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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   28484 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026

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Here's why it didn't get much press coverage:

  1. Based on their names, at least 24% of the perpetrators were of obviously Arab descent (hence likely Muslim), despite Arabs representing 7% of the French population. In this regard the case is a bit like France's small-scale answer to the grooming gangs scandal.
  2. Contrary to your claim that the perpetrators came from "all walks of life" and represented a cross-section of French society, they were in fact overwhelmingly from working-class backgrounds (if professions like canteen worker, car mechanic, farmhand, mason's helper, supermarket receptionist, construction worker, factory worker, video rental shop owner, soldier, restaurant manager, construction worker, truck driver, firefighter, forklift driver, delivery driver, carpenter, electrician and food processing worker are any indication).

"Woman gang-raped by scions of the wealthy elite" is a man-bites-dog story that woke journalists can't get enough of (see Epstein's island, "A Rape on Campus", the Duke lacrosse scandal, Brock Turner – I posit it's not an accident that two of those turned out to be completely made up, and it still seems to be an open question as to whether any actual "gang rape" occurred on Epstein's island). "Woman gang-raped by working-class men, many of them first- or second-generation Muslim immigrants from Arab countries" is a dog-bites-man story, in addition to being profoundly dissonant with the woke worldview.

It also explains why feminists don't want to talk about it, as most modern feminists have been so compromised by intersectionality theory that they can only conditionally agree with a statement like "rape is bad" after they know the ethnicities of victim and perpetrator. Following the October 7th attacks, a popular slogan highlighting this hypocrisy was "#MeToo, unless you're a Jew". To be more exacting, I think the modal Western feminist is functionally operating on the principle "#MeToo, unless your rapist was a man of colour" – less pithy, admittedly, but more precise. Liberal feminists simply do not want to acknowledge or pay attention to sex crimes committed by Arabs, Pakistanis, immigrants etc. for fear of "giving ammunition to the far-right". They especially don't want to discuss the possibility that men from such demographics commit a disproportionate amount of sex crimes, and that there might be cultural reasons for this (as certainly seems to have been the case with the aforementioned grooming gangs scandal: I've read some articles claiming that, within Pakistani culture, a married Pakistani man raping a white British teenager who "dresses like a whore" is not even seen as adulterous, never mind criminal).

Your comment convinced me @ffrreerree2 was right on the money to bring this up as a Culture War topic.

It's basically Epstein Island but for blue collar and/or immigrant types instead of the elite, the victim is older instead of underage and the videos of the rapes exist.

How so?

sorry I edited this in a few minutes after my reply

It's basically Epstein Island but for blue collar and/or immigrant types instead of the elite, the victim is older instead of underage and the videos of the rapes exist.

See also media coverage of white on black shootings vs black on black shootings.

Is there a general way to balance the ubiquity of "dog bites man" stories with the novelty of "man bites dog" stories such that audiences are cognizant of the relative merits of both?

You can have men bite dogs so many times it becomes mundane.

I remember the days when the Rotherham grooming gang scandal was on the news for the first time (to an extent). Jezebel, which normally dissects the smallest and most trivial "outrages" of the last vestiges of patriarchal misogyny in multiple columns, posted one column about the entire subject, which consisted of nothing but repeating the official press release of the police.

They especially don't want to discuss the possibility that men from such demographics commit a disproportionate amount of sex crimes, and that there might be cultural reasons for this (as certainly seems to have been the case with the aforementioned grooming gangs scandal: I've read some articles claiming that, within Pakistani culture, a married Pakistani man raping a white British teenager who "dresses like a whore" is not even seen as adulterous).

It's simply an ingroup-vs-outgroup thing. I guess Islam plays into it somewhat but in the end it's fundamentally tribal. If the women of the outgroup signal any disrespect towards the moral code of the ingroup, they're fair game.

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