Some of you have doubtless been following the politically correct brouhaha over defense against rape, sparked by Miss Nevada's comments about self-defense for women. Most of the liberal/progressive/feminist wing insisted that this was a terrible idea, and that the "rape culture" was to blame, and what was needed was "education for rapists" so that they wouldn't do it any more. (YGTBSM!!!)
Needless to say, such a ridiculous suggestion attracted multiple fiskings from the usual suspects. Blog buddy and best-selling author Larry Correia wrote one of his brilliant debunkings of the loony left, which attracted sturm und drang from them and hysterical laughter from those of us on his side. He was then attacked for being all sorts of things that he isn't, and responded in his usual delicate, shy, retiring manner (NOT!). Most recently, Michael Z. Williamson, another author buddy, has weighed in with some sound common sense on the subject.
My main problem with those who talk about a "rape culture" and blather on about the need for "education for rapists" (by which they mean any man, because in their eyes we're all at least potential - if not incipient - rapists by definition) is that they have no idea what they're talking about. Their world view isn't grounded in reality, but in some kooky moonbattish perspective that appears to stem from the same universe where unicorn farts generate power. The real world simply isn't the way they want to see it - but they can't and won't accept that. If you try to point out to them that this is the case, they scream blue murder and accuse you of sexism, political incorrectness and anything else they can think of.
To my great sorrow, I know far more about rape than most people. I've written about certain aspects of that experience in my memoir, on this blog, and elsewhere. Let me cite a few instances. First, from my book 'Walls, Wire, Bars and Souls', a memoir of my time as a prison chaplain:
What else but evil personified can explain the actions of some of the hard-core criminals inside prison walls? Take, for example, the Central American drug lord who silenced a prospective witness by ordering the kidnapping, rape, torture and murder of his six-year-old daughter. He then had her broken, bloody, naked body nailed to the front door of the witness’s home, with a note thrust into her mouth promising the same treatment to his wife and their other three children unless he ‘forgot’ what he knew.
That's just one of the rapists to whom I had to try to minister inside prison walls. There must have been well over a hundred of them - probably several hundred. None of them would be interested in the slightest in any form of 'education' to make them less likely to rape.
Then there's the wholesale 'rape culture' encountered in Africa. Women there are widely regarded as chattels and possessions, first of their fathers, then of their husbands. They exist for the convenience of men, and have little opportunity to assert anything like their own rights or humanity. Even youth is no defense - child rape as a supposed 'cure for AIDS' is rampant throughout the continent. Do your own Internet search on the topic to find dozens of references.
I encountered that problem at first hand while working in South Africa's townships (which I described in general terms in several previous blog posts, including here and here), and in various African countries where I've worked. During my military service I came across a particularly egregious example of it, in the context of a greater atrocity. From an earlier article:
A village in an African nation was tucked out of the way in the bush. There were probably a hundred or more people living there - no-one knows for sure. The inhabitants wanted only to tend their crops and herds, eking out a subsistence existence in the harsh terrain of Africa. Unfortunately, their country became one of the many battlegrounds of the Cold War. The Soviet Union and its surrogates trained and equipped guerrilla movements, and in response the United States and its allies did the same. These movements fought one another in bloody conflicts across the face of that nation.
The village was visited one day by representatives of a pro-Western guerrilla movement. They paraded the residents, forced them to listen to hours of propaganda, stole food and other supplies they needed, and 'conscripted' several of the young men to join their ranks as porters for the stolen supplies. Those selected had no choice in the matter, of course; it was obey, or die. They duly trekked off into the bush with their new masters.
A week or so later, troops from another guerrilla movement arrived. This was a pro-Communist movement, now ruling the country (with substantial assistance from Soviet surrogate forces) after the withdrawal of the former colonial power. They were enraged to find that the villagers had 'given supplies' and 'provided recruits' to their enemy (even though both had been taken at the point of a gun). They decided to punish the entire village.
The result was an atrocity of the grossest kind. Many of the villagers - particularly the men - were shot out of hand, or beaten to death. The women and children must have wished for such a fate before they died. They were raped, beaten and abused. After over 24 hours of this treatment, the government troops took the survivors - mostly women and children - and impaled them on sharpened stakes, set into the thorn boma rigged up as a perimeter fence around the village. They drove off, leaving their still-living victims to die, perched in the extremity of agony atop the sticks driven deep into their entrails.
An Army patrol from another nation arrived at the village a day later. They wouldn't normally have gone there, but they'd seen the smoke of burning huts the day before, and cautiously came to investigate. They were in the area because their country had become involved in the conflict, supporting pro-Western forces (as did the United States, during those years). The patrol was aghast beyond speech at what they found. Those villagers still alive were hanging on their stakes, moaning, crying out, begging for help. All around them lay the bodies of those fortunate enough to have been killed before they could be impaled. Women, adolescents, even small children wriggled, screamed and begged for mercy atop their stakes. Right next to them, the vultures and jackals feasted on the dead - even, sometimes, on those still alive, who were too weak to defend themselves.
The patrol was helpless. They had only basic first-aid-type medications available; the nearest hospital was hundreds of miles away; there were no ambulances or other vehicles to take the injured there; and even if there had been, how does one remove a stake driven up through the rectum and anus into someone's bowels and internal organs? How could anything be done without causing such unspeakable agony that it would torture the victim beyond endurance? And even if one managed to do so, how could the victim then be moved? They had no anesthetics to numb the pain of being bounced around in the back of a truck, or antibiotics to control the infections that had already set in.
There was only one gift that patrol could give the suffering victims . . . and they gave it. Shots rang out, one by one, as those impaled on the stakes were given the final mercy of a swift, painless death. This was no atrocity - it was the kindest, the only, thing that could be done under the circumstances. Strong men wept bitterly as they struggled against their emotions, lined up their sights on a woman or child, and pulled the trigger. When the last victim was still and silent, they gathered up the bodies, deepened an existing hollow in the ground, and buried them. One of the patrol read from a dirty, worn, pocket-size New Testament and intoned a brief prayer over the grave as the others stood around silently.
They never knew the names of a single one of those they buried. They left behind them a heap of earth, surmounted by a roughly-fastened wooden cross, in the midst of the burned thatch huts of the village. Nature would ensure that within a year or two, all traces of the village would have disappeared. The bush would take over again. The cross would be eaten by termites before long, and the earth would flatten out over time. In two or three years it would become just another low mound in the African bush, with no hint as to what lay beneath it. Today, it's doubtless long forgotten by everyone except the members of that patrol - and, perhaps (if any survived the civil war in that country), those few youths who were conscripted to carry the stolen supplies, at the start of this whole affair.
(Those who committed this atrocity aren't in a position to speak of their actions. That patrol, by common consent, suffered a 'communications breakdown' for a few days - just long enough to track the perpetrators, hunt them down, and deal with them. There were no survivors. When they got back to base, superior officers were quietly, verbally, informed of what had transpired, and all concerned agreed to let matters lie. After all, what would be achieved by anything else? No-one would care. This was just another village, in just another conflict in Africa - and life's always been very, very cheap in most of Africa. It still is, to this day.)
So, you see, I know a lot more about rape than those liberal/progressive/feminist idiots who've never experienced anything like it, and who think that even impaired consent (as in, being drunk) amounts to rape. They have no idea. Frankly, I hope and pray that they never will have any idea . . . but their bloviating stupidity is just too much. Education is the last thing that will stop this crime. If I run into one of those feminazis (of either sex) I know I'm going to find it very difficult not to get in their face and tell them to shut up and get the **** out of my way. Christ's remarks about the Pharisees are the mildest condemnation I can think of for them - and I can think of some a whole lot stronger than that.
The truth is not in them.
Peter
