Syrian women who fled to Jordan tell of horrific rapes back home

I'm sorry you are decidedly pro American and an apologist for U.S.-backed war crimes. But this site also happens to claim to be anti-imperialist at the same time. We know who's been shit disturbing in Syria, Libya, and so on ad nauseum.

Pattern and Precedent

http://www.soaw.org/

Whether Guatemala, Syria, or Afghanistan,  it's the same shit just different eras.

Yes it is one long running conspiracy \i'm afraid. Your precious Uncle Sam was orchestrating war crimes since before the doctor and the madman went on the rampage in Vietnam and Cambodia.

U.S. backed Syrian Rebel Group supported by Al-Qaeda Affiliates

There is no such thing as "Al Qaeda" or invisible armies of darkness. That is conspiracy bullshit perpetrated by Uncle Sam who has run out of countries to smear and propagandize people into believing are "evil empire" nations.

Terrorists in Syria(and dozens of other countries since WW II) are but proxy fighters who are typically provided with aid and weapons, and special "training." It is not conspiracy theory now that Uncle Sam was propping up the Khmer Rouge as proxy fighters against the communists in Vietnam. Not according to presidential candidate John Kerry who admitted that his Green Berets were running guns for Pol Pot, the biggest mass murderer since Adolf Hitler. No conspiracy theory, and you can check out that Meet The Press quote from Kerry yourself.

The US-Al Qaeda Alliance: Bosnia, Kosovo and Now Libya. Washington’s On-Going Collusion with Terrorists

I apologize for this source of unAmerican activities. Peter Dale Scott is a former Canadian diplomat and retired professor of University of California. Apparently he's descended into conspiracy theory after having worked in foreign policy and having lived and worked in the USA. He is an incorrigible conspiracy theorist for sure. For sure.

Rape?

What they do at the SOA

They train them to rape(and torture and murder) socialists, social workers, social activists, human rights advocates, and yes, they even train soldiers of foreign militaries, paramilitaries and mercenaries for-hire to rape nuns!

Fidel, you've been TOLD not to post in the feminist forum because you abuse its mandate repeatedly with anti-feminist garbage. Since you seem so anxious to be suspended, you're getting your wish.

Apologies to all who had to read Fidel's fucking drivel in a place that should be safe for women.

I don't agree with Fidel on the specifics about 9-11, but I do agree with his analysis of how reporting about rape works in the mainstream media in North America, and I agree entirely with his first post in this thread and support it wholeheartedly.

No one in the mainstream media in the US gives a shit about rape until it's happening in a country they don't like.  Then it's used as propaganda to try and get the UN to agree to "intervene".  Rape happens everywhere.  In war, all sides engage in it, including ours when we "intervene" in disputes in other countries.

Ditto.

Fidel was not suspended for his analysis of media coverage of rape - during wartime or otherwise. It was his comment about the Feminist Forum being code for pro-imperialist, anti-communist man-hating. The latter warrants suspension. The former does not.

Fidel was suspended because he has been told not to post in the femism forum anymore because he can't respect its mandate. His post also reads as hostile toward the opening poster, rather than respectful of what the feminism forum represents, which is not a place for male posters to educate women on the "real politics" of the world and invalidate the affective response to certain world events. There are ways to introduce anti-imperialist politics to the FF, and Fidel's "Ban me" approach is not one of them.

Thanks for your comments, Michelle. I don't think people should be ridiculed, though, for flagging a post they perceive as hostile to their response to a pretty sensitive issue.

I'm only a sporadic poster these days, and Michelle and Rebecca are two of the people I come to see, FWIW.

Though I disagree with Michelle about Fidel's post. Whether or not he's correct, he's tone-deaf to context, and the whole thing with, "Yes but the Americans are worse" is nothing more than derailing.

Back OT: these stories make me feel helpless.

Esther wrote:

In any war it's always the women who suffer the most while having the least to do with the fighting.

Perhaps arming the women is the answer, deplorable though that may be.

I hear you, Rebecca.  I'm sorry if it sounded like I was being critical of the moderating - that certainly wasn't my intent.  Believe me, I know what it's like - you can't please everyone any of the time, and you constantly hear from the people you didn't please.  I don't agree with you about me being "one of the best" ones, unless you include everyone in the "one of" - everyone has a different style.  And there are lots of people who hated my moderating style, believe me!  I certainly don't miss moderating, not even a little bit.

I didn't see Fidel say anything about feminists being man-haters - I must have missed that part, and if I did, I'd have told him off.  I didn't like his preamble - I never have liked the whole defensive "I know you're going to ban me for saying this" crap - if you're going to say something, say it and take the consequences, don't pull that passive-aggressive shit.  Used to make me insane when I was moderating, and believe me, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy for the hapless poster when I was a mod too!  ;)

But the reason I had to say something about Fidel is because the only person in the thread up to the point of Fidel's second post here who actually bothered to even try to look at this issue from a broader, anti-imperialist point of view was Fidel. 

OathofStone, I acknowledge your mocking post about how this thread about a brutal rape in Syria is now about all these other issues, and I caught the implication that that's the dumbest thing ever, haha.  Yeah, haha, really stupid of any feminist to actually be able to hold more than one thought in her head at the same time and be able to relate them to each other.  It's feminism 101 to come to the understanding that feminism is related to and includes anti-racism, anti-colonialism, international relations (which always affect women somehow), and the understanding that rape happens everywhere and isn't the sole domain of some faceless barbarians from "over there somewhere" who really need to learn how to be civilized like us North Americans.

Sineed, the reason I don't think it's derailing, in THIS case, to say that the Americans are just as bad if not worse, is because the whole reason that story even reached us over here in Canada (while countless prison rapes here in North America don't) is because this story isn't about those Syrian women - it's about manufacturing consent for intervention in Syria.  And that is important from a feminist context, because we're being used, and our issues are being used, to try and get us to join a consensus that we should send in the troops.  And if we do send in the troops, there's going to be a whole lot more rape and torture happening by the "good guys from our side" when they get there.

The other reason I don't think it's off topic to discuss how bad Americans are about rape as warfare is because I would argue that Esther invited it right from her very first post, with her broad statement about how "in any war", women become victims.  Yes, that's true, and that opens the door to a broader discussion.

What should we have done in this thread?  What is the proper reaction to this story?  Take it completely out of context of what's happening on the international stage right now and cluck our tongues and say, "I agree!  Rape is bad!  Bad!  Those poor women!"

Yes, I think we all agree.  Rape is very bad, and what has happened to those women is awful.  Is that as far as we can go on this topic without being considered off topic?

The mainstream media will always manufacture consent for whatever their corporate owners feel is in their best interest. I highly doubt the West will intervene in Syria because Assad is secular. The West fears Islamist governments more than totalitarian dictatorships because, regardless of whether they are democratically elected or not, non-secular governments in the Middle East don't give a shit about the West. With the exception of Israel.

Rape is a tool of war. Is and always has been. Women, for the most part, maintain a fragile framework of social order during war. Demeaning and humiliating them is an effective way to destroy family structures and morale. Kill the men, gang rape and murder the women, and what you have left is a nation of orphaned children. Sierra Leone is a good example.

Thanks for posting that, Weltschmerz. I agree.

Sineed wrote:

Why does Esther have to frame her outrage around an explicitely anti-imperialist stance?

She doesn't. Not in the least. But all of us need to be sensitive as to whether our outrage has been manufactured by someone for anti-human aims. And everyone should have the right to point out, in an appropriate way, such things as: "Hey, that event is being publicized in a very specific way in order to whip up support for an invasion of Syria" - or, "Hey guess what, that event never happened, here's the evidence", or whatever.

I believe in "safe spaces" on babble. But I don't believe any forum can be "safe" for anti-woman or homophobic or racist or pro-imperialist discourse. There are many many other discussion boards which do have such safe spaces.

Rebecca West wrote:

Women need to talk about rape without political context. It's very difficult to do so on babble, because people who don't understand what rape does to the soul can't step outside their politics to discuss it outside the political context.

Rebecca West wrote:

Women need to talk about rape without political context. It's very difficult to do so on babble, because people who don't understand what rape does to the soul can't step outside their politics to discuss it outside the political context.

Rebecca West wrote:

Women need to talk about rape without political context. It's very difficult to do so on babble, because people who don't understand what rape does to the soul can't step outside their politics to discuss it outside the political context.

Rebecca West wrote:

Women need to talk about rape without political context. It's very difficult to do so on babble, because people who don't understand what rape does to the soul can't step outside their politics to discuss it outside the political context.

Quoted multiple times so that maybe some people can finally understand this.

Rebecca West wrote:

Women need to talk about rape without political context. It's very difficult to do so on babble, because people who don't understand what rape does to the soul can't step outside their politics to discuss it outside the political context.

Ex-fucking-actly (and not just women but men and children too that have been assaulted/abusd/trustshatterd)

The person who raped me was in a position of power and I believe it is partially why I have such an anti authoritarian side to my personality.  I thank Michelle for putting some context into a story that is meant to serve a certain agenda.  Trying to talk about rape in Syria with no context is like trying to talk about rape and saying don't talk about patriarchy because it is about the individual effect on the person who was assaulted.  IMO they are both important and virtually impossible to separate.  Rape is a tool of patriarchy and happens more often in areas of conflict and often by both sides since both sides are usually misogynist patriarchies. 

Esther Pinder wrote:

Thank you for man-splaining rape for us in the Feminism Forum.

Attacking a rape survivor is pretty harsh, don't you think?

Esther, I have generally agreed with your points but attacking a rape victim because he's male isn't called for. 

Kroptokin, thank you for sharing, and I understand your concerns. But the Assange threads demonstrate what Kara and I are on about. I have no trouble entertaining the possibility that Assange's rape charges may have been trumped up, but many of the men in that thread were instantly dismissing the possibility that the charges had substance, implying that anybody who thought otherwise was a dupe of the imperialist military industrial complex.

As Michelle's posts in this thread show, women are capable of comprehending that stirring up context-free outrage is a tool of manipulation, a method of shaping public opinion. We do get it. Yes, yes we do. We don't need guys telling us that we're dupes of the CIA or whatever because we are willing to entertain the idea that horrifying human rights' abuses including rapes are being perpetrated by enemies of America. It's just so knee-jerk tiresome.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

I think this article written by a women is enlightening and highlights the points Michelle has tried to make in this thread.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/from-afghanistan-to-syria-womens-rights-war...

I'm apparently not the right kind of woman to talk about rape here, because I generally need to talk about rape (and other issues of misogyny and oppression of women) WITH the political context.  So I'll bow out and leave it to those women who need to talk about it without political context.  I don't do depoliticized feminism very well anymore, nor do I think feminist issues should be separated from other issues of oppression such as anti-racism or global politics.  It's clearly a difference in philosophy that I seem to be out of step with here, and I can live with that.

It's not a discussion in a political context that's the problem. It's the higher burden of proof some babblers seem to require to believe allegations of rape when the perpetrators are perceived to be on the left. So if, say, American soldiers in Afghanistan are accused of rape, everyone here presumes guilt without question. But if Hugo Chavez was accused of rape, then the level of skepticism is high.

I have always had trouble with the term, "rape culture," because rape exists outside of culture. Women's allegations of rape are so often ignored and denigrated because these accusations are a challenge to the dominant culture. Priests don't rape because it's a violation of their vow of chastity. Scout leaders don't rape because that's a betrayal of the trust we put in them to take care of our children. Prominent community leaders don't rape because...I think you can see where I'm going with this.

Allowing that rape has happened forces people to admit to ugly truths. Rape allegations are an affront to the status quo, whatever the culture. In that reality lies the heart of the reasons why raped women have been treated so savagely all around the world.