape culture. - Amith On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 10:55 AM, Lüko Willms <marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > ******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > ***************************************************************** > > on Sonntag, 10. Januar 2016 at 18:18, Dennis Brasky via Marxism wrote: > > > ANY man, whatever social class or ethnicity, that sexually attacks a > woman, > > must be severely dealt with. I'm open to a long jail sentence - or worse! > > like a life sentence or death for touching the buttock, for example? > > And please not, the reactionary campaign does not talk about ordinary > white men molesting women, or even raping. > > No, only "North African and Arab" men are being target. Not special > rights for women are being asked, but special punishments for Muslims. > > > Ditto for those involved in lynchings/pogroms against Muslims, or any > other > > oppressed nationality. > > Remember how sexual relations of Blacks with "white" women were a > central tenet of the US-american racist, and probably still is, and have > again and again been used as a pretext for lynching. > > A repetition of that is going on in Germany, and spreading world wide. > And you want to side with the lynch mobs? Since that is the question! > > The Ku Kux Klan is obviously still virulent, and found an echo among > some people writing on this list. > > > Cheers, > Lüko Willms > Frankfurt/Main, Germany > http://www.mlwerke.de > _________________________________________________________ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: > http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/amithrgupta%40gmail.com > _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
