Lesbian Brutally Kidnapped, Brutally Gang-Raped in San Francisco
Dec 23rd, 2008 by admin
A 28-year-old woman who lived peacefully with her woman partner was brutally attacked a week ago last Saturday night in San Francisco. As the woman got out of her car and crossed the street, she was surrounded by four men ranging in age from late teens to early 30s who first taunted her for being a lesbian, ordered her to disrobe, then sexually assaulted her on the spot. She was then forced back into her car and driven seven blocks away to a burned-out apartment building, where she was repeatedly raped, then left in the street naked. The men stole her wallet and car, which was found abandoned two days later.
Police have offered $10,000 to anyone who can provide information on the whereabouts of the men, described as follows:
Police described the first suspect, believed to be the group leader, as a Latino man in his 30s, who stands 5 feet 6 inches tall, weighs 180 pounds, and has black hair, brown eyes and a mustache.
The second suspect is described as an African American man in his early 20s, about 5 feet 10 inches, 170 pounds with black hair and brown eyes. He is known by the nickname “Blu,” police said.
The third suspect is described as Latino, 18 to 20 years old, who is nicknamed “Pato.” The fourth suspect is described only as a Latino man 18 to 20 years old.
The reports I’ve read (and there are by far NOT enough reports) consistently suggest that this is somehow connected with the passage of Proposition 8 in California. I don’t think so. I think lesbians have been raped, assaulted and attacked by men for decades and centuries and millennia, that these hate crimes often have been unreported or underreported and that far too often, femicidal males believe these targeted women deserved the brutalities doled out to them. All the passage of Proposition 8 might have done is emboldened guys like this to do what they do with even greater impunity (if that’s possible) than ever before. Dedicated opponent of lesbian rights Rick Warren being selected to deliver the invocation at Obama’s inauguration sure doesn’t help anything either.
The woman is DEVASTATED. Her life is ON THE LINE. Don’t make this about Proposition 8, you idiots, this is about the LIFE OF A WOMAN and how a man has attempted, and possibly succeeded, IN DESTROYING her life.
God.
Indeed men have brutally raped either individually or in groups women who identify as lesbian or appear to the male rapists to be lesbian and it has nothing to do with Proposition 8. Men rape women because they can and because they want to enforce their male domination and power over women. Furthermore, men rape women as punishment for supposedly stepping outside male-defined perameters of how women are supposed to act and behave. The central reason for these crimes are male hatred of women - not because of the woman’s sexual orientation but because she is female not male. But, instead excuses are offered and since proposition 8 is media news this is being used to deny men’s centuries old war against women. Missue of male power is the core reason but society does not want to hear this because it really would ’split the world open’ and we can’t have that can we. So, lets continue pretending men who rape women are deviants or loners or not normal men or not white men etc. etc. anything but the fact violent men make that choice to commit sexual violence against women, because if we admit this, then this means there something deeply wrong with how boys and men are socialised into becoming so-called ‘real men.’
Men rape lesbians because they can and are fully supported in this culture to do so. Let’s see if all those gay men in San Francisco take to the streets in outrage over this. I think I’d be a little more convinced that men were not all evil conniving snakes if I saw more moral outrage on their part against crimes men commit routinely against women all the time!
Men who rape women are as common as apple pie.
All men support rape and abuse of women just about. Since I NEVER and I meant NEVER ever hear men bring up this topic in outrage over male crimes against women, I assume they don’t care.
Men will get outraged over Palestinian (men), or white supremacy (white men ruling over black men), but they never speak of the crimes all men commit by “commission” or “ommission” against women. This is the tip off women!
Human rights are all about men, never about women exclusively.
Recently, we had our male dog neutered. He is an amazing dog now. Perhaps this is something that might take the “rape” instinct out of men.
P.S. I’m so glad I can come to a blog that supports women’s view 100%. There is no pandering to men (Obama inviting Rick), there is no toleration of pornography. This is what freedom looks like women! Heart creates a serious space for serious women. The male voice is not allowed to run wild here the way it is everywhere else on the Internet. Women have to create spaces where they have time to honestly speak about our lives and our fight for freedom. Let’s see all the “liberal” men out there get out and do something about rape, and about this situation in San Francisco.
This depressed and upset me so much I didn’t have the heart to write about it.
Years ago when I lived in DC a nice polite, white, middle class lesbian couple I knew who lived in a “nice” neighborhood came home to find their house sprayed painted with anti-lesbian slurs and a window broken. They were terrified. This was on my mind last night as we saw some strange spray painted markings on a telephone pole outside our house last night (while my partner is transgendered no one assumes anything but “female” although I find often we are assumed to be “sisters” and not partners). I’d gone to the store with her for last minute shopping and left my son home because we were getting him some things and he’s almost 13, old enough to be at home for a little while by myself, and all this flashed through my mind. What is someone came by to do something to the house while he was home alone, because of me and my relationship?
We started a blog about this incident to help bring justice to this woman through the power of collective thought. Visit us and leave a comment: http://goddessofvengeance.blogspot.com
This is so sad. I hope this young women gets better and her attackers are caught and punished by the full extent of the law.
My heart aches for this woman. Screams for her and for justice for what these men did and took from her.
I’ve been raped. It was not ‘brutal’ in the sense that no one beat me to accomplish it, but it was traumatizing, horrifying and a permanent scar on my mind and heart regardless.
Oh how my heart cries out for all women in this moment. We are not safe. We are not safe. WE ARE NOT SAFE. We are hated and used and beaten and ravaged and raped, and nobody, not even most of us, gives a shit. Especially in the case of lesbians. After all, who gives a flying horse’s ass about a woman who doesn’t even have the decency to let men fuck/own/use her? What good is she?
I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I really don’t.
Fuck men. Fuck them. They don’t talk about rape because they don’t give a fuck about it…so long as no one (except them) rapes their prized pieces of pussy.
I would tear the whole system to pieces with my fingers, with my nails, with by breath and words and stabbing stares of death. With my teeth. With my tears. With my screams.
But I can’t. I have no power. I have no power in the face of this worldwide campaign of hate. I am powerless, small, helpless. All I can do is speak. All I can do is resist daily, hourly, by the minute in whatever tiny ways I can. It’s just not enough, and things will not change no matter what I do. No matter what all of us do.
It is sobering to understand, to know, that if given half a chance, just about every man I/we encounter on the street/at work/anywhere in life (even amongst those I/we might call ‘friends’) would beat me/us, rape me/us, and leave me/us for dead…that in the back of all of their heads this is the ultimate sick, fucked up, perverse, woman-hating ‘fantasy’…of taking their hatred of us to it’s absolute logical conclusion their ultimate desire.
I’d throw up, but I might never be able to stop and would probably drown in my own vomit. Maybe I could take a few of the motherfuckers with me.
My thoughts are with this woman. My thoughts are with all women. My thoughts are with the most marginalized of us all…the lesbians, who commit the highest crime of all in refusing to fuck men. It’s not enough. It’s not even close to being close to being in the same universe as enough. Thinking and resisting in these microscopic ways is just not enough. I want this world to burn. Burn. Just burn to ashes so we can start over again. It’s the only way. There’s no saving this version of it.
But I do it. I keep living it. We all keep doing it. We all keep living it. Getting up, going to work, braving the streets, facing our ‘lovers’, ‘friends’, ‘co-workers’ with penises, we hold back the tears and horror with all our might and we keep smiling. We keep finding good things, things to keep us alive.
We keep fighting, even though it’s hopeless. It’s all we can do.
It’s not fair, it’s not right, there’s no justice in this world for us, but it’s all we can do.
CJ.
Claire these are my arms, around you. This is my hand stroking your hair. This is breath barely drawn, in pain. For you and all our daughters, and me, and all of us.
Claire, the greatest danger women face is actually living with men, and agreeing to marry or be live in. The most rapes, and abuse occur between men who know the women well.
It’s very hard for lesbians to tell straight women to stop aiding and abetting and caring for the enemy of lesbian feminists, so that’s my utter frustration.
Men will stop raping women when women stop believing anything men say ever. Women need to band together and form a country of their own, and rapist men need to be executed. Men need to fear death anytime they ever disrepect a woman, and right now men think they are free to do whatever they want.
So women, in the past small groups of lesbians did go out and deal with the men who raped women. It’s not on the books, and it was done quietly, but women did know who to turn to.
I don’t believe men will ever change unless women radically change, and I don’t see this happening any time soon.
As I said before, we had our male dog neutered, and now he is transformed. This tells you something.
This story truly breaks my heart and I can, unfortunately relate. My partner was recently gang raped. I am having a hard time finding resources to help me help her. I need any tools that I can find to support her in her healing process. She is a very strong woman and I love her very much. I worry about her constantly while trying not to let her see how much I am hurt that she is hurting. This isn’t about me and I don’t want her to worry about anything other than her recovery. If anyone has any suggestions or knows of any resources I would greatly appreciate some information.
J
I understand the reaction that bringing up Prop 8 ignores the total history that was at play in this attack.
But. Maybe that’s more honesty than America deserves.
You see, the point of people in the LGBT community bringing up prop 8 is this - that they (patriarchal America) can’t deny any of our rights without therefore being complicit in rape and murder. That they can’t be Rick Warren without also being Hitler. That to check the wrong ballot box is rape. That the blood is on their hands. My mathematical sense of ethics doesn’t like the fact that these statements are literally false, but does it matter? How does the cost-benefit analysis work out here?
Of course that raises the question of trivializing rape, but is that really possible in this case? Will anyone with enough brains to vote trivialize this?
Not that any stranger’s response to this is going to help her. I also think that spending too much time on proselytizing to robots (as the tactic I describe above runs the risk of doing) wastes time better spent on indoctrinating their kids and erasing their culture. I hate to respond to a single person’s suffering with such a demographic response, but…well, I want her to be immortal anyway and I don’t know any other way.