Walks Like a Duck, Quacks Like a Duck, Eats Like a Duck = Rapist

This is a blog so I don't have to go by that innocent-until-proven-guilty jazz (though I love that tune dearly)--on trial for rape in South Africa, Former South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma, former head of South Africa's National AIDS Council, testified with what I imagine was a straight face that he thought the young woman he raped in his home wanted sex with him because she talked to him about not having a boyfriend and wore a skirt to his home. The woman has known Mr. Zuma since she was a child and is HIV-positive. Despite that, and despite being the head of the National AIDS Council, he testified he did not use a condom, and she didn't ask that he use one:

he believed the risk of a man being infected by a woman is statistically lower than a woman picking up the virus from a man.

"I knew that the risk I was taking was not a great risk," Zuma replied when asked why he did not behave more responsibly.

and

"Normally when she came to visit she would be wearing (pants). But on the day in question, she was wearing a skirt and her legs were exposed," he said. "That gave me an indication that she was expecting me to be of some assistance to her."

Assistance = sex? Huh? The woman, a survivor of child rape, froze when he came into the guest bedroom in which she was sleeping. I guess to him her lack of movement was further encouragement.

The idea that a skirt equals sexual availability, that a woman raped as a child would want sex with a man she saw as a father figure, that a woman who is a lesbian would want to fuck a man twice her age--the usual rapist thinking along the lines of all women want it, no means yes, men can't control themselves, and she looked at me so I knew she wanted me to fuck her in the ass. There's plenty written about rape myths and thinking so I won't; Google it and see for yourself.

This is almost as bad as the Homeland Security deputy press secretary busted yesterday for talking dirty with what he thought was a 14-year-old girl. Must be a Republican political appointee--who else would think he could get away with sending porn and explicit suggestions to a 14-year-old girl over the Internet? The articles I've read don't say he's married. If he is, I'm guessing he won't be for long.



tag: Jacob Zuma, rape