Same tune, different verse

digby has a must-read piece today contextualizing racially-based sexual violence. I'm always amazed that the narrative surrounding these incidents treats them as aberrations rather than the norm.

There's a hair's breadth of difference between incidents like these and a full-on lynching, and in an environment where immigrants - specifically Mexican and other Central American immigrants - are being criminalized and dehumanized (if you want examples, I suggest dropping in on random threads at Free Republic or Little Green Footballs - you'll have to find those on your own. No linky-links from me), these might be the leading edge of another wave of racially-motivated violence.

digby sez:

And once again, I have to ask about the forced sodomy. Is it that men were always raping other men with objects and nobody talked about it, or is this becoming more common? [emphasis added] This particular form of violence is showing up everywhere from Abu Ghraib to the less physically brutal but equally terrifying "hazing" of grade school kids. And the common denominator in all of this is that it's being excused by the rightwing moralists. What in the hell is up with this?

Indeed. The answer to the bolded question is, unfortunately, that men were (and are) "raping other men (and women) with objects and nobody talked about it" with an alarming degree of frequency, and that the U.S. certainly isn't the only - or for that matter, the worst - offender. That this racially- or ethnically-motivated violence has such sexualized overtones shouldn't surprise us, given the prevalence of misogynist political-economies and cultural regimes the world over.

The question to us is how do we fix the societal context of a virulently racist society which enables these explosions of hate-based violence? I'm all ears and willing to take my share of the responsibility and do my share of the work.