Fourteen hundred children were sexually exploited in Rotherham, England between 1997 and 2013. The feminist outrage was deafening—except that it wasn’t.
Feminists—who see rape everywhere—were silent about the horrors of Rotherham. Why? The men who hideously abused women in Rotherham were Pakistani men.
Feminists prefer going to Capitol Hill and badgering henpecked solons who are desperately fearful of being accused of waging a “war on women.” But when it comes to Rotherham, silence.
Ian Tuttle writes about the “Feminists’ Failure in Rotherham:”
In Rotherham there is a real-life “rape culture.” But you will not learn anything new about it from Salon, the Daily Beast, Jezebel, or Slate. It has gone unmentioned at Feministing, Bitch Media, or the Feminist Majority Foundation. There have been no outraged op-eds from Jenny Kutner, Jessica Valenti, or Samantha Leigh Allen.
These are, apparently, not the rapes they are looking for.
It is hard not to interpret the feminist blogosphere’s silence on Rotherham as an indication of the movement’s ultimate lack of seriousness. Perhaps they are not interested in confronting the ethnic and religious homogeneity of many of the perpetrators: Emma and the majority of the 1,400 victims were abused by “Asian” men — i.e., Muslim men typically from Rotherham’s Pakistani community. Local government leaders, social services, and law enforcement — for fear of being labeled racist — ignored numerous reports they received.
Or perhaps the rapes of young girls overseas are of no particular interest. The victims were, after all, often in and out of government housing, truant or absent from school, and sometimes around domestic violence. Many had gone serially missing. They are not the upper-class types likely to fall victim to sexist fraternity pranks. They are not prospective Salon readers.
Or perhaps rape culture is just much more palatable a subject when it does not involve, you know, actual rape.
I urge you to read the entire piece.