I appreciate the tone taken by Cary Tennis -- that rape is the primary problem, and a rapist's own racism should be dismissed, not valorized by those seeking to excuse the attacker. But that's not what has happened in many European countries, where multiculturalists have demand that Islamic male superiority be valued over the human rights of women.

In America, the hate crimes movement has actually codified the terrible notion that racism articulated during rape is punishable with penalty enhancement, but sexism articulated during rape is not. Every year, a handful of rapes that include racial content (slurs, or admitted selection of victims by race) are subject to hate crime charges, but rapists who use slurs against women or target one woman after another (thus "choosing" women as clearly as some assailants choose by race) are not subject to increased hate crime penalties. That amounts to selective prosecution, a fact not made any more palatable by the additional fact that counting sexism as penalty enhancement for rapists would certainly make almost all rapes hate crimes, a conundrum that ought to be laid at the feet of those who created such laws, not kicked under the table in the interest of promoting political agendas. Selective enforcement of hate crime laws creates a disturbing legal climate in which even violent sexism is legally "erased" in the interest of not deflection attention from other, rarer forms of prejudice. With these laws in effect, women in America are being given the message that being raped because you are a woman isn't as important as being raped because you are white, black, gay, Asian, and so on. Not progress, it might be suggested.

So what do we do about this? Tennis asks: Where are the voices of feminists, leftists and human rights activists? Maybe they're on the case. I can answer with cold authority that any feminist who speaks out about rapes that happen to be interracial, let alone speaks out about the disparate use of hate crime laws, can expect to be pillored by a quite diverse range of people.

Many years ago I was attacked by a man in the park who put his hand over my mouth and told me to be quiet. I shifted my weight and got him in the ribcage hard with my elbow. He limped off. The move came automatically to me as I'd been doing Tai Chi for many years. So yes for sure learn a martial art. Wing Chun Kung Fu is especially effective for women. Another thing to do is go get a large dog. Bring this dog with you whenever possible and make sure she/he gets plenty of exercise. If you need to go out at night and it is possible, bring your dog. I noticed years ago that the very types of men who are threatening to women also seem to be the same sorts who are afraid of big dogs. These guys cross the street when they see a big dog. And rapists come in all sorts of sizes and descriptions. Before I learned martial arts, years before, I was raped by two blonde guys..you never know.

FWIW, Cary, race was not mentioned in any of the articles from Aftenposten, neither the English ones nor the Norwegian ones. Regardless, no one's debating the fact that rape occurs, that it sometimes occurs more frequently than has been the case in the past, or that sometimes it's Muslim men who are the perpetrators.

We as individuals cannot control the behavior of others. We need instead to focus on how we react to others' behavior. The stuff you learn in a self defense class works just as well on a Muslim dude as it does on a Trønder. And the stuff you learn from a shrink might teach you how to learn to live with and possibly change your irrational fears, e.g. getting killed in a terrorist attack, getting eaten by a shark, or getting raped by a Muslim man who is a stranger.

There's probably no way that in this many pages of responses, no one has said anything about this part of Frederick B's initial letter, but, um, I really have to:

"A woman who admits to having less than ten uncomfortable experiences-- no physical incidents, mind you-- and you advise this women to deepen her phobia and continue to act in a manner that has no correlation to the actual events of her life." [emphasis mine]

How many times, exactly, does a woman have to be forced out of her comfort zone before something important can be considered to have happened? Why isn't once or twice too many times? How often does she have to be made to feel unsafe before taking actions to protect herself "correlates" to her life?

Oh, wait - she's a woman, she should just expect to harassed and intimidated. It's her job.

If an individual man makes it clear that he does not respect the personhood of a woman and feels entitled to treat her any way he chooses, the only sane response (at least, from a not-wanting-to-get-raped point of view) is to question whether or not, if given the chance, he would have any compunction about taking whatever he chooses from her. If the same behavior follows from several members of the same group (this could be any voluntary group, like the Shriners or New Englanders or Klansmen, just as easily as a religion), it is not unreasonable to infer that said group's culture does not respect the safety and independence of women. And then to take that inferrence down to the nearest self-defense course. The LW wasn't planning to pepperspray every dark-skinned man she encounters, she just wants to feel safe going about her life. It's not racist, it's not alarmist, it's self-preservation.

p.s. I didn't mean to infer that either Shriners or New Englanders are misogynists or rapists. [Klansmen, sure, why not.]

Just namin' groups.

Sorry, not buying any of it. If you assume that one group is inherently inferior (in this case, inherently more prone to rape) than another, that is the definition of bigotry. I'm not surprised that so many people are so quick to assuage the LW's fears, to assure her that, of course, she isn't a bigot. There is a racism-denial business in this culture and business is booming. The fact is that the pendulum has swung back, and people are now becoming more and more

Also, the Muslim/Arab dodge is nothing but debate-club sophistry. It's precisely the people like the letter writer who constantly conflate the two. When you insist on making sweeping generalizations you abdicate your right to complain about that sort of thing. And, more importantly, in the context of the original letter the complaint is nonsensical: how do you know who is Muslim? As the LW herself points out, a Muslim could easily be a white skinned Scandinavian. But, as she makes clear in her letter, she is making snap judgements about who, precisely, is a Muslim. How does she know who is or isn't a Muslim-- who she should fear-- if not through exterior racial clues?Don't practice "religious profiling" yourself and then act self-righteous about racial and religious difference, please.

And, finally-- it's just "the gangbangers"? Right there, you're participating in stereotyping. Stereotyping that, I'd like to point out, does nothing to protect you. Not everyone who dresses a certain way acts a certain way. And if you are so quick to judge someone as a gangbanger, it doesn't surprise me that you see so many rapist out there.