–we are women” : an article by amanda kijera.
The United Nations, western women’s organizations and the Haitian government must immediately provide women in Haiti with the funding that they need to build domestic violence and rape crisis centers. Stop dividing Black families by distributing solely to women, which only exaggerates male resentment and frustration in Haiti. Provide both women and men with job training programs that would allow for self-sufficiency as opposed to continued dependency on whites. Lastly, admit that the issue of racial integration might still need addressing on an international level, and then find a way to address it!
so i have a special research interest in haiti, in case y’all didn’t already know. i found this article to be really engaging, stupendously interesting. i feel so confused by this! i feel confused by one of the responses to the above:
How is it possible, after being the victim of a brutal rape, to absolve the perpetrator of guilt and point the finger at men of another color who are nowhere near one’s body? This projection is absolutely stunning and self-defeating.
The man who committed this crime committed it for his reason and his alone. Without holding him to account, what hope of change is there? If a person cannot own his behavior, he cannot change it.
This sort of rationalization would absolve white slave owners, by the way. They were simply victims of cultural thinking at the time. And the patriarchy? A remnant of twisted religious extremism.
No one would be responsible for any action at any time, anywhere. There is, after all, a context for every crime.
At the root of this absolution is a desire to push personal responsibility on the collective. Unfortunately, the collective was not in that room that night. One man raped one woman.
oh dear. what now? what is this now. why am i so confused? can anyone please tell me what is going on, and who should do what, and why? and how this fits into all of it?
Melissa’s words are so incredibly powerful, and I can’t make that point any better than she can. This is not about the “global hierarchy”. Every person has control over their actions. Amanda’s rapist is no different. Her response is astounding to most – how could she possibly blame the status of the black man in the world society for this? How was the man that beat her and abused her not at fault? We’re right to question that.
oh, i miss Bq, i want Bq to tell me how to think about this real bad!
Gender Agenda 
I have some thoughts on this.
“How is it possible, after being the victim of a brutal rape, to absolve the perpetrator of guilt and point the finger at men of another color who are nowhere near one’s body? This projection is absolutely stunning and self-defeating.”
Obviously a rapist should be held accountable for their actions. But to use that as a justification for ignoring the cultural context in which those actions occurred is to ensure that there will be more rapists and more rapes.
“This sort of rationalization would absolve white slave owners, by the way. They were simply victims of cultural thinking at the time.”
This is a self defeating analogy. Let us imagine for a moment:
“How is it possible, after being the victim of slavery, to absolve the slaveowner of guilt and point the finger at men who are nowhere near the plantation or slave? This projection is absolutely stunning and self-defeating.
The slaveowner who committed this crime committed it for his reason and his alone. Without holding him to account, what hope of change is there? If a person cannot own his behavior, he cannot change it.”
This statement does not absolve the slaveowner. But it does absolve the investors who financed the slave trade, the capitalists who profited off it, the “scientists” who justified it, the generals who fought to defend it. If abolitionists had not recognized that the entire system of slave-holding was the problem, we would still have slavery today. This does not mean absolving white slave owners of anything. It means not absolving ourselves when we are complicit in the crime.
If the person who wrote this quote is living in the United States right now (which I don’t know if that is true) then they are complicit in any rape that occurs in Haiti. they are complicit because their government occupied Haiti in the 1930s, their government boycotted haiti in the 19th century, their government overthrew aristide in the early 1990s, and then put him back on their own terms. Their government propped up horrible military dictators for generations, and their government used foreign aid and debt obligations to force Haitians into an untenable economic position.
Did the rapist in this situation have control over his actions? Yes. A crime occurred, and that rapist is responsible. But a second crime was committed when the rape victim could not have a)medical care b)support and comfort c) justice. Don’t absolve yourself of those crimes just because someone else committed a different crime first. That is like saying “it is okay for me to rape a woman if someone else drugged them first.” Obviously, if they hadn’t been drugged, you could not have rape them, just as, if this woman had not been raped, you could not have denied her justice, health, or her humanity. But just because someone else has hurt someone does not mean you can hurt them too. So to the statement: “Unfortunately, the collective was not in that room that night. One man raped one woman.” I say: “actually, it was.”
It may not be right to completely absolve a rapist, any rapist, of responsibility for their act. But don’t you dare use their culpability as an excuse to deny your own.
ok so when you are saying “dont you dare” you are pointing at the writers, rite, not me??
“If the person who wrote this quote is living in the United States right now (which I don’t know if that is true) then they are complicit in any rape that occurs in Haiti. they are complicit because their government occupied Haiti in the 1930s, their government boycotted haiti in the 19th century, their government overthrew aristide in the early 1990s, and then put him back on their own terms.”
not if the person who lives in the u.s. cant really have control over the u.s. government! so few ppl have control over the u.s. government. how can everyone be considered complicit if they cant prevent their huge government from doing bad things? like, no one can, you know? in what way is an american complicit in the crimes committed by the american government? i think those ways have limits! i know that the american lifestyle enjoyed by americans is directly responsible for horrible things happening all over the world to other humans/animals, i know that. im curious to know what you think this american could have done to Not be complicit in the thing that you are saying she is complicit.
Yes, I was pointing at the writers, not you at all.
I should really be writing my paper right now, but I’m going to quickly reply anyways.
In my head, the person writing this was, like myself, a white male from America. I did not follow the links in your post (because I didn’t have time)…and in light of that, I was almost certainly way to harsh in the language I used.
that said, I don’t know if this person is complicit. I guess I think that if you are living the American lifestyle, you are complicit. And probably there is nothing you can directly do about that complicity, but you can at least recognize it. Because you are a direct beneficiary.
I think the reason I viewed it the way I did, is because what the first quote was saying was: the US should change their behavior in these specific ways to solve the problem. And so I took the second post not only as saying that structural factors are not responsible, but as saying that the US/west shouldn’t implement those changes. And I guess one way to start helping the situation and start not being complicit (if you are living the American lifestyle) is to not directly appose or undermine changes someone suggests that could help the problem.
I read that article about the woman who was raped in Haiti a while ago and it left me feeling confused.
I think I just don’t entirely agree with either party.
The thing that I can’t wrap my head around in this argument is that the kind of oppression black men are suffering somehow necessitates rape. Crimes like rape, to me, qualitatively different than crimes like theft or even murder. No level of economic destitution will ever require you to rape someone. No level of violence in your neighborhood will ever require you to rape someone (unless its one of those horrible situations where someone has a gun to your head). Rape has no value attached to it that will help you temporarily improve a bad situation. If the man who raped Amanda really was just expressing “misdirected anger” then fuck him! He doesn’t have the right to that anger if he’s going to use it to hurt innocent people.
But every crime has a context. Every crime does have a society and the politics of that society behind it. That means, slave owners , rapists in the US, and rapists in Haiti.
So the counter argument isn’t much better, as BJ’s response, which I don’t really have anything to add to, showed.
I don’t there IS a way to not be complicit, but being complicit sometimes has unintended benefits. For example, we’re much more able to address the fuckedupness of U.S. than the average citizen in Haiti is. I think? maybe?
EVERYONE READ THIS http://flipfloppingjoy.com/2010/05/28/single-story-homophobia-and-gay-imperialism-revisted/