A street in Rotherham in South Yorkshire, England. A report claims at least 1,400 children as young as 11 were sexually abused from 1997-2013 in Rotherham care homes.

The child sexual abuse case in Rotherham is a travesty of justice of the most serious kind. That 1,400 girls were subject to ongoing assault over a 16-year period as authorities turned a blind eye is a testament to how the safety and well-being of girls, and children in general, is willingly sacrificed to protect the reputations of adults.

More than ever, we, as a global community, need to tackle the problem of sexual violence. Women, girls and young boys are not objects to be used and discarded at will. This is something that our society claims to accept as a given, and yet here we are again with another case of shocking abuse brought to light.

That the victims are mostly white, underprivileged girls, the perpetrators Pakistani, and the authorities who let it go on for years British should make it obvious that rape and other violence against women is a problem that transcends race, culture and religion.

And that makes the comments of the slew of columnists and commentators who have come out in recent days blaming Rotherham firmly on Muslims, multiculturalism and feminists all the more disheartening.


According to Murdoch columnist Rita Panahi, feminists “have for years ignored the plight of disempowered women from certain ethnic communities; now they are abandoning children in a similarly callous manner… One can only hope that, at some point, the feminist movement realises that there is no greater threat to the rights of women in western societies than the encroachment of cultures that view us as innately subordinate.”

Firstly, white feminists have not “ignored” the plight of women from other cultures, they have rightly resisted the urge to be white saviours. Women from “certain ethnic communities” - and I am one - are not passive victims. We have agency and don’t need white feminists to rescue us. What we do require are allies as we take our empowerment into our own hands. Secondly, it’s disingenuous and dangerous to claim that multiculturalism is the greatest threat to western women given that the most dangerous place for a western woman is her own home.

Over at the National Review, Ian Tuttle belittled feminists for criticising nail polish that can detect date rape drugs (feminists are indeed wary of any measure that puts the onus on women rather then men to prevent rape), while the “real-life” rape culture was actually happening in Rotherham.

Tuttle, in his keenness to use the abuse of children to score points against feminists, was clearly so enamoured of his clever decision to cherry-pick nail polish of all things to juxtapose against the rapes in Rotherham that he missed the irony in denying the existence of rape culture in the west even as he lauded an invention designed to combat rape.

Rich Lowry, meanwhile, in a piece called 'The Real Rape Culture', placed the blame squarely on multiculturalism and its supposed “triumph over feminism”. “Violating and exploiting young girls”, he howls, “is just another ethnic folkway that tolerant (by which I presume he means “white") people have to learn to accept, or at least to ignore.”

Since when has rape only been a problem of ethnic communities? So secure do these columnists seem in their misguided belief in the superiority of the white race that they dismiss the epidemic of sexual assaults on US college campuses as “sexist fraternity pranks” and only use the words “rape” and “rape culture” in scare quotes when referring to western society, as if rape when committed by white men isn’t rape at all.

Rotherham is indeed a product of “real rape culture”, but not just because most of the perpetrators are Pakistani. It is a testament to the tacit acceptance of rape, and the scorning of victims. Those simultaneously railing against feminists and holding this up as an example of the incompatibility of Pakistani - or more broadly, Islamic culture - with “western values” would do well to remember that the abuse was able to continue unchecked because the Rotherham police “gave no priority to [child sexual exploitation], regarding many child victims with contempt and failing to act on their abuse as a crime.”

A cover-up of this magnitude does not happen in a void. It is indicative of a wider culture of silence, intimidation and male entitlement that punishes victims for speaking up.

Of course, none of these columnists mention that the Muslim community in Rotherham immediately reacted with outrage that the abuse was covered up and “that justice was not done.” Muslims speaking out against rape doesn’t exactly fit the narrative that sexual violence is some sort of hallowed activity in Islam.

Had Panahi, Lowry, and Tuttle really been interested in addressing rape culture, they would have compared Rotherham to the decades-long cover-ups of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church, or the Christian Brotherhood schools, or the Salvation Army.

They could have mentioned Steubenville in the US, or the 'Roast Busters' in New Zealand. They could certainly have tied the lax attitude of authorities in Rotherham to the cases of Jimmy Saville and Rolf Harris and the sexual assaults of children and women that they, and other western celebrities, committed for decades while others also looked the other way.

But that of course would have undermined their false premise: that this sort of thing never happens here. That the worst thing our boys do is put stolen photos of celebrities on the Internet, pretend to beat up wax figurines of famous pop stars, and play “pranks” on female college students. As if even these seemingly minor incidents can be taken in isolation and not scrutinised in the context of the cultural disregard for women’s bodily autonomy.

That, however, is entirely the point. Panahi, Lowry, and Tuttle aren’t really interested in addressing rape culture and sexual violence. That is merely a flag of convenience that permits them to air their real grievances: at feminists who refuse to accept the delusion that white, western culture is a veritable paradise of rape-free gender equality, and at anyone who has committed the unforgivable sin of not being born white.

Rape culture is not just the act of rape. It is the way our society allows rape to flourish, partly by minimising its presence, which is exactly what these columnists have done. Moreover, to use Rotherham to rail against multiculturalism only serves to realise the grotesque fears of some of the authorities when they made the terrible decision to keep a lid on it: that the rapes would be used to justify racism. When focus is placed on the ethnicity of rapists, it only serves to draw attention away from where it should rightly lie: on the rape itself.

And that too is rape culture.