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Background

Definition of corrective rape

Corrective rape is a criminal practice and hate crime that was first identified in South Africa. What happens is that women who do not conform to normative gender roles are raped by men, sometimes under supervision by members of their families or local communities, purportedly as a means of “curing” them of their homosexuality. Women who are identified as lesbians or who do not conform to cultural or social norms for what women “should look like” or how women “should act” have also been targeted. In an article by SW Radio Africa, Shaw reports that through the guise of corrective rape, lesbian women are raped by men to ‘make them enjoy heterosexual acts,’ while gay men are raped by women, sometimes, under supervision of villagers and relatives to ‘remove their sexual orientation tendencies.’ According to Douglass Janoff, an early account of corrective rape occurred in 1997 although Janoff does not say whether this was how corrective rape was identified. Janoff never directly says “corrective rape” either, but describes how violence against gays and lesbians had been occurring since 1990. In addition, in the United Nation’s Commision of Human Rights on January 31, 2002, the practice corrective rape was described but never stated specifically as “corrective rape.” It appears that the practice was observed by various organizations and individuals but not named as “corrective rape” until later in the 21st century.

Why it occurs

Findings from Bartle’s (2000) study show that corrective rape occurs when the following 5 themes exist:

(1) lesbian visibility: identification of victims

(2) creation of an atmosphere for hate crimes

(3) places and types of hates crimes: private spaces

(4) responses to perpetrators of hate crimes

(5) police and other professionals’ responses to victims of hate crimes

Bartle describes how these themes challenge the assumption that because lesbians report fewer hate crimes, they experience fewer hate crimes compared to gay men. She uses content analysis of congressional hearings and personal accounts to verify her results.

Often, the women who are targeted are not only the ones who identify as lesbians but also women who ‘act like men’ or do not conform to social norms; these behaviors leads to rape occurring in many areas. One example of this was Eudy Simelane, who was gang-raped and brutally murdered in her hometown near Johannesburg because she was a lesbian who, according to the Human Rights Watch, “fought back like a man.” In an interview, one man commented “If there is someone who is trying to rape a lesbian, I can appreciate their thing. It’s just to let them know that they must be straight. For me, I have no time to rape them but if another guy wants to teach them the way, they must rape them, they must rock them. Once she gets raped, I think she’ll know which way is nice.” This example suggests that rape occurs because the locals believe everyone is inherently straight.

Health ramifications

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Social issues

Family

In Susan Hawthorne’s (2005) paper on the torture of lesbians, Hawthorne describes lesbians in various parts of the world who are tortured face several informal forms of treatment, such as initially being shunned. Hawthorne describes how punishments can either be given by the government but often by members of the family of the lesbian or the community as well. Hawthorne states that when the family gives punishment, it is often difficult to have the punishment recognized as a violation of the lesbian’s human rights and as an instance of torture. In such circumstances the torturer can continue with impunity because “no one will ever know, no one will ever hear you, no one will ever find out.” In one example, Hawthorne describes, Tina Machida, a Zimbabwean lesbian who lives in Harare. Machida writes, "They locked me in a room and brought him every day to rape me so I would fall pregnant and be forced to marry him. They did this to me until I was pregnant." Hawthorne describes another case of a lesbian who had family issues: Irina, a Russian lesbian, had been tortured and ill-treated by the police, private investigators and her own family members. Irina described how, in 1995, her sisters demanded she give up custody of her son and get psychiatric treatment in order to “cure” her homosexuality.

When describing the guidelines to interviewing lesbian refugees, Hawthorne describes how one rule is that lesbians who are refugees might also be in danger from their families, particularly from the men in their families. Their confidential interview should not include asking other family members questions about their sexual orientation. Hawthorne presents several rules under these guidelines to express the efforts being put into helping lesbians who have been tortured.

Military

Social issues surrounding corrective rape in terms of the military includes a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Aboali reports that in the The Daily Caller, a conservative news site, removed a part of an article by Joseph A. Rehyansky, a retired Vietnam vet and current part time magistrate, in which he argued that lesbians should be allowed in the United States military so the straight male soldiers could convert them into being straight women. Aboali describes how in the original article, Rehyansky claims his policy of only allowing lesbians to serve in the military “would get the distaff part of our homosexual population off our collective ‘Broke Back,’ therefore giving straight male GIs a fair shot at converting lesbians and bringing them into the mainstream.” According to Aboali’s report, Rehyansky continues his assertion by arguing that men were rapists by nature. Rehyansky states, “it fell to men to swing through the trees and scour the caves in search of as many women as possible to subdue and impregnate— a tough job but someone had to do it…” He continues with, “women had to be more selective because, then as now, the principal consequences of copulation were theirs: pregnancy; childbirth; most of the responsibilities of childrearing whilst their baby-daddy hunter-gatherers were about hunting and gathering and finding other women to subdue; and the ruination of their pulchritudinous figures. How our ancient foremothers ever managed to establish any choice in the matter is utterly beyond me when one considers that they did not have access to Mace, police whistles, Lady Smith .38s, or domestic violence hotlines.” Aboali explains that Rehyansky advocates corrective rape.

Baaz and Stern report about how the armed forces in the Congo committed rapes throughout the area in the war in the DRC. Baaz and Stern discuss how the soldiers of the Congo distinguish between “lust rapes” and “evil rapes.” The authors argue that their explanations of rape must be understood in relation to ideas of different masculinities. Ultimately, the authors believe readers can understand the reasoning in a globalized way through society’s view of soldiers through which rape becomes possible, and “normalized” in particular warscapes by reading the stories of various soldiers. Baaz and Stern report that overall, the soldiers they interviewed represented images of themselves that adhere to universalized military codes, and praise their role as protectors of the population and human – and sometimes women’s – rights. Baaz and Stern also mention that yet, in some places in text, references to these standards were absent or distant. They describe that the texts reflect ambivalence and blurriness regarding the moral codes and standards which govern the soldiers’ behavior.

Case studies and testimonies

Eudy Simelane

According to the Human Rights Watch, on April 28, 2008 a female soccer player named Eudy Simelane was gang-raped and killed in Kwa-Thema, her hometown near Johannesburg. She was 31 years old when she died after being stabbed 9 times and her naked body was found near a drainage ditch. Simelane was a star of the South Africa’s acclaimed Banyana Banyana national female football squad. As well as being one of South Africa's best-known female footballers, Simelane was an avid equality rights campaigner and one of the first women to live openly as a lesbian in Kwa Thema. Since Simelane’s death, a tide of violence against lesbians in South Africa has continued to rise. A friend of Simelane's described their childhood this way: "There were three of us: Eudy, me and Zodwa," says Pretty Makhalya of the Kwa Thema township. Pretty continues, "Whatever we did was boyish. We were different, you could tell. We were athletes. We played with the boys and had feelings for the girls."

Simelane’s mother, Mally Simelane, said she always felt scared for her daughter's safety but never imagined her life would be ended through rape. Mally says, "I'm scared of these people that they are going to come and kill me too because I don't know what happened. Why did they do this horrible thing? Because of who she was? She was a sweet lady, she never fought with anyone, but why would they kill her like this? She was stabbed, 25 holes in her. The whole body, even under the feet."

The reasons behind the rape were that Simelane was lesbian, and fought back ‘like a man.’ The HRW reports that Simelane’s death shocked Kwa-Thema, which was a place of openness and acceptance for the gay and lesbian community. Her death seemed to symbolize the collapse of that open space into violence and patriarchal prejudice. Sharon Cox of the Triangle Project (an LGBT organization in South Africa) reported that a way the community legitimized corrective rape was that "the thinking is, all it takes is one good man to cure you of being a lesbian.” Research released last year by Triangle revealed that 86% of black lesbians from the Western Cape said they lived in fear of sexual assault. The group says it is dealing with up to 10 new cases of "corrective rape" every week.

Noxolo Nogwaza

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Brandon Teena

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