“Low level” sexual harassment must be addressed to avoid escalation into criminal abuse”
The erasure of men’s violence in a victim blaming culture.
Language
Child Sexual Exploitation – Groundhog Day
Child Sexual Exploitation is in the news again – the media are over-run with commentators who are wringing their hands, apologising, claiming that they’re not sure how they didn’t know, telling us that work is in progress to ‘remove this vile scourge’ from our communities. But what are we actually doing? We’ve looked over a […]
What do we mean by saying ‘a brutal rape’?
If you search ‘brutal rape news’ on Google you’ll find page after page of recent news stories (if you are going to do this, even the titles are very graphic, and the litany of results one after another is pretty horrifying). I’m just wondering what it is that provokes journalists to use this adjective as […]
In defence of Shonda Rhimes
This is in response to a terrible article by a woman called Alessandra Stanley. Whilst it’s not very “sisterly” please forgive me as I was white hot with outrage at the time. I am so ridiculously pleased to see women succeed and rise to power, especially in competitive sectors like TV production/writing, that I feel […]
Shaun Wright – When will he face what he did?
In The Times today a report by Andrew Norfolk and and Billy Kember states that Shaun Wright knew for years that local girls were being “groomed and ruthlessly abused by men” in Rotherham.The majority of the people who have looked at this case since the Alexis Jay report have shaken their heads sadly at the […]
Victim-blaming: an all-pervading curse
Something has struck me about a whole range of different recent stories, covering many of the different things that I’m interested in: the tendency for the victims to be blamed. I’ve seen it in tech stories, in legal stories, and above all in political stories. It’s often implicit rather than explicit, and often it seems […]
REALLY Stephen Fry… REALLY?
In case you haven’t heard, our national treasure, Stephen Fry, reportedly waded into the murky topic of Operation Yewtree and historical sex crimes whilst speaking at a Labour Party dinner. He allegedly ‘went off on one’* and thinks there should be tougher laws to discourage people from inventing false claims of rape and sexual assault. […]
“Altercation” vs Extreme Physical Violence
Ray Rice, a member of the Baltimore Ravens in the NFL, is waiting to learn what his punishment will be for violating the NFL’s “personal conduct policy”. Rice’s “misconduct” resulted in him being indicted for aggravated assault. Personally, I’m not entirely certain hitting a woman so hard she ends up unconscious and then dragging her […]
BBC : “Husband murdered wife who left him”
“Husband murders wife who left him” – BBC News The murderer of Caroline Parry was her former husband whom she had left after enduring 27 years of abuse from him. The article gives examples of his extreme emotional and psychological abuse, controlling behaviour, and his obsessive response to her eventually leaving him to live with […]
Let’s have a headline about drunkenness and underpants – Wouldn’t that be funny?
If you ever doubted that male violence against women is laughed at, minimised or normalised by the media – then consider this Headline ‘Drunk East Lancs man breaks order by stripping to underpants and jumping into bed with ex’ The actual story is – A young woman obtained a non-molestation order ‘following an alleged assault […]