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Rape Versus Legitimate Rape

Apr 25, 2013
by Caroline Miller
Andrea Peterson, crimes against victims of rape, Free Thought Today, Janet Brazill, ThinkProgress
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A teenage girl killed herself, recently, after being gang raped at a party and her pictures broadcast across the internet. (“Rape Culture Claims Another Victim, by Andrea Peterson, ThinkProgress, 4/9/13 ) The Canadian authorities were unable to pursue the case because the girl, ashamed, didn’t tell her parents until days afterwards. By that time, viable evidence was lost. When the images of the rape became public, however, the girl was blamed by others and began receiving hate mail. Depressed by these condemnations, she killed herself. A similar fate befell a girl in California. After being gang raped. her pictures were distributed throughout the internet and like the Canadian victim, she, too, received hate mail and she, too, killed herself. http://news.yahoo.com/3-teens-arrested-assault-girls-suicide-024221519.html

What these two young women and others like them suffered is mindboggling in its breadth of brutality and cruelty. Equally appalling is the mindset that blames the victim and not the perpetrator. Unfortunately, this moral righteousness is more pervasive than we care to admit. In the last election, there were candidates seeking public office who attempted to draw a distinction between rape and “legitimate” rape. In order words, some women deserved what happened to them and others, maybe not.

Eradicating the mindset that blames women for the violence done to them will be difficult. For centuries, a man’s license to rape a women has been wrapped in religious authority. The Old Testament is a prime example:

 Numbers 31:17-18 – women and children are the spoils of war

Judges 5:30 – women and children are spoils of war.

Sammuel 12:11-14 – God gives David’s wives to his neighbors to rape

Genesis, Chapter 19 – Lot offers his virgin daughters to quell a mob (“Denying contraception is a new form of rape” by Janet Brazill, Free Thought Today, 4/13/ pg. 11)

 In this country, a man who makes prostitutes of his wife and children would go to jail. But the lingering sneer that pertains to victims of rape stems for an ancient way of thinking. It has no place in the 21 Century and should be rooted out.

Rape of Sabine Women

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Rape of Sabine Women by Nicolas Poussin courtesy of metmuseum.org)

 

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Contact Caroline at

carolinemiller11@yahoo.com

Portland, Oregon author Caroline Miller had distinguished careers as an educator, union president, elected official and artist/advocate.

Her play, Woman on the Scarlet Beast, was performed at the Post5 Theatre, Portland, OR, January/February 2015

Caroline published a serialized novelette, Marie Eau-Claire, on the website, The Colored Lens.  She also published the story Gustav Pavel,  a parable about ordinary lives, choice and alternate potential, on the website Fixional.co.

Caroline has published four novels

  • Ballet Noir
  • Trompe l’Oeil
  • Gothic Spring
  • Heart Land

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