On Jan 22, 2008 1:45 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >something happens to rub my nose in it. Like a friend of a friend > >mentioning that a good friend of his came out to his parents and was > >killed by his father for it. I don't think I could ever be completely > > Go a bit more west .. the middle east. Even worse there. > http://www.boycottdubai.org says it all - 16 year old french boy raped by > Emirati men, one of whom was HIV positive. And the authorities' first > reaction seems to have been to try prosecute the kid for homosexuality. The > police doctor who examined him was like "I know you are gay, you have a > very large anus". I'm familiar with the story, and frankly the whole "blame the victim" attitude doesn't seem so different from what appears to happen to women here when they complain about rape. For example the recent story of the young woman who was supposedly kidnapped and held in a guest house while being repeatedly raped. When she first complained to the police she was ignored. When the press got it the police claimed there was no report, then filed a report. Then they accused her of being a sex worker. Finally she withdrew the case, under speculation that one of the rapists was connected and had "fixed" things. I've seen other similar reports of police being unsympathetic to rapes, blaming the victim. In this case even if the "sex worker" smear wasn't made up as an excuse for police inaction it should be irrelevant. It doesn't matter if a person sometimes accepts money for sex, that doesn't mean that kidnapping them and forcing them to have sex isn't rape. It is! Yes, things are even worse in the gulf, but that doesn't make things good here. > Richard Burton (who translated the Kamasutra among other things) I have a complete set of the Burton "Thousand Nights and a Night." I like to tell people that the thin volume of "Arabian Nights" one sees as a kid are only the "clean" stories, and that Scheherezade did not entertain a horny king for three years with kiddie stories - the complete set is about four shelf feel long, and most of them are quite racy. I did get tired of navels "that could hold a dram of rare perfume" though - and I like curves! I consider Burton a role model, and curse the fact that so many of his papers were destroyed when he died. -- Charles
