Conversational Rape
Every once in a while, a piece of news grips us, and becomes the centerpiece of conversation for the day among friends, schoolmates, and colleagues. And there’s little that stokes rabid discussion like a scandal. Or sex. Or – gasp! – a sexual scandal.
Five men have been charged for the alleged gang rape of a 17-year-old girl in Singapore, The New Paper reported today. The men invited the teen to a house party, where they plied her with alcohol and subsequently took turns forcing themselves sexually on her.
The initial reaction is one of intense disgust: with the despicable act of the five men, who in their sad state of sexual depravity sought to ask girls out because they wanted to have sex. Horny? Get a blowup doll. Visit the whore-houses in Geylang. Throw your head under a bucket of ice. Both heads, if you need. But to scroll through your phone book, start calling all the girls, hope that one eventually agrees to meet you, proceed to get her drunk, and then sleep with her against her will? What is wrong with these people shitheads?
Then again, it’s not as uncommon as it seems. Stretch your imagination by a bit, and you realize it could be the magic ingredient that drives the clubbing industry and the brisk trade of alcohol. Think the hordes of men who ask their female friends out “for a drink”. (How innocent.) Or buy a drink for the ladies at clubs. (How generous.) And the girls actually fall for it all the time. (How naïve!)
Here’s a pointer, girls: there are men who scroll through their phone books, start calling you (and all the other girls), hope that you eventually agree to meet them, proceed to get you drunk, and then hope that your judgment is clouded enough to think that you want to sleep with them. Every once in a while, some of these men try to force it on you, and – hopefully – end up on the dock. Or in the great tabloid as tomorrow’s conversation starter.
At some point of the conversation, some self-righteous bigot jumps out from the corner he’s been lurking and bludgeons you with this gem: “The girl deserves it. What self-respecting girl goes to a house with five other guys? She obviously wanted to have sex!”
Yes, in the same way you obviously want me to stick my boot down your throat because you opened your mouth.
Which prehistoric rock have you just crawled out from? A girl is entitled – as men are – to have friends, and go out with them, if she feels like, when she feels like. She can wear short skirts, and plunging necklines. (The more adventurous men can too, though they wouldn’t look nearly as good!) And if you can’t figure out in that bigoted, chauvinist, primitive brain of yours that a girl who does any – or all – of the above is NOT asking to be raped, then you’re not much better than the five rapists.
And until your brain evolves beyond your Neanderthal thinking, it’s the end of this conversation.
One of the five men accused of rape admitted in a police statement that “he wants to have sex” on the night of the alleged rape.
Muhammad Shafie Ahmad Abdullah, a full-time national serviceman, told his friends to invite girls for a drinking session at his home.
Shafie called co-accused Mohd Sadruddin Azman and invited him, saying he’s out from camp and wanted to have sex.
Another of the five co-accused, Lim Boon Tai, eventually brought a teenage girl to Shafie’s flat, where the five men allegedly raped her.
Lim also suggested that Shafie buy drinks “to get the girl drunk so that we can easily get the girl”, according to police statements.
Source: The New Paper
