No one here will ever know it simply because we do not have a diverse enough community for this to have come up, but I become just as enraged at people who respond to this by posting that we didn't pass the violence against women act so we have no room to talk. Responses like this always remind me of I guess about 10 years ago when a Yale feminist student was protesting against some sexist policy or other at Yale (and the policy was sexist, and i agreed with her, to be clear), and was asked why she didn't protest a male Muslim student's recent comments about women. And she refused. I have contempt for that.
I have equal contempt for the sexist man who makes rape jokes, trivializes rape, enforces rape culture, and is a rape apologist, who screams and rants about rape in other countries and demands that American feminists address it. He uses this to trivialize American feminism, American feminists, and violence against women in this and other western countries. To me, he is the woman mentioned above. She is him. Both have political agendas. The only difference is, she has probably never raped anybody...I cannot say the same for him.
I argue with women who express those views all of the time. None of them post here. I refuse to ever clap like a fucking monkey for male sexists here who demand I "denounce" something in another country. They can roundly go fuck themselves sideways.
When I see a rape and torture and murder like this, or a gang rape like the one in Ohio, or any act of violence like these, I am shaken inside. I cry. These women, all of them, are me. I am them. I feel that all Americans need to read "Dark End of the Street: Black women, Rape, and Resistance" which chronicles the systemic use of rape as a terrorist tactic in the apartheid south. It's important history to know because this history still echoes through to today, in every way. There is no way to read this book without crying many times, and feeling crumpled on the ground next to the victims. Because they are me, I am them.
This is the true feeling of sisterhood, that I believe is similar to what BAC means when he calls people here "brother". Few seem to understand it and many mock it "the sistahs" dripping with their hate. But that is what it is. It is not an ideology, it is not intellectual, it is not plotting against men...it is a feeling, not a thought. A feeling at the most visceral level that I am her and she is me.
And that is that! Now you can all carry on, as I have learned better than to argue with the digusting people here on this subject.
