This article from BBC Corrective Rape, South Africa posted June 29, 2011 tells yet another story of women being brutally raped, either at knife point, or while being stabbed. The article explains that this is believed to be done in order to “correct” their sexual orientation. They site traditional patriarchal beliefs as a root cause for the continued acceptance and lack of investigation in to these crimes. They say that males have a resentment toward the more masculine presenting lesbian women because, “they are stealing their girlfriends.” They mention a specific number of cases that are known to be orientation related, but also mention that 50,000 rapes occur every year in South Africa and orientation is not noted, making it unknown how many of these specific types of cases their are. It is evident that most of these cases go unsolved. There was an extremely violent prominent case that did go to trial and convicted two of four gang rapists. This case where a South African lesbian woman was stoned, stabbed 25 times in the face, and gang raped by four men, caught the media attention and began a task force against gay and lesbian rape: Task force against gay rape. What makes the whole thing even more sad, as if it could get worse is that South Africa is just one of a few countries that have legalized gay marriage!

This pattern of thought and stereotype is not new. There is the infamous patriarchally inspired phrase regarding women who were raped, “She was asking for it [fill in the blank],” *because she was wearing too short of a skirt, * she was flirting with me, *she had already turned me on too far, * her saying no really meant yes. A woman very dear to me was once asked by her 50’s bred father what she did to deserve the beating her husband gave her.

When you add the ego crushing idea that a woman might not actually WANT to sleep with a man, that she doesn’t need him in her bed, well that is just unacceptable. I don’t know how many times I have heard from our liberal California boys, “she just needs to find the right man,” “she hasn’t been done right,” as if the right male partner will turn off the lesbian switch in her brain. Its disgraceful, tragic! With the addition of an unstable government, patriarchally extreme violence, guerrilla mentality, and unenforced equality laws, you get this practice of acting out all the shitty phraseology of insecure Californian boys to create an unchecked massacre of women.

I have experienced the entitled attitudes of men over lesbians. Lesbian erotica has been so extremely commercialized, many men participate in the ideology that two women together are simply waiting for a male to enter and fill the gap, so to speak. My girlfriend and I, just the other weekend, were told by a man that we were so sexy together, and that he was European, so he could say that. He then proceeded to watch us from about two feet away for at least an hour. (This was a tiny bar, not much space to escape and we were committed to staying for a friend). This is not ok. This is a violation! I understand the creation of fantasy, but to feel that he had the right and tell us that we had now become his fantasy, that we were there for his pleasure is degrading and devaluing. We were not two people in love to him, we had become a porn. I recognize that this might be the case for any couple canoodling in a bar, but most people have the respect to not inform them of this or to stare because it is there right as the higher up in the social hierarchy, white, male, european.

There is are many international organizations that bring awareness and power to women who have experienced violence, rape, or any other type of degradation at the hands of the patriarchal culture. Take Back The Night is one of these that is international and is meant to be a symbol of hope that women everywhere may enter the night without fear, with hope, and with support. I hope this for the women of South Africa, I hope that South Africa begins taking care of is margined  marginalized women and men, and upholding the laws they committed to in their constitution.