October 24, 2003

More reasons to hate the french

IHT: France takes on plague of sexual 'rite'
The phenomenon of gang rape in France has become banal. It occurs - how often is unknown - in the concrete wastelands built as cheap housing for immigrants on the outskirts of France's big cities. Here, according to sociologists and prosecutors, teenage boys, many of them loosely organized into gangs, prey on neighborhood girls.

Many of the boys are raised in closed, traditional families and are hopelessly confused or ignorant about sex; others are simply street toughs. In this world, women enjoy little respect; often girls who appear weak, or who wear tight-fitting clothing or go out unaccompanied by their fathers or brothers are considered fair game.

So now gang rape is a rite of passage... Joy.

Posted by pqbon at October 24, 2003 1:20 PM | TrackBack
Comments

This is not "one more reason to hate the french" and all the french bashing that Americans like to do at this point is just trite and silly. The problem is that these are a) kids in the projects growing up in poverty with drug dealers all over the place and b) mostly kids from muslim cultures where women are treated like shit anyway. The murder discussed in the article stinks of honor killing. The "respect" for technical virginity (anal rape only, how considerate) bears a disturbing resemblance to the attitude of American teenagers in Catholic school. What do you expect from people when it's acceptable to say things like this:

"The boys have needs. Where I come from, it's not normal that a girl goes out at night. If I tell my sister not to go out, she obeys me. This world is not like France."

That quote was from the _Algerian_ neighborhood butcher. Take people with an attitude like that, and throw them in a poverty/overcrowding situation which will only make people more brutal towards each other, and there you go. If we had the same influx of immigrants from Algeria and surrounding parts, and stuck them in the sorts of projects where we like to stick black people, the same thing would happen here. The same thing _could_ be happening here right now. And I sincerely doubt that the American justice system would handle it better than the French.

I realise I'm being as prejudicial towards Algerians as you are being towards the French... but my reasoning is that any group of people that takes that attitude towards their daughters, sisters and girlfriends isn't worth half a pint of my warm piss. (I'm not much for cultural relativism, you see.) Which I think is a better reason than anyone has for bitching about the French.

Posted by: metamanda at October 24, 2003 2:38 PM