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Corrective rape is a hate crime in which a person is raped because of their perceived sexual or gender orientation. The common intended consequence of the rape, as seen by the perpetrator, is to correct their orientation, to turn them straight, or to make them "act" more like their gender. The term was coined in South Africa after well-known cases of corrective rapes of lesbians like Eudy Simelane and Zoliswa Nkonyana became public. There are many health ramifications associated with corrective rape, and although some countries have laws protecting LGBT people, corrective rape is often overlooked.

Definition of corrective rape
"They tell me that they will kill me, they will rape me and after raping me I will become a girl. I will become a straight girl."

Corrective rape is a criminal practice and hate crime that was first identified in South Africa. According to Douglass Janoff, an early account of corrective rape occurred in 1997 in South Africa, 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. 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.’ In addition, in the United Nation’s Commision of Human Rights on January 31, 2002, the practice of 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.

Corrective rape has also occurred in Thailand, Ecuador, and Canada.

Why it occurs
Findings from Bartle’s study show that corrective rape occurs when the following 5 themes exist:

(1) lesbian visibility and identification of victims by community and authority members

(2) creation of an atmosphere for hate crimes due to little or no acceptance of lesbians and gays

(3) places and types of hates crimes, meaning that when there is no one around it is easier to commit corrective rape

(4) responses to perpetrators of hate crimes and by victims but that are not taken seriously or ignored by the community

(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 self-identify as lesbians but also women who ‘act like men’ or do not conform to social norms; these behaviors lead to rape occurring in many areas. One example of this is 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
A variety of physical and psychological trauma can result from corrective rape and the physical abuse that often accompanies it. There are many cases in which the victim does not survive the attack or are maimed/scarred for life; many victims contemplate suicide due to the high amount of shame that is associated with the violation. Victims in South Africa are at a high risk for contracting HIV/AIDS as well as other sexually transmitted diseases, in addition to experiencing a pregnancy. The Treatment Action Committee (TAC) says there is also growing evidence that rape is contributing to increasing rates of HIV infection amongst black lesbian women. Services for survivors of sexual violence, such as access to post-exposure prophylaxis to prevent HIV transmission and emergency contraception, are woefully inadequate.

South Africa
Currently in South Africa, women have less sexual and economic power than men. One of the factors associated with this inequality is strict gender roles, which has led to one of the highest rates of violence against women in the world. Corrective rape is used as a "punishment" for people who are gay or do not fit traditional gender roles (usually women), where oftentimes they are verbally abused before the rape by the perpetrator saying they will be “teaching [the women] a lesson” on how to be a “real woman.” Because women have less control over their economics, which creates economic vulnerability, they have less control over their own sexual activities. Poor, black women who live in townships are more likely to become victims of corrective violence, and gay women are more likely to be isolated with little support, which increases their chances of being targeted.

Corrective rape is not recognized by the South African legal system as a hate crime despite the fact that the South African Constitution states that no person shall be discriminated against based on their social status and identity, including sexual orientation. Legally, South Africa protects gay rights extensively, but the government does not do anything to prevent corrective rape, and women do not have much faith in the police and their investigations. Crimes based on sexual orientation are not expressly recognized in South Africa; corrective rape reports are not separated from general rape reports. In December 2009, there had been 31 recorded murders of lesbians in South Africa since 1998, but only one had resulted in a conviction. In the last twenty years, attitudes toward homosexuality have become worse in South Africa.

Statistics
Over 40% of South African women will be raped in their lifetime, but only 1 in 9 rapes will be reported, human-rights organizations calculated. In 2006, more than 54,000 cases of rape were reported. This translates into an average South African woman more likely to be raped than to finish secondary school.

Corrective rape is on the rise in South Africa: more than 10 lesbians are raped or gang-raped weekly, as estimated by Luleki Sizwe, a South African nonprofit. It is estimated that at least 500 lesbians become victims of corrective rape every year and that 86% of black lesbians in the Western Cape live in fear of being sexually assaulted, as reported by the Triangle Project in 2008. Yet, victims of corrective rape are less likely to report it because of the negative social view of homosexuality. Underreporting is high for sexually violent crimes, thus the number of corrective rapes are likely higher than what is reported.

One South African man stated, “Lesbians get raped and killed because it is accepted by our community and by our culture.”

Canada
Although gay marriage was legalized in Canada in 2003, there are still many laws that target gay sex: anal sex is illegal for anyone younger than eighteen, although the age of consent for penile-vaginal intercourse is fourteen in most providences; it is legal for three or more people to have sex “as long as there is no anal penetration,” reads Section 159 of the Criminal Code; and even in courtrooms, Canadian gays face subtle forms of discrimination.

In St. John's in 1997, a young man was lured into an alley and raped while prayers and religious words were said during the attack. The man was reportedly emotionally traumatized by the religious aspect of the attack.

The wide-spread belief that sexual assaults of gay men are not caused by homophobia but by other gay men themselves is supported through assumptions, not research. Collective sexual fantasies assigned to the gay community normalize sexual abuse, which provides motivation and justification for sexual assaults.

Many prison incidents involve a sexual element, ranging from coercion to rape. In one instance, a teenager begged the judge to not send him back to the Edmonton Young Offenders Centre, where other kids had brutally raped him. The judge acknowledged that the other kids “had perceived he was a homosexual” but said he could do nothing about the placement.

Statistics
In an analysis of homophobic violence in Canada, it was found that more than 4% of incidents involved sexual assault. In a separate study in Vancouver, 1/3 of gay men reported that they ‘had been forced to have sex against their will at least once in their lives.’

Other countries
Instances of corrective rape in additional countries have been reported.

In Zimbabwe in the early 2000s, a young lesbian was locked up by her family and was raped until she was impregnated by an older man, in order to “correct” and punish her for her non-heterosexual orientation. Like in South Africa, many victims of corrective rape in Zimbabwe do not want to speak out because of the stigma surrounding homosexuality. Amanda Porter, a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Harare, reported that gay men are forced into heterosexual acts and lesbian women were raped, sometimes by male relatives, to convert their orientation. In Zimbabwe, it is against the law to engage in homosexual acts under the common law offense of sodomy, but the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum has stated: “We support a Constitution that protects Zimbabweans against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.”

In Thailand, a Burmese lesbian went shopping with a male friend, where he and five other men raped her, saying she was wasting her beauty as a lesbian. Although everyone who worked in the factory with her knew about the rape, no one came to her defense.

There have been multiple instances of corrective rape of LGBT persons in the United States. In 2000, Frederick Mason, a 31-year-old African American, was arrested following a verbal altercation with his landlord. He was then taken to the police station where he was put into an interrogation room with two unidentified officers. The officers forced down his pants and raped him with a billy club while saying things such as, “I’m tired of you, faggot.” In 2003, a Native American transgender woman was walking down the street late at night when two LAPD officers threatened her with arrest for prostitution. They put her in handcuffs and drove her to an alley, where they physically and verbally abused her, saying, “You fucking whore, you fucking faggot.” The two officers then raped her, threw her on the ground, and said, “That’s what you deserve.”  In 2004, a lesbian from Georgia was raped by a deputy officer. She reported that he forced her into her apartment at gunpoint and raped her, vowing he was going to “teach her a lesson” and that “the world needed at least one less dyke” and that he was going to make that happen.

Ecuador has been found to host rehabilitation clinics that attempt to "cure" homosexuality through corrective rape, forced isolationism, and physical torture. Many times, people are forced into the clinics by family members. One woman, Paola Concha, was 24 years old when she was taken, against her will, into a clinic outside of Quito in 2006. Concha says she was in the clinic for about 18 months, during which she was confined for days without food repeatedly, forced to dress as a man, and was raped. The rehabilitation clinics operate under the guise of drug and alcohol centers, but it is questionable how many of them also offer "treatments" for homosexuality. Homosexuality was illegal in Ecuador until 1998, but in 2008, civil unions were legalized under the new Constitution.

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 forms of treatment, such as initially being shunned. Hawthorne describes how punishments can either be given by the government but also 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 the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Aboali reports that 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 on 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 that readers can understand the reasoning in a globalized way through society’s view of soldiers by which rape becomes possible, and “normalized” in particular warscapes by reading the stories of various soldiers. Baaz and Stern report that overall, the soldiers represented self-images that adhere to universalized military codes, and praise their role as protectors of the population and human – sometimes women’s – rights. Baaz and Stern also mention that yet, in some places in their paper, 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.

Global impacts
"Violence against women and girls continues unabated in every continent, country and culture. It takes a devastating toll on women’s lives, on their families, and on society as a whole. Most societies prohibit such violence — yet the reality is that too often, it is covered up or tacitly condoned."

Discrimination, torture, and rape of lesbians happens in every part of the world, including "developed" countries. Some believe this to be a manifestation of the domination of patriarchal society which punishes lesbians as outsiders, especially when nations go to war. Under patriarchy, lesbian existence is delegitimized and/or made illegal. Dr. Susan Hawthorne argues that the freedom of lesbians from torture and violence may be an indicator of the social health of a society. Amnesty International's Crimes of Hate report concludes with the following statement: "The struggle to protect the human rights of LGBT people should be one that is waged by all." In addition, many believe that it should be recognized as a hate crime because of the misunderstanding of homosexuality and the animus toward gay people that motivate corrective rape. Discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people is underpinned by heteronormativity. Heteronormativity is the idea, dominant in most societies, that heterosexuality is the only ‘normal’ sexual orientation, only sexual or marital relations between women and men are acceptable, and each sex has certain natural roles in life, so-called gender roles.

South Africa
South Africa is uniquely able to "correct" corrective rape. The 1996 Constitution enshrines myriad rights on the basis of which a group may challenge the circumstances that give rise to corrective rape; the constitutional doctrine makes available several possibilities for bringing suit; and South Africa manifests an openness to international and comparative law that makes it possible to incorporate human rights approaches to preventing private rights abuses. Traditionally, in South Africa and elsewhere, the legal system has allowed the public-private divide to dictate a lower level of involvement in issues of domestic violence and sexual assault, including corrective rape. However, "modern human rights law has largely ignored this private-public distinction." For instance, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which obligates states to remove discriminatory barriers from the full and free exercise of rights by women, reaches any actor. The Convention's duty to modify the conduct of private citizens to ensure equality for women covers attitudes that include the inferiority of women and stereotyped gender roles, which arguably encompass the animus toward gay women that motivates many men to commit corrective rape. However, 66% of women said they did not report their attack because they would not be taken seriously. Of these, 25% said they feared exposing their sexual orientation to the police and 22% said they were afraid of being abused by the police.

South Africa is in the process of translating the promises of democracy into reality and in this process it is confronting a major challenge in the form of gender-based violence.

United Nations
In 86 UN member states, homosexuality is illegal, and in seven countries, it is punishable by death. In December 2008, the UN issued a declaration on sexual orientation and gender identity. Sixty-six countries have signed the declaration, including six countries in Africa. The United States, India, and South Africa are among the countries that have not yet signed.

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 that she 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 by "the thinking... all it takes is one good man to cure you of being a lesbian.”

Zukiswa Gaca
In December of 2009, Zukiswa Gaca, a twenty-year-old living outside of Cape Town, was raped based on her sexual orientation. She was out drinking with friends when a man approached her for a date. She described to CNN, "I told the guy that no I'm a lesbian so I don't date guys and then he said to me, 'no I understand. I've got friends that are lesbians, that's cool, I don't have a problem with that.'" Later, when Gaca left the bar with the man, his demeanor towards her changed. "He said to me, 'you know what? I hate lesbians and I'm about to show you that you are not a man, as you are treating yourself like a man,'" Gaca reports. He then proceeded to rape her as his friend watched. This rape caused her to become suicidal, she said. She went to nearby train tracks and lied down on them until another man grabbed her before the train approached and called the police.

Gaca decided to go to the police and press charges; when she got there, the policemen ridiculed her and engaged in victim blaming. She is fighting for her case because, she said, "They always get away with it. I'm just pushing so that there will be a different story on my case. Maybe if this guy could be sentenced or something happens to him I think a lot of my friends will report their cases because some of the lesbians, they don't report their cases, they don't go to the police station because they know that it will just be a waste of time."

Zoliswa Nkonyana
19-year-old Zoliswa Nkonyana was stabbed nine times and stoned to death outside of her home in Khayelitsha in February 2006 for being an openly gay lesbian. In February 2012, the judge sentenced the four men convicted of Nkonyana's killing to 18 years in prison, reporting that the motive for the killing was hatred and homophobia. This trial set a precedent for future trials for crimes against homosexuals in South Africa because the judge named "hate and intolerance on the basis of sexual orientation as an aggravating factor in sentencing," Jill Henderson from the Triangle Project told BBC.

Noxolo Nogwaza
The body of Noxolo Nogwaza, a 24-year-old lesbian and member of Ekurhuleni Pride Organizing Committee, was found lying in an alley in Kwa-Thema at about 9am on Sunday, April 24, 2011. Noxola’s head was completely deformed, her eyes out of the sockets, her brain spilt, teeth scattered all around, and her face crashed beyond recognition. Witnesses say that an empty beer bottle and a used condom were stuck up her genitals. Parts of the rest of her body had been stabbed with glass. A large pavement brick that is believed to have been used to crash her head was found by her side

Brandon Teena
Brandon Teena, a 21-year-old transexual man, was killed on December 31st, 1993, by two men who were enraged because Brandon had reported them to the police for a violent sexual assault. That sexual assault occurred, by the accounts portrayed in “The Brandon Teena Story” and “Boys Don’t Cry,” because the soon-to-be-murderers were enraged over Brandon’s gender identity.

Activism and preventative efforts
Various organizations, groups, and individuals work to raise awareness of corrective rape and its ramifications. Many individuals are also trying to raise general awareness of the existence of gender non-conforming women, including lesbians, bisexual, transgender and intersexed women in order to stop stereotypes and stigmas that exist around them.

ActionAid
Achieving women's rights is ActionAid's overarching priority that they try to accomplish through campaigning and different programme work. They view ending violence against women as a pivotal element of their overarching mission, including corrective rape. They commissioned an influential report entitled "Hate crimes: The rise of ‘corrective’ rape in South Africa."

ActionAid joined People Opposing Women Abuse (POWA), the Treatment Action Committee (TAC), and 27 other human rights organizations to organize the "07-07-07 Campaign," named to mark the date that two women, Sizakele Sigasa and Salome Massooa, were brutally murdered after being subjected to corrective rape in a Johannesburg township. The campaign calls for justice for Sizakele and Salome and all women being targeted for hate crimes. Despite police inaction, the coalition is demanding that the authorities re-examine the case and conduct a thorough and efficient investigation into the murder, rape, and torture of the women. Furthermore, the campaign is calling for sexual orientation to be specifically recognised as grounds for protection in a proposed new Prohibition of Hate Speech Bill. On International Women’s Day 2009, ActionAid called for an end to South Africa’s war against women with the following recommendations:

The South African government must:

– Uphold their constitution’s prohibition of discrimination against people on the basis of sexual orientation, including by tackling the rising tide of violence against lesbian women.

– Demonstrate its commitment to action in this area, by signing the UN’s declaration on sexual orientation and gender identity condemning violence, harassment, discrimination, exclusion, stigmatisation, and prejudice based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

– Bring perpetrators of violence against women to justice.

– Make tackling sexual violence a national priority for the criminal justice system and allocate adequate resources for investigations, as well as appropriate training and incentives for the police and judiciary.

– Recognise hate crimes against lesbian and transgender women as a specific crime category supported by the necessary resources to investigate and bring these crimes to court.

– Include sexual orientation as grounds for protection against hate speech in the proposed Prohibition of Hate Speech Bill.

– Allocate resources for adequate services for survivors of sexual violence, including post-exposure prophylaxis to prevent HIV transmission and emergency contraception.

– Ensure specific HIV services are available and accessible to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities, including lesbian women.

– Take action to tackle gender discrimination and violence against women, including economic empowerment measures and community education programmes.

The International Community Must:

– Recognise violence against women as the most widespread human rights violation and a key security issue.

– Prioritise and take steps to guarantee women’s security, by addressing violence against women in all its manifestations.

Luleki Sizwe
Luleki Sizwe is a community based organization focused on supporting victims of corrective rape in South Africa’s townships. Their top two objectives include changing the existing stereotypes surrounding lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women in our society and supporting and reaching out to lesbians who have been forced from their homes due to their sexual orientation and HIV status. They try and accomplish this through a variety of activities including campaigning, advocating, and providing a safe house and medical care to victims of corrective rape.

Ekurhuleni Pride Organizing Committee
The Ekurhuleni Pride Organising Committee was formed in June 2009 by a small group of LGBTIs (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersexed) who wanted to decrease the frequency of severe hate crimes affecting LGBTIs within Ekurhuleni. EPOC organizes the Ekurhuleni Pride March, holds regular meetings to share information, hosts workshops and conferences to bring forth education. They also aim to document the lives and the openly gay and lesbian Ekurhuleni activists who liberated themselves in the 1980’s.

Edge Magazine
The Edge is a magazine based in the United States dedicated to providing a platform for minorities. They featured an article on raising awareness for victims of corrective rape.

Uzima Collective Group
The Uzima Collective Group is based in North Carolina. Their mission is to empower women, promote wellness, growth, equality, and to make a rise against hate crimes on lesbians. They had a campaign entitled "Because of who I am" in which they mailed postcards to government officials and set up a pen pal network between American and South African lesbians in an effort to raise international awareness about and provide support against corrective rape in South Africa.