Odysseys of George

I was bored and I switched on the idiot box to channel 70 of Astro. It was their Star News and they were talking about somebody’s comment on rape which is causing an uproar in Western Australia. It sounded religious or is it just a chance for people to make it a religious issue? Rape is rape - how can a crime be a religious issue? All religion forbids it - a sin! So again, an irresponsible act by some idiotic individual has managed to make the society react to it as a religious issue. I blame the media? Well it is too boring to just simply do a story spread without having a twist to it - religion - somebody has breach a forbidden act. Even an aethist who rapes would be given a religion to sensationalise news.

Then I make some calls and was sent a paper cutting of the news that made the headlines. A rape occured (like it is so rare - in america, a rape occurs every 2 minutes) and a religious leader made a remark that offended the women community in particular and the public in general.

According to the translation, (name deleted) said: “If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it … whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat.The uncovered meat is the problem.”

“If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab (Islamic headscarf which covers the hair neck and shoulders), no problem would have occurred.”

Now the first part is what the issue in Australia is about - I think it is a dumb analogy. But I refuse to waste my saliva on some idiotic, narrow-minded, demented remark made by any individual. I am sure this is not a shared opinion as what will happen is that it will divide the society into two halves or maybe three and one will dominate - hopefully the wiser!

Now, the second part purely portrays a person who is not exposed to the world. A women can be raped anywhere. Our Malaysian reports as mentioned in an article by Jacyln Kee in 2003,WAO says, ” Statistics last year shows that only about 20% of rape incidents happened in public places, while nearly 70% of them happened in the “safety” of homes. Nearly 80% of rapists are people known by the survivor.”
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She goes on to write,“there is no single profile of rape survivors, save that they are all women (since rape is a gender specific crime in this country) - females as young as a few months old to elderly grandmothers and girls clad in baju kurung to miniskirts have been subjected to rape.”

And I like this statement that she wrote,

These are facts and numbers which effectively debunk most of our common beliefs about rape. If rape is about behaviour and clothes, then surely only one specific type of woman gets raped. If rape is about not going out late at night, then surely rapes should only happen after 7pm, outside of the homes by strangers. If terribly severe punishments can stop rape, then how does this work on most rapists who think they have not committed a crime since they are faultless in their actions; surely cases should have decreased in commensuration with harsher punishments through the years. If rape is the act of psychotics, then how is it possible that there are more than ten thousand madmen walking in our streets in a perfectly normal way?

So, where are we to preventing another rape in the next 2 minutes? Nowhere! Women, know your surrounding well, always be prepared like how you would prepare yourself from a snatch thief , pepper spray , a tazer, learn martial arts etc.etc. and above all teach your children to respect women and treat them with dignity, the art of self control even when the hormones go raging!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 31st, 2006 at 5:20 pm and is filed under Life, Matters of Rakyat. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.