bride snatching: how lovely it's becoming more common

following a disturbing title (Bride-Snatching Involved in Half of All Marriages in Kyrgyzstan) on liveleak, i came across this video:




note the shaming guilt placed on the kidnapped wives and the ambivalent, entitled attitudes of the men interviewed for this video.




i can't believe this practice, called ala kachuu, goes on so regularly(or even at all.) also disturbing is the fact that the authorities officially state that wife-snatching is illegal, but that no one ever prosecutes. and of course the abducted women are considered unclean, impure, or tainted by muslim standards, and will be shunned by their families and society if fleeing their captors, especially once the marriage is consummated, aka rape, occurs. how's that for a horribly textbook description of double victimization? thank gods there are people like the woman in the video fighting for the victims' rights.




it's inconceivable that they have to teach students that stealing your bride is wrong, but i'm glad they're at least acknowledging that there's a problem with viewing women as chattel.




this practice of wife snatching is becoming more popular since the fall of the USSR, as the liberation of the area has caused many groups to harken back to ancient customs and traditions.




hiding behind cultural relativism in this case is a load of bs to me. kidnapping is a crime, no matter to which gods you do or do not pray. your religion does not entitle you to rape, demean, and abuse others.

why the eff is this so common?!?

a grey, ice-filled day greeted my feet this morning as i walked out the door on about 3 hours of drunken sleep. my hair's in a greasy side ponytail, and i dressed in the dark: dickies, pink chucks, a tattoo-printed tee and slim blue cardigan. makeup free and glasses-adorned, i am looking almost as great as i feel, lol. pathetic.





so i'm hunched over my computer, blearily staring at the screen, unable to focus on anything work-related. i start randomly surfing the net, something i haven't done much of lately, and i come across this article from texas. as if i couldn't feel any worse.





gods, this 21 year-old guy was a substitute teacher for THREE WEEKS, and was already busted for having sex with a 14 year-old girl in a parking lot! he went and pulled her out of class and lured her into his car to assault her! when the girl broke down in class the next week, they arrested him. he actually had the nerve to claim that the sex was consensual! the school system said he passed their background check. it really makes me wonder what kind of checks they do. i've never been a substitute teacher, so i haven't a clue. has anyone ever seen the criteria required? i'm guessing no felonies? anyone?





what really got to me, and maybe it's just exhaustion, but not really, is that this story is ridiculously common. so common, in fact, it probably hasn't surprised a single one of the people that read or heard of it. and that's disgusting. people put in charge of our children should not be utilizing their positions of authority in such an immoral way. and the poor girl, in typical guilt-ridden victim style, had to be convinced that it wasn't her fault!




the power differential is inherent in any student-teacher relationship. students listen to their teachers, look up to them, fear and respect them. yet these people justify sexual relations with them? it sickens me. i'm all for free love between two consenting adults. have fun, do it however and whenever you want. any fetish that can be imagined has likely been tried more than twice. but dammit, CHILDREN ARE OFF LIMITS!!!!!!!! that shouldn't be something that even needs to be mentioned, and yet, time and again, they're victimized, and then shamed into believing it's their fault. and teachers, the people that society trusts to mold and shape young minds, should be particularly cognizant of that.




okay, so now i need to go calm down. i can't wait to get out of work and jump into some comfy pajamas and decompress. maybe i'll finish knitting a scarf, and try to pretend for an evening that the world isn't all kinds of fucked.

good luck alex ~ and dubai can kiss my homo ass!

so i posted a lighthearted entry earlier today, thinking i wanted to stay away from anything too heavy. but then i read this, and all that changed.


dubai is famous for its decadence and overindulgence in all things worldly. the shopping there is said to be some of the best in the world, and money changes hands there in the billions. it's beautiful, extremely modern, and sleek. oh, and then apparently they outlaw homosexuality and deny raped teen males justice.


alex's attack is horrid. absolutely horrifying. first, he's taken out to the desert, threatened and raped by three different men and dumped in front of a hotel. add to being gang-raped by three different guys the fear and shame brought upon his family. mix in a doctor that won't do blood tests or a proper examination, accuses him of being gay, and then officially states that there was no evidence of forced assault.

"Then he cleared the room and told Alex: 'I know you’re a homosexual. You can admit it to me. I can tell.'"

top it all off with the fact authorities withheld for months information that one of the men is HIV positive!! thank gods his parents are strong enough and supportive enough to be fighting for prosecution. to avoid ARREST, (arrest for being raped!!!!) alex had to flee the country. i'm surprised he stayed as long as he did (he left a month into his 10th grade year at school; he'd been attacked on bastille day, july 14th) but he stayed in order to pursue prosecution. now he's been told that he could be sentenced to a year in jail. even typing that almost made me vomit.


and his alleged attackers? all three claim innocence, despite the fact that their sperm was found inside of alex. also interesting:

"United Arab Emirates law does not recognize rape of males, only a crime called 'forced homosexuality.'"

note how they are sure to mention homosexuality within the framework of wrongdoing, but not rape. because the real crime here is being gay, not sexually assaulting another human being.


UAE's government is indeed fucked up. this is the worst kind of double (at least) victimization. and unless they seriously change their judicial system, i'm sure things like this will continue. being gay is not a crime. rape victims are just that; victims. i don't think it's that difficult to understand. best of luck, alex ~ though i don't quite get that his attorney says he's looking for the death penalty for his attackers? *shakes head*

if you haven't already...

i'm just gonna assume that you already know about this case, and that it would be redundant to rehash all of its painful details. click on the picture to sign a petition urging a fair and detailed civil rights investigation into the case.

pride & prejudice, sans jane austen, pt 2

so i'll continue the saga...

after telling the uk court story, i ask bob if he can see the correllation between the two situations. he responds that the poor foster girl is a victim, and that the judge was wrong, but that the reason he was wrong is merely because she's a child. to him, the two dads that had begun our discussion are adults, and therefore cannot be victims. they have the ability to choose their license plate, and to him, shouldn't, because they're asking for trouble.

yep, those women and gays, they're just asking for it, by doing crazy things like buying vanity plates and wearing frilly underwear. they're just tempting those innocent hate-mongers to do something horrid to them. how dare they?!?

from there, the discussion quickly spiralled drainwards. i ask him how he can say that gays are asking for trouble by being themselves? he responds with a comment to which i must first add a little backstory.

a few years ago, joe & dan, aforementioned couple, came out to a party with a group of girls in our neighborhood. said party was fairly lame, so we all decided to trek the two blocks back to my apartment to hang out on our own. while walking back, an SUV stopped in the middle of the street and two large men jumped out, yelled they were 'looking for' joe & dan, and proceeded to assault them, unprovoked, on the sidewalk. it was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life, and i can't even begin to understand how much more difficult it was for them. neither of them had ever even been in a fight before, let alone the victims of violent gay bashing. discrimination prevailed every step they took, from the attitude of the police, who insisted joe & dan must've done something to provoke the attack, to the hours in the er, where we were shoved into a private holding room (we were told the blood was scaring the other people in the waiting area), to the fact that my witness statement was the only one counted as testimony, and later the reduction of sentencing to probation by the judge due to an incompetent public defender. never mind the fact that dan's mother is a lawyer and refused to help, and my (former) girlfriend's father asked us what they were doing to incite an attack ('were they holding hands?' he asked before proceeding to tell us to let that be a lesson to us to be careful and discreet in public.) not that it matters, but they weren't even walking next to one another. their only 'crime' was being gay on the sidewalk at 1 or so in the morning.

so this event is obviously one which had a great impact on my life, as well as mary's, as she was one of the people out with the crowd that evening, and has been friends with the two of them even longer than me. bob, having only known us for a short time, dares to respond to my statement about gays asking for trouble by saying

well, look what happened to . they got attacked for nothing. it just proves my point that gays need to watch out.

this was too much for me. i really felt he overstepped boundaries. i mean, how dare he blame two innocent people for getting beaten by some homophobic neanderthals? joe's nose was broken, and dan just missed going blind from a hit and cut right above his eye! and the whole time, mary just sat there, completely refusing to stick up for people she calls her best friends, all in the name of a steady piece of ass. i hit my limit. i excused myself, apologized for not being able to discuss it anymore, and walked out of the restaurant.

i haven't talked to bob since, and when i called mary a week later, she dared to tell me i should apologize to him because i left the restaurant! i told her i left because i was so hurt, and i didn't want them to see me cry. (which i did.) then i added that i couldn't believe she didn't at least stand up for joe & dan, because what bob was saying was wrong, and his thinking was total watercooler discrimination & homophobia. to which she promptly hung up on me.

you don't have to be throwing bricks through windows and beating random strangers to have prejudice. you don't have to be screaming nigger, faggot, slut, or kike to be discriminatory or putting others down for being who they are. hatred is not always obvious, in fact, it's usually just the opposite. it's ingrained in the straight, white, classist patriarchy of our society, and it's up to us to fish it out, identify, and eradicate it. is requires us each to look in the mirror and find that ugliness that may be glossed over and buried under layers of polite, politically correct ideals. it isn't nice, pretty, or simple. i'm losing close friends over this, but honestly, it's making me reevaluate my friendships in general. i'm not happy about it, but...

i just can't 'sit nice and be quiet' anymore.

pride and prejudice, sans jane austen, part one

okay, i'll get to it. i've been hella busy these last couple of weeks and haven't updated my blog in practically a millenium (re: two weeks.) but i must be honest and let y'all know i've been avoiding it. avoiding my own emotional turmoil over an incident that happened when i was at dinner the other night with a couple of friends. but it's been long enough now, and i hope i've gathered enough distance to recount the story accurately and without getting too upset by it. so here's what happened:
the three of us are at dinner, discussing our weeks, lives, etc. ~ average friendly dinner convo. now the other two, bob** and maryanne**, are coworkers that have upped the ante from close friends to dating (dangerous, i know, but that's a totally different tale.) they're still in that obnoxious lovey-dovey stage, and it's kinda cute in a nauseating way. so maryanne is talking about her parents and what they do for a living and she mentions that her mother works for an adoption agency. we talk about that a bit, and i ask about whether or not they approve gay adoptions. this obviously leads to a turn in topics, and bob mentions that he'd recently seen a minivan with a vanity plate that read: '2 dads.' i smiled and said that was awesome, and remarked that i was glad people were proud to state such things. the conversation then went (roughly) as such:

bob: i don't know....
me: you don't know what?
bob: it made me uncomfortable.
me: what made you uncomfortable?
bob: i don't know. i mean, i'm okay with gays and all, but i just don't think they should be so obvious.
me: how do you mean, obvious?
bob: well, people get beat up for stuff like that. i just think they should be careful. they're kind of asking to get beat up by being so obvious.
me: so you're saying gay people should hide.
bob: no
me: then what are you saying?
bob: i just think that there are a lot of people out there that don't like gays. someone could come along and see that and get really upset.
me: but if you say things like that, then you're basically saying that gay people should hide and not be who they are. we need people to do things like have pro-gay vanity plates to emphasize that it is okay to be gat parents. in fact, it's GREAT to be gay parents, and there's nothing wrong with that. saying those men shouldn't have those vanity plates is saying that what they're doing is wrong. that who they ARE is wrong. do you not see where that line of thinking progresses? it promotes homophobia and intolerance.
bob: but i'm not homophobic. i'm friends with you and joe** & dan**
me: 'but some of my best friends are black' is NOT a valid argument. society has the problem, not gay folk. you can't blame a victim, and when you say things like that, it's what you're doing.
bob: but society's not gonna change.
me: you really think that civil rights for gays aren't going to progress? blacks and women didn't have the right to vote, but now they do. i believe that in my lifetime we'll see progress and the furthering of gay rights, don't you?
bob: no. i think the country is going in the opposite direction.
me: and you're okay with that?
bob: uh...well...no...but...

the conversation escalated from there, with me reiterating the same points over and over again, and him continuing to state that gays will be beat up if they're too obvious.
~~ note that mary is extremely quiet during this whole discussion. mary's bisexual, and has had long term relationships with men and women, and has not piped up once, despite my repeated attempts to bring her into the discussion. she refused to state an opinion either way, because she was too scared to offend her new beau. ~~
i tried to take the entire conversation and put a similar situation into a different context. i began to discuss this court case that cara brought up last month at the curvature that made me cry with rage. i thought that by discussing that what a young girl is wearing and her background is no excuse for rape would resonate as discriminatory. i told him that the asshole judge in the case was blaming the girl for her attack, and that shaming gays into hiding who they are skirts the same thought lines.

i have to leave work now, so i'll publish the rest tomorrow

**not their real names