'Being raped by a gang is normal – it's about craving to be accepted'

How sad is that! 'Being raped by a gang is normal'. This is a really awful indictment of the way today's young black women think and feel. To prostitute yourself just to feel accepted by a bunch of thugs must surely be the bottom rung of an already low ladder. How can otherwise normal healthy women think that acceptance by men who will only abuse them and dominate them sexually is what is the best thing they can hope for. It beggars belief. 

I've just been reading that a female former gang member (pic above) has exposed the growing levels of sexual violence against young women who join them, saying that many are willing to risk being raped in return for the status of membership.

Isha Nembhard, who was part of an 80-strong gang in Peckham, south London, said some girls readily accepted that they would be sexually abused when associating with male gangs. The 20-year-old said that the problem had reached a point where being raped was becoming "normalised" among many young women. "Girls who are getting treated very badly know what they are getting into. They sleep with a boy and the boy asks if she will sleep with all his friends.

"It's about low self-esteem and a craving for attention. Even if they know it's wrong, they will do anything to get acceptance," she said. "A lot of girls are sort of prostituting themselves to have sexual relationships within a gang and get treated in a bad way. For example, she might know about what happens to girls in the gang but still sleeps with all of them just for the status."

Nembhard, who was a teenage drug dealer, said that even those who are abused and called "pieces of shit" by gang members maintained sexual relationships with them because they felt "that they couldn't do better".

What hope then is there for these women if they already think, at such a young age, that this is the best they can do? For me, it's right up there with the common feeling of shame that many Asian women feel when they are raped and think that somehow they were responsible for their rape and general victimisation! Often Pakistani and Indian women are not only shunned by their peers in their communities, but are also made to feel that they are the perpetrators of the crime not the rapist! The world is really messed up! So much for 50 years of Feminism as it's clear that many women still feel completely at the beck and call of men and their sexual whims.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/feb/18/being-raped-by-gang-normal