By Race Hochdorf
Thursday, August 11, 2016
Over the past 16 years more than 1,400 young girls
between the ages of 12 and 16 living in Rotherham, England have been groomed
for sexual exploitation on an “industrial scale.” This according to social
workers, police officers, residents, and the victims themselves whom the Daily
Express recently interviewed. These 1,400 young girls have been the victims of
rape, torture, abduction, and forced prostitution—but that’s not even the worst
of the news. The worst? British
authorities have been knowingly letting it happen now for years.
The reason, while appalling, is unfortunately not
surprising: An independent inquiry into who was running these child sex rings
found that an overwhelming majority of the perpetrators were Pakistani men, and
that, because of this, authorities feared accusations of racism if they pursued
prosecution. Their fears aren’t entirely without foundation. The British Muslim
Youth (BMY) organization has openly encouraged British Muslims to “cut ties”
with authorities over what they perceive as an “unprecedented level” of
Islamophobia.
While an update of the independent inquiry suggests
authorities have slightly improved their response to these child sex abuse
allegations in Rotherham, social workers who have been working with victims
since the original report was released are openly questioning whether much has
changed. In addition to British authorities taking little action regarding this
shocking level of criminal activity within their communities, the media
coverage in the British and international press has been relatively sparse.
Hm, Victime Blame
Much?
Large-scale sex attacks by migrants from the Middle East
are not only happening in Britain. At a train station in Cologne, Germany on
New Year’s Eve as people gathered to celebrate the arrival of 2016, gangs of
North African and Middle Eastern men raped, beat, and groped more than a
thousand women. Unlike Rotherham, this occurrence did garner the world’s attention, but not in the way you would
expect.
The mayor of Cologne, Henriette Reker, suggested a “code
of conduct” for German women to help prevent future attacks by immigrant men
from Third World countries, which included: “dressing more conservatively,”
“keeping an arm’s length distance from strangers,” and “going out in groups.”
New Statesman ran an article titled “After Cologne, We Can’t Let The Bigots
Steal Feminism,” about how voicing feminist outrage over the attacks could wind
up helping “Islamophobes” spread hate, and the popular feminist website
Feministing called the media “unabashedly racist” for reporting the ethnicities
of the attackers.
Was I really reading the coverage right? Were these
allegedly liberal, feminist writers and politicians more concerned, in the
aftermath of this attack, with the feelings of the communities of the attackers
over the safety and dignity of the women who were harmed? Were they really
willing to do the thing they are so quick to chastise others for doing: victim
blame?
Let’s Try a
Comparison Here
Keeping these two terrible situations of sexual assault
happening in Europe in mind, let’s shift focus now to a rape case that occurred
in the United States and grabbed our attention a few months ago. It rocked even
the most diehard believers in the justice system. I’m speaking of course, about
the Stanford rape case.
When Brock Turner, a white college freshman, brutally
raped an unconscious woman behind a dumpster and only received a sentence of
six months in jail, the entire country—including me—was outraged. How could
there be such a gross miscarriage of justice? How could such a clear-cut case
of deliberate barbarism meet what was basically the judicial equivalent of a
“time out”?
The Internet reacted with anger and disbelief. A
Change.org petition that demanded the judge who presided over the trial be
recalled for his ruling garnered more than a million signatures (one of which
was mine). More than just the petition, the Internet did what it normally does
best when appalled: it preached.
This “preaching” took on the forms it normally takes—
Facebook statuses, tweets, hashtags, and think-pieces by celebrities and non-celebrities
alike. We needed to understand what had just happened. We needed to fathom the
unfathomable. Most importantly, we needed to make a diagnosis. A week after the
Stanford rape case became famous, a common consensus among cyberdom had at last
emerged: The West is a rape culture.
One Incident a
Rape Culture Makes; Yet Not 1,400?
The Stanford case was not simply a horrible fluke or a
standalone instance of injustice, feminists cried. It indicated a “systemic”
problem where Westerners blame victims of sexual assault and normalize male
sexual violence (particularly straight white male sexual violence). Open
letters to American fathers criticizing the way they raised their sons were
featured on sites like Mashable and CNN; popular mommy bloggers wrote several-paragraph-long
statuses about how “we need to talk about rape culture” and “we should teach
men not to rape instead of victim-blaming by teaching our daughters how to
‘avoid’ being raped.”
I saw athlete culture get criticized; white people—as a
group—got criticized, too. But the main lesson we were supposed to take away
from Stanford was that there’s a problem, particularly with the straight white
Western man, that needs fixing. There is something about straight white male
culture that is causing sexual assault, and we have an obligation to step up
and stop it—whatever “it” is.
While I was happy to see that people were outraged over a
young woman not receiving justice, I was also a little confused. I wondered
then why the reactions to the Cologne attacks had been so radically different
from the reactions to the Stanford case. Was the disparity just a fluke? With
the latest news coming out of Rotherham, I can’t say that it is.
While cries of “rape culture” were everywhere during
Stanford, they are nowhere to be heard in the discourse surrounding the scant
coverage of Rotherham, nor was it anywhere to be heard after the Cologne
attack— despite the fact that the men these gangs were comprised of did come from cultures that routinely
and systemically abuse women and
treat them as inferior.
We’re Apologizing
for Rape, People
This is a clear instance of what has gone wrong with
modern liberalism in the West. Cultural relativism has taken priority over the
rights of women, and only when white Western men (the pet favorite oppressor)
strike is there a “brave” call to action. Western feminism— and it seems social
justice warriors in general— are more concerned about “mansplaining” and
“manspreading” than they are about the ever-increasing threat of Islamism and
the glaringly obvious problem that arises when countries emphasize
multiculturalism but don’t equally emphasize assimilation.
The message seems clear: If a white guy in his home
country assaults a woman, it suggests an entire “rape culture” that needs to be
addressed. But when Muslim migrant men from Third world countries assault a
woman, it demonstrates our “lack of cultural sensitivity,” and to even remotely
suggest that elements in their culture and religion are a contributing factor
to their abuse of women is xenophobic and bigoted.
To conclude, the amount of “Western guilt” Birkenstock
liberals are peddling isn’t just astoundingly stupid, it’s also incredibly
dangerous. Liberalism needs to locate its balls, and start defending the values
of the Enlightenment (including women’s rights) rather than shrivel like
cowards in the face of a clash between barbarism and modernity.
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