"Asian men, white women and a taboo that must be broken"

[financeguy]

The Derby gang was all Asian except for one seasoned white abuser. Most of the Asians were Muslim Pakistanis and – apart from a few Asian and mixed-race girls who fell into their nets – their victims were almost all white. Because I am Asian and "a fucking Muslim" and the rapists were my people committing a "Paki" crime against white females, I am guilty too, apparently, part of the evil posse.

The English Defence League and British National Party have draped bunting and bright lights around the story, the nation's virtue penetrated and torn by rapacious migrants and their sons. Two days after the Derby case, another such network was exposed – of white men in Cornwall who plucked white girls to groom, violate and control. Was theirs a lesser crime? No. It's naked racism to believe that sex assaults on white women by black or Asian men are more depraved and animalistic than those carried out by white men, who presumably remember to say "please" and "thank you" before and after.

But when I ask myself was a greater crime committed by the Asian molesters, the honest answer has to be yes. Conscientious Asian community activists in Derby have said that these criminal acts were nothing to do with race or religion. The perpetrators were bad men who did terrible things. That is surely self-delusion or a cover-up.

Most Asian men do not go around raping young white girls and women; many have happy and equal relationships with white partners. However, an alarming number of Asian individuals, families and communities do believe that white females have no morals, are free and available, deserving of no respect or protection.

Up in Bradford a few years back, I met Muslim pimps, some wearing mini Koran pendants on heavy, gold chains. "Not our girls," they reassured me, "just them white girls from the estates, cheap girls. They love it man, all the money they make! What else will they do with their lives? We're helping them make a career."

Much laughter, until I asked them what they would do if a white pimp groomed their daughters. They would kill the pimp and the girls too, they said. They would too.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Asian men, white women and a taboo that must be broken - Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Commentators - The Independent

[Pearl]

I read the article.

Its disgusting what people do to justify rape, especially that of children.

BTW, which taboo are you talking about, FG? Racism towards Asians in the UK or the sexual repression in Muslim communities? I got the impression Yasmin Alibhai-Brown was talking about sexual repression.

[financeguy]

^ I was just quoting the title of the article. The writer is a British-Asian journalist, her sympathies based on articles I've previously read are broadly liberal/feminist, I think the taboo she is talking about is that there is a certain hypocrisy within some Islamic British Asian communities in so far as that when some of their young men rape white girls, some of the media prefer to look the other way, for fear of being accused of racism.

[Pearl]

Originally Posted by financeguy

I think the taboo she is talking about is that there is a certain hypocrisy within some Islamic British Asian communities in so far as that when some of their young men rape white girls, some of the media prefer to look the other way, for fear of being accused of racism.

I suppose they won't be looking away for long now because of what this columnist has written.

[yolland]

I don't think she's saying that (to quote the article) rape "in some places intersect[ing] with 'culture, ethnicity and identity'" is itself the "taboo" topic, though that could be a corollary (are we to assume this specific type of scenario is statistically common in the UK, relative to the demographics in question?). Rather, it's the frank acknowledgment of frequent (pan-)South Asian contempt for Western women's sexual mores that's "taboo"--in a way that, say, frequent Western contempt for traditional Muslim women's self-identification with their communities isn't. Both are pretty tough to have an "honest national conversation" about, though. Especially when--as she points out--the first people leaping into the fray always seem to be the textbook racists, with their shrill projections framing rape as omen of looming mass revenge against 'the white race,' or the wanton mass looting of unearned 'goods' by the outrageously uppity.

It's not about devoutness...or skin color...or not getting laid enough. A tension between a traditional worldview where the community is the elemental social unit, and a modern Western one where the individual is...between a gender system where self-affirmation through family duty is the base paradigm, and one where self-expression through the dynamic of romance is...between a gender-role system where men guard women's dignity by regulating access to them and women look to men for protection, and one where men grant women dignity by letting them regulate access and women look to men for respect. Add to all that assorted external factors, like the unnerving ability of certain sociopaths to rally the troops by appealing to ties of blood, status or shared prejudice; widespread socioeconomic segregation; large numbers of broken and weak families, more so in some communities than others; widespread drug and alcohol abuse; the trusting nature of the young...and you've got a lot of potential for ugly.

Understanding, really understanding, how gendered behavior--yours or theirs--looks from the other side is very difficult, probably among the last fluencies even the most diligent and determined assimilator can achieve. And it seldom happens without many (often mutually) embarrassing, disorienting, and sometimes disturbing moments along the way. I'm not exactly sure how "an honest national conversation" might be used to facilitate or accelerate that process, though I admire this author for attempting an opening salvo.