A woman in Greece has been in court charged with setting fire to the genitals of a male British tourist who, she claims, had repeatedly sexually harrassed her - groping her bottom and breasts and exposing his genitals to her. Whatever the facts in this particular case it has to be said I find it very very easy to believe that male British tourists cause all sorts of unnecessary grief to local women in the countries they visit. It's sexism combined with racism and xenophobia, the patronising attitude that foreign women won't mind or won't make a fuss if you behave inappropriately to them.When I have been out flyering for my comedy shows in Leicester Square (which for me was a quick way of boosting audience numbers if we were a bit low, but from the outside to the kind of idiot who assumes no woman could be a comedian, looks like a minimum wage dodgy cash-in-hand job likely to be filled by someone from overseas who doesn't speak much English) I would get a lot of harrassment. And a fair bit, though not all, of it would stop when the perpetrators realised I spoke English, and with a relatively middle class accent.
It's gross. It ties in nicely with the news that the Mayor of Riga is unhappy at the behaviour of British stag parties visiting his country.
Now three things:
1) If British stag parties insist on bringing what is essentially an out-of-control British tradition to countries where it is not welcome maybe these countries should return the favour and set up the Pamplona Bull Run at Old Trafford one Saturday!
2) Stag parties and the sort of stuff that is being described in the Greek case are really a sort of watered-down (in some cases not much watered-down) sexual tourism. If we keep allowing lap-dancing and table-dancing bars to proliferate in the UK and the problems of the underground but widely-tolerated prostitution industry are ignored it is only a matter of time before wealthy tourists from elsewhere will be piling to the UK to get their fix of sexism. And when we don't do anything about rape and sexual assault in the UK, the perpetrators are (a) still on the streets and (b) going to assume they can get away with it wherever they go.
3) Remember all the women-don't-drink-or-it's-your-own-fault-if-you're-raped adverts? And the ones where we were told if we let our friends get in an illegal minicab they'd defintely get raped and it would be our fault. In fact even two weeks ago ministers were warning that women going on holiday to Greece should drink less or ... you guessed it - they'd get raped. So where in the light of this new case are the Home Office paid-for posters warning men that if they get drunk abroad they should expect to have their genitals torched? Instead the guys parents - who were not there at the time - are quoted as saying the twenty-year old who was celebrating the last night of a two week five-lad holiday definitely didn't harrass anyone. Did anyone really expect his parents to say "He probably did it, he can be a right tit"?
3 comments:
"2) Stag parties and the sort of stuff that is being described in the Greek case are really a sort of watered-down (in some cases not much watered-down) sexual tourism."
A quick Internet search turned up a site for stag parties in Warsaw that offers the activities "Babes in Oil", "Solidarity Strip Meal", and "Steak & Tits". Even a river cruise offered the options for "topless hostess, strip show, lesbian show, or 'body dessert'."
Countries like Spain and Ireland won't put up with that anymore and don't have to, but Eastern European countries are in a difficult situation. They really need all of the tourist dollars they can get, so they accept drunken mobs and loads of strip clubs in their city centers.
But if men as a group, particularly white western men who have more economic power than Eastern European women did not believe or demand innumerable East European women and girls must be made sexually available to them then we would not have innumerable numbers of misogynistic, violent men travelling to these countries.
It is not the fault of Eastern European countries, rather it is the now normalised and widely accepted belief that men have a right to buy women and then commit sexual torture on and in their bodies. Male demand drives the sexual slavery of women but some cities are finally saying 'enough is enough we no longer wish to have drunken hoards of arrogant men invade our cities and commit sexual assaults against women.'
The man who discovered his alleged sexual harassment of a Greek woman resulted in his being burned on his penis and genital area, experienced a shock. Namely this very courageous Greek woman refused to passively submit whilst this 'nice, wouldn't harm a fly' British male thought he could allegedly sexually assault any woman because she was supposedly a sexualised commodity.
Bravo to the woman for challenging pseudo male entitlement and refusing to passively submit to male sexual assault, because despite claims to the contrary such male sexual harassment and sexual assault of women is an everyday occurence and it is happening on a global scale.
"But if men as a group, particularly white western men who have more economic power than Eastern European women did not believe or demand innumerable East European women and girls must be made sexually available to them then we would not have innumerable numbers of misogynistic, violent men travelling to these countries."
Rape and other abuses of women are definitely prevalent in America and Britain too, but there is an attitude among a lot of Western men that you can treat Eastern European (or Greek, or Thai, or wherever) women in ways that you would never do to women at home - it has racist (not seeing those women as fully human) as well as classist aspects. Greece isn't a poor country, but apparently the local women are still mistreated by British tourists.
"It is not the fault of Eastern European countries, rather it is the now normalised and widely accepted belief that men have a right to buy women and then commit sexual torture on and in their bodies."
I'm not blaming those countries at all. I'm saying that countries that accept stag parties or worse, sex tourism, do so primarily out of poverty. It is a worldwide problem - as a single male traveler in Asia and Latin America, many locals assumed I was a sex tourist and I was often offered prostitutes.
"Male demand drives the sexual slavery of women but some cities are finally saying 'enough is enough we no longer wish to have drunken hoards of arrogant men invade our cities and commit sexual assaults against women.'"
I'm glad cities are drawing the line, but as a practical matter, if Prague or Riga cracks down on it, the stag parties will just move to even poorer cities.
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