I've been watching a program about Somali refugee women abandoned in some God forsaken piece of land somewhere in Kenya. They receive food every 15 days from the UN. A lot of them have lost their husbands and some were abandoned by them...this abysmal refugee camp has one policeman for about 15'000 women, with children. All of these women complain of being raped by men coming into the camp...no one is there to protect them...some are badly beaten and then ganged raped...one woman said "the minute they see you have no man to protect you, no husband, you become their prey because then everything is allowed..."
Hardly anything is written about these women...the same thing happened in the Congo, but there at least the horror got some coverage...
I was also reading about rape in Haiti in the earthquake's aftermath. Again, rape is common in those camps. And again these women have no protector...
The same happened during hurricane Katrina, in New Orleans. I remember having watched a program where hundreds of families were placed in some covered stadium, and again, some women were raped in that stadium...
Needless to say in Iraq, rape also became common practice with the fall of the previous regime...and the most vulnerable were/are the women with no protectors...those whose husbands, brothers etc..were killed either by the US army or by the militias...
Here we have two situations one is war like -- Iraq, Congo, Somalia and one is natural disasters like -- Haiti and New Orleans...and in both situations the incidents of rape took a substantial peak...
In both situations there is a breakdown of "law and order", in both situations there is "chaos" and in both situations there is an noticeable absence of a protective role figure...
In other words, when Authority, or its symbols like the state, the leader, the husband, the man is no more, the door is open for other "lesser" authorities, other males to enter and do what they have always wanted to do, but were held back from -- in times of law and order...in times where punishment would be inflicted (at least theoretically speaking), acting as a deterrent...
So basically it takes a man to protect a woman from another man...assuming of course that this woman is not also subjected to rape by this initial protector if he happens to be a husband, for instance...because as everyone well knows, rape is very common in marital relationships...
And somehow for the woman, rape inside the marriage relationship is preferable to being subjected to rape by outsiders...which is understandable, the lesser of two evils...but evil nonetheless...of course some would argue that one cannot talk of rape inside of marriage and some would argue it's preferable to call it "coercion". For me this is pathetic hair splitting...
In sum, a woman needs a man to protect her from other men, even if this protector proves to be a "rapist" himself...or let's say a "sex coercer"
What a sobering realization...
