If there were any logic to what they’re doing, I’d expect Finn to talk like a working-class black Londoner and Rey to talk like somebody from some far-flung desert place, like maybe Australia.
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I’ve now left BoingBoing and asked to have my account anonymised; whether or not that happens I won’t know. But I noticed when I went to log off (I forgot after handing in my notice) that at least one person had replied to a subsequent post. As I won’t see those posts and some people who post here might be left in doubt, I’d just like to clarify that, contrary to accusations being levelled against me, I personally do regard rape regardless of gender as a serious, violent crime which has long term implications for the victim even where no physical violence is involved. I’m not going into my own family history except to say that this is not an academic statement. At all. I could tell you quite a lot about long term consequences from experience.
I made the mistake of trying to explain in a post what I thought might have been the logic of the parole system in this country, mentioning in passing that US law tends to be much more Mosaic. I deleted prior to posting a passage about Breivik and how in Norway he will probably serve only 21 years, but decided it might be a derail.
I made a number of mistakes in the post which made it ill-advised. First of all I did not spell out my own opinion with absolute clarity. Second, because most people in the US would not understand them, I avoided terms like actual bodily harm and grievous bodily harm.
The result was several posts of a rather personal nature, one more or less accusing me of seeking to find excuses for rape, and several from people who were anxious to tell me that all rape is violent.
I was on BB for I think something over a year and a number of respondents would have read some of my past posts. Despite this none of them simply asked for clarification, but went straight onto the attack. I did try subsequently to explain what I had meant but that went down badly too and I realised it was time to stop digging.
This, however, was not why I decided to leave BB. It was actually because of a post from 44 that attracted no criticism whatsoever, advocating castration for rapists. I got well into drafting a careful response and then thought, why bother? What am I doing here? I’m changing nothing. I’m getting irate at a gun happy poster on a blog demonstrating his utter ignorance of psychology, while other people seem to be getting off on virtue signalling. And I’m part of this.
It wasn’t an eureka moment - I have wondered before about other threads where the US and the UK seem to inhabit different planets - but I thought, you know, I have nothing to contribute. This is not my world.
I am aware that criminal justice is an emotive subject, but that in my opinion is why it is such a failure. The British MP Ken Clarke, who was an experienced criminal barrister, was briefly put in charge of it in the UK and his attempt to bring in evidence based policies resulted in howls from the tabloids and his removal. As a kid my father used from time to time to tell me about trials at the Old Bailey that barristers he knew were involved in (he was on the commercial side,so dealt with sharks rather than gang leaders), and it’s clear that prison solves nothing; it’s an elastoplast (band-aid in the US). It engenders its own special corruption - private prisons, unions of guards, hierarchies of prisoners, drugs. I have no answers myself. Well, killing off all violent men would, technically, work provided you could be sure they wouldn’t get into positions of authority and use the system to their own advantage (also known as “becoming a warlord”).
So for anybody who has read this far I’d like to clarify my view - which is that violence against women and children is in fact possibly the largest social problem we have (eliminating it might eliminate a lot of other problems) but focussing on whether one person is or is not locked up or castrated is a deflection. The death penalty for murder in some US States doesn’t seem to be working, while in Saudi and Iran many innocent people get executed every year. Calling for the castration of rapists is unlikely to make the slightest dent in the number of rapes. A major change in attitudes is needed, and that actually means a social revolution, one that begins with children before they even start school; in fact even before they are born (prenatal poverty), since the evidence suggests that the abused are the next generation of abusers.
The movement against molesters and rapists needs to gain traction. The mighty need to be cast out from their seats, not just a minister or a few presenters and producers. Anger is an appropriate emotion but it needs to be directed anger, with cool dispassionate intelligence developing the weapons.
I doubt we will succeed till we eliminate the system by which sociopaths can become billionaires and presidents. That might look like a cop out (“We can’t do anything about crime till we have socialism”) but the message needs to be got out there.
This has become too much about me and I may regret posting it later, but due to the cross-board overlap I did not want people to think I was simply walking away because to explain myself would expose me to more attacks.
Finally, if the literature on sociology and criminal justice lacks appeal - and I would say it is an extremely tedious read - if you want to get a flavour of how the British establishment sees things, I can recommend the books of P D James. She actually worked in the criminal policy department, and the books which include Kate Mishkin convey, I think, something of the complexities of police work.
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That’s the dilemma, isn’t it? These problems have no simple answers; in fact, they are extraordinarily complex. Maybe the long-needed pushback by women against molesters is a one positive step along the way.
I don’t blame you for leaving the other place. I got fed up and left in August I think. I still read the articles as they are interesting, but it seems to me (a totally non-scientific observation) that the number of comments has gone down.
I appreciate your comments always; very insightful.
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I think the only way it will happen is when women stop collaborating with their abusers.
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FWIW, if I were still posting at the BBS and had seen that I would have absolutely called 44 to account for that line. I’ve done it a few times before (not sure which posters I would have been responding to, so possibly 44 every time or others). I’m sure there are quite a few others here who have also left, who would have said something to counter that false premise.
The more posters who leave the BBS, the more of an echo chamber it will be.
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For a majority of women, that would mean not “collaborating” with their fathers, uncles, teachers, boyfriends, husbands, bosses, etc. That’s simply not possible for most.
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Exactly. When the focus is so tightly upon the abuse itself, it’s easy to forget that for the abuse to happen, there had to be a power imbalance in the first place.
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This is a good analysis.
If I could possibly add something, the thing that I noticed was the dynamic between Vice Admiral Holdo and Poe (“I’m a man, why won’t this confounded woman listen to me?”).
It was all I could see, a man being discounted in the same manner women are every day. It reminded me of that old trope about people learning something from seeing it in a movie, and this possibly a bit too meta for them to handle.
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I understand that. But every revolution begins with a vocal minority, e.g. the Suffragettes.
BTW I am a trustee of a charity in this area and I’ve known some of the women experiencing this kind of abuse. The horrifying thing is the way they kind-of accept it as part of life.
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The question I had from all the Worboys coverage was if they suspected him of hundreds of other rapes what was being done to investigate them?
I know the answer is probably nothing, or there’s not enough evidence, but I’ve not seen anything about it.
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I am not posting this aimed at any particular individuals here, but as illustrative of the reality we deal with.
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Exactly this. Worboys was a failure of the criminal justice system from start to finish.
We need to change the culture in which women don’t come forward until it’s too late.
My wife has been doing a little local research for a national organisation into how women can come forward if they are suffering domestic abuse. The provision is, to say the least, pathetically bad. I think the government knows that to fix the justice system would mean raising taxes, and it won’t do it because its backers paid for it to be elected to avoid taxes.
We’re not as bad as, say, Pakistan; but we don’t recognise the institutional misogyny in our society or how it works. I suspect in, say, Sweden, he’d have been caught after the first two or three attacks.
I was finding on BB that all people wanted to do was attack the criminal, and not consider how he had been undetected for so long and what that meant about our society.
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Oh GSM, yes, a million times this. Guys who get into pissing matches with feminists to “prove” the feminists are being hypocrites. Guys who set up collaborative art or political activity groups and insist they’re inclusive, yet somehow it’s always women making the costumes, cleaning up after, figuring out the production logistics, and never getting a chance to perform themselves.
Or, if they do, it’s tokenism at its worst – women shoehorned in at the last minute with not nearly as much time to prepare as the core all-men group already have. If the women are very good at improvising or have a lot of domain knowledge, they might even pull it off, but they’re not gonna feel like coming back.
Fuck all that.
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But…but…women are just naturally so good at making tea and stuffing envelopes! Don’t you want efficiency?
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You jest, but that was the actual argument presented to me on several occasions – except with total confidence and no pretence of stammering. 'Cos real progressives don’t buy the mainstream narrative of feminism that erases any personal choices which happen to align with traditional roles etc.
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I know about it. I am far from perfect myself but I am aware of the issues and have had management responsibility for women engineers and supervisors.
Last year we had an incident at the charity I’m involved with, where a peripherally connected man had somewhat exceeded his authority. He phoned me up trying to do the “let’s sort this out between us men.” I’m afraid I got two of the women trustees to deal with it, telling them they were perfectly capable, had my 100% support. They did. He hasn’t spoken to me since.
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Yes, but are you recommending I return?
Even if that were possible, it’s draining on my mental health. Not my monkeys, not my circus.
Besides, after the incident with the Mormon trolls, I’d probably get banned again for standing up against bigotry.
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I just have nothing to say.
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No, of course I wouldn’t ask anyone to go back there to try to salvage the place. As you say: not our monkeys, not our circus.
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