The Spark

the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist

“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx

Duke:
Betting on Rape

Apr 10, 2006

“tomorrow night, after tonights show, i’ve decided to have some strippers over to edens 2c. all are welcome... I plan on killing the bitches as soon as they walk in and proceding to cut their skin off while cumming in my duke issue spandex..”

This e-mail message was sent by one member of the Duke University lacrosse team to fellow team members just an hour after some of them had gang-raped a woman at a team party.

The woman who was brutalized and another woman had been hired to dance at what they were told would be a bachelor party attended by five men. When they arrived, they found instead 40 Duke lacrosse team members there who were already drunk. All the team members present are white. The two women are black.

A few minutes after the women started to dance, the men started to make racist remarks and physically threaten them. Fearing for their safety, the women began to leave. Before they could escape, one was attacked.

The woman is a 27-year-old mother of two children, a student at North Carolina Central University in Durham. She is former military, from a working class family in the area.

Duke is considered to be an “elite” university of the old-line Southern aristocracy. It costs about $43,000 a year to attend, more than the annual income of most black families in Durham.

At first, police and Duke University officials tried to sweep it under the rug as though it were nothing more than a party that got a little out of hand. But hundreds of students and others from Durham protested, forcing an investigation.

Was this just a few athletes who got out of control, as the news media imply, or a coach who didn’t control his team, as the Duke president says?

No, it’s the reflection of a society in which the hatred of women runs very deep; a society which equates rape with sex and which condones all sorts of violence against women.

If anyone doubts it, look at the sadistic filth a “well-respected” athlete at this “high-class” school bragged about in his e-mail. He equates killing some women with sexual pleasure. And then look at the sports betting website where anyone can place a bet on how many Duke lacrosse players will be shown on their DNA test results to have raped this woman.

The ravaging of women is just another sporting event for these goons.