The appalling situation surrounding IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn's sexual assault charge is just one more illustration of what power, privilege, and a set of Caucasian testicles can buy you: the capacity not only to commit an atrocity, but to do so under full expectation of immunity.
That's not to say I'm any more repulsed by the conduct of Strauss-Kahn than I am by any other monster of his ilk. Rather, I'm disgusted at the light this has shed on just how much the upper-class white establishment will stand by its own, with the French aristocracy more inclined to condemn the American justice system than to acknowledge that one of their fellow noblemen might have done something wrong.
The Young Feminist Task Force, of the New York State Chapter of the National Organization for Women, has made space on its blog for letters of support for the victim. A single mother, immigrant, and woman of color, the assaulted housekeeper was everything her entitled attacker was not, a tragic reality that makes the situation all the more worthy of attention.
Meanwhile, we have France passing a sweeping ban on the burqa, purportedly for security concerns. Personally, I feel they'd better serve the security of their citizens by reigning in megalomaniacal rapists than oppressing their Muslims.
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