MetaFilter posts tagged with violence and rape

Rape as a War Crime Against Your Own

davidstandaford — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 13:49:16 -0800

Iraq: "A woman suspected of recruiting more than 80 female suicide bombers has confessed to organising their rapes so she could later convince them that martyrdom was the only way to escape the shame."
Algeria: "Evil al-Qaeda chiefs are raping young male converts to shame them into becoming suicide bombers, it emerged yesterday. "

Life and death of a black and white

mrducts — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:47:48 -0800

Texas executes Mexican national who was denied consul visit. Jose Medellin, a Mexican national, was born in the border town of Nuevo Laredo, just across the Rio Grande river from Laredo,TX. Medellín moved to the US when he was 3 years of age, and was 18 years of age in June of 1993 when he participated in the gang rape and murder of Jennifer Ertman, 14 and Elizabeth Pena, 16 in Houston,Texas. He was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to death. In 2004, the International Court of Justice ruled that the Bush Administration must reconsider the case because Medellin was not informed of his right to contact Mexican consulate officials under the Vienna Convention. After the ruling, President Bush asserted authority under the Constitution and the various laws of the United States to order states to review the convictions and sentences of foreign nationals who had not been advised of their Vienna Convention rights. On March 25, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the arguments of the Bush Administration, and ruled that President Bush can't force Texas to reconsider, even if in violation of the International Court of Justice.[Previously]

Fritzl, all too nonfictional

Kattullus — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 10:29:25 -0800

The horrifying crimes of Joseph Fritzl shocked Austria and the world. Recently two essays explored Austrian literature in an attempt to understand what cultural conditions could foster such monstrosity. Nicholas Spice, in Up from the Cellar, explores the work of Nobel Prize laureate Elfriede Jelinek and her dissection of male violence. Ritchie Robertson searches for antecedents in Josef Fritzl's fictive forebears. [via The New Yorker's Book Bench]

Hearts of Darkness

sy — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 21:00:32 -0800

This article, about rape in the Eastern Congo, (nytimes, bugmenot here) makes for hard and disturbing, yet important, reading. In addition to the stories reported, one paragraph from the article stayed with me: "Many Congolese aid workers denied that the problem was cultural and insisted that the widespread rapes were not the product of something ingrained in the way men treated women in Congolese society. 'If that were the case, this would have showed up long ago,' said Wilhelmine Ntakebuka, who coordinates a sexual violence program in Bukavu." I understand the work these sentences are trying to do, allowing the Times to bear witness to rape without letting its readers draw easy conclusions about the "savagery" of distant, alien Africans. But I wonder if a better way to do this, though beyond the scope of a newspaper article, might have been to reflect on the ubiquity and ineradicability of violence in all times and places, from the Mongols to John Atchison. My hope is that, if we all hold the possibility for so much evil within us, that the places that seem most wretched must also hold the seeds of resilience and recovery.

Prison Rape

petsounds — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 19:46:01 -0800

Human Rights Watch indepth report on male rape in US prisons. "I've been sentenced for a D.U.I. offense. My 3rd one. When I first came to prison, I had no idea what to expect. Certainly none of this. I'm a tall white male, who unfortunately has a small amount of feminine characteristics. And very shy. These characteristics have got me raped so many times I have no more feelings physically. "

Watching is better than doing

MonkeySaltedNuts — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 08:33:58 -0800

Internet porn reduces rape. Violence on the silver screen reduces it in the streets.

Let me guess: don't ask, don't tell?

magullo — Thu, 26 Feb 2004 07:56:06 -0800

"No war comes without cost, but the cost should be born out of conflict with the enemy, and not because of egregious violations by some of our own troops"
Dozens of American servicewomen serving in the Gulf, Afghanistan and other regions report sexual misconduct, assaults and rapes by their colleagues.

Prostitute? or Sex Slave?

hhc5 — Fri, 23 Jan 2004 18:33:31 -0800

The Making of a Sex Slave (NY Times; reg. req) The next time you seek comfort in the arms of a working girl, ask yourself if she's lying down with you because she likes the money or sex, of if she's doing it because she's been kidnapped, beaten, raped, taken to a foreign country where she doesn't speak the language, and told that the corrupt local police will murder a member of her family if she tries to escape. Prostitution might be victimless crime, but the horrors described here certainly aren't; the problem is, how's a john with a conscience going to tell the difference? A (much) longer report, terrifying in its thoroughness, on a topic lightly touched on here.

Summer — Sun, 26 May 2002 03:51:24 -0800

Cannes film sickens audience It proved so shocking that 250 people walked out, some needing medical attention. Good lord.