& it doesn't stop ...

[Joseph Tracy]

These things are a shame to any culture. We shouldn’t forget the well documented problem of rape in the US military since the inclusion of women in combat, and the rape of women on college campuses. There has still been no legislation to demand outside accountability for the failed military justice system or the privatized campus legal hearings in regard to rape.
The ugly truth is that many men with power simply like structures that enable abuse and protect their buddies; they don’t want to challenge men with rank, or profitable campus boys and refuse at the highest levels to protect the rights of women . When these things get shoved under the rug the press becomes less willing to report. This culture never cleans up our scandals , just sensationalizes them then moves on to more meaningless distractions.
> On Jan 13, 2016, at 12:55 PM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
> 
> Alas, this sort of behavior isn't limited to Muslim men. Aggressive street harassment of young women by groups of men - and not the upscale, educated type - is a fact of life, certainly in NYC, and in many major cities. Boredom, alcohol and cultural machismo (specifically, adherence to the virgin-whore dichotomy) are the usual suspects. I agree with Kai that the police and press have bungled the handling of these incidents, but, on the other hand, these incidents are occurring during a major cultural upheaval, and I pity the politicians who have to weigh images of drowned toddlers against assaults on their citizens.
> 
> Look at this incident, that happened in NYC at the Puerto Rican Day Parade:
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rican_Day_Parade_attacks
> 
> "The Puerto Rican Day Parade attacks occurred on June 11, 2000 in New York City and involved multiple assailants who harassed, sexually assaulted, and robbed random victims. Many of the attacks were caught on video and received worldwide attention. The New York City Police Department was greatly criticized for its handling of the attacks. Eventually, over fifty women reported being harassed or assaulted."
> 
> Most of the men involved were American, but of Dominican or Puerto Rican heritage, no strangers to the culture of machismo street harassment, but the aggressive nature of these assaults were so anomalous to the "normally" macho behavior ascribed to men of these backgrounds, that the outcry centered mostly on alcohol abuse. Alcohol was banned from subsequent parades. Many of the victims were paid reparations by the city, but few of the men received any punishment.
> 
> But imagine these same events occurring today, say, in Dallas, perpetrated by a group of Mexican-American men, in the present atmosphere of anti-immigrant hysteria. The reaction would be dramatically different - hyped up, jingo-istic, hysterical, and possibly murderous.
> 
> Which is to say that the context of these types of assaults is crucial in determining whether they're treated as criminal incidents or, conversely, either covered up in a ludicrous attempt to keep the peace and/or spun into racist hysteria by right-wing zealots.
> 
> Interestingly, this belated reaction to the NYC assaults was posted 11 years later, when the country was awash in anti-immigrant sentiments:
> 
> http://www.disclose.tv/forum/puerto-rican-day-flash-mob-attacks-women-t64303.html
> 
> Laura
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen 
> Sent: Jan 13, 2016 5:30 AM 
> To: pynchon -l 
> Subject: & it doesn't stop ... 
> 
> 
> http://www.taz.de/Sexueller-Spiessrutenlauf/!5265345/
> 
> Several cases of sexual harassment in the city of Hamburg around the weekend (not all of them mentioned in this article), all related to folks who recently came here. In one case a woman was harassed in the bus by 30 - 40 men, yelling "Yalla, Yalla", which is Arab for Let's go ...
> 
> >Die 24-Jährige stieg laut Polizei um 4.51 Uhr an der Haltestelle Furchenacker in einen Bus der Linie 4 und wollte stadteinwärts fahren. An der nächsten Station stiegen „etwa 30 bis 40 Südländer in den Bus ein“, sagte ein Polizeisprecher. Da die Frau an der folgenden Haltestelle aussteigen wollte, habe sie den Stopp-Knopf gedrückt, um der Busfahrerin dies zu signalisieren. Da der Bus voll gewesen sei, habe sie sich durch die Männer hindurch zum Ausstieg drängeln müssen. „Dabei wurde sie von diversen Männern an den unterschiedlichsten Körperstellen angefasst“, so die Polizei. Der Bus hielt aber nicht wie gewünscht am Eidelstedter Platz. Die Frau konnte nicht aussteigen, die Übergriffe gingen weiter. Nach Angaben des Opfers riefen die Männer dabei „Yalla, Yalla“, was auf Arabisch „Los geht ’ s“ heißt. Schließlich konnte die Frau an der Kieler Straße aussteigen, der Bus fuhr weiter. <
> 
> If things process further in this breathtaking speed, we'll have the Civil War in spring.
> 
>  
> - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l

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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l