Stop "Corrective Rape": A South African Epidemic

For those of you who don't know what corrective rape is, here goes: a man (or men) sexually assaults a queer woman with the intention of raping the gay out of her. And in South Africa, this disturbing torture has become somewhat of an epidemic, with 520 women reporting being survivors of corrective rape in a year, and perhaps hundreds more unreported rapes estimated.

As Mike Jones reports on the Gay Rights blog, in the most recent attack, a 30-year-old South African woman, Millicent Gaika, was beaten and raped for five hours by a man she knew, as he screamed, "I know you are a lesbian. You are not a man, you think you are, but I am going to show you, you are a woman. I am going to make you pregnant." I find it astonishing that men actually believe that forcibly raping a woman is suddenly going to give her a taste for men and an aversion to women ... I guess it's a particularly twisted version of the "she wanted it" rape myth?

Of course, in some cases, the men might not really think they're going to rape the woman straight, but are simply committing a misogynistic, homophobic hate crime under the guise of, um, "helping" lesbians. This is demonstrated by the fact that Gaika's attacker also shouted, "I'm going to kill you," and that some victims of corrective rape (or gang-rape) have been murdered.

Corrective rape isn't the only violent crime against women in South Africa: one-quarter of the country's women will be raped by the time they're 16. That's right — sixteen. Clearly, something is seriously wrong, and the government must take steps to protect women. Please sign this petition to tell South Africa to address its corrective rape epidemic.

Photo credit: D.C.Atty