ETA: please see comments for updates–apparently the pictures may not be pictures of a woman’s rape (i.e. porn or something). If they are not of a woman’s rape, I must say, I am still outraged–as what in the JESUS is any form of media doing publishing porn pictures alongside a legitimate story about how rape is used as a tool of war?
I got this link (EXTREME TRIGGER WARNING, images of actual rape at link) about the use of rape by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan from facebook–where, because of Facebook’s irritating practice of pulling irrelevant and often meaningless blurbs/pictures to detail a posted link, I got the link with a picture of a close up of an Iraqi woman’s face as she is being gang raped by U.S. forces.
It made me absolutely sick to see the photo on facebook, right next to farmville and yoville updates. It made me absolutely sick to see the face of this woman as she is being raped turned into social media–what may be the most brutally intimate moment of her life turned into a status update for potentially millions of people.
And it furthermore makes me sick that rape survivors in the U.S. are given certain protections by the media, namely, their names are not reveled and the videos or pictures that may exist of their rapes are not released to the public. Now, certainly, with the existence of blogs and vindictive misogynistic bastards, many details are released anyway (think: the Duke rape survivor and the woman who survived Kobe Bryant’s assault), but the mainstream media and all of it’s affiliates do not post that shit—while at the same time, the women we colonize, the women whose lives and bodies we violently destroy, get their pictures, their names, and their rapes posted world wide for anybody to see. By mainstream media.
Why in the holy hell is it ok to publish this horrible image in any fucking reputable type of media anywhere? And what makes it ok to publish it without giving this woman the dignity of at least getting her face blocked out, as the world wide media did for the men who were sexually violated at Abu Ghraib?
Why the fuck is this ok?
My typing keys can not ask this question with the rage and violence that is coursing through my blood right now. WHY THE FUCK IS THIS OK? The penis that is raping this woman’s mouth get’s more protection from media than the woman does.
That media exists right now makes me physically ill.
ETA: I just found out that the images at the links are of a 14-year-old girl that was gang raped and then killed along with her family (including her five-year-old sister). One of the men that committed this heinous despicable crime just now is up on trial. Which is why the pictures are being circulated again. And, no, the fact that the girl is dead does not change a fucking thing for me.
I think it’s important to look at how this rape of a little girl by U.S. soldiers in the name of “justice” is covered in the media (mainstream and otherwise) as compared to the rape of a little girl by a ‘hero.’
It’s important–but right now, no person should be allowed the luxury of escape through logic and reasoned well argued blog post.
Outrage, outrage, outrage, outrage, outrage, outrage, outrage in my soul…..
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October 12th, 2009 at 5:41 pm #
bfp… i think i’ve seen those pictures before…that they’ve been attributed to several different incidents. and they’re odd in that they don’t show soldiers in desert uniforms, but rather forest green ones.
while i have exactly zero doubts that such photos do exist, and that they show americans engaged in war crimes against women and children…
i have serious doubts that those pictures are real.
October 12th, 2009 at 5:46 pm #
*speechless*
October 12th, 2009 at 5:48 pm #
do you mean they are not real as in the pictures are some sort of porn? or not real as in computer generated? or…??
why in the hell is a news source posting them then???? not saying i don’t believe you that they’re not real–just…what in the hell is going on with media??????
October 12th, 2009 at 5:52 pm #
i mean, this is the org that sponsors the site: http://www.worldinstituteforasianstudies.org/
The World Institute for Asian Studies is a non-profit, non-governmental international organization aimed at bringing academics, scholars, holders of public office, researchers, analysts and media personnel of the First World and the Asian Region to an ongoing dialogue that would inform each other of the developing issues that are likely to impact globally and regionally.
not going to be doing a very good job of getting scholars and researchers and analysts posting horrible shit like that…and if it is porn–it just published porn along side an extremely important story about the use of rape as a tool of war….that just makes me outraged all over again, just a different reason.
October 12th, 2009 at 6:31 pm #
I posted that pic a few years ago and my inbox flooded with emails saying it was not from an actual rape, but a porn site. I don’t remember the source, but I deleted the link from my archives because I didn’t think it was real.
I still don’t know if they’re real or not, but I went with the emails that claimed they had seen it circulating on porn sites.
Still don’t know, though….?
October 13th, 2009 at 4:08 am #
well, i’m going to assume they’re from a porn site too–and I’m going to ask, what the hell are they doing on a freaking media site???? Jesus in hell, what the fuck is wrong with media????
October 13th, 2009 at 4:14 am #
I mean, I’ve been thinking about this all fucking night. went to bed shaking with rage. Because I looked at the link very closely now, and saw that they had at the very bottom of the story a little blurb saying “rape” pictures–I was outraged at first so I didn’t notice the blurb–but now, knowing that the pictures are probably of porn–what. the. fuck. HOw many stories do we not have images of so we pull porn images to give a better idea to the reader?
October 13th, 2009 at 4:15 am #
Here is the blurb: “Asian Tribune carries here three of the ‘Rape’ photographs which have brought criticism that the U.S. forces in Iraq have used rape as a weapon of war.”
WHAT????
October 13th, 2009 at 9:37 am #
Um… isn’t it just as possible that the photos are real and being used by porn sites? maybe they are not “recent” photos, and i would certainly agree that their use by mainstream media is problemmatic, but the fact that porn sites have had them on rotation for a few years does not necessarily mean they aren’t legitimate photos. either way, i’m very not cool with the pictures being used at all.
October 13th, 2009 at 2:49 pm #
i can’t really answer why a news site would use them…perhaps misunderstanding, perhaps wanting to dramatize their point of view…
I know some of the iconic anti-choice images are often not what they are portrayed to be…still births vs abortions…but the people using them fervently *believe* that they are real.
my guess is that it’s some very fucked up pr0n, eroticizing the very same dynamics that your post is speaking to. So perhaps, it’s not good to say they aren’t real…but that they probably aren’t what they are advertised to be.
the deciding factor for me is that those look like old army surplus uniforms, not anything that has been used recently. for reference…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Combat_Uniform has pictures of the new uniform.
October 13th, 2009 at 4:00 pm #
Seconded, what Aaminah said.
Because in fact there is porn – media sold as porn, not as criminal evidence but as porn – that is of women being raped. Not “just” rape-as-fetish-so-we-make-it-look-”real” porn, but sexual assault, photographed and/or filmed, and sold/exhibited as pornography.
I have not looked at the link. And I am not theorizing or alluding to one Linda Lovelace book or some shit. I have said this before publicly – one of the times I was sexually assaulted, he photographed it. It is not some extreme aberration that males do this – rape and film it one way or another.
I’m not okay with this photo being used how it was used in the article you refer to, whether it was “faked” or a real image of gang rape. But I am also not particularly surprised. I still feel like most mainstream – and even plenty of “progressive” – media discuss rape as a sensationalized attention-grabber rather than from any real place of justice at all. At all.