The Mythology of Rape

Twenty-two suspects have been detained after a six-year-old girl was brutally raped and had her throat slit in New Delhi. The attack happened on Saturday in Badarpur district on the outskirts of the Indian capital. The incident came only days after the sexual assault of a five-year-old girl in the same city triggered a huge public outcry and calls for capital punishment for all rapists. Family members said the girl went to the public toilet for her daily bath but they were soon informed by locals she was lying in a pool of blood. "The girl used to go for a daily bath in that public toilet. She also went today," said Jitender Kumar Jha, a relative of the victim. "After some time people came to our house to tell us that the girl is lying in the toilet with injuries on her neck. "When we went, we saw her lying on the ground with a slit throat and she was naked." The police were quick to seal the crime scene and detained 22 suspects with past criminal records in the region. "We have rounded up 22 suspects. They are alcoholics and drug addicts, who have some past criminal record," said Ajay Chaudhary, a commissioner of police. "All of them are being questioned. Soon we will identify the culprit and he will be arrested." Severe neck injuries The girl was taken to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences trauma centre, where she underwent emergency surgery. Viplav Mishra, who operated on the victim, confirmed wounds to her genitalia and said her neck injuries were severe enough to confirm an attempt to murder the child. "The girl had an incised wound on her neck showing that someone tried to slit her throat with a sharp object," Mishra said. "It was a very deep wound, her wind pipe was just saved, we could see the windpipe and deep structure inside. "The neck muscle was also damaged. There were four to five incisions. "I had to take out a segment of skin to repair the damage. It was a long and tedious process. "Fortunately she has survived and I think that after the sexual assault, there was also an attempt to murder the child." Last December, public outrage over the fatal gang rape of a woman in New Delhi forced the government to pass a new, tougher law to punish sex crimes and hold police and hospital authorities more responsible. Brutal sex crimes are common in India, which has a population of 1.2 billion, and UNICEF says one in three rape victims in India are children. New Delhi alone has the highest number of sex crimes among major cities, with a rape reported on average every 18 hours, according to police figures.

Male Rape in the Hood


Male rape appears to be a growing concern in the hood coast to coast. Several months ago a friend in Philadelphia called saying men were being gang raped on the street in the City of Brotherly Love. Apparently the love between brothers has turned to wrath. My friend said gangs of men were assaulting men and raping them at will.

Of course this is a not too infrequent occurrence among the jail and prison population. Men are often raped by prison gangs and those men with the physical power to subdue the weaker brothers, or those not affiliated with a gang, or those in a rival gang. Apparently this ritual of violence has spilled over to the wider society.

Yesterday, a young brother in downtown Oakland told of male rape cases he was familiar with. He swore if he was raped the rapist would be a homicide victim. He said the rapists were difficult to recognize since they did not look gay but often had the demeanor of brothers on the down low or men who look straight but prefer the booty call of other men. The young man said his father called such men booty bandits!

But we are aware there is a significant degree of male rape in the workforce and in the US military, along with female rate estimated at 30% for women in the military. This matter reminds us of the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah, wherein the men came to Lot's house and demanded the angels inside. Lot offered his daughters but they insisted the prophet give up "the angels." They had no desire for his daughters. Shortly thereafter the town was destroyed by earthquake apparently for its iniquities.

We know rape is pandemic these days, most especially in war torn African nations such as the Congo, but also in the newly liberated South Africa where women are raped almost at will.
In the Congo women, girls, men and boys are victims of this act of violence.

Rape has always been a facet of war, usually the victors rape the vanquished. Most often in war, the men are killed and the women seized as the spoils or booty. Of course rape is about power and domination rather than any sexual craving. The rape of men or women is thus a power play to totally humiliate and destroy the dignity and humanity of the victim.

In the hood, male rape may also be tied to gang initiation, along with homicide. Not only can strangers fall victim to the initiate but he may be ordered to rape and/or kill his best friend to prove loyalty to the gang.

Is it not possible the hip hop fad of sagging pants may be a contributing factor to male rape in the hood since men walking about with their behinds showing is inviting to those predators seeking the male booty?

Rape seems a sign of the times, these days the world is not a pretty place but rather a war zone. Ray Charles called it the Danger Zone and said it was everywhere. I've said before, we must practice eternal vigilance, stay ever on the alert and aware of ones surroundings.
--Marvin X
4/10/11

OCTOBER 30, 2009

The recent rape of the young lady at Richmond High School reveals the urgency of my monograph The Mythology of Pussy. Yes, the title may be abhorrent and offensive to many, but the content is essential manhood and womanhood training that speaks directly to how youth can become socialized beyond the patriarchal mythology that is totally dysfunctional in the global village—a socialization that breeds animal and savage behavior in men and often women who are taught values of domination, ownership,violence, emotional and verbal abuse.

Rape is the ultimate expression of the patriarchal or male dominated society wherein the female has no value other than as a sexual animal that must serve men at every turn, willingly or unwillingly. So how can we be shocked when we know this society was founded upon rape, kidnapping, murder—the total exploitation of human beings. America is the place where women had their bellies cut open and lynched along with men during our enslavement.

Even as we speak, America is raping, torturing, murdering and exploiting poor people around the world, from Iraq to Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. She is endorsing such behavior throughout the Americas, in Mexico, Guatemala, and Columbia. All for the profit motive, for the glories of capitalism.

Yet, little Johnny is supposed to behave peacefully in the hood—he is supposed to act civilized in spite of his poverty, ignorance and disease. His ghetto life is the culture of violence—and it is merely a reflection of the larger society of violence—violence in the news, movies, books, sports, and yes, sex. America cannot tell little Johnny not to rape when she goes around the world raping!

But we cannot only blame America because such animal behavior is worldwide—even as I write, women, men and children are being raped in the Congo, Sudan and South Africa.
They were raped in the Balkans, Iraq and all wars throughout history. Women are called “the spoils of war” or “booty.” Every soldier knows women are the prize they get for killing “the enemy.”

The youth in Richmond were acting out the same behavior we did as teenagers when I grew up in Fresno. As teenagers, my friends used to gang rape every Sunday at the show—every Sunday girls were taken behind the movie screen while we sat eating popcorn and watched the white man kill Indians—and in our ignorance, some of us cheered the slaughter of the Native Americans, even while many of us had Native American blood in our veins. And if the girls were not gang raped behind the screen, they were raped on the train yard as we crossed the tracks going home to the projects. We called gang rape “pulling a train” on the girl. The boys lined up to wait their turn—just as in the Richmond case, nobody said stop, this is wrong, this is criminal, this is somebody’s sister. This was our culture, thus normal behavior. If you didn’t engage in this behavior you were considered a “punk.”

Gang rape was thus part of expressing manhood—it was the only mythology we knew. Violence was not only toward women, but toward other men as well. We went to the show to fight Mexicans because few whites came to our theatre—we wanted to fight the whites but the Mexicans were a reasonable facsimile. We went to the dance and concerts to fight Mexicans and brothers from “the country,” since we considered ourselves “city nigguhs.” Yes, we were city nigguhs who picked cotton, cut grapes and pitched watermelons almost as much as the so-called country nigguhs.

Violence against woman and men will not end until we deconstruct the mythology of the patriarchal or male dominated culture globally—rape is happening worldwide—it is an epidemic in South Africa. Even before the Richmond incident, a brother told me how the young women are raped in hotel rooms downtown Oakland. He pointed out to me the girls walking pass my outdoor classroom at 14th and Broadway—he said all of them have been given drugs in drinks and then raped.

As long as the mythology of world culture (including the religions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, African traditional religion, Buddhism, Hinduism, et al) promotes the domination of women, rape shall the ultimate expression. As long as men are taught women are chattel or personal property, rape will persist, along with domestic and partner violence, verbal and emotional violence.

We must understand rape has nothing to do with sex—rape is an act of violence! It is an expression of power, control, authority, domination. Religion perpetuates such violence by promoting male authority and ownership. The religious community must be prepared to make radical and revolutionary changes in its theology, mythology and ritual. It must rid its theology of women as chattel or personal property of men. We are descendants of slaves, yet our relationships are the embodiment of slavery with the resulting partner violence, verbal and emotional abuse.

The sad truth is that the religious community or leadership cannot advocate changing traditional values because to do so would decrease the power of leadership, a leadership that is often guilty of the same said violence, rape, domination and exploitation of females—and often males!

The only solution is radical and revolutionary manhood and womanhood rites of passage, wherein young men and women evolve to see themselves as spiritual beings in human form. I will end with a quote from a poem by Phavia Kujichagulia, “If you think I am just a physical thing, wait til you see the spiritual power I bring.”

I encourage the reader to obtain a copy of my Mythology of Pussy: A Manual for Manhood and Womanhood Rites of Passage. Go to www.marvinxwrites.blogspot.com.
I just returned from a national tour promoting this monograph—I dropped seeds in Texas,
Louisiana, Mississippi, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Newark, NJ, and Harlem, NY. It is indeed sad to return home to the Bay Area and learn of the incident in Richmond. We must stand up from animal to divine—from bestiality to spirituality—there is no other way! –Marvin X

Rape and the Egyptian Revolution

“Sometimes,” said Adel Abdel Maqsoud Afifi, a police general, lawmaker and ultraconservative Islamist, “a girl contributes 100 percent to her own raping when she puts herself in these conditions.”

The increase in sexual assaults over the last two years has set off a new battle over who is to blame, and the debate has become a stark and painful illustration of the convulsions racking Egypt as it tries to reinvent itself.

Under President Hosni Mubarak, the omnipresent police kept sexual assault out of the public squares and the public eye. But since Mr. Mubarak’s exit in 2011, the withdrawal of the security forces has allowed sexual assault to explode into the open, terrorizing Egyptian women.

Women, though, have also taken advantage of another aspect of the breakdown in authority — by speaking out through the newly aggressive news media, defying social taboos to demand attention for a problem the old government often denied. At the same time, some Islamist elected officials have used their new positions to vent some of the most patriarchal impulses in Egypt’s traditional culture and a deep hostility to women’s participation in politics.

The female victims, these officials declared, had invited the attacks by participating in public protests. “How do they ask the Ministry of Interior to protect a woman when she stands among men?” Reda Saleh Al al-Hefnawi, a lawmaker from the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party, asked at a parliamentary meeting on the issue.

The revolution initially promised to reopen public space to women. Men and women demonstrated together in Tahrir Square peacefully during the heady 18 days and nights that led to the ouster of Mr. Mubarak. But within minutes of his departure the threat re-emerged in a group attack on the CBS News correspondent Lara Logan. There are no official statistics on women attacked — partly because few women report offenses — but all acknowledge that the attacks have grown bolder and more violent.

By the second anniversary of the revolution, on Jan. 25, the symbolic core of the revolution — Tahrir Square — had become a no-go zone for women, especially after dark.

During a demonstration that day against the new Islamist-led government, an extraordinary wave of sexual assaults — at least 18 confirmed by human rights groups, and more, according to Egypt’s semiofficial National Council of Women — shocked the country, drawing public attention from President Mohamed Morsi and Western diplomats.

Hania Moheeb, 42, a journalist, was one of the first victims to speak out about her experience that day. In a television interview, she recounted how a group of men had surrounded her, stripped off her clothes and violated her for three quarters of an hour. The men all shouted that they were trying to rescue her, Ms. Moheeb recalled, and by the time an ambulance arrived she could no longer differentiate her assailants from defenders.

To alleviate the social stigma usually attached to sexual assault victims in Egypt’s conservative culture, her husband, Dr. Sherif Al Kerdani, appeared alongside her.

“My wife did nothing wrong,” Dr. Kerdani said.

In the 18 confirmed attacks that day, six women were hospitalized, according to interviews conducted by human rights groups. One woman was stabbed in her genitals, and another required a hysterectomy.

In the aftermath, victims of other sexual assaults around Tahrir Square over the last two years have come forward as well. “When I see Mohamed Mahmoud Street on television from home, my hand automatically grabs my pants,” Yasmine Al Baramawy said in a television interview, recalling her own attack last November.

She and a friend were each surrounded by two separate rings of attackers, she said. Some claimed to be protecting her from others but joined in the attack. They used knives to cut most of the clothes off her body and then pinned her half-naked to the hood of a car. And they continued to torment her on a slow, hourlong drive to a nearby neighborhood, where, she said, residents finally interceded to rescue her.

“They told people I had a bomb on my abdomen to stop anybody from rescuing me,” Ms. Baramawy said.

The attacks have underscored the failure of the Morsi government, with its links to the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, to restore social order. The comments by the president’s Islamist allies blaming the women have proved embarrassing.

Pakinam el-Sharkawy, the president’s political adviser and the highest-ranking woman in his administration, called such statements “completely unacceptable.”

She attributed the attacks to the general breakdown in security but also to the refusal of the protesters to allow the police into the square since the revolt against Mr. Mubarak. “The protesters insist on keeping security out of the square, even to regulate traffic,” she said.

On Sunday, the Morsi government convened a meeting of women to discuss plans for their advancement. So far, though, its most tangible measure to address the problem is draft legislation to criminalize sexual harassment.

But women’s rights advocates say the bill would do nothing to protect women from social attitudes and scorn that assault victims face in hospitals and police stations — not to mention in the Parliament — if they try to bring legal complaints.

Ms. Moheeb said in an interview that after she was attacked, nurses told her to keep silent in order to protect her reputation.

With police protection negligible, some women are taking their security into their own hands. At a recent march to call attention to the sexual attacks, several women held knives above their heads. “Don’t worry about me,” said Abeer Haridi, 40, a lawyer. “I’m armed.”

Members of the political elite, meanwhile, have appeared more concerned with blaming one another. The Muslim Brotherhood “plotted the sexual harassment in Tahrir Square” to intimidate the demonstrators, asserted Mohamed Abu Al Ghar, the president of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party.

The Muslim Brotherhood said opposition leaders “ignored the brutal party of harassment and rape” in the square, according to a column on the Brotherhood Web site. The rapes are “a disgrace on their foreheads,” the column declared.

Other Brotherhood lawmakers faulted protest organizers for failing to segregate the demonstrators by gender as the Islamists usually do.

Some ultraconservative Islamists, now a political power alongside the Brotherhood, condemned the women for speaking out at all.

“You see those women speaking like ogres, without shame, politeness, fear or even femininity,” declared a television preacher, Ahmed Abdullah, known as Sheik Abu Islam.

Such a woman is “like a demon,” he said, wondering why anyone should sympathize with those “naked” women who “went there to get raped.”

Ms. Moheeb called such remarks “scandalous” and accused Islamist lawmakers of being complicit.

“When ordinary people say such things, ignorance might be an excuse,” Ms. Moheeb said, “but when somebody in the legislature makes such comments, they’re encouraging the assailants.”