for those who haven’t read the woman’s FB post, here is a clip:
“…were attacked on Saturday night by a group of 7-10+ middle eastern men, believed to be from Syria, aged 18-25”
Canada has a lot of issues at this moment, stemming in part from increased immigration in the last 3 years (causing housing issues, etc). This sort of event, “brown people beating up white women” could be a dangerous racial catalyst.
I hope this gets dealt with as a single incident, but given current affairs, I am not optimistic.
Immigration is such a fucked up issue almost everywhere. You’ve got the right blaming everything on brown people and the left claiming all immigrants are just peace loving pacifists looking for a better life.
As with most issues the truth is in the middle and any immigration policy should absolutely demand that any immigrant coming into a country assimilate and fully support our values of equality for all.
You cannot tell me you support equality for all when your religion makes your wife walk 5 steps behind you in a beekeeper suit at 30c weather while you get to strut around in shorts and flip-flops.
As with most issues the truth is in the middle and any immigration policy should absolutely demand that any immigrant coming into a country assimilate and fully support our values of equality for all.
First generation migrants tend to be, in most receiving countries, less likely to commit crime than native-born population.
http://www.antoniocasella.eu/nume/Bersani_2012.pdf
They found that immigrant men and women were less criminally active than native-born men and women in regard to self-reported crime, being stopped by the police, being charged with a crime, and having contact with a criminal justice agency. This pattern of lower levels of criminal activity among immigrants compared to the native-born held in models controlling for key background characteristics including a variety of educational, employment, and family history measures.
The problem comes with latter generations, if the receiving country isn’t doing an adequate job at integrating them. If the parents work really long hours, aren’t capable of spending much time with their kids, have trouble to pay kindergarten and have trouble teaching their kids the local language, if the kids are victimized by racist bullying at school, have less means to do well academically and land a good job, and are generally otherized by society, they’re at a larger risk getting alienated and engaging in antisocial behavior and even crime.
So, if you don’t want migration to be a problem, invest in public schooling (including kindergarten), offer classes teaching the local language to adults, empower unions, protect labor, and fight racism.
As with most issues the truth is in the middle and any immigration policy should absolutely demand that any immigrant coming into a country assimilate and fully support our values of equality for all.
America is hardly a country of “equality for all” sadly
Edit: This was literally 4 posts down
This happened in Canada, what does the usa have to do with this? This same thing is playing out over in the EU as well, and everyone here is wondering how the right is gaining political growth…this is why. People inherently do not want groups that come over and violently force their beliefs on the population.
I agree, and it goes both ways. I was taking to a Mexican immigrant yesterday who hasn’t been home to see his mother in more than 20 years as he doesn’t have the ability to cross the border, and she has continuously been denied visas without explanation.
There’s a lot of shit the US puts immigrants through as they walk on the edge of being allowed to exist here. My opinion is that we should both open our borders, and document the people who come through.
I hope this gets dealt with as a single incident, but given current affairs, I am not optimistic.
Genuine question. Is it a single incident though?
There have been a lot of reports of issues with people coming to western countries and not holding the same standards of respect for women.
I think it should be dealt with as a single issue iff it is a single issue. If it isn’t a single issue why should it be treated as such?
Violent people should be brought to justice, this is unacceptable.
There are many Muslim or Islamic immigrants who live in Western countries just fine, what happened here? Many Muslim and Islamic immigrants are LGBT+.
The root cause of the issue in this incident should be examined, and if all else fails violent immigrants should be deported.
I work with middle eastern guys who are like this, they hide this side of themselves when I’m around (white guy) but it comes out when my female coworkers are alone. It’s common enough that I’ve heard about it from multiple people. But when I’m around they’re great and I consider them good work friends.
It’s hard facing this as a lefty. I met a Muslim European colleague at an all hands in tel aviv during pride a few years ago. Went for super late night constitutional with a few other internationals including fellow Americans and the whole city was alive and really queer. In depth conversation with this otherwise really nice guy about how he would minimum believe mental illness, maybe disown, his daughters for being gay or trans. I understood it’s religion like anti abortion and I’ll never persuade him and didn’t argue, just shared perspectives and asked questions.
It’s not hard at all to face this as a leftist. You can acknowledge that homophobia and sexism are deeply rooted in Islamic religions while also recognizing that not every adherent is guilty of either. Pretending something isn’t true because it’s not pretty doesn’t benefit anyone except those who would utilize the blind eye to continue to do harm to society.
What’s difficult about it?
Criminals can be victims, victims can be criminals. There is no rule that groups humans into two groups. Oppressed and oppressor with zero movement between the groups. Instead humans just go around, get hit, and hit. Sometimes they avoid hurting people because they can’t, sometimes it is because they won’t.
I have zero problems understanding that some Muslims have been mistreated by the West is one fact and a totally seperate fact is some Muslims would honor kill a LGBT person. Seperate facts.
Maybe? I guess I want to know what efforts are made for integration. If you treat people as subhumans, they will hate their fellow countrymen
Is it weird that I’m impressed by how minor their injuries are?
A significantly broken nose can be life altering, especially if it’s too swollen to set right away, don’t get me wrong, but they both walked away.
If I was in a fight with multiple men and I ended up on the ground, I don’t think I’m walking away. I say that as a 178cm woman who’s stronger than most.
I dunno. I read it after seeing your comment and it suprised by your assessment. Black eyes take forever to heal. They have to see that every day in the mirror for weeks while also trying to deal with the trauma of the attack.
I think it’s great they walked away, but then again, doesn’t seem like the kind of situation where it’s a group of people looking to maim or kill
I’m surprised how serious you take black eyes
The story could easily be “racist woman gets punched in face after saying something”
What? Where does it say at all in the article that these woman were racist to the guys before being attacked?
They’re Canadian.
Broken nose, broken teeth and black eyes? This was a normal day at whale shit hockey.
atheism is the answer. until we as a whole reject religion, these incidents will be recurring.
I know homophobes that are atheists. while religion being gone would decrease it, do not expect it to be gone just because of that. People will always have issues with people different than they are.
yes, but with religion out of the way, we can implement better education to reduce ‘otherism’ bias. i am convinced that the only obstacles stopping us from being better humans are all rooted in BS fairy tales.
While true they won’t have a belief system that backs it up, it won’t have the power behind it.
There are smart homophobes. They use science, however flawed it is, to promote their arguments. Cutting out religion would take care of the few vocal people who genuinely believe being gay is against their religion but it definitely wouldn’t take care of the larger problem which has always been xenophobia.
They will just create a different one, like the atheists that are homophobic have.
Doesn’t work. USSR murdered and prisoned both religious people and gay people alike. The answer is not being a fucking cockwomble, which is admittedly more easily done if you’re an atheist, but by no means is a guarantee.
agreed! but the path to not being a cockwomble aligns pretty well with the goals of a reason based, humanitarian, secular society.
if you don’t agree, what’s your path towards our common goal?
Don’t think you solve the problem of intolerance with bigotry towards religious people.
The article doesn’t mention anything about the group of men being religious, you’re just using this as an opportunity to attack religion because that’s something you hate.
Hatred doesn’t solve anything.
Not necessarily. Plenty of chill religious people and unchill atheists. Russian homophobia, for instance, is generally secular.
Really? So why is that Krill East Orthodox Shaman announcing he hates gays every single week?
Also show me the religious Muslim who isn’t a homophobe
Up until fairly recently, Orthodoxy was not a strong influence on Russian life.
According to this Guardian article, British Muslims have no chill, but more than a few Muslims on the mainland are chill with gays, particularly in France.
You seem very centered on Abrahamic religions. Pretty much all Western neopagans are tolerant of homosexuals. Francis Cabral, a Jesuit missionary, recounts with disgust about how homosexual relations were tolerated by Japanese Buddhists. Hsing Yun, a Taiwanese Buddhist who died last year, specifically said that homosexuals must be tolerated. Haitian Voodoo has two deities associated with homosexuality. Various indigenous religions in America have similarly tolerant views, and the term “two-spirit” comes from them.
is it really, though? provide some evidence. and if it is, do you have a better solution to reduce bias?
Okay :)
The old homophobic laws of Russia, rooted in religion, were repealed under Lenin (Khoroshilova 2017). The reintroduction of crackdowns of homosexuals began during Stalin (ibid.). The Comintern began linking homosexuality to fascism and moral degeneracy under Stalinist leadership (Healey 2001, p. 183). Eventually, the USSR banned sodomy due to a conversation between Iagoda and Stalin, with Iagoda linking homosexuality to counterrevolution, degeneracy, corruption of the youth, and pedophilia (ibid., p. 184-187). This was then reinforced in propaganda by Gorky, who famously said “Destroy the homosexuals - Fascism will disappear” (ibid., p. 189-190).
I will skip over legal changes of most of the post-Stalinist era of the USSR, as they matter little in this context. What does matter is that the USSR continued to be strongly antitheistic and anticlerical. As a consequence, religiosity isn’t intense in Russia, and many aren’t religious at all (Agapeeva 2021).
Now let us look at modernity. Putin is allegedly religious, but his dislike of homosexuals is definitely secular in nature.
Analysis of his homophobic comments and the justifications of anti-gay laws reveal the same preoccupations of Stalin and Gorky. The law against being gay in public was described as preventing the propaganda of homosexuality towards children (Roberts 2013). In an interplay with nationalism, the LGBT movement is seen as an influence from the degenerate West, bent on corrupting the Russian youth. This is best seen in the designation of prominent Russian gay activists and organizations as foreign agents (Human Rights Watch 2021) or the use of the English word “gender” to describe things they despise.
Note how at no point have the protagonists of this story described homosexuality as a sin or invoked God. Indeed, the first half of this text is dedicated to Leninists.
Anecdotally, I see this in my personal life as a Russian emigre. Many people in my family hold minor homophobic views, framed typically as disgust, seen universally as Western and liberal in character. All of the Russians I have personally heard expressing a disgust or dislike of homophobia are atheists.
Now for the alternative solution:
According to Pettigrew and Tropp (2008), the three main ways of reducing prejudice against a group is through increasing understanding of that group, lessening anxiety about the group, and improving empathy towards that group, with the second two being stronger factors. Contact with the group accomplishes all three. This is supported anecdotally by tales of bigots changing their positions when they found out their own loved ones were gay.
One should note that a lack of empathy and high levels of anxiety about boogeymen are the hallmarks of a conservative worldview.
Therefore, combatting homophobia is best done through increasing visibility, which is the function of “outness” and pride parades, and through combatting conservativism and the reactionary gender roles that led to the birth of homophobic attitudes in the first place. This would in turn entail a battle against class society in general, but that is a discussion for another time.
Works Cited:
Khoroshilova, Olga. 2017. “1917 Russian Revolution: The gay community’s brief window of freedom”. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41737330
Healey, Dan. 2001. “Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent”. University of Chicago Press.
Agapeeva, Kseniya. 2021. “Religiosity During the Pandemic”. Levada.ru. https://www.levada.ru/2021/04/14/religioznost-v-period-pandemii/
Roberts, Scott. 2013. “Vladimir Putin says anti-gay Russian laws are about ‘protecting children’”. Pink News. https://www.thepinknews.com/2013/06/26/vladimir-putin-says-anti-gay-russian-laws-are-about-protecting-children/
Human Rights Watch. 2021. “Statement by Russian and International Human Rights Organizations in Support of Russian LGBT Rights Activists under Attack”. Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/11/19/statement-russian-and-international-human-rights-organizations-support-russian-lgbt
Pettigrew, Thomas F., and Linda R. Tropp. 2008. “How does intergroup contact reduce prejudice? Meta-analytic tests of three mediators”. European Journal of Social Psychology 38 (6): 922-934. doi:10.1002/ejsp.504.
“cutting off people’s pinkies will reduce global warming”
“People with missing pinkies contribute just as much to global warming”
“Do they really though? Provide some evidence. And if true do you have a better solution to reduce global warming?”
People don’t need to have an alternative plan ready to go in order to point out that yours is ineffective.
Homophobia and Atheism aren’t mutually exclusive to one another, hell I know plenty of Atheist Transphobes… some of whom used to be gay allies until they were radicalized by the Alt Right.
What makes you think this group of men were religious in the first place?
There is a really funny South Park episode about this… Bottom line is assholes will be assholes with or without religion, which is just a convenient excuse for assholery.
We don’t actually know this, just because one southpark episode depicts it happening like that doesn’t mean it would. Religion has a lot of archaic beliefs that actively harm people. It would be a lot harder for someone to be motivated to hurt someone if they didn’t believe they had a reason to justify it.
There were assholes before religion. Putting an emphasis on it being the problem is naive, imo. History is full of secular assholes. I.e. nazis.
This sounds like something a member of the United Atheist Alliance would say.
“A group of men walking on the other direction made a comment to me. My girlfriend, Tori, said ‘hey that’s my girlfriend,'" MacLean told CTVNews. “They continued walking and Tori followed them to basically say: ‘That is not OK’.”
Don’t ever do this, no matter who you are.
