Mass sexual assault in Cologne, including rape cases

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Re: Mass rape/molestation in Cologne

Post by Broomstick »

Vendetta wrote:The "white woman harrassed by minorities" thing is something that (racist but won't admit it) people are bringing up as a smokescreen to say that only other guys would do this, nice (white) guys like them would never even think of it.
^ Yes, that - one of the stock replies is that it's always some other of guy doing than the speaker.

In reality, the color doesn't matter - it's the fact women are female and some men have the morals of feral tomcats.
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Re: Mass rape/molestation in Cologne

Post by Broomstick »

ArmorPierce wrote:In not making excuses, it is there, it is what they do, and the women may not feel about it how you may expect because you are looking at it through the lens of your culture and experience.
You know, I've actually talked to women of different cultures and backgrounds. Know what? They get harassed and followed and shit, too.

"Different culture" is no excuse. I have known many men from "machismo" cultures who were complete gentlemen and never said or did anything offensive. I have known Muslim men from the Middle East who likewise were perfect gentlemen by our standards. I have know men from South Sudan raised in a near-stone-age tech culture who were nonetheless complete gentlemen.

Men who genuinely care about and give a damn about women, who view them as fellow human beings, do not treat them as sex toys regardless of where they come from.

And then there are men raised in the west who group women, harass them, even drug them and rape them.

It's not a racial problem.
It's not a cultural problem.
It's a gender problem.

You can, of course, have overlapping issues - a serial rapist might target a particular group of women for racist reasons (or even men - Jeffrey Dahmer deliberately targeted non-white men for rape, lobotomy, and eating for several very astute, if sick, reasons). But the heart of this particular topic is a gender problem.
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Re: Mass sexual assault in Cologne, including a rape case

Post by K. A. Pital »

I have fixed the title, because "mass rape" was not actually true after reading the OP articles. It was a mass sexual assault with a rape case.

That being said, it is a regrettable but easily foreseen development.
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Re: Mass sexual assault in Cologne, including a rape case

Post by ArmorPierce »

I think most rational folks can agree that harassment of women is very common.

As I've stated in prior communication, I am specifically against this video for editing it for shock value and appealing to the racists and calling for legislation to prevent (minority) men from approaching women and saying something that you can claim has a sexual under tone.

I also take issue with white people feeling that minority women must feel that they support the same actions and beliefs held against their brothers father's and sons. We I communicated before as am example, Dominican women for example, despite being faced with a much more pluralistic gender culture, report in surveys that they are far more satisfied with their men than American women.

In addition, in another survey of women at a college, they reported pictures of black men as far more threatening than white men. I think cops generally feel the same way but that's just speculation. This video pays right into that notion to scare people to feel that they need to protect their women from the minority savages

Also, I talk with a lot of minority women. They all hate that video for varying reasons btw.
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Re: Mass sexual assault in Cologne, including a rape case

Post by Simon_Jester »

Pierce, you're repeating yourself.

Again you bring up the "Dominican women like being harassed by their men" shit without any serious attempt to substantiate it, you didn't address my point that minority women have rights too, even if those rights exist to protect them from things that some of their "fathers, brothers, and sons" feel inclined to do.

Because there is nothing intrinsic to the nature of blacks or Latinos that somehow makes them sexual harassment machines.
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Re: Mass sexual assault in Cologne, including a rape case

Post by ArmorPierce »

The point of me bringing it up is to point out that you're viewing the situation through the lens of your experience, background and culture and jumping to the conclusion that minority women feel the same way as you would expect them to and thus needs to be saved.

what was your point again? Yes of course minority women have rights. Does not mean that they will hold the same opinion as you or support this video's agenda and depiction of their race.

please see article below, there had a great deal of anger expressed over this video in the minority community.
I’m not the only one who noticed the strange racial dynamics in the video. At Slate, Hanna Rosin reports that the video’s production company admits to having edited out most of the white men who also catcalled the PSA’s star, Shoshana Roberts. Acclaimed feminist writer Roxane Gay tweeted that the video’s “racial politics are fucked up.” Also on Twitter, New Inquiry editor-in-chief Ayesha Siddiqi made a series of comments that criticized the way the video plays on race, gender and class, noting the way it seemed to let “white men in suits” off the hook for their everyday sexism. The gist of these arguments? Showing a highly edited video of a white woman being harassed by men of color drew attention to much more than modern-day street harassment.
http://qz.com/289449/women-of-color-are ... you-think/
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Re: Mass sexual assault in Cologne, including a rape case

Post by Ziggy Stardust »

ArmorPierce wrote: what was your point again? Yes of course minority women have rights. Does not mean that they will hold the same opinion as you or support this video's agenda and depiction of their race.
The logical extension of your argument, here, would be to say that none of us can criticize, say, female genital mutilation of the sort that is practiced in many cultures just because the women of that culture will have different opinions on their own culture's gender rights than the rest of us? We view harassment as bad in and of itself, independent of any single women's reactions or beliefs about it. Even within white people or Dominicans whoever, you will have a spectrum of women with different tolerances of it. It's irrational to say that just because beliefs are heterogeneous across a society that we shouldn't make effort to prevent negative behavior, like catcalling and other harassment. And, guess what? All the statistics I can find seem to indicate that most women don't like it, and that there were few differences between the races in how they responded to it. Shocking!

Not to mention that waving your hand and saying (without evidence) that Dominican women are more satisfied with men of their background than white people doesn't actually say anything about their opinions on catcalling. I shouldn't have to explain that asking someone whether they are satisfied with the other gender is a much broader and larger question than catcalling specifically. Not that you will substantiate your claim in any way, though.
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Re: Mass sexual assault in Cologne, including a rape case

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ArmorPierce wrote:The point of me bringing it up is to point out that you're viewing the situation through the lens of your experience, background and culture and jumping to the conclusion that minority women feel the same way as you would expect them to and thus needs to be saved.

what was your point again? Yes of course minority women have rights. Does not mean that they will hold the same opinion as you or support this video's agenda and depiction of their race.

please see article below, there had a great deal of anger expressed over this video in the minority community.
Whether they like the video is a relatively trivial matter.

Whether there is an actual problem with catcalling, stalking, and sexual harassment on the streets of our cities is more relevant.
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Re: Mass sexual assault in Cologne, including a rape case

Post by ArmorPierce »

Simon_Jester wrote:
ArmorPierce wrote:The point of me bringing it up is to point out that you're viewing the situation through the lens of your experience, background and culture and jumping to the conclusion that minority women feel the same way as you would expect them to and thus needs to be saved.

what was your point again? Yes of course minority women have rights. Does not mean that they will hold the same opinion as you or support this video's agenda and depiction of their race.

please see article below, there had a great deal of anger expressed over this video in the minority community.
Whether they like the video is a relatively trivial matter.

Whether there is an actual problem with catcalling, stalking, and sexual harassment on the streets of our cities is more relevant.
In response to this, I'll repeat my earlier question. The makers of the video proposes the introduction of legislation that will punish those who make comments such as 'good morning, have a nice day' (which the video identifies as a selection of harassment) in public. Are you in favor of this? I will remind you once again, I am against this video and it's appeal to exploitation of fears of minorities and the proposed legislation. This video is no better than the youtube 'in the hood' prank videos.
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Re: Mass sexual assault in Cologne, including a rape case

Post by madd0ct0r »

Can all this flicking shit about an ancient American video be split out?

This thread was about the spate of attacks/distraction robberies in cologne over the holiday. As far as I can see the current options on that are
1) lots of sexual attacks
2) lots of similar modus operandi robberies

Committed by
A) recent middle east migrants acting opportunistically
B) recent middle east migrants working in criminal gangs
C) as A or B but locals with the blame falling on immigrants as they are in the public mind and humans will identify an "other" as a majority if it's higher then about 3 in 10. I know I've read papers giving that number or similar. Could someone not on a phone with a tenuous chained connection confirm?
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Re: Mass sexual assault in Cologne, including a rape case

Post by Simon_Jester »

If the attacks were caused by "immigrants who assault our women," then you'd expect similar attacks to be occurring all across Europe. There's no reason that Syrian/Iraqi/whatever immigrants in Cologne should be more sexist or more inclined to assault women than immigrants of the same ethnicity in other cities.

So that undermines (1), in that if the attacks were motivated by sex then given the sheer number of attacks you'd need a large number of perverted men wandering Cologne. But why would they all be in Cologne, and not in other cities?

It also undermines (A), in that the immigrants are all over Europe, not just in Cologne.

Whereas (2) and (B) are made more likely, because a specific gang could easily engage in large scale, organized "grope and pickpocket" tactics, without anyone else in any other city feeling like doing the same thing.
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Re: Mass sexual assault in Cologne, including a rape case

Post by ArmorPierce »

Ziggy Stardust wrote:
ArmorPierce wrote: what was your point again? Yes of course minority women have rights. Does not mean that they will hold the same opinion as you or support this video's agenda and depiction of their race.
The logical extension of your argument, here, would be to say that none of us can criticize, say, female genital mutilation of the sort that is practiced in many cultures just because the women of that culture will have different opinions on their own culture's gender rights than the rest of us? We view harassment as bad in and of itself, independent of any single women's reactions or beliefs about it. Even within white people or Dominicans whoever, you will have a spectrum of women with different tolerances of it. It's irrational to say that just because beliefs are heterogeneous across a society that we shouldn't make effort to prevent negative behavior, like catcalling and other harassment. And, guess what? All the statistics I can find seem to indicate that most women don't like it, and that there were few differences between the races in how they responded to it. Shocking!

Not to mention that waving your hand and saying (without evidence) that Dominican women are more satisfied with men of their background than white people doesn't actually say anything about their opinions on catcalling. I shouldn't have to explain that asking someone whether they are satisfied with the other gender is a much broader and larger question than catcalling specifically. Not that you will substantiate your claim in any way, though.
You present a very valid point. One needs to strike a balance between the two. There are obvious instances where you throw out tolerance for cultural differences and then less so for behaviors and actions that are obviously power grabs or have permanent physical effects.

Those are very good extensive statistics but not exactly answering the right question. The video in question was made and edited to show minorities 'catcalling'/'harassing' her. What are the minority women opinion specifically regarding this video? Is there agreement in the depiction of minority men. Do they agree with the proposal by the group sponsoring the video to introduce legislation to punish men approaching women, which per the video, includes such comments as 'hello.... have a good day'. I've posted material containing of backlash against the racial aspect of the video so at least some minority women have bad feelings towards the video (sorry no study available regarding the breakdown). See here:
Although Hollaback, an anti-harassment organization, issued an apology for their “unintentional racial bias,” I’m not quick to believe it. I believe the creators of the video used the image of the black man to get audiences to rally for the cause. Because what gets white Americans to rally for a cause more than a black man threatening a white woman’s “purity” and “femininity”?
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... clnk&gl=us

I am referring to their attitudes regarding the video specifically, portraying minority men as aggressors, appealing to racism, and the fact that the video is proposing legislation to potentially punish men for saying "Good morning.... have a good day" (as was shown as harassment in the video) and most likely would be legislation used to further harass minorities. White folks shouldn't make assumptions and assert that that we must save the minority group women from their brothers sons and fathers, when no help is being asked.

As to particular study. Unfortunately it was mentioned on a morning news show years ago and I cannot locate it online. Women from Spain and Dominican Republic rated that they were the most satisfied with their men, American women rated somewhere below. This initiated comments from the anchors of having to go to DR to find a good man, which I found ironic.
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Re: Mass sexual assault in Cologne, including a rape case

Post by madd0ct0r »

Looking back at first page, Thanas reports 60-120 cases total, the article says 60 'criminal cases, including one rape' in Cologne, with others in Sttutgart.
Articles on first page say 8 men have been detained.

8 men working as two teams of 4 (one groper, one pickpocket, two to bounce crowd and ensure neither of the first two gets grabbed by a bystander).
Operating, lets say, 11pm to 4am = 5 hours. Assume each team makes a hit every thirty minutes (enough time for crowd to disperse / move to nbext area). That's 2x10 hits = twenty over the night.

So assuming all reported cases are this gang (unlikely, there'll be some genuine drunken idiots in there) we're looking at a bigger gang or much more frequent hits. Police data would probably give the frequency based on recorded time and area that but I don't think it'll be public until after the court case (if ever).
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Re: Mass rape/molestation in Cologne

Post by wautd »

Broomstick wrote: It's not a racial problem.
It's not a cultural problem.
It's a gender problem.

Sure it can be. While the western world still isn't perfect, its a helluva lot worse in patriarchal societies. Sure, there are Egyptian men who treat women decently, but that doesn't prevent that misogyny is endemic there.
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Re: Mass rape/molestation in Cologne

Post by BabelHuber »

Metahive wrote:Why? I mean you sought to engage in a debate about it on your own volition now, did you?
I'm not tired of discussions, but I'm tired of quick accusations of being racist.
Because you both tar an entire religion and an entire area with a very broad brush based on nothing but popular stereotypes.
If you have a region where some parts of the population have medieval beliefs, like that women are second-class citicens, then stating this is perfectly valid and has nothing to do with racism.

And if this is valid for an "entire area", it simply is. No racism involved at all.
I mean, as a German you do know that Germans themselves are often target of exactly this kind of ignorant prejudice, right? I mean, fuck, I get the same "look, a German, he must be a humourless authoritarian Nazi guy"-spiel when I tell people I'm from there and I don't even look German.
Sorry, but this doesn't fit to my experiences. I'm an IT consultant, in 2015 I have been in the USA, Poland and France for an international project and never ever has anybody shown such a behaviour.

Of course some Polish and French colleagues made some jokes about Germany and Germans (including some corny Nazi stuff), but I have taken this as fun and returned the favour when possible. Perhaps I would have had problems if I would have reacted in an uptight way instead...
Serious question, what do you know about Syria and Iraq? What was the situation of women in both countries before the recent crises? What kind of rights and limitations did they have? If you want to make definitive statements like that about them, I expect some work to have been put behind it. Syria was and actually still is a secular authoritarian dictatorship. Iraq was likewise before Bush Jr. fucked the country up. Both countries weren't actually all that deeply steeped in religious "piety" before they become conflict zones. I shall also remind you that it's ISIS that wants to install a fanatical Islamic regime in both countries and that the refugees coming here are running away from that very prospect!
The problem is that even in these secular dictatorships, you had some areas, especially rural ones, where such medieval believs are not uncommon. (just look at the rapes at the Tahir place in Egypt, people who do such things need a certain mindset).

It is perfectly possible that people flee from ISIS who don't know anything about how to behave in constitutional states and have been raised according to some weird believes they probably consider 'Muslim'.

And such people can cause problems, because they don't respect women as being equal, they probably test how far they can go in public before the police arrests them etc.

Of course other people from the same region are different and don't cause any troubles. This whole thing is a matter of the environment people have grown up and the beliefs they take with them, not about the region they come from as such.
In the 1960s, when Kennedy was aiming for the US presidency, a popular attack against him was that as a Catholic, he was unqualified to lead the US since all Catholics pledge allegiance to the Pope and he would thereore be compromised as a leader of the country. These people were ignorantly tarring an entire religious community with a very broad brush based on nothing but popular stereotypes, exactly like you're doing now. You don't know how women fared in Syria or Iraq, you don't know how people were or are educated there and yet you think you can render judgement on those people simply because you buy into the bigotted narrative concerning them.
50 years ago some morons in the US thought that a catholic US president is impossible. So what? Does this mean that I'm not allowowed to criticise the medieval beliefs of some utter morons in 2015?
I shudder whenever I meet an American here in Germany, because of course they must bring their whole gun-craziness, religious fundamentalism, litigousness and violent self-righteousness with them. O wait, that was me being like you and indulging in bigotted stereotyping, my bad.
I have never accused all people living in a region as a whole, if you don't know the difference between this and my statements, you are beyond hope.
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Re: Mass sexual assault in Cologne, including a rape case

Post by Broomstick »

ArmorPierce wrote:I also take issue with white people feeling that minority women must feel that they support the same actions and beliefs held against their brothers father's and sons. We I communicated before as am example, Dominican women for example, despite being faced with a much more pluralistic gender culture, report in surveys that they are far more satisfied with their men than American women.
So, when my black neighbors or coworkers tell me about being harassed on the streets where they live, or at the mall, or the grocery store, or in the parking lot where we work I should disbelieve them because you have a survey that Dominican women are happy, gotcha. Once again, studies trump the actual experience of women, we must all be deluded about our actual life experiences, silly little women. :roll:

Clearly you have ignored my point that a "machismo" culture is not the same as sexual harassment.
ArmorPierce wrote:please see article below, there had a great deal of anger expressed over this video in the minority community.
Oh, look - you can cherry pick to support your position, too! Isn't that what you accused the video makers of doing?

Domician women do NOT represent all minority women. "Women" are not a monolithic block. There are widely divergent opinions among women even in the same culture about these topics, much less cross-culturally. One survey of Dominican women does not speak for all women.
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Re: Mass rape/molestation in Cologne

Post by Broomstick »

wautd wrote:Sure it can be. While the western world still isn't perfect, its a helluva lot worse in patriarchal societies. Sure, there are Egyptian men who treat women decently, but that doesn't prevent that misogyny is endemic there.
Misogyny is endemic in the west, too. I'm not interested, in this thread, about getting bogged down in the degrees of misogyny. Saying "but it's worse over there" is not an excuse for bad behavior here.
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Re: Mass rape/molestation in Cologne

Post by ray245 »

Broomstick wrote:
wautd wrote:Sure it can be. While the western world still isn't perfect, it's a helluva lot worse in patriarchal societies. Sure, there are Egyptian men who treat women decently, but that doesn't prevent that misogyny is endemic there.
Misogyny is endemic in the west, too. I'm not interested, in this thread, about getting bogged down in the degrees of misogyny. Saying "but it's worse over there" is not an excuse for bad behavior here.
I doubt anyone is denying this. I do not think this changes the fact that such mass sexual assault was something extremely uncommon and this incident was not committed by any westerner. There's degree of difference in regards to misogyny in the western world and the non-western world. Misogynistic attitudes can be shown in different forms.

This degree of misogyny is central to this entire debate because this is how people perceive people coming from a very different cultural background. Can a westerner commit sexual assault and rape? Of course. However, this does not mean that it is likely that we will see 60 plus westerners all committing an organised sexual assault in a western country. Even some of the most misogynistic westerners would dare to commit such an open act in public.

Such mass sexual assault is not something we commonly hear about in Europe. This is something crucial and important for everyone to take note.
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Re: Mass sexual assault in Cologne, including a rape case

Post by madd0ct0r »

And yet we don't even know wether it was sexual attacks or distraction robberies. Not that that is stopping either side in this thread from arguing complete irrelevancies.
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Re: Mass sexual assault in Cologne, including a rape case

Post by K. A. Pital »

Even if these were distraction robberies, the mass character is quite alarming. I think that regardless of the goals of the attackers, it is an extremely dangerous precedent. Any coordinated attack on women must be taken very seriously by the authorities.

My personal opinion is that such things are intolerable (and it does not matter if they are done in the First World or Third World). Women should feel safe at all times. As an example, my wife felt very safe in China. She does not feel as safe in Europe. That is just personal observations, of course.
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Re: Mass sexual assault in Cologne, including a rape case

Post by ray245 »

madd0ct0r wrote:And yet we don't even know wether it was sexual attacks or distraction robberies. Not that that is stopping either side in this thread from arguing complete irrelevancies.
Doesn't matter. The fact that such kind of actions are committed by ethnic minorities and immigrants from the Middle-East/Arab is the pressing concern here. To commit an illegal act so publicly (be it actual sexual assaults or distraction robberies) reinforce the perception that there are a considerable amount of people coming from those regions that would have severe problems fitting into a western society.

There's an ethnic/racial dimension to these assaults, and that's a major pressing issue now.
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Re: Mass sexual assault in Cologne, including a rape case

Post by madd0ct0r »

And yet as I showed above, we don't know any more then those 8 arrested were involved. Nor has anyone submitted the 'usual' number of sexual allegations made in Cologne on new years eve each year, indeed, even the OP refers to criminal charges & 1 rape. Is that a translation thing? Are criminal charges =/= sexual assault? Is 60 high for cologne on news years eve?

At the moment, we have a police chief blaming immigrants and a bunch of articles echoing him without adding information.
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Re: Mass sexual assault in Cologne, including a rape case

Post by Thanas »

A few updated numbers:

Over 100 cases in Cologne.
Over 50 cases in Hamburg.
Over 11 cases in Düsseldorf.

It looks as if this was coordinated activity happening in more than a few cities at the same time, which makes gang activity or people coordinating in social networks very likely.

Every description so far mentions arab or north-african looking men to be the culprits and mentions a group of around 40 or 50 in Cologne specifically. Given how we do not have a large arab-speaking community before migration (and those that were here were not that bad) it seems more and more likely migrants are indeed to blame for this.
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Re: Mass sexual assault in Cologne, including a rape case

Post by Simon_Jester »

On the other hand, it also sounds like this is coming from the actions of a specific criminal gang formed among the migrants, and perhaps one that didn't even exist until recently. It's spread across more territory than I'd thought, but it's still a thing concentrated to a few cities, not spread out across all of Germany or all of Europe.
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Re: Mass sexual assault in Cologne, including a rape case

Post by K. A. Pital »

Simon_Jester wrote:On the other hand, it also sounds like this is coming from the actions of a specific criminal gang formed among the migrants, and perhaps one that didn't even exist until recently. It's spread across more territory than I'd thought, but it's still a thing concentrated to a few cities, not spread out across all of Germany or all of Europe.
To be fair, the assaults happened on a wider geography than expected. Perhaps after a more thorough investigation, similar events, though on a lesser scale, may be discovered in other cities, too. And not only in Germany, although as the biggest recipient it sure is more likely that immigrant criminal gangs would form and operate in Germany simply due to the much larger recruitment pool.
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