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For Women Journalists in Egypt, a Rite of Passage « The Thinking Housewife
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For Women Journalists in Egypt, a Rite of Passage

June 30, 2012

 

ADITYA B. writes:

Yet another foolish white woman has, in her own words, suffered a “horrific sexual and physical attack in Tahrir Square.” There’s something about the prospect of “horrific sexual and physical attack[s]” in the line of duty that seems to almost – dare I say it – arouse the white careerist?

White women don’t venture into Mestizo and black territory for pleasure because there is not glory in being raped in the pursuit of hedonism. However, when such dangers are part and parcel of achieving some sort of “glory” in pursuit of career that seems to act as a stimulant.

Do you think I am on to something? That the prospect of being horribly raped and killed seems to act not as a deterrent, but as perverse incentive to place oneself in harm’s way.

Equally fascinating is Natasha Smith’s reaction. While she is being raped, she is saluting her attackers (most respectfully). This is a wonderful synechdoche for the west: we salute our rapists as they brutally gangrape us.

And of course, she hasn’t learned one damn thing from this experience. Instead of leaving this disgusting and barbaric nation post haste and urging her sisters to stay as far away from these animals as possible, she is encouraging women to place themselves in harm’s way.

There is no cure for the Eloi. I don’t know what portion of white society thinks like this woman. But there is no cure for them. There is nothing anybody can do for a group that is so determined to commit suicide. All we can do is let them, and prevent them from taking us down with them.

Laura writes:

Do you think I am on to something? That the prospect of being horribly raped and killed seems to act not as a deterrent, but as perverse incentive to place oneself in harm’s way.

No, no, no.

It may be one of the hazards of the job, a hazard that is put in the back of the mind and forgotten because the job is desirable and it’s very difficult to make it as a journalist, but not an incentive. No woman would invite such an experience.

But once it has happened, it becomes an opportunity. It is unfair to criticize Natasha Smith for yelling out “Salaam, Allah!” to her attackers; she was desperate. But what is most amazing is that after she was turned away from two hospitals for medical treatment and denied help by people who thought they might be arrested if they assisted her, she writes, “This vicious act was not representative of the place I had come to know and love.”

Imagine walking around a city after you have been beaten and your clothes torn to shreds by a throng of men, and people deny you help. What does it take to “love” such a place?

At the end of this CNN interview, Smith says she is annoyed that the incident is gaining so much attention. Third World women are raped all the time. The attention demonstrates a bias toward her because she is a white Westerner. (I believe rape is much more common in America than in Egypt. Also, didn’t the attack itself show enough of a negative bias toward a white Western woman to balance it all out in the end?) The hardness in her face is shocking for a woman so young.

Natasha Smith, who was making a documentary on women’s rights, was motivated to venture into a dangerous situation in a foreign country by her belief that the world is too dangerous for women in foreign countries. Surreal.

The good thing is that this will probably land her a job.

Lisa writes:

Do you think I am on to something? That the prospect of being horribly raped and killed seems to act not as a deterrent, but as perverse incentive to place oneself in harm’s way.

Laura responds: No, no, no.

You are more optimistic than I: this would be the ultimate outworking of a white woman’s atonement for her white guilt, and gruesome penance for her white privilege. The white victim of rape in Haiti has testified to as much, with her expressing some feeling that the act has helped her identify even more with those people, and cleansed her from some of her racial prejudice. Our ability to deceive ourselves knows no bounds.

Aditya responds:

I s’pose I am being uncharitable towards the intrepid Ms. Smith with my remarks about her ejaculations during her ordeal. I cannot imagine the situation. I s’pose a human being will instinctively resort to entreaties, hoping against hope, that the monsters in human form will refrain.

But the fact that she went to this place in the first place is an act of unforgivable stupidity. She knew the danger it posed and did it, not in spite of, but because of the danger. That’s why I feel, that like male thrill-junkies, women like Ms. Smith may be drawn to such situations.

What Ms. Smith doesn’t realize is that when she was attacked, so was white womanhood. Hyper-individualism has weakened conscious group bonds in the Eloi to the extent that they fail to understand that every attack on a white woman in Egypt is an attack on whiteness and white womanhood. That, too, is unforgivable.

When women like her profess “love” for places like Cairo or Istanbul or Bombay, I take it mean that they so thoroughly reject their upbringing that they gravitate to the other extreme of the norms they were raised in. I think these women are undergoing a permanent adolescent rebellion. Since they are intellectually and morally underdeveloped, it is hopeless to discuss the foolishness of their actions or the shame and infamy it brings upon their race and nation.

The hardness seems to come from that same mixture of adolescence and adulthood. Juvenile cynicism and moral permissiveness lend that hardened look to almost every pretty girl in L.A.

She will assuredly be a heroine for a while and may even end up as an “expert” on some tiresome news channel. And people will even listen to her. And they should. This is exactly what an apathetic, ignorant and decadent citizenry deserves.

Laura writes:

Hyper-individualism has weakened conscious group bonds in the Eloi to the extent that they fail to understand that every attack on a white woman in Egypt is an attack on whiteness and white womanhood.

Here is a woman who has been persuaded all her life that whites are guilty and morally inferior. She finds herself facing a nonwhite mob of men filled with wild, rapacious hatred. They rip her clothes to shreds. They grope at her breasts and stick their hands into her genitals. [It was unclear to me whether she was actually raped.] They punch her and drag her by the hair. They are on the verge of tearing her to pieces.

In the immediate aftermath of this horror, she can reject everything she has been taught and realize that a significant minority of nonwhites bears animus towards her not because of any historic guilt of whites but because it is filled with envy and sees her as the sacrificial object of its hatred.

Or she can continue as she has. And denounce whites yet again.

The latter choice is much easier. And that’s exactly what Natasha Smith has done. In the interview, the only moment of real bitterness is when she addresses the issue of the excessive attention toward the rape which is unfair and a sign of white privilege.

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