Over Sexed and Over Here?

Sometimes you've got to wonder - only the other day I saw a headline describing Malmo as the 'rape capital of Europe'.  You know, if I was the mayor of Malmo, I'd be looking to fire whoever is in charge of the PR campaign for the tourist industry.  Because, you know, I really don't see that as being a selling point - I certainly wouldn't visit Malmo on that basis.  And I'm pretty sure that it's not going to do anything to attract female visitors, either.  It's hardly up there with 'City of Culture', say, as a slogan.  But I shouldn't be making light of accusations, never mind how false they are.  The 'capital of rape' nonsense was another example of the fake news peddled by the right with regard to Sweden.  The country has always held a fascination for reactionaries, with its image of liberalism, reasonableness and free love.  As if all that wasn't bad enough, in recent years the Swedes have also started being nice to refugees, allowing them to settle there.  Now, combine that with all that free hardcore pornography right-wingers imagine Sweden is awash with, and what do you get?  A tidal wave of porn-fueled rapes committed by gangs of rampantly aroused foreigners.

The idea of immigrants, particularly those from Muslim backgrounds, being more prone to committing sexual offences has become something of an obsession for the right, with hardly a week going by without some report or other of 'European' (ie, white) women suffering mass assaults at the hands of gangs of immigrants.  The fact that none of these have proven to have any foundation in fact is neither here nor there, of course.  True or not, they serve their purpose of insidiously reinforcing the negative stereotype of the sex offender immigrant in popular culture.  Not that there is anything new in this idea of 'foreigners' somehow being 'better' and more enthusiastic rapists than Europeans - just listen to that song on Peter Wyngard's album 'Golden Throats'.  You know, the one called 'Rape', in which he 'amusingly' chronicles the different rape techniques of various ethnicities.  But that was the seventies - and now, it seems.  And let's not forget all those stories you used to get in the old men's magazines about western women being ravaged by Arab potentates or devious Orientals.  Mind you back then, the women put themselves in peril by ill advised travels in foreign climes.  Nowadays those bloody foreigners are over paid on benefits, over sexed on rape and over here.  Apparently.