Boys will be boys

(AP Photo)

This is really sick, but it needs publicity.

Two teenage sisters in rural India were raped and killed by attackers who hung their bodies from a mango tree, which became the scene of a silent protest by villagers angry about alleged police inaction in the case. Two of the four men arrested so far are police officers.

Villagers found the girls' bodies hanging from the tree early Wednesday, hours after they disappeared from fields near their home in Katra village in Uttar Pradesh state, police Superintendent Atul Saxena said. The girls, who were 14 and 15, had gone into the fields because there was no toilet in their home.

Hundreds of angry villagers stayed next to the tree throughout Wednesday, silently protesting the police response. Indian TV footage showed the villagers sitting under the girls' bodies as they swung in the wind, and preventing authorities from taking them down until the suspects were arrested.

Police arrested two police officers and two men from the village later Wednesday and were searching for three more suspects. ...

The family belongs to the Dalit community, also called "untouchables" and considered the lowest rung in India's age-old caste system.

There's a lot to this, no doubt - caste and misogyny and a patriarchal mindset, certainly. The article goes on to talk about "an entrenched culture of tolerance for sexual violence" in India. These girls were only 14 and 15, and they weren't even safe from the police officers who were supposed to protect them!

Do you wonder why I post about rape, about misogyny, about angry self-pitying douchebags? But the people who piss me off the most are those who shrug off these issues. Yeah, you may not be raping and murdering any teenagers yourself, but you can't stand those feminists who keep making a big deal about nothing, right?

India tightened its anti-rape laws last year, making gang rape punishable by the death penalty, even when the victim survives. The new laws came after the fatal gang rape of a 23-year-old woman on a bus in New Delhi that triggered nationwide protests. ...

Last month, the head of Uttar Pradesh state's governing party, the regionally prominent Samajwadi Party, told an election rally that the party was opposed to the law calling for gang rapists to be executed.

"Boys will be boys," Mulayam Singh Yadav said. "They make mistakes."

Really, is this such a problem? Why are you always blaming men? After all, boys will be boys.

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Edit: This gets more infuriating all the time:

Uttar Pradesh officials initially appeared caught off guard by the reaction to the attack on the two girls, and [Chief Minister Akhilesh] Yadav on Friday mocked journalists for asking about it.

"You're not facing any danger, are you?" he said in Lucknow, the state capital. "Then why are you worried? What's it to you?"