I first read about this over at Pandagon and it's been haunting me for days.
Why has this not been the #1 story on the evening news?
How can this be happening? I'm horrified; I don't have anyting illuminating to say...

Why did Army doctors give the rape kit to KBR security? If this is all true, it has to be the most transparent, idiotic cover-up I have ever heard of. Hopefully whichever sympathetic guard gave her the phone will go one step further and tell what happenned.

I wonder, are the Army doctors standing behind their findings from the rape kit, or have their opinions waivered?

What were her attackers thinking would become of her, in that container? They didn't know the other guard would intervene.
Sounds like attempted murder to me.

Whats worse than the story itself are the bloggers' comments. If you click on the comments you can see the (presumable male) commenters call other commenters "man hating feminists" and one asserts that despite the fact that the victim was a working woman, she is still "marriable." Who ARE these people? If rape will be acceptable as long as it's tolerated then we have a long way to go.

More and more I find myself being drawn to the conclusion that rape has become one of those crimes that is technically illegal but nevertheless universally condoned, kind of like driving 10 miles over the speed limit. *sigh*

Even more horrifying is the apparent increase in incidents wherein the rape of a child (a crime most would consider reprehensible) is excused or condoned. It's almost as if now that it's more or less acceptable to rape women, there's a push to stretch the boundary line still further and include children as legitimate targets for rapists looking to get their non-con fix as well.

The thing that really leaves me steamed is that they're likely to get away with it. Halliburton has dumped their subsidiary, and much of the evidence has been destroyed.

I'm assuming that nobody can even dispute at this point that she was rescued from her employer while being held under armed guard against her will, since the state department has a record of that, at least.

A year or two back on Feministing, I took a lot of heat for writing that I thought there was merit in allowing the actions of a woman who stabbed a street catcaller, even if the force used was disproportionate to the threat (and having lost track of the case, I don't think I ever found out if it was, since there was some threat of rape involved).

I sit here in impotent rage; stories like this are the reason why. When a U.S. corporation can get away with gang-raping an employee, when even the rescuers are sufficiently complicit to turn over evidence to the perpetrators, I will not fault a woman who on the first indication of threat resorts to maximum available force.

I'm sure that statement will greatly disturb some people, but there it stands.

Wow, looks like retribution against the victim is not just for Saudi Arabia any more. True, the retribution isn't government-enforced, it's just government-ignored.

Excuse me while I go barf.

The rightwing slanderblogs are already starting on this woman. See http://minx.cc/?post=248956

The rightwing slanderblogs are already starting on this woman. See http://minx.cc/?post=248956

This is such a horrifying story. I first heard about it on Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night. I just found it on YouTube..

http://youtube.com/watch?v=yksWwImnNzk

As if this story did not already depress me enough. I just went to take a look at the gross rightwing site listed above. Oh dear lord that was a nasty view into the reason rapists are hardly ever convicted. They were calling Schizophrenia more common than rape and claiming gang rape was mostly made up. I left my two cents on that page and I don't think I want to check back for the abuse I will surely be given.

Zed, I'm with you. I've never stabbed anyone, or hit anyone for that matter, but I have a tendency to cuss men when they talk to me on the street. Many times I have felt guilty for "overreacting." And perhaps sometimes I have. But stories like this make me wonder what an average man is capable of. I am petite and hate conflict, but I will stand up to every 6 foot tall asshole that tries to intimidate me. Don't know if it'll make a difference in the world, but that's what I feel I have to do.

And, gosh, what a horrible situation to be in for this woman. My heart goes out to her. Sigh.

The "blame the victim" and "she's lying" mentalities on that right-wing blog are sickening.

This entire incident is sickening, especially if the army really DID hand off the rape kit to the employers of Ms. Jones' attackers. Not exactly a good call on their part.

Zed, I wasn't around when you posted about that issue, but I'm with you. In a just society, women wouldn't need to resort to violence to protect even their most basic right to walk down the street without being harassed. But we don't live in that society, and it's disgusting how little the law protects women. Like Vervain said, it seems pretty clear that rape these days might as well be legal. What are we supposed to do to make people fucking listen to us???

This is fucking sick. This is what men do when American laws no longer apply. That answers the question of how men would act torwards women if there werent American laws guarding our rights.

Zed,
I completetly agree with your self-defense perspective.If theres the threat of harm I believe you have the right to employ a lethal weapon. Thats why I'm for gun laws, how else would women protect themselves?

More and more I find myself being drawn to the conclusion that rape has become one of those crimes that is technically illegal but nevertheless universally condoned, kind of like driving 10 miles over the speed limit.
Vervain: That is a really good analogy (albeit a really sad, disturbing one).
This especially applies to forms of sexual assault that don't involve penis/vaginal penetration, such as groping, flashing, stalking, verbal harassment, etc and ESPECIALLY date rape.

The rightwing slanderblogs are already starting on this woman.

Ahhh, the Ringnutz. Sooooooooo predictable.

I just went to take a look at the gross rightwing site listed above. Oh dear lord that was a nasty view into the reason rapists are hardly ever convicted.

Yeah. Always a treat to see Th' Good Ole Boys come rushing out of the woodwork & link arms around some of their own. But then I don't expect much out of a heard of pigs but the grunts. I really hope something like what happened to Ms. Jones happens to THEM. Not to someone they care about, but to THEM personally. Maybe that will teach them the meaning of the words "rape" & "violation". Show me the button: I'll push it.

Zed, your comments bring to mind the case of Seven New Jersey Women who received jail terms for an altercation that ensued after a man attempted to sexually assault one of them.

"I really hope something like what happened to Ms. Jones happens to THEM. Not to someone they care about, but to THEM personally."

I certainly don't condone acts of violence like this against anyone. no matter how much they are horrible excuses for human beings. But I did want to add to this point. The sad thing is sexual assault probably HAS happened to someone they care about because it is so widespread. And it is so commonly the case that family and friends of the victim so often blame the victim themselves. So these jerks probably either don't know sexual assault happened to someone they care about because the survivor feared telling them, or they don't recognize sexual assault for what it is.

Relaxed attitudes about rape leads me to eventually take a class in a martial art. Its past time for women to retaliate against this b.s. I would not hesitate to knock out a man who attempted rape on me and then give him a few very hard kicks to the groin area to make sure he may never be able to do it again. If I go to jail so be it. Our justice system has failed. I am sure many of you has read about rape cases being persecuted the "correct" way and the rapist being let off on a technicality. Or best yet, a Republican presidential hopefully willingly letting loose a rapist, even AFTER a woman wrote to him warning he'll do it again.And, yes, the man set free by Huckabee did again commit rape.

Zed, I don't think that's a bad idea at all. Given the fact that a woman who's attacked by a man even when bystanders are around is very unlikely to receive any help at all (see the St. Paul, MN rape case, or the woman in England who had a seizure and died while bystanders mocked her and pissed on her) and that after being attacked there's almost zero chance of her attacker even being brought to trial, maximum force is really the only way to go. I say we make them feel as terrified and helpless as they've made us feel for the last 5,000 years if they want to be disrespectful.

One problem I see, however, is that women aren't TRAINED to use maximum force against other human beings. I don't mean trained like taking self-defense classes, but more along the lines of psychological grooming. I remember reading somewhere about a self-defense trainer who said that one of the most difficult things he faced with his female students was getting them to use their full force -- they just could not, psychologically, get themselves to unleash the full brunt of their force. So, first we have to train ourselves to NOT be afraid to hit, and hit HARD.

And then, of course, there's the matter of actually doing it -- I think in a clear cut case you could get a woman to employ force, but often it's not that simple. When I was beaten up and mugged, for instance, it happened so fast that it wouldn't have mattered whether I knew how to fight or had a weapon -- my attackers were on me before I even knew they were there. Another problem is that especially with sexual attacks, the attacker is often someone the victim knows, and in that situation it's damn hard to convince the victim to use force; while it's happening the victim will probably try to justify it in their minds, thinking they deserve it or that this couldn't REALLY be rape because someone they know and trust wouldn't do that. But when it's possible to retaliate, I say go all out on the fuckers. Increasingly, I'm beginning to fear that that's the only way this shit will ever stop.

"Its past time for women to retaliate against this b.s. I would not hesitate to knock out a man who attempted rape on me and then give him a few very hard kicks to the groin area to make sure he may never be able to do it again."

OTOH, even if he's left impotent he could still attack someone else with his hands (I've heard of people raping with rifles).

Meanwhile, here's some recent news on fighting back:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2007/12/after_being_fol.html

"A 25-year-old woman was followed off a Green Line trolley in Brookline early this morning and attacked by a man who tried to rape her, police said.

"The woman had been followed from the Government Center station to the stop at Brookline Hills. She fought the man off and ran to safety in a home on Cypress Street, said Captain John O'Leary of the Brookline Police Department..."

I understand the rage and despair stemming from this story but I have a question.

Some of the posters have advocated using maximum or lethal force if one is threatened, do you not see where this will lead? Past the emotional part to a legal one, will the lives of men depend upon whether or not a woman feels threatened?

I was assaulted once, a woman thought I was following her one evening as I was walking home from work, I'm sure it had something to do with the hour, my physical appearance and size but as I walked past her she maced me and ran away, using your logic could she have justified gunning me down? she obviously felt threatened.

That is a very specific example I gave but there are so many circumstances that are very unclear at the moment they take place, what should women do?

SarahMC

What were her attackers thinking would become of her, in that container

Shipping containers in Iraq are modified into something kindasorta like small trailers. A lot of people live in them, or at least sleep in them at night. They have minimal ventilation, electricity, a little furniture, etc.

Not that I would want to be locked up in one.

SarahMC

What were her attackers thinking would become of her, in that container

Shipping containers in Iraq are modified into something kindasorta like small trailers. A lot of people live in them, or at least sleep in them at night. They have minimal ventilation, electricity, a little furniture, etc.

Not that I would want to be locked up in one.

will the lives of men depend upon whether or not a woman feels threatened?

Well, these days, it often feels like the lives of women depend on whether or not a man feels like raping us. So that doesn't sound like some horrific dystopia to me; it sounds like the current situation as women live it. I guess men would have to negotiate that in the same way we women negotiate life these days.

EG,
So youre saying because women have cause to fear walking alone at night, men ought to as well?

Dananddanica,

The state of Florida recently legalized the use of lethal force to defend oneself from a perceived threat, even if the other person is unarmed and not physically touching you.

I'm unclear on the exact wording of the law, but I think the circumstances where it applies are A) if someone is trespassing on your property, you can shoot them on sight, and B) if someone invades your personal space to within a certain distance and you feel they pose a physical threat, you can pre-emtively defend yourself with force.

I think Texas may also have a similar law.

You may personally object to these laws, but I wanted to bring up the example to show that it's not as if we women are being given some sort of special accomodation that men are not (that's what your wording seemed to imply to me), or that the opinions expressed by the other commenters here are necessarily very far off from what is already legal in some places.

RE: "will the lives of men depend upon whether or not a woman feels threatened?"

--

YES! And that's rather the whole point. Isn't it?

Do you have a problem with women making these judgment calls?

RE: "So youre saying because women have cause to fear walking alone at night, men ought to as well?"

The ones who are threatening women ought to fear walking anywhere. Is that problematic for you?

Albino,
Good point, I remember when that Florida law was passed, people thought it would be like the wild west, as far as I know it has not become that way.

SmallTown,

It is problematic for me. I understand why laws such as the one albino cited were proposed and passed, the intent behind them is clear and good but their execution is murky. The issue for me is if people take self-defense to its pro-active extreme, how are we to know if they are in the right? People should and do have the right to protect themselves but to use the example I used in my original post: I was about 5 feet from this woman as I passed her, I'm fairly certain she did what she did because it was night, I was probably 1 foot taller, 150 pounds heavier and I have an appearance that would give a start to some people if they were to open their door to me.
She assaulted me based on her fears, can we debate if they were reasonable or not? What if she had killed me, justified? The main problem for me when you parse down the persons justification to threat is the issue of intent for the other party. A dead person will have a hard time proving their intent and a maimed one will have a hard case to make. I understand that this might be seen as a price to pay for a greater good and I also understand that the line between perceived threat and real threat can be a nanosecond. Thats what makes the issue so murky for me.

Its far simpled in the majority of cases I see in the news, robber on someones property, assault in progress or witnessing the assault of someone else. These are, I believe, the majority of instances that we hear about but the principle still stands for other circumstances, it is a sticky situation and one that cant be resolved simply.

because women have cause to fear walking alone at night, men ought to as well?

Actually, yes. Maybe then men would start taking women's lives seriously, and start policing themselves.

As I recall Zed's original point back on the thread he referenced earlier--once that I agreed with then and still agree with now--he pointed out that if more men feared that women would "go crazy" and knife or shoot them if threatened, that would make men think twice before indulging in a bit of street harrassment. And I think he's right. I recall being sexually harrassed on the street when I was around 16; when I turned around to tell the guy off, the teacher I was with yelled at me, saying "What if he had a gun?! What if he got violent! You should just ignore him." Even then I saw the essential injustice there--why wasn't he worried that I might have a gun or get violent? That kind of fear is used to keep women in line; if more men felt it, maybe they'd tell each other "Dude! Keep your mouth shut! What if she's one of those crazy bitches with a gun?"

I finally ran across an article about this in the MSM yesterday, and it conveniently left out the parts about the woman being both vaginally and anally raped, AND how she was held in a shipping container for 24 hrs without food & water.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/12/12/contactor.assault.ap/index.html?iref=newssearch

It really makes me wonder. At the risk of libel/slander, I'll decline to mention what exactly it makes me wonder.

Dananddanica,

We already have social constructs regarding self defense. You're creating boogeymen where there are none.

Given the choice between a raped woman or a dead man, I'll take the dead man everytime. Did I mention how much I enjoy jury duty?

And granola.

Dananddanica:

You represent pretty well the casualty case on the opposite side, and I can sympathize.

That said, if she had shot you, and I had been on the jury, unless someone could prove to me beyond a reasonable doubt that you were sufficiently nonthreatening in appearance that it was unreasonable of her to consider herself in danger, I would probably refuse to convict.

There will always be corner cases where someone innocent gets shafted; your case is substantially rarer than the case where the woman gets shafted because she is considered defenseless, so there is social interest in shifting the burden to the smaller percentage of the population.

It's unfortunate for people in your position, but I stand by the conclusion. My recommendation is that you learn to look less intimidating. This will likely work much better for you than women trying to look less 'sexy'.

I understand that this is in the minority of cases and this is not a female to male exclusive issue, it is in my mind dangerous to put the burden of proving to be "sufficiently nonthreatening" on the victim whether that victim be a man, woman, or child. it is always easier to look back at an event and judge than to experience it at the moment but whether it be a senior citizen scared by some young punks or a woman scared of a large man, shouldnt there be some cause given before maximum or lethal force is used?

To say that a dead man is better than a raped woman, that is quite the absolutist statement, are you saying that any person that does a rape of any kind is better off dead?

finally, to the original post, of course halliburton covers it up, there is simply too much money to be made and not nearly enough oversight, I work in that world and it is truly sickening how much can go on where there is literally no consequences.

"To say that a dead man is better than a raped woman, that is quite the absolutist statement, are you saying that any person that does a rape of any kind is better off dead?"

"any person that does a rape of any kind"? What? Rapists, you mean?

And "rape of any kind"? Are there good rapes out there that I am not aware of? Are you going to get into some sort of gray rape b.s.?

Yes, I would say that a dead RAPIST is better than a raped woman. I certainly wouldn't cry over it.

d--
Sorry you got maced but here are my thoughts:

Mace is almost always NON-lethal, so the threshhold justification for using it is lower. If she had a gun, she might have been less inclined to use it. On the other hand, had you been a real attacker, her reluctance to use deadly force might have doomed her to attack. It's a good argument for the carrying and ready use of mace. Not to be unsympathetic to you, but you did learn a lesson to do something in the future to help a woman feel less threatened by you. Like saying something non-threatening before you pass like "Good evening, excuse me, I'm just walking past." Undoubtedly in your case you didn't think a thing about it until you were maced. Now you will think about it ahead of the situation.

How reasonable the fear of imminent bodily harm was in the case of the use of deadly force in self defense will always be a question. There is often evidence beyond what the dead victim would have said which would shed light on whether or not the shooter was reasonable in her fear.

It is interesting to note that several posters here seem to accept the idea, prevalent among NRA members, that if more law-abiding citizens were carrying then the criminals would be less likely to attack them. I wonder if anyone has studied the effect of liberalized concealed weapon license laws on personal crimes like assault and battery or robbery?

"So youre saying because women have cause to fear walking alone at night, men ought to as well?"

Some people are justifiably angry about history, Dan, and I'm sorry to hear what happened to you. These laws don't mean there will be any significant rise in women attacking men. And if there somehow is an alarming increase in people mistakenly or falsely claiming self defense kills, such laws will be reconsidered. Here's one case I'll believe in the system. These laws are no license to go killing people at random.

I have seen posted elsewhere that someone was tired of women being expected to take all sorts of precautions to prevent rape, when it still happens anyway. Yes, it certainly is a burden to put on the victim, but that is how men and women need to be these days to avoid becoming victims. I need to watch out for my house, my family and myself as well. Simply locking doors and windows when we go out are not enough. I am still researching methods online and through book purchases, and will continue to "instruct" my family on better ways to stay safe. Interestingly enough, this will include letting my wife hit me with pepper spray to teach her how to use it. I have some just gathering dust. I want to know how it works myself.

So Dan, were your actions, just walking, unreasonable? No, of course not. But men can put as much effort into avoiding women walking alone as women put into avoiding suspicious men. Sounds perfectly fair to me. I've read advice for women to cross the street to avoid men walking behind them, and I've seen women do it. Men can cross the street to keep their dista