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.
I am not posting this aimed at any particular individuals here, but as illustrative of the reality we deal with.
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.
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.
But…but…women are just naturally so good at making tea and stuffing envelopes! Don’t you want efficiency?
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.
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.
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.
I just have nothing to say.
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.
Gah.
Then there’s
Dude, no.
You pray for forgiveness.
You hope for forgiveness.
You might even take a measure comfort in worshipping a god who is forgiving by nature.
But you should never take that forgiveness for granted, and you certainly shouldn’t speak on your deity’s behalf.
'Cause I know that if I had god-like power (note: this is one of may reasons why I should never be given power), I would put the requests of the people who falsely claimed to speak for me, and I would put them on the bottom of my pile of eternally-long list of things to do.
In Jurgen, by James Branch Cabell, Heaven turns out to have a War Roof which is placed over the world whenever there is a war on to stop the blasphemous prayers of both sides for divine intervention from reaching it.
I also like Heller’s God Knows, in which King David has the Lord miraculously instruct him to do whatever it is he wants right up till he (David) has a sudden attack of insight into himself and the Lord leaves him.
Thank incomprehensible first cause of the universe that I’m an atheist and am aware that all this stuff is going to /dev/null.
I prefer thinking it’s going to 127.0.0.1.
See - I would have said that machines ARE magic, precisely because we set them up.
Gotdamn! I had no idea Iris DeMent was such a badass.