How the U.S.A. is Guilty of a Crime Against Humanity

New laws are clearly in order for dealing with rape. Rape is, after all, a hate crime. More specifically, it is listed as crime against humanity with the International Criminal Court. Now, this is not to say that every rape is a crime against humanity. A crime against humanity is a crime that is done systematically and are condoned by the government or whatever authority is in place. These are particularly horrendous crimes done in both times of war and in times of peace. Specifically, they are not sporadic events. For a really good description of crimes against humanity, I suggest looking up the Pinky Show on YouTube and watching the episode about it.

Now is the hard part: proving that rape in the United States has become a crime against humanity.

This is, surprisingly, rather easy. Just take a look at Sarah Palin. She practically does the work for me. Actually, our legal system as a whole does it for me.

Using the statistics from RAINN: About 60% of rapes go unreported and factoring that in, it means that only about 6% of rapists ever spend a day in jail. This means that roughly 15 of 16 rapists walk free.

That's kind of...depressing. Especially given there's something like rate of 1 out of every 5 or 6 American women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. What is our government doing about this? Well, looking at the normal rape case, the woman's* background is dragged out into the spot light, her credibility called into question, and most discussion about the case circles around how horrible the whole situation is for the man. In general, no one cares about what has happened to the victim because in most American's minds, the man accused of rape is the victim.

Our government is doing nothing to stop this. In fact, there are politicians like Palin who make things easier for rapists to get away with rape. There are even politicians who are rapists, but we almost never hear about it. It's a culture of silence, and if that isn't government condoning rape, then I don't know what is. No, they aren't encouraging rape, but they aren't exactly doing anything to stop it either. Given how many rapes occur in the United States and the rate of punishment for this particular hate crime, one has to wonder what is causing this?

Government isn't directly encouraging it, as far as I know. Indirectly, though, I'd argue.

Our government, despite how many women hold a position of power, is based on a system of patriarchy. That is, white men in suits typically call the shots. Now, we have a president who is young, progressive, and not white. Will things change?

Probably not, as sad as that is.

Patriarchy is a system that has been around for so long, it's really quite depressing how accepted it is. The basic assumption in the United States is that men are the power in the house. Women are beneath them because the female is just a derivation of the male. This comes directly from the Abrahamic faiths, specifically Christianity, which is our unofficial state religion. Looking at that root, we can see that the Abrahamic god made Eve from Adam's rib. That is literally how we get the word "woman", which means something along the lines of "of a man". Anyone else see any problems with this?

Going further into Abrahamic lore, and yes I'm grouping the three faiths together here as one, we get to the story of Lilith. Now, Lilith is often rejected by Christians and usually only shows up in Jewish lore, but she's still important because and Abrahamic faith is an Abrahamic faith and they all are nothing more than branches of the same religion.

Back to Lilith. She is, according to the stories, Adam's first wife. She was made the same way he was, and thus was his equal. When he tried to make her submit, she pointed out that she was his equal and thus would not submit. She was promptly removed from the Garden of Eden and replaced with Eve. In the meantime, Lilith essentially became the Mother of Evil, all because she wouldn't submit to her partner. Because that's what he was. Adam was not her husband. He was her partner.

This idea that a relationship between a male and a female (I'm going to try and eradicate the word "woman" from my vocabulary) must place the female in submission to the male is part of why rape is such a controversial subject in the States. If a female refuses a male the opportunity to have sexual intercourse with her, she is labeled "prude" and "frigid" and a variety of other words that I have been called many times and don't wish to repeat.

Conversely, if the female chooses to be her own person and refuse to submit to any male, she is most frequently labeled a "bitch". If she chooses to have sex as she wants it, when she wants it, and with whomever she chooses, then we get to words like "slut", "whore", and other unsavory terms. Going even further with this, males are not treated in this way. If a male sleeps with many females, he is labeled a "stud", a "player", and other things. It is also naturally assumed that the male is will dominate the female during intercourse. However, if a male refuses to have sex, the most common result (that I have observed) is some light teasing and a general acceptance of his choice.

Because males have a choice. That's the real issue. According to American culture, males have a choice when it comes to sex. Females don't. Rape is about power, not about sex.

Our government is condoning rape, which is a hate crime, and our society is not only condoning it, it's effectively encouraging it by teaching children that males are superior to females and that it's not normal for a female to not submit to a male in any way. If this isn't a crime against humanity, I'm not sure what is.



*I'm only speaking about female victims, because according to American law, rape means that penetration occurred and thus the only people capable of rape are males. This issue is another post, so I won't go into it here.

**If anyone reading this has any problems with my typical lack of quotations/links, go to Google and run a search. I don't link something unless I think you should take a look at it.