Italian Court Acquits Man of Groping Because He Only Did it for 10 Seconds or Less

My response to that is when’s noxious patriarchy going to end, especially when thrust upon us by a division of a federal government?

You can read the CNN story here and The Guardian story here.

According to the court, ten seconds is too fleeting to be a crime. What fresh hell is this? A friend of mine who commented on my Facebook post about this story noted that a punch in the nose takes less than ten seconds. Perhaps a ten-second rape would be absolved by the state. Or a bullet that reaches its target faster than that.

According to One Billion Rising, “1 in 3 women across the planet will be beaten or raped during her lifetime. That’s ONE BILLION WOMEN AND GIRLS. Every February, we rise – in countries across the world – to show our local communities and the world what one billion looks like and shine a light on the rampant impunity and injustice that survivors most often face. We rise through dance to express joy and community and celebrate the fact that we have not been defeated by this violence. We rise to show we are determined to create a new kind of consciousness – one where violence will be resisted until it is unthinkable.”

When we let the “little crimes” get by as “okay,” we make the bigger crimes easier to ignore. And by ignoring those crimes–as the Italian court did–we further discount women and keep them forever living in a world where they’re considered second-class citizens.

Would the men on the Italian court be unconcerned if somebody groped their wives and daughters for “only” ten seconds? I think not.

–Malcolm