Sunday, November 30, 2014

Corrective rape – an offspring of Hate crimes – by blogger Snehal Gajare



Humanity is considered to be the greatest of all religions; but are these preaching confined only to our books/speeches or they can also be incorporated into our demeanour too? I was extremely shocked to read an article that spoke about “Corrective rape” in South Africa.  “Corrective rape” is a horrifying practice of raping the people from the LGBTQ community to ‘cure ‘them of their sexual orientation. Raping someone because he/she is gay/lesbian/bisexual or a transgender? There have been several reports that speak of families knowingly enlisting men to rape their lesbian relatives to “correct” their sexual orientation.  Is this humane? This is nothing but a hate crime. Sometimes our humanitarian homophobic inclinations as a society can exacerbate fears and threats in lives of several others and make it a living hell.

Another article revealed about the plight of the students belonging to the LGBTQ community who were raped on the college campus. College life stories are all about education, friendships, independence and growing up as an individual; but to a lot of students such stories are filled with episodes of sexual assaults. A study by American Association of University women revealed that more than 70 percent of the LGBTQ students had encountered sexual harassment from the campus employees, faculty members and fellow students at the college. The study also reads that such violent assaults on LGBTQ students are perceived as a violent attempt to oppress those who are challenging social norms around sexuality and gender. Moreover, even if assault cases are reported, neither the hospitals not the universities/colleges are very equipped to deal with rapes cases in the LGBTQ community. The scenario is no different when a straight person reports rape. Our “temples of learning” are turning into dungeons with such an alarming rate of sexual assaults on campuses.


The main purpose of writing this article is to create awareness among the people that “Hate” should not be used as a weapon to ruin someone’s life. If you don’t like someone for whatever reason, that’s your personal opinion. But this hatred does not grant you an advantage to rape the other person. One cannot commit rape under the veil of correcting the LGBTQ community. Rape is Rape. It doesn't matter whether you are LGBTQ or straight. At the end of the day you are a human being and there cannot be a convincing explanation for committing rape.

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