Re the recent brutal gang-rape and slaying of South African player Eudy Simelane, Outsports reader Wayne Jones emailed me from South Africa to add:
“As you mentioned, there have been other lesbian murders (in black townships/ghettos) where the motive has been simply because the women were gay. Township women don’t have it easy here: last year a woman near Durban was stripped of her clothes, made to walk the streets naked and her shack was burned down because she was wearing trousers!
Re the recent brutal gang-rape and slaying of South African player Eudy Simelane, Outsports reader Wayne Jones emailed me from South Africa to add:
“As you mentioned, there have been other lesbian murders (in black townships/ghettos) where the motive has been simply because the women were gay. Township women don’t have it easy here: last year a woman near Durban was stripped of her clothes, made to walk the streets naked and her shack was burned down because she was wearing trousers!
“At the other extreme, a 25 yr old black woman was stripped naked and sexually assaulted by about 100 men at a public taxi rank in Johannesburg in Feb 2008. Her crime? She was wearing a mini-skirt and apparently was ‘asking for it.’ Three men nearby managed to help her, but not before the mob had stuck fingers into her vagina and poured alcohol over her naked body.
"A popular tabloid columnist (and it is entirely the poorly educated lower class who read this high-circulation tabloid), Jon Qwelane, has just written another article against gay marriage, this time comparing it to marrying an animal. His online editor refused to publish the article, but the damage has already been done as the newspaper (Sunday Sun) had no qualms printing it alongside a cartoon of a man and a goat marrying in a church."
South Africa isn't the only country where grisly crimes against women and gays are occurring. From conservative Islamic countries to Guatemala, there's a growing global terror campaign aimed at keeping these two groups "in their place." The United States, with its own population of poorly educated traditionalist men who are easily stirred up against women and LGBT people, has its own violent statistics building.
Sadly, the violence starts with something as seemingly non-violent as the case in the news today — San Diego Mesa College's open retaliation against two lesbian coaches who dared to call the school on its flagrant Title IX violations in the athletic program. -Patricia Nell Warren
