Newspapers routinely skip mentioning e.g. 5,000 young adult males massacred by Boko Haram but ring alarm bells when 100 young women are kidnapped. I guess it sells better?
> “There's a fear among them that this is a zero-sum game; that there's a pre-defined cake and if you start talking about men, you're going to somehow eat a chunk of this cake that's taken them a long time to bake [for women]. I know for a fact that the people behind the report insisted the definition of rape be restricted to women," he says
That seems to be as much the source of the problem as the stigma itself. The relief agencies don’t want to acknowledge male rape because it goes against the narrative they have created.
Still a resounding "no". Demonizing relief agencies as being as bad as societal homophobia? You honestly think relief agencies are in it for the money and are minimizing male rape?
I personally believe that some charities / relief services in almost all areas are in it for the money.
Of course, my beliefs don't amount to anything other than researching who I personally give money to, but I do not find it far-fetched to believe that some agencies act in bad faith; I have a hard time aligning with the false memory syndrome foundation for example.
Being acquainted with people who volunteer in such relief agencies, I cannot tell you how disgusted I am to see their efforts denigrated as profit driven. They are typically rape victims themselves, each with their own individual stories — not just statistical females who have experienced statistical rape. The idea that they would not sympathize with male rape victims is just... appalling. Are you saying you know such people? Name names.
This oversimplifies the situation. An NGO can be profit-driven while the actual volunteers and workers who do much good are not.
Did you read the article? This is not an entirely uncommon situation, either. The corruption is often seen as a cost of doing business by interested parties with other priorities, something which all parties are usually generally aware. After a war (a scenario in which NGOs thrive) the existing social structure that has the capacity and organization to execute projects is often the winning faction, which as often as not didn't prevail by being virtuous.
To state that some relief agencies are - I'd say success-driven rather than profit-driven - is not an attack on the people in direct contact with, and assisting, victims. There is an unavoidable gap between volunteers at the forefront of relief efforts, and the people running the agency.
Like any other organization, relief agencies need funding, they need support from local government, they need positive publicity if they're to continue. The people doing those jobs are focused on those results, not the work those in the field are doing.
You asked for an example. About 20 years ago, my colleagues' three-year-old daughter was kidnapped from in front of her apartment house. She was a sweet, blue-eyed, blonde-haired child, and her search became a huge media frenzy: non-stop reporting as police followed lead after lead.
She started working with a local branch of a national missing children's organization. At her first meeting, the director told her that her daughter' disappearance was "the best thing that has happened to them" because the publicity pulled in so many donations.
He wasn't a bad person, or incident to get daughter; but his role was making the agency successful, and he evaluated things from that standpoint. I don't think that's at all unusual for these agencies.
I can't reply to your comment, rectang, so I hope this will suffice.
You will notice I did not call out anyone for denying help to make rape victims, merely that I believe bad actors exist in all facets of society. I by no means am putting down the hard work of the heroes who give their time to help people. I find your black and white response just as disgusting, to ignore that people can take positions of power over others and abuse them.
As for naming names, I have given an example of an organisation I find abhorrent.
The article explicitly mentions some who are concerned that putting a spotlight on male victims will take a chunk out of their piece of the cake. If a so-called relief agency is worried more about their market share than the absolute number of people they're helping, I'm not sure whether they should be called a relief agency at all.
For the individual victim, the rape is certainly a lot worse than what those agencies do.
However, at scale, agencies that try to censor information and reports about rape/violence other than male-on-female rape/violence might do a lot of harm regardless, be it through stigma, or be it through denying victims and future victims (preventative) information and help, or by getting government to marginalize these problems.
I remember some (women) associations campaigning/lobbying against "men's shelters", trying to get their funding cut or not allocated in the first place, or trying to get local governments to deny permits to operate such shelters. WTF.
>She is known for having started the first domestic violence shelter in the modern world, Chiswick Women's Aid, in 1971 [...] Pizzey has been the subject of death threats and boycotts because of her research into the claim that most domestic violence is reciprocal, and that women are equally capable of violence as men.
Of course David Brooks objects to "the personal is the political". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_personal_is_political He is a conservative who strives to limit debate to avoid unfavorable turf, and rape is an inconvenient subject for him. But rape happens, even if it's not fun for David Brooks to talk about.
@rectang, are you able to respond with an intelligent rebuttal of parent's point? That making politics a part of one's core identity makes it impossible to compromise, hence citizens in a heterogenous society should strive to minimize things that prevent compromise and co-existence? Or do you just have the ad-hominem that "Brooks is a conservative!!!"?
Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That just makes this place even worse, which is why they specifically ask you not to reply like this.
Would you please stop? There's nothing noble about this kind of internet battle. It's a petty pursuit that just damages the container here, which is fragile to begin with and all too easy to wreck. If you care about correcting the injustices of rape, no doubt there are many ways; smiting internet enemies isn't one.
I didn't say anything about the article. The trouble is that your comment was a step into ideological flamewar. Just look at the results it led to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21618367.
You singled out a provocative point about an inflammatory topic and then made it even more provocative by using ideological flamewar language ("the narrative they have created"). That's going the wrong way down a one-way street. When commenting here, try to step away from provocation, not further in!
>> A study of 6,000 concentration-camp inmates in Sarajevo found that 80% of men reported having been raped
I find this in particular hard to believe. Eastern Europe is notoriously homophobic, and was even more so back in the 90s. Genital torture is far more believable in this case. Outright rape (as in involuntary sexual act by another male or female) is not really believable at all, unless the definition of the act is extended to include torture.
Rape isn't necessarily an act of sexual desire for the rapist. In their mind, they wouldn't see themselves as homosexual, and a homophobic culture would really only see the victim as the one that's been made a homosexual by the act.
You don't understand. The very act of having sex with a man is so revolting to them, they would never do it. They do have prison male rape between inmates (same as the US), but that's about it. Remember: in a wartime situation like this, the perpetrators would have no shortage of targets of the opposite sex, and they do partake quite abundantly. A homophobe in particular is not going to rape a male in this situation, even if this inflicts an emotional scar.
Africa and other places, I don't know. But I'm pretty sure this would not happen in Yugoslavia.
> The very act of having sex with a man is so revolting to them, they would never do it.
As others have noted, the torture/humiliation angle might outweigh any other considerations.
There's also the trope going around from time to time that the biggest homophobes are closeted gays, but I don't know to what extent that is junk science.
> But I'm pretty sure this would not happen in Yugoslavia.
Up until the year 1990 or so, the whole world would have said exactly this sentence when asked about the possibility of civil war, genocide, or mass murder or rape of civilians in Yugoslavia. And yet...
I'm pretty sure that there are plenty of people alive right now in the former Yugoslavia who when asked would tell you that that murder and rape are wrong, yet who committed murder or rape during the war. They would probably try to explain that in wartime things are different, that you have to do them to avoid being ridiculed/punished/killed by your comrades, or that you get caught up in the moment or whatever. None of that means that they are innocent, of course. But in their own minds they can justify doing things that normally they would find revolting.
You'd be surprised. It is used as torture not for sexual gratification, a way to show dominance over the victim (as is often the case in "domestic"/"civilian" rapes too). The rapist often isn't considered a "homo" either, as in some cultures only the male who is the "woman" i.e. on the receiving end is considered the deviant and the "weak". And, of course, you can rape somebody with objects.
E.g. in Afghanistan it is quite common for powerful males to keep around underage male sex slaves too, and that apparently is not considered "deviant homosexuality" either, even tho adult same-sex relationships are (in Afghanistan).
Then, there are male prisoners of war who get raped, where the perpetrator if found out would face consequences due to homophobia as you say, but who is going to believe a POW and what POW is going to speak up in the first place while still interned in some camp?
And there are plenty of reports from Africa where family members were forced to rape each other or be killed, as a very evil way of humiliation and torture. That of course did not just men dads had to rape daughter and sons had to rape moms, but sons had to rape dads, and so on.
"Homophobic" is sometimes a problematic word. The emotion it describes is often less a sort of fear than a sort of hate. No one fears himself, but lots of people hate themselves. (One imagines this might be more common among those who torture prisoners of war.) So, the fact that Eastern European war criminals hate homosexuals does not prove that any particular Eastern European war criminals are not themselves homosexual.
Homophobia makes the rape way more believable ironically. If they are homophobic enough to think sex with men is the worst thing to happen to a man then guess who is more likely to think raping their enemies is a better way to hurt them?
And that is before the 'obviously a repressed closet case' aspects of virulent homophobes putting way too much thought and effort into 'fighting' something which doesn't affect them. Far more than the typical outgroup 'easy target' and 'scapegoat' maltreatment.
As additional info:
The same is going on in some of the CIA's secret prisons, according to whistleblowers and images. And many other kinds of torture. Also stuff going on in Saudi Arabia. Of course the CIA used "national security" to forbid any publicity on it. But you can find it on wikileaks or similar uncensored sites. The only way to bring this into the open, is by revoking the "national security" in cases of crimes and war-crimes.
I have also seen problems for women (and some men) in the US military. But that is a whole different chapter.
While you aren't wrong that the Saudi Arabian government tortures prisoners, you're phrasing implies that they are unique when in fact most authoritarian governments around the world torture people in their prisons.
>While you aren't wrong that the Saudi Arabian government tortures prisoners, you're phrasing implies that they are unique when in fact most authoritarian governments around the world torture people in their prisons.
Could you expand a bit on the significance of this? This seems like the kind of response that would be met with scorn if Saudi Arabia were substituted for certain other authoritarian governments in this sentence.
I've been grappling with it a bit myself, lately. When we are thinking about the human rights violations of a particular government or organization, is it important to consider them in context (similar to your statement, if I'm reading it correctly--i.e. such violations are not unique)? But then such attempts to place things in context are often met with accusations of whataboutism (which is sometimes the case in that "provision of context" is actually "attempt to deflect the conversation"). In other cases I'm not so sure.
I didn't at all intend to justify or excuse anything the Saudi Arabian government has done. Not uniquely despicable isn't a good look. I did worry that people not familiar with the issues who read the comment I replied to would come away with the impression that for a totalitarian country to torture is unusual.
It's completely valid to say "lots of countries torture, and let's focus on Saudi Arabia because they get a lot of US support so we as US citizens have more leverage over them than most countries". It's also completely valid to say "let's focus on Saudia Arabia because they're on the worse end and we need to start somewhere".
I wouldn't have left my comment there was a large discussion about Saudi abuses; I thought the comment was useful because it was in reply to a single offhand looking comment.
There is a reason GWB did not want the US to be recognize the International Criminal Court. And why Bill Clinton thought it was important: that was about making sure US remains the good guy despite being (during the 90-2020 period) the only superpower left. Instead, you guys chose the other path.
Saying “you guys” when talking to individual citizens (especially online) regarding actions of their government (especially when they were 3 decades ago) is unnecessarily antagonistic.
No who you’re reply to, but while I can see that it is a little antagonistic are you suggesting that citizens shouldn’t feel responsible for their government?
You do realise that the USA is supposed to have a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people”?
In my view there isn’t enough responsibility taken by US citizens for their government, certainly stemming from a lack of general citizen engagement in politics in the USA , so it might be actually helpful to remind people that their government is their responsibility.
Strawman, that is not what I am saying at all. Merely that in space meant to foster constructive conversation - which HN aims to be - ending a comment with "you guys chose to do X" when talking about controversial political decisions goes against the spirit of the space.
And if you really believe what you've written, feel free to disclose what government(s) you answer to and what you've personally done to right their wrongs.
Perhaps, I'm not that familiar with the "spirit" of HN, but that comment seemed pretty mild to me.
To your last sentence, first, yes I believe what I've written. I am an Australian citizen. I personally don't think I do enough to "right [our] wrongs", but that doesn't stop me believing in the principle of democratic responsibility. I recently have gone to a Climate Change protest, voted, and donated 10% of my salary to helping people who deserve help but aren't getting it from our government. Day-to-day I also avoid participating in activities I believe are wrong but which are made illegal/regulated in my society (eg. eating meat).
But again, the above is kinda besides the point. I believe in democratic responsibility so look first to question what I'm able to do rather than blaming some third-party, and wouldn't complain about "you guys chose..." phrasing.
It's hardly a "simple slogan". It's supposed to be the foundational ethos of a democracy. The fact that most people in the USA do not care enough to live by it is a big problem. Unfortunately it seems people like don't even believe in the ethos, so we're quite a long way from where Abe Lincoln wanted his country to be in this respect.
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
We the People. Not "We the currently elected and appointed politicians and bureaucrats."
The argument that 330+ million people should feel responsible for the outcomes of tens of thousands of elections they cannot vote in is absurd.
You might as well say that someone in Germany should take more responsibility for the actions of the Catalonian separatists. It is on its face ridiculous. There is literally nothing I can do about, say, the governor of a state not stepping down when he loses an election.
Even if we are, we may still not be responsible for the government's actions. The US is run by majority rule, so when something is decided, it doesn't necessarily reflect the will of the whole citizenry.
The US is not run by majority rule, the most obvious evidence for that is that the person who got to most votes in the last presidential election is not the president. If you want more evidence, look at the shape of some of the Congressional districts to see how politicians can pick their voters so that their election is a foregone conclusion.
The US has a representative government which the voters have influence on, but they don't get the final say.
>Even if we are, we may still not be responsible for the government's actions. The US is run by majority rule, so when something is decided, it doesn't necessarily reflect the will of the whole citizenry.
Even in a dictatorship the people are partially responsible for what they didn't stop from happening.
It's not like "I was in the minority, so I have no responsibility at all".
How do we feel about German citizens in the 30s who went on doing their business, knowing what was going on, and merely "disagreeing" with it?
At best they were cowards. At worst they were enablers...
Were the Jews, gays, gypsies spared and privileged because of their race, and carried on living as if nothing bad is going on, turning a blind eye to the atrocities?
Rather the opposite.
You're trying to make the "looking the other way" citizens into victims...
More accurate would be the objectively true statement: Most Americans were unaware of this and were not involved in the decision to do so in any way whatsoever.
Citizens in a democracy share responsibly for the actions of their government.
Heck, even citizens in an authoritarian regime share responsibly for its actions - if they didn't do anything to oppose them.
Merely disagreeing with the actions, or minding their own personal affairs, don't absolve of the responsibility.
We should think of them the same way we talk about those Germans who knew what was going on (re Jews, camps, etc) but kept their mouth shut, tended to their families and jobs, and pretended it was business as usual.
I do not think that living in a place makes you responsible for e.g. murders done by people you have never met who are in a different place (but aren’t so far away as to be a TOTALLY different place), no.
Horrific. Without wishing to in any way minimize the experience of women who are raped, it must be noted that at least the vagina is designed to be penetrated, while the anus is not. I would not be surprised therefore if men are therefore more easily injured and are potentially more likely to suffer long term health problems than women who experienced similar abuse.
This was perpetually going on within the Shia-Sunni turf war that happened during the US occupation of Iraq. We as a species are capable of some pretty horrible things.
No one has been prosecuted for the war crimes the CIA commited. Although some low-level army personnel were court martialed for the Abu-Gharib torture, none of the clearly complicit higher-ups were even indicted. In the case of the CIA’s torture program, it is clear that those at the highest levels of government sanctioned these war crimes. Bush, and those around him, should be in prison for their disgusting, shameful actions.
Yea, it was hard to pick up. Thanks for the pics!
War is bad. No one can control the CIA. I mean why should Bush be tried for war crimes? He wasn’t boos on the ground. Mine as well throw Obama in there too.
I mean if a soldier commits a crime, you want to arrest the president? I mean 9/11 happened. But that was fake right? Fake like the guardian?
No, I'm saying we created a power vacuum in which a lot of score-settling happened, and much of that score-settling was adjudicated by men raping other men.
No other species is so creative with regards to exploiting the nervous system to maximize suffering. Orcas and cats might play with their food, but they are pikers compared to humans. We are far and away the most savage and brutal animals ever to walk the face of the earth.
Perpetually?
It was going on for 1000+ years before we even thought about operations over there.
We are also a species of just making statements that are bologna.
Back in 2011 he cancelled a trip to switzerland after some human rights groups had threatened to have him arrested and tried if he ever set foot there.
Well they don't. Not sure if the swiss legal system is set up to prosecute criminals in universal jurisdiction. In germany around 2006, a private citizen, Wolfgang Kaleck filed a lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld and other criminals who perpetrated abu ghraib and guantamo, which the German government only barely managed to ignore because none of the targets of the lawsuit were actually on german soil at the time the suit was filed. I'm also curious to know if that ever went anywhere.
Actually they did one time when one of the ruthless generals of Algeria was got arrested in Switzerland because of two human rights peoples. but it was released.
I'd assume not considering he has left the US multiple times since his presidency and does not seem to be under arrest. There was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuala_Lumpur_War_Crimes_Commis... but if you read about that the connection to the questioned claim (and the claims of the linked commission) have dubious basis at best.
When you hear something that makes you ask whether or not it's true it's best to try to validate or invalidate it quickly rather than hold onto it. In this case a simple Google search saves a lot of assumption.
Has he gone to europe before or since he cancelled that trip to switzerland in 2011, when those lawyers were threatening to have him arrested and tried?
After having a good think about it, I do believe it would be unwise for bush jr to enter any country which can prosecute criminals in universal jurisdiction. It would just be really awkward for everyone if some savvy lawyer filed the right paperwork to get him arrested. Either bush is executed or imprisoned, hurting international relations, or the state running the investigation simply ignores its own laws and demonstrates to the world that the U.S. can torture with impunity. Neither scenario would be fun to muddle through. Much less risky for everyone if bush jr just hangs out in texas painting watercolors.
Maybe this is as good a place as any to mention a weird and confused use of the term 'homophobic'. I don't understand its use in certain places, so that's why I'm bringing it up.
It will often be used to describe aspects of a culture or belief system. Half the time it makes sense (i.e. throwing gays off roof tops) and the other half the time it doesn't make sense but still comports with the accepted definition (i.e. non-bigoted traditional gender role value systems).
If I google "phobic define", I get something about an extreme aversion or irrational fear. If I google "homophobic define", I get something about a mere dislike OR a prejudice.
To have a dislike for something is not sufficient for having an irrational fear or extreme aversion to something.
I don't think it matters particularly. But there is a tendancy for people to treat their negative attitude towards homosexually as an intellectual or moral position. This completey side steps their own behaviour which could be rude, bullying, abusive, invasive etc. There is simply no moral or intellectual justification for that behaviour regardless of what you feel or think. And using words like phobia reinforces that impression. It's a position that should be incomprehensible like being hostile to people with particular hair colour.
I agree that irrational fear, extreme aversion, discrimination not rooted in sincere religious/moral beliefs, and dislike simply for the sake of dislike should be incomprehensible.
This, however, is compatible with the uncontroversially true belief that disagreement outside of the conditions stated above exists.
Obviously, there is absolutely no sense in revising definitions such that they fail to account for the actual use of the terms. So, I get your point.
My point was rather that discrimination should be incomprehensible regardless of the moral or religious sincerity.
To borrow from Christianity we should love and forgive our neighbor. Or from a secular point of view we should respect the rights and dignity of individuals.
Of course that is a somewhat contraversial political opinion. And the way we speak and the words we us is also political motivated.
But then why should our use of words or their definitions need to be politically neutral? The uncharitable nature of words can be a feature. And really it is amazing how forgiving society has been of homophobes.
The word "homophobia" was derived, it's not a true phobia in the psychiatric sense.
If it were, then there would be people who become irrationally terrified when presented with groupings of things that are all the same.
It's more akin to a portmanteau. But that doesn't mean the phenomena it describes are not very real ones.
I would argue that homophobia and transphobia are both describing the same underlying phenomenon. But I also respect that there is fierce debate around that question.
I'd say that the underlying phenomenon is classic xenophobia. These are just specific cases of it, where the "foreign/different/alien" thing is someone's sexual or gender preference, or even opinion on the validity of those things. (EG it's possible for a homosexual to be anti-homosexuality: their tribal affiliation's homophobia is stronger than their personal sexual orientation. Then you get headlines about a "Wide Stance".)
109 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 113 ms ] threadIn that these are just the men who survived.
That seems to be as much the source of the problem as the stigma itself. The relief agencies don’t want to acknowledge male rape because it goes against the narrative they have created.
No.
The original rape is worse than anything the relief agency does.
Rape > social stigma == neglect by relief agencies
Still a resounding "no". Demonizing relief agencies as being as bad as societal homophobia? You honestly think relief agencies are in it for the money and are minimizing male rape?
Of course, my beliefs don't amount to anything other than researching who I personally give money to, but I do not find it far-fetched to believe that some agencies act in bad faith; I have a hard time aligning with the false memory syndrome foundation for example.
Did you read the article? This is not an entirely uncommon situation, either. The corruption is often seen as a cost of doing business by interested parties with other priorities, something which all parties are usually generally aware. After a war (a scenario in which NGOs thrive) the existing social structure that has the capacity and organization to execute projects is often the winning faction, which as often as not didn't prevail by being virtuous.
Like any other organization, relief agencies need funding, they need support from local government, they need positive publicity if they're to continue. The people doing those jobs are focused on those results, not the work those in the field are doing.
You asked for an example. About 20 years ago, my colleagues' three-year-old daughter was kidnapped from in front of her apartment house. She was a sweet, blue-eyed, blonde-haired child, and her search became a huge media frenzy: non-stop reporting as police followed lead after lead.
She started working with a local branch of a national missing children's organization. At her first meeting, the director told her that her daughter' disappearance was "the best thing that has happened to them" because the publicity pulled in so many donations.
He wasn't a bad person, or incident to get daughter; but his role was making the agency successful, and he evaluated things from that standpoint. I don't think that's at all unusual for these agencies.
You will notice I did not call out anyone for denying help to make rape victims, merely that I believe bad actors exist in all facets of society. I by no means am putting down the hard work of the heroes who give their time to help people. I find your black and white response just as disgusting, to ignore that people can take positions of power over others and abuse them.
As for naming names, I have given an example of an organisation I find abhorrent.
Because the relief agencies you accuse of predation contribute more towards human suffering than rapists? Keep fighting the good fight, hulahoof!
However, at scale, agencies that try to censor information and reports about rape/violence other than male-on-female rape/violence might do a lot of harm regardless, be it through stigma, or be it through denying victims and future victims (preventative) information and help, or by getting government to marginalize these problems.
I remember some (women) associations campaigning/lobbying against "men's shelters", trying to get their funding cut or not allocated in the first place, or trying to get local governments to deny permits to operate such shelters. WTF.
Citation needed.
But you might be interested to read about this lady: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Pizzey
>She is known for having started the first domestic violence shelter in the modern world, Chiswick Women's Aid, in 1971 [...] Pizzey has been the subject of death threats and boycotts because of her research into the claim that most domestic violence is reciprocal, and that women are equally capable of violence as men.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
You reacted to something the commenter didn't say, and have since been perpetuating a flamewar. We don't need that. Please don't.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Once politics becomes your ethnic or moral identity, it becomes impossible to compromise, because compromise becomes dishonor. - David Brooks
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
You singled out a provocative point about an inflammatory topic and then made it even more provocative by using ideological flamewar language ("the narrative they have created"). That's going the wrong way down a one-way street. When commenting here, try to step away from provocation, not further in!
I find this in particular hard to believe. Eastern Europe is notoriously homophobic, and was even more so back in the 90s. Genital torture is far more believable in this case. Outright rape (as in involuntary sexual act by another male or female) is not really believable at all, unless the definition of the act is extended to include torture.
Africa and other places, I don't know. But I'm pretty sure this would not happen in Yugoslavia.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/15/ugandan-mps-pr...
As others have noted, the torture/humiliation angle might outweigh any other considerations.
There's also the trope going around from time to time that the biggest homophobes are closeted gays, but I don't know to what extent that is junk science.
> But I'm pretty sure this would not happen in Yugoslavia.
Up until the year 1990 or so, the whole world would have said exactly this sentence when asked about the possibility of civil war, genocide, or mass murder or rape of civilians in Yugoslavia. And yet...
I'm pretty sure that there are plenty of people alive right now in the former Yugoslavia who when asked would tell you that that murder and rape are wrong, yet who committed murder or rape during the war. They would probably try to explain that in wartime things are different, that you have to do them to avoid being ridiculed/punished/killed by your comrades, or that you get caught up in the moment or whatever. None of that means that they are innocent, of course. But in their own minds they can justify doing things that normally they would find revolting.
You don't know what you're talking about. The Balkans have been unstable for a very long time.
E.g. in Afghanistan it is quite common for powerful males to keep around underage male sex slaves too, and that apparently is not considered "deviant homosexuality" either, even tho adult same-sex relationships are (in Afghanistan).
Then, there are male prisoners of war who get raped, where the perpetrator if found out would face consequences due to homophobia as you say, but who is going to believe a POW and what POW is going to speak up in the first place while still interned in some camp?
And there are plenty of reports from Africa where family members were forced to rape each other or be killed, as a very evil way of humiliation and torture. That of course did not just men dads had to rape daughter and sons had to rape moms, but sons had to rape dads, and so on.
And that is before the 'obviously a repressed closet case' aspects of virulent homophobes putting way too much thought and effort into 'fighting' something which doesn't affect them. Far more than the typical outgroup 'easy target' and 'scapegoat' maltreatment.
I have also seen problems for women (and some men) in the US military. But that is a whole different chapter.
While you aren't wrong that the Saudi Arabian government tortures prisoners, you're phrasing implies that they are unique when in fact most authoritarian governments around the world torture people in their prisons.
Could you expand a bit on the significance of this? This seems like the kind of response that would be met with scorn if Saudi Arabia were substituted for certain other authoritarian governments in this sentence.
I've been grappling with it a bit myself, lately. When we are thinking about the human rights violations of a particular government or organization, is it important to consider them in context (similar to your statement, if I'm reading it correctly--i.e. such violations are not unique)? But then such attempts to place things in context are often met with accusations of whataboutism (which is sometimes the case in that "provision of context" is actually "attempt to deflect the conversation"). In other cases I'm not so sure.
It's completely valid to say "lots of countries torture, and let's focus on Saudi Arabia because they get a lot of US support so we as US citizens have more leverage over them than most countries". It's also completely valid to say "let's focus on Saudia Arabia because they're on the worse end and we need to start somewhere".
I wouldn't have left my comment there was a large discussion about Saudi abuses; I thought the comment was useful because it was in reply to a single offhand looking comment.
You do realise that the USA is supposed to have a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people”?
In my view there isn’t enough responsibility taken by US citizens for their government, certainly stemming from a lack of general citizen engagement in politics in the USA , so it might be actually helpful to remind people that their government is their responsibility.
And if you really believe what you've written, feel free to disclose what government(s) you answer to and what you've personally done to right their wrongs.
To your last sentence, first, yes I believe what I've written. I am an Australian citizen. I personally don't think I do enough to "right [our] wrongs", but that doesn't stop me believing in the principle of democratic responsibility. I recently have gone to a Climate Change protest, voted, and donated 10% of my salary to helping people who deserve help but aren't getting it from our government. Day-to-day I also avoid participating in activities I believe are wrong but which are made illegal/regulated in my society (eg. eating meat).
But again, the above is kinda besides the point. I believe in democratic responsibility so look first to question what I'm able to do rather than blaming some third-party, and wouldn't complain about "you guys chose..." phrasing.
Oh come on. A simple slogan is hardly evidence that we're all individually and collectively responsible for the things our government does.
We the People. Not "We the currently elected and appointed politicians and bureaucrats."
You might as well say that someone in Germany should take more responsibility for the actions of the Catalonian separatists. It is on its face ridiculous. There is literally nothing I can do about, say, the governor of a state not stepping down when he loses an election.
The US has a representative government which the voters have influence on, but they don't get the final say.
Even in a dictatorship the people are partially responsible for what they didn't stop from happening.
It's not like "I was in the minority, so I have no responsibility at all".
How do we feel about German citizens in the 30s who went on doing their business, knowing what was going on, and merely "disagreeing" with it?
At best they were cowards. At worst they were enablers...
Rather the opposite.
You're trying to make the "looking the other way" citizens into victims...
Heck, even citizens in an authoritarian regime share responsibly for its actions - if they didn't do anything to oppose them.
Merely disagreeing with the actions, or minding their own personal affairs, don't absolve of the responsibility.
We should think of them the same way we talk about those Germans who knew what was going on (re Jews, camps, etc) but kept their mouth shut, tended to their families and jobs, and pretended it was business as usual.
But in any case, women also get anally raped.
Here’s one about the army that’s more graphic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisone...
No one has been prosecuted for the war crimes the CIA commited. Although some low-level army personnel were court martialed for the Abu-Gharib torture, none of the clearly complicit higher-ups were even indicted. In the case of the CIA’s torture program, it is clear that those at the highest levels of government sanctioned these war crimes. Bush, and those around him, should be in prison for their disgusting, shameful actions.
When you hear something that makes you ask whether or not it's true it's best to try to validate or invalidate it quickly rather than hold onto it. In this case a simple Google search saves a lot of assumption.
It will often be used to describe aspects of a culture or belief system. Half the time it makes sense (i.e. throwing gays off roof tops) and the other half the time it doesn't make sense but still comports with the accepted definition (i.e. non-bigoted traditional gender role value systems).
If I google "phobic define", I get something about an extreme aversion or irrational fear. If I google "homophobic define", I get something about a mere dislike OR a prejudice.
To have a dislike for something is not sufficient for having an irrational fear or extreme aversion to something.
This, however, is compatible with the uncontroversially true belief that disagreement outside of the conditions stated above exists.
Obviously, there is absolutely no sense in revising definitions such that they fail to account for the actual use of the terms. So, I get your point.
Of course that is a somewhat contraversial political opinion. And the way we speak and the words we us is also political motivated.
But then why should our use of words or their definitions need to be politically neutral? The uncharitable nature of words can be a feature. And really it is amazing how forgiving society has been of homophobes.
If it were, then there would be people who become irrationally terrified when presented with groupings of things that are all the same.
It's more akin to a portmanteau. But that doesn't mean the phenomena it describes are not very real ones.
I would argue that homophobia and transphobia are both describing the same underlying phenomenon. But I also respect that there is fierce debate around that question.