Feminism and Rape Culture

I have pointed this out on numerous occasions, but Paulina Neuding tells the story in greater detail. The story is a seeming paradox. It is even more seeming at a time when American feminists are saying that more feminism will give us fewer Harvey Weinsteins. It’s a hypothesis like another. Beyond the fact that HW strongly supported feminism and feminist leaders, the hypothesis is worthy of consideration… sort of.

Neuding opens her essay by noting that Sweden is one of the most feministically correct countries in the world. What American feminists dream of, Swedish feminists have achieved:

Sweden prides itself on being a beacon of feminism. It has the most generous parental leave in the developed world, providing for 18 months off work, 15 of which can be used by fathers as paternity leave. A quarter of the paid parental leave is indeed used by men, and this is too little according to the Swedish government, which has made it a political priority to get fathers to stay at home longer with their children.

  

Sweden has never ranked lower than four in The Global Gender Gap Report, which has measured equality in economics, politics, education, and health for the World Economic Forum since 2006. Of all members of Parliament, 44 percent are women, compared to 19 percent of the United States Congress. Nearly two-thirds of all university degrees are awarded to women. Its government boasts that it is the “first feminist government” in the world, averring that gender equality is central to its priorities in decision-making and resource allocation.

But while Swedish women rank among the most equal in the world, they increasingly fear for their physical safety on the streets. Reported sex crimes increased by 61 percent between 2007 and 2016. Meanwhile a rise in gang violence among men–the number of victims injured by gunshots increased by 50 percent between 2004 and 2016–indirectly affects the safety of women. Police admit that rape cases are piling up without being investigated because resources are being drained by gang violence and shootings.

And yet, paradoxically these liberated strong empowered women are increasingly subjected to sexual violence. Women are liberated but they are afraid to go outside by themselves. Dare we mention that in cultures where women are not allowed out on their own, a woman out on her own is presumed to be of loose morals.

Neuding continues:

In June, a 12-year-old girl in the small town of Stenungsund reported that she had been dragged into a public restroom and raped by an older boy. Six weeks later the girl had still not been questioned by the police. Even though she believed she had identified the perpetrator, the police had yet to pay him a visit.

“We have so many similar cases,” a spokeswoman of the local police told the Swedish public television channel SVT on September 12, “and there are so few of us, that we simply don’t have the time.” She continued: “We have rape victims three years old,” and even their cases await investigation. Torgny Söderberg, head of the investigation section at the Stockholm police, confirmed the problem on SVT, acknowledging that homicides and attempted homicides draw resources away from rape investigations. “It’s hard to explain why rape cases are piling up awaiting investigation, but the other crimes are even more serious. We are forced to choose between two evils.”

Good statistics are hard to come by, and the Swedish government has done yeoman work keeping the story under wraps, but still it’s happening:

In August of 2016, a woman reported that she had been victim of a gang rape involving ten men in Fittja outside Stockholm. Several suspects were identified early on through forensic evidence and yet it took almost a year until any arrests were made. “I work with rape cases daily, and this is one of the worst rape cases I’ve ever seen,” the victim’s lawyer, Elisabeth Massi-Fritz, told me. “My client has been subject to immense, psychological trauma that will remain with her for the rest of her life. It was nothing short of torture.” And yet, the suspects walked the streets for months before the police found the time to make arrests.

“Unfortunately, the police were too busy and lacked the resources to work the case thoroughly until this spring. Then a number of people were arrested in June,” explained the prosecutor, Markus Hankkio. Ten suspects have now been identified, and the trial will likely begin in October. Over a year after the suspected gang rape, police are now admitting that the same men may have committed more rapes while the police were too busy to investigate this crime, and they are urging other victims to come forward.

There are, however, reasons to think that there may indeed be a real increase in sex crime. While precise numbers are hard to come by, surveys of victims indicate that the share of women in Sweden stating that they have been victims of sex crime has grown rapidly. Self-reported sex crimes doubled between 2012 and 2015, from 1.4 to 3 percent of the female population. The number of women reporting that they feel unsafe in their own neighborhood has increased to almost one in three—an “alarming” development according to The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå), a government agency.

Of course, you know who is responsible for these sex crimes. Immigrants from largely Muslim countries, the immigrants who were welcomed into Sweden with open arms. Naturally, Neuding says that these cultures are patriarchal—in my view they are pretending to be patriarchal. When it comes to competing in the worlds of business, industry and military conflict, they are weak and ineffectual. Which is one reason why they take out their aggression on women.

Neuding writes:

Previous studies (by now more than a decade old) have shown a large overrepresentation of immigrants, particularly from patriarchal societies in the Middle East and North Africa, among the suspects of sex crimes in Sweden. Overrepresentation of immigrants has been even higher when it comes to group rapes, especially with three or more assailants. According to an official study from 1996, immigrant males were 4.5 times as likely as Swedes to commit rape. Immigrants from Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia were particularly overrepresented, being more than 20 times as likely to commit the same crime. In total, 53 percent of rape suspects were either first or second generation immigrants.

A similar study, conducted in 2005, showed an even higher overrepresentation of immigrants among sex crime suspects, by then up to 5.1 times as likely as Swedes to commit rape (see pages 70-77 for a summary in English). In the 2005 study, Brå explained the growing over-representation with reference to demographics and immigration: “[T]he number of people in Sweden belonging to the group of refugees, which have in earlier studies been shown to have an especially high propensity to commit crime, has increased.” It is a plausible hypothesis that the same mechanism is at work now.

Let’s see. Swedish women are liberated and empowered. They are independent and autonomous. They do not need men for much of anything because they can defend themselves. Swedish men have gotten the message and have learned to function like modern-day castrati. They sing the songs of political correctness in an abnormally high pitch and allow Swedish women to go unprotected against the sexual predators that they have all—men and women alike-- welcomed into their country.

At least, you  are not going to condemn them for Islamophobia.