Elon Musk bought Twitter.

[dpedin]

Farage can maybe get 20% of the vote, but to have a shot at power he needs to get that over 30% and he can't do that if enough of middle England thinks he's a Tommy Robinson supporter. He already needs people to hold their noses and skip past there are a lot of UKIP/Reform who overtly or otherwise support Yaxley-Lennon, which is to say hold various extreme/racist/homophobic positions. Wanting to get that next 10-15% of the vote is what's driving frog face, but he's learning the nice way you can't just assume you'll keep your base. An interesting strategy from the man who says he wants to be PM mind, presented with a challenge from Musk he's opted for run silent, run deep in the hope the problem goes away without him needing to act

Also rather odd in all this is we did have an inquiry, one that returned a list of recommendations back in 2015 maybe 2016? And the Tories presented with a list that many involved in the various sectors thought good ideas did nothing with it, and Rayner in saying it wasn't for HMG to determine the need for a further report didn't exactly clarify if Labour would enact the recommendations already on the table. The politics says it's much more important to drive a sense of outrage than to seek sensible progress, which perhaps is depressing more than it's odd

HMG have now assented to some of the recommendations of the Jay report, and indeed one Alexis Jay thinks what's passed these last few days in terms of public debate essentially fails to meet the standards of debate, isn't helpful to implanting change, and we don't need another report at this point because that would merely delay any changes already in the pipeline. No doubt Musk will reflect on these considered positions and issue a suitable apology, or I suppose he could channel his inner Yeeb and just declare Alexis Jay a nonce

The Jay report includes recommendations such as having a cabinet minister for children and enhanced DBS checks - not sure that changes whether justice has been done in relation to the grooming gangs, or indeed that it will prevent organised child abuse in future. Ultimately the punishments on offer for child rape and/or complicity in it have not matched the crime, and this will run and run unless and until it does.

As ever the British state sees a major problem and offers a minor, technical process-based committee made remedy, that still somehow takes years to implement it

There are a number of recommendations in the Jay Report - picking one and suggesting it won't make the impact you want is a bit unfair? Look at the whole package of recommendations, they are more than minor changes.. Another National Enquiry will merely extend the time taken to implement any changes required, we need to make a start.

Sentencing for crimes are determined by the Sentencing Council who issue guidelines for Judges.

[Biffer]

HMG have now assented to some of the recommendations of the Jay report, and indeed one Alexis Jay thinks what's passed these last few days in terms of public debate essentially fails to meet the standards of debate, isn't helpful to implanting change, and we don't need another report at this point because that would merely delay any changes already in the pipeline. No doubt Musk will reflect on these considered positions and issue a suitable apology, or I suppose he could channel his inner Yeeb and just declare Alexis Jay a nonce

The Jay report includes recommendations such as having a cabinet minister for children and enhanced DBS checks - not sure that changes whether justice has been done in relation to the grooming gangs, or indeed that it will prevent organised child abuse in future. Ultimately the punishments on offer for child rape and/or complicity in it have not matched the crime, and this will run and run unless and until it does.

As ever the British state sees a major problem and offers a minor, technical process-based committee made remedy, that still somehow takes years to implement it

There are a number of recommendations in the Jay Report - picking one and suggesting it won't make the impact you want is a bit unfair? Look at the whole package of recommendations, they are more than minor changes.. Another National Enquiry will merely extend the time taken to implement any changes required, we need to make a start.

Sentencing for crimes are determined by the Sentencing Council who issue guidelines for Judges.

Exactly. Musk can implement some of these himself, without government action, such as "more robust" age-verification requirements for the use of online platforms and services, and mandatory online pre-screening by tech platforms for sexual images of children. But he won't.

[Kiwias]

HMG have now assented to some of the recommendations of the Jay report, and indeed one Alexis Jay thinks what's passed these last few days in terms of public debate essentially fails to meet the standards of debate, isn't helpful to implanting change, and we don't need another report at this point because that would merely delay any changes already in the pipeline. No doubt Musk will reflect on these considered positions and issue a suitable apology, or I suppose he could channel his inner Yeeb and just declare Alexis Jay a nonce

The Jay report includes recommendations such as having a cabinet minister for children and enhanced DBS checks - not sure that changes whether justice has been done in relation to the grooming gangs, or indeed that it will prevent organised child abuse in future. Ultimately the punishments on offer for child rape and/or complicity in it have not matched the crime, and this will run and run unless and until it does.

As ever the British state sees a major problem and offers a minor, technical process-based committee made remedy, that still somehow takes years to implement it

There are a number of recommendations in the Jay Report - picking one and suggesting it won't make the impact you want is a bit unfair? Look at the whole package of recommendations, they are more than minor changes.. Another National Enquiry will merely extend the time taken to implement any changes required, we need to make a start.

Sentencing for crimes are determined by the Sentencing Council who issue guidelines for Judges.

Leading to the obvious questions of who sits on this Council, who appoints them, and how can new members be appointed.

[sockwithaticket]

Hmm

- Communicating with millions of people in almost real time but with a high degree of anonymity and depersonalisation
- Platforms designed to have a specific psychological impact on their users, from addictive behaviour to creating and promoting outrage as "engagement" is king
- Huge amounts of misinformation and outright manipulation by bad actors

Society has never faced anything like this before, and I can't agree that social media has just exposed existing rifts. It is a wildly successful outrage generator, lie spreader, and clique builder.

Sure, but 99% of outrage goes nowhere. For something to succeed and cut through on social media it has to tap into something real and already existing.

Do you mean real and existing prejudices, bigotry, racism, sexism or xenophobia?

I suspect all it does is support a vicious downward spiral of all the above, often against the majority view in that given population and evidence that shows the contrary. As George Orwell said “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

The issue as I see it isn't that social media exposes existing prejudices and divides, it's that it makes them worse. Those who hold abhorrant views and/or have a prediliction for insane conspiracy theory use to be isolated and discouraged, now they have access to reinforcement and perpetuation of their views. They can link up with others, validate each other and actively recruit. It's a function of the internet more generally - there are anorexia forums on the darkweb where people who previously never would have met egg each other on to engage in ever more unhealthy behaviour and encouraging resistance to the interventions of concerned family and friends. But social media is worse because it's more legitimised and more widely used. Social media platforms give loud minority views a megaphone.

This is then exacerbated by lazy journos amplify the importance of content because writing an article or recording a 2 minute piece based on some tweets is easier than proper research and reporting. Someone on Oh God What Now recently spoke about the state of freelance work, which is more prevalent than it once was, in the present where the going rate for a piece is often the same whether you knock it up based on a twitter exchange or a month of dedicated research into a meaningful topic.

[Paddington Bear]

HMG have now assented to some of the recommendations of the Jay report, and indeed one Alexis Jay thinks what's passed these last few days in terms of public debate essentially fails to meet the standards of debate, isn't helpful to implanting change, and we don't need another report at this point because that would merely delay any changes already in the pipeline. No doubt Musk will reflect on these considered positions and issue a suitable apology, or I suppose he could channel his inner Yeeb and just declare Alexis Jay a nonce

The Jay report includes recommendations such as having a cabinet minister for children and enhanced DBS checks - not sure that changes whether justice has been done in relation to the grooming gangs, or indeed that it will prevent organised child abuse in future. Ultimately the punishments on offer for child rape and/or complicity in it have not matched the crime, and this will run and run unless and until it does.

As ever the British state sees a major problem and offers a minor, technical process-based committee made remedy, that still somehow takes years to implement it

There are a number of recommendations in the Jay Report - picking one and suggesting it won't make the impact you want is a bit unfair? Look at the whole package of recommendations, they are more than minor changes.. Another National Enquiry will merely extend the time taken to implement any changes required, we need to make a start.

Sentencing for crimes are determined by the Sentencing Council who issue guidelines for Judges.

I picked two of their points not one and am aware of how sentencing works (it works poorly).

Returning to my post - what in the Jay report delivers justice? Financial redress is fine enough and no one can quibble, but this was a vile, organised and systemic crime, for which many rapists received a couple of years in prison. Hundreds, maybe thousands continue to walk free. The police and social services, who were in on it, barely have had a slap on the wrist. That’s not justice and no DBS check delivers it or indeed prevents it from happening again. How does a DBS check or a minister for children stop a taxi driver from seeing a girl who has been raped multiple times asking for help and deciding to rape her again? This is a criminal justice not a safeguarding issue. You stop it happening again by pointing out that the last bloke who did something like this will die in a cell.

Taking another recommendation of the report - mandatory reporting of abuse - wouldn’t you say even without it being a legal requirement it would have represented the absolute bare minimum you’d expect of a police officer or social worker anyway? The better question is *why* they didn’t and what the repercussions should be of their decision not to.

Taking your post, Biffer’s point about online verification and the report itself, it just reminds me of how within 24 hours of David Amess being murdered the political discussion was about online hate. We have made an art form out of skirting round major issues. People know it, and that’s why these issues won’t die and get social media attention. We could kill this off as a wedge for the far right if punishment fitted the crime.

Tommy Robinson would be howling into the wind if Starmer could turn around and say ‘the rapists got life sentences and the police who covered it up are in prison without their pensions’.

[robmatic]

Seems like it would be easy not to cede ground to far right loonies here but no, there will be a bitter fight to defend some clearly broken systemic issues instead.

[Paddington Bear]

Seems like it would be easy not to cede ground to far right loonies here but no, there will be a bitter fight to defend some clearly broken systemic issues instead.

Exactly this.

If you’re defending a system which doesn’t deliver economic growth, doesn’t allow ordinary people to buy houses and doesn’t throw the book at people who commit horrific crimes, how on earth are you surprised that people will 1) suggest the system needs to go and 2) look to both extremes for alternative solutions?

[Hal Jordan]

I don’t think social media has polarised society so much as revealing existing polarisation which has been exacerbated by a decline in living standards

Hmm

- Communicating with millions of people in almost real time but with a high degree of anonymity and depersonalisation
- Platforms designed to have a specific psychological impact on their users, from addictive behaviour to creating and promoting outrage as "engagement" is king
- Huge amounts of misinformation and outright manipulation by bad actors

Society has never faced anything like this before, and I can't agree that social media has just exposed existing rifts. It is a wildly successful outrage generator, lie spreader, and clique builder.

Yup, 100% agree

If you wanted to meet fascists in the good old days, you either had to go to a football match or join a golf club, and if you wanted to meet Communists you spoke to the SWP at the table they'd set up in the market, or visit that weird bookshop that sold the Little Red Book and self-published analysis of Shakespeare through the prism of Elizabethan feminists.

You had to put the effort in.

[tabascoboy]

Hmm

- Communicating with millions of people in almost real time but with a high degree of anonymity and depersonalisation
- Platforms designed to have a specific psychological impact on their users, from addictive behaviour to creating and promoting outrage as "engagement" is king
- Huge amounts of misinformation and outright manipulation by bad actors

Society has never faced anything like this before, and I can't agree that social media has just exposed existing rifts. It is a wildly successful outrage generator, lie spreader, and clique builder.

Yup, 100% agree

If you wanted to meet fascists in the good old days, you either had to go to a football match or join a golf club, and if you wanted to meet Communists you spoke to the SWP at the table they'd set up in the market, or visit that weird bookshop that sold the Little Red Book and self-published analysis of Shakespeare through the prism of Elizabethan feminists.

You had to put the effort in.

So much this, now those who would have been just pub bores with repressed anger issues have an outlet to get their bile out to potentially billions. And bots can generate auto responses and 'Likes' by the ton to inflate a commentary so it appears to be a universal thing

[_Os_]

Farage can maybe get 20% of the vote, but to have a shot at power he needs to get that over 30% and he can't do that if enough of middle England thinks he's a Tommy Robinson supporter. He already needs people to hold their noses and skip past there are a lot of UKIP/Reform who overtly or otherwise support Yaxley-Lennon, which is to say hold various extreme/racist/homophobic positions. Wanting to get that next 10-15% of the vote is what's driving frog face, but he's learning the nice way you can't just assume you'll keep your base. An interesting strategy from the man who says he wants to be PM mind, presented with a challenge from Musk he's opted for run silent, run deep in the hope the problem goes away without him needing to act

Bingo!

This Musk intervention is terrible for the Tories. Should absolutely not be focusing on historic sex crimes or people who aren't white or immigrants. Jenrick is now wading in against British Pakistanis/immigrants/"alien cultures", former-PM Truss is wading in against Philips basically saying she's fair game, Badenoch is saying she wants another inquiry into historic sex crimes. They should all be ignoring this.

The reasons the Tories lost in 2024 were: 1 they did an absolutely shit job, 2 their voters are dying (1 in 10 dead since 2019, dying at 3 times the rate Labour voters are), 3 apathy (sometimes confused with group 2), 4 people switching to Labour/Lib Dems/Greens. Reform was not the reason the Tories lost, there's about 1 million hardcore racist fascists to the right of the Tories who will never vote Tory, they really want the BNP/EDL/Tommy Ten Names but held their nose and voted Reform last time (probably about a quarter of Reform). There's a bloc of former Labour voters who are also upset about immigration/people who aren't white, they also will never vote Tory but voted Reform last time. Maybe half of the Reform voters could be reached by the Tories, but if they're won using toxic means the Tories will also lose voters on the other end of the scale. Basic facts like Lib Dems 72 seats and Reform 5 seats, have had zero impact on Tory thinking.

Jenrick's contribution is particularly awful for the Tories and excellent for Labour. Launching an attack on an entire ethnic community means not even trying to win those voters, which for British Pakistanis means about 30 to 40 seats (5%-ish of seats). If it looks dodgy and racial, which it does, everyone adjacent who isn't that ethnicity will eventually notice and become less likely to vote for that party. Will a British black person think when that party says they want "tougher policing" they really mean tougher policing of their community only and continued zero policing of rich whites doing drugs in Soho nightclubs? Will an immigrant who is white think it's likely that party will whip up outrage against illegal immigrants and people who aren't white, with the only actual legislative outcome being legal immigrants including themselves becoming targets?

20% of the UK isn't white even without immigration this will rise to about 40%. 2021 census found 16% of the UK is foreign born, that percentage hasn't decreased since. White British people are 74%. A party in the UK electoral system needs 30% to be competitive and 35% to have a strong chance of a majority. Perpetually calling large groups of people cunts based on their background isn't a winning strategy. If nothing changes and the Tories keep telling large groups of people they are cunts, it's the same as gifting Labour huge head starts every election, at the moment it's a 10%+ head start, not long from now it'll be 20%+. Throwing their hands up in the air and crying about "ethnic voting blocs" (which really means, people who aren't white and/or immigrants mostly don't vote Tory because it's demonstrably not in their interest to do so), will change nothing.

The Tories have two huge demographic problems: 1 Their voters are incredibly old, they need to offer people under 50 something (their big offer to young people in 2024 was forced conscription into the military to fight in a possible WW3), 2 They're perceived as racist and a super majority of people who aren't white do not vote for them, digging up historic sex crimes and attacking every British Pakistani will not change the perception many have that the Tories are an active threat to them.

All this Musk stuff is precisely not where the Tories need to be, should be ignoring it like Labour mostly are, they're doing the exact opposite.

[Sandstorm]

Tories need to offer people under 50 something (their big offer to young people in 2024 was forced conscription into the military to fight in a possible WW3),

[Hal Jordan]

Zuckerberg chowing down on Trump's mushroom as Meta moves to get rid of fact checkers in favour of Community Notes on Facebook and Instagram.

[Hugo]

Seems like it would be easy not to cede ground to far right loonies here but no, there will be a bitter fight to defend some clearly broken systemic issues instead.

Exactly this.

If you’re defending a system which doesn’t deliver economic growth, doesn’t allow ordinary people to buy houses and doesn’t throw the book at people who commit horrific crimes, how on earth are you surprised that people will 1) suggest the system needs to go and 2) look to both extremes for alternative solutions?

Agree with both you and robmatic here.

In looking at how the British state moves at a snails pace to reform and address these issues I was wondering what the outcomes would be if groups of mostly white men operated sexual gangs and victimised non white girls.

I've been trying to figure out whether there would be more urgency to address it? Would the sentences have been harsher? Would the communities of the paedophiles and rapists have turned them in or protected them with a wall of silence?

To me the truly sinister thing about these cases hasn't been the vile acts themselves but the aparatus that exists in society that enables them. It's the enabling that bothers me more than anything. The people who either overtly or more passively have given these men permission to terrorise these girls.

[I like neeps]

Seems like it would be easy not to cede ground to far right loonies here but no, there will be a bitter fight to defend some clearly broken systemic issues instead.

Exactly this.

If you’re defending a system which doesn’t deliver economic growth, doesn’t allow ordinary people to buy houses and doesn’t throw the book at people who commit horrific crimes, how on earth are you surprised that people will 1) suggest the system needs to go and 2) look to both extremes for alternative solutions?

Agree with both you and robmatic here.

In looking at how the British state moves at a snails pace to reform and address these issues I was wondering what the outcomes would be if groups of mostly white men operated sexual gangs and victimised non white girls.

I've been trying to figure out whether there would be more urgency to address it? Would the sentences have been harsher? Would the communities of the paedophiles and rapists have turned them in or protected them with a wall of silence?

To me the truly sinister thing about these cases hasn't been the vile acts themselves but the aparatus that exists in society that enables them. It's the enabling that bothers me more than anything. The people who either overtly or more passively have given these men permission to terrorise these girls.

You don't have to wonder, there have been numerous grooming gangs made up of white men in the UK. I think it gets far less coverage as it's not politically expedient to make a big deal out of it every few years.

Reality is in the UK if you're in a grooming gang convicted of rape you're getting likely 12-25 years. Is it long enough? A mandatory life sentence would be better I think but there's no evidence the punishments were soft. And there was an enquiry too, the Tories just never acted on the results. Starmer hasn't yet, he should do so.

[Hugo]

Exactly this.

If you’re defending a system which doesn’t deliver economic growth, doesn’t allow ordinary people to buy houses and doesn’t throw the book at people who commit horrific crimes, how on earth are you surprised that people will 1) suggest the system needs to go and 2) look to both extremes for alternative solutions?

Agree with both you and robmatic here.

In looking at how the British state moves at a snails pace to reform and address these issues I was wondering what the outcomes would be if groups of mostly white men operated sexual gangs and victimised non white girls.

I've been trying to figure out whether there would be more urgency to address it? Would the sentences have been harsher? Would the communities of the paedophiles and rapists have turned them in or protected them with a wall of silence?

To me the truly sinister thing about these cases hasn't been the vile acts themselves but the aparatus that exists in society that enables them. It's the enabling that bothers me more than anything. The people who either overtly or more passively have given these men permission to terrorise these girls.

You don't have to wonder, there have been numerous grooming gangs made up of white men in the UK. I think it gets far less coverage as it's not politically expedient to make a big deal out of it every few years.

Reality is in the UK if you're in a grooming gang convicted of rape you're getting likely 12-25 years. Is it long enough? A mandatory life sentence would be better I think but there's no evidence the punishments were soft. And there was an enquiry too, the Tories just never acted on the results. Starmer hasn't yet, he should do so.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-35524340

Are you sure? This is from 2016 and at least half these sentences seem soft (5 years for sexual activity with a child, wtf!) and with good behaviour I'm sure they are not serving those sentences in full. A 12 year prison sentence is nothing when you are out in half that time.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-68446855
^. From last year. The one at the bottom avoided jail despite penetrating the girl.

If my daughter was the victim in either one of these cases no way I'm satisfied with the sentences handed out.

[I like neeps]

Agree with both you and robmatic here.

In looking at how the British state moves at a snails pace to reform and address these issues I was wondering what the outcomes would be if groups of mostly white men operated sexual gangs and victimised non white girls.

I've been trying to figure out whether there would be more urgency to address it? Would the sentences have been harsher? Would the communities of the paedophiles and rapists have turned them in or protected them with a wall of silence?

To me the truly sinister thing about these cases hasn't been the vile acts themselves but the aparatus that exists in society that enables them. It's the enabling that bothers me more than anything. The people who either overtly or more passively have given these men permission to terrorise these girls.

You don't have to wonder, there have been numerous grooming gangs made up of white men in the UK. I think it gets far less coverage as it's not politically expedient to make a big deal out of it every few years.

Reality is in the UK if you're in a grooming gang convicted of rape you're getting likely 12-25 years. Is it long enough? A mandatory life sentence would be better I think but there's no evidence the punishments were soft. And there was an enquiry too, the Tories just never acted on the results. Starmer hasn't yet, he should do so.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-35524340

Are you sure? This is from 2016 and at least half these sentences seem soft (5 years for sexual activity with a child, wtf!) and with good behaviour I'm sure they are not serving those sentences in full. A 12 year prison sentence is nothing when you are out in half that time.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-68446855
^. From last year. The one at the bottom avoided jail despite penetrating the girl.

If my daughter was the victim in either one of these cases no way I'm satisfied with the sentences handed out.

They do seem soft sentences I agree. But, the sentences are nothing to do with Labour. The Tories never changed them in power. The Grooming Gangs scandal has been known and used as a political football for many years. It's not a taboo subject as suggested. Regrettably, the government's of the day haven't done much about it. But that's true of everything in British politics really.

[JM2K6]

I don’t think social media has polarised society so much as revealing existing polarisation which has been exacerbated by a decline in living standards

Hmm

- Communicating with millions of people in almost real time but with a high degree of anonymity and depersonalisation
- Platforms designed to have a specific psychological impact on their users, from addictive behaviour to creating and promoting outrage as "engagement" is king
- Huge amounts of misinformation and outright manipulation by bad actors

Society has never faced anything like this before, and I can't agree that social media has just exposed existing rifts. It is a wildly successful outrage generator, lie spreader, and clique builder.

Sure, but 99% of outrage goes nowhere. For something to succeed and cut through on social media it has to tap into something real and already existing.

That's clearly untrue, given how much bullshit cuts through.

Feed someone a diet of carefully curated content designed to make them angry, to make them feel part of a group pushing back, and to make them feel treated unfairly - day after day, year after year - and very few people are going to survive that and come out the other side able to discern what is outrage bait, what is real, and what is horseshit.

Just look at "walkable cities" as an example of this offer, or the way the yanks have successfully convinced their population that their government rules every part of their lives while barely regulated corporations piss all over them.

Propaganda works. Social media is several evolutions past that, essentially. Human beings are not designed to cope with this shit

[JM2K6]

One thing I will say about Musk (and I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing) but he is at least visible and open about what he does and what he advocates for.

I'm not a fan but most billionaires like him operate in the shadows and get others to do their dirty work behind the scenes. Him and Vivek have showed their hand, they are billionaires looking out for their business interests, anyone who thinks otherwise after their meltdowns on Twitter the past week is not paying attention.

He's not a free speech absolutist nor is he concerned about "saving countries", he's in it for himself.

He's repeatedly positioned himself as a free speech absolutist and has just written a column for a German newspaper saying that only AfD can save Germany, so I'm really not sure where you get that idea

I suppose we can add his championing of Tommy Robinson and his vile attacks on the UK Govt to the tally.

Not sure how someone misreads Musk this badly tbh

[Uncle fester]

Zuckerberg chowing down on Trump's mushroom as Meta moves to get rid of fact checkers in favour of Community Notes on Facebook and Instagram.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... dApp_Other

I love his comments re Europe not taking his shit.

Meanwhile, those radicalized by the far right will attack brown people and lefty politicians.

[Niegs]

That's clearly untrue, given how much bullshit cuts through.

Feed someone a diet of carefully curated content designed to make them angry, to make them feel part of a group pushing back, and to make them feel treated unfairly - day after day, year after year - and very few people are going to survive that and come out the other side able to discern what is outrage bait, what is real, and what is horseshit.

Just look at "walkable cities" as an example of this offer, or the way the yanks have successfully convinced their population that their government rules every part of their lives while barely regulated corporations piss all over them.

Propaganda works. Social media is several evolutions past that, essentially. Human beings are not designed to cope with this shit

And these people (or 'people' in the cast of bots, bot farms) don't even have to be where you're from to drive up the rage. A facebook announcement recently from my municipality had at least a couple of people in it raging about bike lanes who clearly weren't even from the region, let alone the local community. And they each had two posts with comments on many others'. In a history group, someone was going on about how this city is a dangerous hellhole and admitted he lives in another province (felt compelled to counter it to the two people who responded 'I moved away a few years ago and had no idea it's got so bad!').

I noticed someone elsewhere having a go at the CBC for not allowing comments under youtube or news stories any more. Without much evidence, I responded that it's usually full of nonsense anyway, so write them a letter if he really wants to be 'heard'. But popping into another news service's video about a hit and run near where my family lives, the comments section was FULL of racist suggestions that the driver was an immigrant (and, curiously, a lot of the accounts were name followed by four digit number... is that the sign of a bot, or at least someone who only has a youtube channel to rage? Because none of the five I clicked on had any content.) These sort of comments continued even after it was then reported that it was some white dude who nearly killed someone with his car over having high beams flicked at him.

I fully admit I spend too much time in these spaces, but at least I have the critical thinking skills to question, check alternative sources, and have good natured spirit that wants to see everyone's lives improve, not focus purely on selfish things like a lot of these rage baiters seem to. It's this sort of crap that's steering less-educated/critical people (like my brother ) to get angry about political stuff that doesn't affect him or that isn't that bad (like cost of living) compared to how we grew up (dude, you have two vehicles, ATV, boat, go on three vacations a year and have your kids in travel soccer... life isn't bad, ffs).

[Hugo]

You don't have to wonder, there have been numerous grooming gangs made up of white men in the UK. I think it gets far less coverage as it's not politically expedient to make a big deal out of it every few years.

Reality is in the UK if you're in a grooming gang convicted of rape you're getting likely 12-25 years. Is it long enough? A mandatory life sentence would be better I think but there's no evidence the punishments were soft. And there was an enquiry too, the Tories just never acted on the results. Starmer hasn't yet, he should do so.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-35524340

Are you sure? This is from 2016 and at least half these sentences seem soft (5 years for sexual activity with a child, wtf!) and with good behaviour I'm sure they are not serving those sentences in full. A 12 year prison sentence is nothing when you are out in half that time.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-68446855
^. From last year. The one at the bottom avoided jail despite penetrating the girl.

If my daughter was the victim in either one of these cases no way I'm satisfied with the sentences handed out.

They do seem soft sentences I agree. But, the sentences are nothing to do with Labour. The Tories never changed them in power. The Grooming Gangs scandal has been known and used as a political football for many years. It's not a taboo subject as suggested. Regrettably, the government's of the day haven't done much about it. But that's true of everything in British politics really.

I think we are talking at slight cross purposes here.

The village I grew up in I'm quite sure (by the law of averages) there were some deviants or predators lurking. However, there could never have been actual gangs operating in plain sight doing this type of stuff. Nevermind the men or the police, the women of the village, curious, strong willed and naturally protective would have chased them out.

For these guys to be doing this stuff to the scale and extent they did (and still are, since this stuff is ongoing) speaks to the fact that it is on some level tolerated. It like everything else is a product of culture.

So, you see with the case of the Syrian refugees who raped the girl in Newcastle, the ringleader was already in court in 2016 for a sexual assault case. That brush with the law did not seem to deter him since he subsequently raped another girl then was involved in BLM rioting in 2020.

All of this activity is enabled by people, either by their inaction, their indifference or their unwillingness to have tough conversations. The state just fails at it's basic duty to keep people safe and then adds insult to injury with sentences that serve neither as a punishment or as a future deterrent.

People need to be held accountable for this state of affairs, it is not normal.

[Paddington Bear]

Hmm

- Communicating with millions of people in almost real time but with a high degree of anonymity and depersonalisation
- Platforms designed to have a specific psychological impact on their users, from addictive behaviour to creating and promoting outrage as "engagement" is king
- Huge amounts of misinformation and outright manipulation by bad actors

Society has never faced anything like this before, and I can't agree that social media has just exposed existing rifts. It is a wildly successful outrage generator, lie spreader, and clique builder.

Sure, but 99% of outrage goes nowhere. For something to succeed and cut through on social media it has to tap into something real and already existing.

That's clearly untrue, given how much bullshit cuts through.

Feed someone a diet of carefully curated content designed to make them angry, to make them feel part of a group pushing back, and to make them feel treated unfairly - day after day, year after year - and very few people are going to survive that and come out the other side able to discern what is outrage bait, what is real, and what is horseshit.

Just look at "walkable cities" as an example of this offer, or the way the yanks have successfully convinced their population that their government rules every part of their lives while barely regulated corporations piss all over them.

Propaganda works. Social media is several evolutions past that, essentially. Human beings are not designed to cope with this shit

When I say real I mean what people already believe. Taking one of the examples you’ve raised, petrolheads who see anything that stops them driving where they want when they want and parking wherever have existed for as long as there have been cars

[Guy Smiley]

When I say real I mean what people already believe. Taking one of the examples you’ve raised, petrolheads who see anything that stops them driving where they want when they want and parking wherever have existed for as long as there have been cars

Of course there have always been prejudices and attitudes in society. You seem to be wilfully brushing off the amplification and distortion enabled by the rise of social media. I wonder why you are so determined to defend the role it plays.

[Paddington Bear]

When I say real I mean what people already believe. Taking one of the examples you’ve raised, petrolheads who see anything that stops them driving where they want when they want and parking wherever have existed for as long as there have been cars

Of course there have always been prejudices and attitudes in society. You seem to be wilfully brushing off the amplification and distortion enabled by the rise of social media. I wonder why you are so determined to defend the role it plays.

[JM2K6]

Sure, but 99% of outrage goes nowhere. For something to succeed and cut through on social media it has to tap into something real and already existing.

That's clearly untrue, given how much bullshit cuts through.

Feed someone a diet of carefully curated content designed to make them angry, to make them feel part of a group pushing back, and to make them feel treated unfairly - day after day, year after year - and very few people are going to survive that and come out the other side able to discern what is outrage bait, what is real, and what is horseshit.

Just look at "walkable cities" as an example of this offer, or the way the yanks have successfully convinced their population that their government rules every part of their lives while barely regulated corporations piss all over them.

Propaganda works. Social media is several evolutions past that, essentially. Human beings are not designed to cope with this shit

When I say real I mean what people already believe. Taking one of the examples you’ve raised, petrolheads who see anything that stops them driving where they want when they want and parking wherever have existed for as long as there have been cars

The "controversy" about walkable cities is not anything to do with petrol heads. It's a ludicrous conspiracy theory about government camps and open air prisons, tying into anti vaccination and climate conspiracy shit.

In olden times this would be the preserve of a handful of loons who would otherwise be muttering about contrails. Now it's something that has spread across the western world and has become a cause celebre, egged on by bad actors. The scale of such a blatantly stupid and fact-free conspiracy theory can only be achieved with something like modern social media.

And now thanks to generative AI, it's even easier to pump out this swill to whatever ends bad actors want. Just put that shit out there and watch it catch fire.

[fishfoodie]

That's clearly untrue, given how much bullshit cuts through.

Feed someone a diet of carefully curated content designed to make them angry, to make them feel part of a group pushing back, and to make them feel treated unfairly - day after day, year after year - and very few people are going to survive that and come out the other side able to discern what is outrage bait, what is real, and what is horseshit.

Just look at "walkable cities" as an example of this offer, or the way the yanks have successfully convinced their population that their government rules every part of their lives while barely regulated corporations piss all over them.

Propaganda works. Social media is several evolutions past that, essentially. Human beings are not designed to cope with this shit

When I say real I mean what people already believe. Taking one of the examples you’ve raised, petrolheads who see anything that stops them driving where they want when they want and parking wherever have existed for as long as there have been cars

The "controversy" about walkable cities is not anything to do with petrol heads. It's a ludicrous conspiracy theory about government camps and open air prisons, tying into anti vaccination and climate conspiracy shit.

In olden times this would be the preserve of a handful of loons who would otherwise be muttering about contrails. Now it's something that has spread across the western world and has become a cause celebre, egged on by bad actors. The scale of such a blatantly stupid and fact-free conspiracy theory can only be achieved with something like modern social media.

And now thanks to generative AI, it's even easier to pump out this swill to whatever ends bad actors want. Just put that shit out there and watch it catch fire.

Because quite frankly only a complete cretin wouldn't would want to live in someplace where they could access all their basic health, dentistry, socialization, grocery, media needs within a 15 minute walk of their home ..... what a hellhole eh ?

[Niegs]

It's all a WEF Schwab conspiracy to imprison us and restrict my freedums!!! Wake up! Do your own research!

(... something else I saw in a post about local bike lanes ... )

[robmatic]

You don't have to wonder, there have been numerous grooming gangs made up of white men in the UK. I think it gets far less coverage as it's not politically expedient to make a big deal out of it every few years.

Reality is in the UK if you're in a grooming gang convicted of rape you're getting likely 12-25 years. Is it long enough? A mandatory life sentence would be better I think but there's no evidence the punishments were soft. And there was an enquiry too, the Tories just never acted on the results. Starmer hasn't yet, he should do so.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-35524340

Are you sure? This is from 2016 and at least half these sentences seem soft (5 years for sexual activity with a child, wtf!) and with good behaviour I'm sure they are not serving those sentences in full. A 12 year prison sentence is nothing when you are out in half that time.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-68446855
^. From last year. The one at the bottom avoided jail despite penetrating the girl.

If my daughter was the victim in either one of these cases no way I'm satisfied with the sentences handed out.

They do seem soft sentences I agree. But, the sentences are nothing to do with Labour. The Tories never changed them in power. The Grooming Gangs scandal has been known and used as a political football for many years. It's not a taboo subject as suggested. Regrettably, the government's of the day haven't done much about it. But that's true of everything in British politics really.

You are right that it is not really a party political issue given the Tories having done sod all about it (even if Labour are being particularly dumb about it at this moment in time) but that is yet another thing that is opening the door to obnoxious anti-system political actors. You can't blame people for thinking that the mainstream parties are ineffectual when they keep on demonstrating it.

[I like neeps]

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-35524340

Are you sure? This is from 2016 and at least half these sentences seem soft (5 years for sexual activity with a child, wtf!) and with good behaviour I'm sure they are not serving those sentences in full. A 12 year prison sentence is nothing when you are out in half that time.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-68446855
^. From last year. The one at the bottom avoided jail despite penetrating the girl.

If my daughter was the victim in either one of these cases no way I'm satisfied with the sentences handed out.

They do seem soft sentences I agree. But, the sentences are nothing to do with Labour. The Tories never changed them in power. The Grooming Gangs scandal has been known and used as a political football for many years. It's not a taboo subject as suggested. Regrettably, the government's of the day haven't done much about it. But that's true of everything in British politics really.

You are right that it is not really a party political issue given the Tories having done sod all about it (even if Labour are being particularly dumb about it at this moment in time) but that is yet another thing that is opening the door to obnoxious anti-system political actors. You can't blame people for thinking that the mainstream parties are ineffectual when they keep on demonstrating it.

Which is what I said...

The points I replied to Hugo on were that the elites don't care about the working classes - the state in this case are poorly funded councils and regional police who aren't anyone's definitions of elite.

And the race of the offenders was a reason it wasn't as big a talking point. When the race of the offenders is the reason it's talked about every few months.

[dpedin]

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-35524340

Are you sure? This is from 2016 and at least half these sentences seem soft (5 years for sexual activity with a child, wtf!) and with good behaviour I'm sure they are not serving those sentences in full. A 12 year prison sentence is nothing when you are out in half that time.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-68446855
^. From last year. The one at the bottom avoided jail despite penetrating the girl.

If my daughter was the victim in either one of these cases no way I'm satisfied with the sentences handed out.

They do seem soft sentences I agree. But, the sentences are nothing to do with Labour. The Tories never changed them in power. The Grooming Gangs scandal has been known and used as a political football for many years. It's not a taboo subject as suggested. Regrettably, the government's of the day haven't done much about it. But that's true of everything in British politics really.

I think we are talking at slight cross purposes here.

The village I grew up in I'm quite sure (by the law of averages) there were some deviants or predators lurking. However, there could never have been actual gangs operating in plain sight doing this type of stuff. Nevermind the men or the police, the women of the village, curious, strong willed and naturally protective would have chased them out.

For these guys to be doing this stuff to the scale and extent they did (and still are, since this stuff is ongoing) speaks to the fact that it is on some level tolerated. It like everything else is a product of culture.

So, you see with the case of the Syrian refugees who raped the girl in Newcastle, the ringleader was already in court in 2016 for a sexual assault case. That brush with the law did not seem to deter him since he subsequently raped another girl then was involved in BLM rioting in 2020.

All of this activity is enabled by people, either by their inaction, their indifference or their unwillingness to have tough conversations. The state just fails at it's basic duty to keep people safe and then adds insult to injury with sentences that serve neither as a punishment or as a future deterrent.

People need to be held accountable for this state of affairs, it is not normal.

Giselle Pelicot might disagree about your assumptions about your village? Nice, many professional, working and middle class men from all parts of society thought it ok to rape an older women whilst she was asleep. If they are capable of that then what else could/have they done - rape a sleeping 15 year old then claim they thought she was 16, 18? They walk amongst us! Midsummer Murders should have taught you something about nice middle class quiet villages.

The reality is that CSA and sex abuse more generally is predominately a male issue regardless of race or class. It has always been thus and will continue to be so. From buggery in posh private boarding schools (training grounds for pervert MPs and CoE ministers), sexual and physical abuse by priest and nuns in catholic homes for poor boys/girls, sexual abuse in private schools (ask R5 Nicky Campbell) to the Met police raping and killing women on the streets of London it is a huge issue for our society and I for one find it ironic that we are all in a tizzy about Muskieboy, father to 12 kids with 3 different women, tweeting crap about CSA whilst working for Trump who, is a convicted sex abuser!

This isn't a race issue - in England & Wales in 2022 88% of all CSA offenders were white British, 7% asian, 3% black, 2% other. Asians make up 9% of the population so their offending rate was below what was expected. White British make up 83% of the populations so they are over represented (Centre of Expertise on CSA Report 2022-2023). Yes the data is difficult and patchy but the overall picture is fairly clear. In terms of CSA gangs the Gov own report in 2020, requested by Savid Javid stated the majority of child sexual abuse gangs are made up of white men under the age of 30.The report, which covers England, Scotland and Wales and summarised a range of studies on the issue of group-based child sexual exploitation (CSE), also known as grooming gangs, said there was not enough evidence to conclude that child sexual abuse gangs were disproportionately made up of Asian offenders.

As for the great USA as at June 2024, in the states that have set a marriage age by statute, 6 allow marriage between an adult and a girl/boy who is under 16 years old. Sounds like CSA to me and Muskie has a bit of work to do in his own back yard first?

The difficult thing to acknowledge about all this CSA and grooming gangs is that it isn't some dark skinned, illegal immigrant who is causing all the problems, it is essentially baked into our own white, christian, British society. The offenders are probably someone you and I know and possibly even count as a friend or workmate who is a perpetrator of CSA, probably in their own wider family or with someone youngster close to them. It has always been thus, as the Who called him your Wicked Uncle Ernie. You probably have a mate who seems to have lots of hard porn, who goes off to the Far East for his holidays every year with his mates, always boast about his sexual exploits over a drunken weekend night out or who thinks nothing of some 'harmless' visit to a local strip club. Ever wonder what else they get up to?

It is just too easy to blame some 'other' people in society preferably those of a different colour, race or religion for these heinous crimes rather than accept it is folk who are white, British and christian who make up the vast majority of perpetrators. The EDL seems to have a rather high % of sexual abuse offenders for example. Rather than looking at the facts and figures it is just easier to jump on an unfounded tweet from a jacked up megalomania which supports our own prejudices and biases, or even worse knowingly use it to pursue a political agenda whilst paying lip service for the victims! It is a very, very uncomfortable topic for individuals and our society to discuss and explore, so much easier to explain it away by blaming someone who doesn't look like us. I often wonder about those who shout most and loudest about CSA and asian grooming gangs and wonder why they ignore the evidence, reminds me of a mate at primary school who was always the first to dob us mates in it with the teacher whilst denying he had anything to do with it, despite being the ringleader!

[Paddington Bear]

They do seem soft sentences I agree. But, the sentences are nothing to do with Labour. The Tories never changed them in power. The Grooming Gangs scandal has been known and used as a political football for many years. It's not a taboo subject as suggested. Regrettably, the government's of the day haven't done much about it. But that's true of everything in British politics really.

I think we are talking at slight cross purposes here.

The village I grew up in I'm quite sure (by the law of averages) there were some deviants or predators lurking. However, there could never have been actual gangs operating in plain sight doing this type of stuff. Nevermind the men or the police, the women of the village, curious, strong willed and naturally protective would have chased them out.

For these guys to be doing this stuff to the scale and extent they did (and still are, since this stuff is ongoing) speaks to the fact that it is on some level tolerated. It like everything else is a product of culture.

So, you see with the case of the Syrian refugees who raped the girl in Newcastle, the ringleader was already in court in 2016 for a sexual assault case. That brush with the law did not seem to deter him since he subsequently raped another girl then was involved in BLM rioting in 2020.

All of this activity is enabled by people, either by their inaction, their indifference or their unwillingness to have tough conversations. The state just fails at it's basic duty to keep people safe and then adds insult to injury with sentences that serve neither as a punishment or as a future deterrent.

People need to be held accountable for this state of affairs, it is not normal.

Giselle Pelicot might disagree about your assumptions about your village? Nice, many professional, working and middle class men from all parts of society thought it ok to rape an older women whilst she was asleep. If they are capable of that then what else could/have they done - rape a sleeping 15 year old then claim they thought she was 16, 18? They walk amongst us! Midsummer Murders should have taught you something about nice middle class quiet villages.

The reality is that CSA and sex abuse more generally is predominately a male issue regardless of race or class. It has always been thus and will continue to be so. From buggery in posh private boarding schools (training grounds for pervert MPs and CoE ministers), sexual and physical abuse by priest and nuns in catholic homes for poor boys/girls, sexual abuse in private schools (ask R5 Nicky Campbell) to the Met police raping and killing women on the streets of London it is a huge issue for our society and I for one find it ironic that we are all in a tizzy about Muskieboy, father to 12 kids with 3 different women, tweeting crap about CSA whilst working for Trump who, is a convicted sex abuser!

This isn't a race issue - in England & Wales in 2022 88% of all CSA offenders were white British, 7% asian, 3% black, 2% other. Asians make up 9% of the population so their offending rate was below what was expected. White British make up 83% of the populations so they are over represented (Centre of Expertise on CSA Report 2022-2023). Yes the data is difficult and patchy but the overall picture is fairly clear. In terms of CSA gangs the Gov own report in 2020, requested by Savid Javid stated the majority of child sexual abuse gangs are made up of white men under the age of 30.The report, which covers England, Scotland and Wales and summarised a range of studies on the issue of group-based child sexual exploitation (CSE), also known as grooming gangs, said there was not enough evidence to conclude that child sexual abuse gangs were disproportionately made up of Asian offenders.

As for the great USA as at June 2024, in the states that have set a marriage age by statute, 6 allow marriage between an adult and a girl/boy who is under 16 years old. Sounds like CSA to me and Muskie has a bit of work to do in his own back yard first?

The difficult thing to acknowledge about all this CSA and grooming gangs is that it isn't some dark skinned, illegal immigrant who is causing all the problems, it is essentially baked into our own white, christian, British society. The offenders are probably someone you and I know and possibly even count as a friend or workmate who is a perpetrator of CSA, probably in their own wider family or with someone youngster close to them. It has always been thus, as the Who called him your Wicked Uncle Ernie. You probably have a mate who seems to have lots of hard porn, who goes off to the Far East for his holidays every year with his mates, always boast about his sexual exploits over a drunken weekend night out or who thinks nothing of some 'harmless' visit to a local strip club. Ever wonder what else they get up to?

It is just too easy to blame some 'other' people in society preferably those of a different colour, race or religion for these heinous crimes rather than accept it is folk who are white, British and christian who make up the vast majority of perpetrators. The EDL seems to have a rather high % of sexual abuse offenders for example. Rather than looking at the facts and figures it is just easier to jump on an unfounded tweet from a jacked up megalomania which supports our own prejudices and biases, or even worse knowingly use it to pursue a political agenda whilst paying lip service for the victims! It is a very, very uncomfortable topic for individuals and our society to discuss and explore, so much easier to explain it away by blaming someone who doesn't look like us. I often wonder about those who shout most and loudest about CSA and asian grooming gangs and wonder why they ignore the evidence, reminds me of a mate at primary school who was always the first to dob us mates in it with the teacher whilst denying he had anything to do with it, despite being the ringleader!

The statistics you are quoting from are misleading - a significant amount of their dataset is sexting and similar actions between two people who are both below the age of consent, and lumps in possession of indecent images with grooming gangs etc. The two offences I’ve listed (and don’t get me wrong particularly for the latter throw the book at them) give you the white proportions you’re quoting from. When it comes to mass grooming and rape the offences become disproportionately Pakistani and Bangladeshi.

In your own words you’ve bundled a hell of a lot of things together - going to a strip club or paying for sex off an adult in Thailand is not comparable to the mass rape of children in Oldham for example (again to be clear I find both vile, when I was travelling as a teenager I landed in Bangkok and hated what I saw so much I used a fair chunk of my dwindling cash to fly out early).

As for gangs themselves, there are of course white Brits involved in that sort of thing. But we know that for example the gang in Cornwall was prosecuted and received broadly appropriate sentences (again though for CSA I’d be pushing for life sentences). In the end covering up CSA has cost the Archbishop of Canterbury his job. The injustice of the Pakistani gangs comes from the cover ups, the obfuscation and the absolutely pitiful sentences handed down as and when someone actually got to court, not to mention that a lot of people involved in covering it up retain reasonably senior jobs in public life.

[dpedin]

I think we are talking at slight cross purposes here.

The village I grew up in I'm quite sure (by the law of averages) there were some deviants or predators lurking. However, there could never have been actual gangs operating in plain sight doing this type of stuff. Nevermind the men or the police, the women of the village, curious, strong willed and naturally protective would have chased them out.

For these guys to be doing this stuff to the scale and extent they did (and still are, since this stuff is ongoing) speaks to the fact that it is on some level tolerated. It like everything else is a product of culture.

So, you see with the case of the Syrian refugees who raped the girl in Newcastle, the ringleader was already in court in 2016 for a sexual assault case. That brush with the law did not seem to deter him since he subsequently raped another girl then was involved in BLM rioting in 2020.

All of this activity is enabled by people, either by their inaction, their indifference or their unwillingness to have tough conversations. The state just fails at it's basic duty to keep people safe and then adds insult to injury with sentences that serve neither as a punishment or as a future deterrent.

People need to be held accountable for this state of affairs, it is not normal.

Giselle Pelicot might disagree about your assumptions about your village? Nice, many professional, working and middle class men from all parts of society thought it ok to rape an older women whilst she was asleep. If they are capable of that then what else could/have they done - rape a sleeping 15 year old then claim they thought she was 16, 18? They walk amongst us! Midsummer Murders should have taught you something about nice middle class quiet villages.

The reality is that CSA and sex abuse more generally is predominately a male issue regardless of race or class. It has always been thus and will continue to be so. From buggery in posh private boarding schools (training grounds for pervert MPs and CoE ministers), sexual and physical abuse by priest and nuns in catholic homes for poor boys/girls, sexual abuse in private schools (ask R5 Nicky Campbell) to the Met police raping and killing women on the streets of London it is a huge issue for our society and I for one find it ironic that we are all in a tizzy about Muskieboy, father to 12 kids with 3 different women, tweeting crap about CSA whilst working for Trump who, is a convicted sex abuser!

This isn't a race issue - in England & Wales in 2022 88% of all CSA offenders were white British, 7% asian, 3% black, 2% other. Asians make up 9% of the population so their offending rate was below what was expected. White British make up 83% of the populations so they are over represented (Centre of Expertise on CSA Report 2022-2023). Yes the data is difficult and patchy but the overall picture is fairly clear. In terms of CSA gangs the Gov own report in 2020, requested by Savid Javid stated the majority of child sexual abuse gangs are made up of white men under the age of 30.The report, which covers England, Scotland and Wales and summarised a range of studies on the issue of group-based child sexual exploitation (CSE), also known as grooming gangs, said there was not enough evidence to conclude that child sexual abuse gangs were disproportionately made up of Asian offenders.

As for the great USA as at June 2024, in the states that have set a marriage age by statute, 6 allow marriage between an adult and a girl/boy who is under 16 years old. Sounds like CSA to me and Muskie has a bit of work to do in his own back yard first?

The difficult thing to acknowledge about all this CSA and grooming gangs is that it isn't some dark skinned, illegal immigrant who is causing all the problems, it is essentially baked into our own white, christian, British society. The offenders are probably someone you and I know and possibly even count as a friend or workmate who is a perpetrator of CSA, probably in their own wider family or with someone youngster close to them. It has always been thus, as the Who called him your Wicked Uncle Ernie. You probably have a mate who seems to have lots of hard porn, who goes off to the Far East for his holidays every year with his mates, always boast about his sexual exploits over a drunken weekend night out or who thinks nothing of some 'harmless' visit to a local strip club. Ever wonder what else they get up to?

It is just too easy to blame some 'other' people in society preferably those of a different colour, race or religion for these heinous crimes rather than accept it is folk who are white, British and christian who make up the vast majority of perpetrators. The EDL seems to have a rather high % of sexual abuse offenders for example. Rather than looking at the facts and figures it is just easier to jump on an unfounded tweet from a jacked up megalomania which supports our own prejudices and biases, or even worse knowingly use it to pursue a political agenda whilst paying lip service for the victims! It is a very, very uncomfortable topic for individuals and our society to discuss and explore, so much easier to explain it away by blaming someone who doesn't look like us. I often wonder about those who shout most and loudest about CSA and asian grooming gangs and wonder why they ignore the evidence, reminds me of a mate at primary school who was always the first to dob us mates in it with the teacher whilst denying he had anything to do with it, despite being the ringleader!

The statistics you are quoting from are misleading - a significant amount of their dataset is sexting and similar actions between two people who are both below the age of consent, and lumps in possession of indecent images with grooming gangs etc. The two offences I’ve listed (and don’t get me wrong particularly for the latter throw the book at them) give you the white proportions you’re quoting from. When it comes to mass grooming and rape the offences become disproportionately Pakistani and Bangladeshi.

In your own words you’ve bundled a hell of a lot of things together - going to a strip club or paying for sex off an adult in Thailand is not comparable to the mass rape of children in Oldham for example (again to be clear I find both vile, when I was travelling as a teenager I landed in Bangkok and hated what I saw so much I used a fair chunk of my dwindling cash to fly out early).

As for gangs themselves, there are of course white Brits involved in that sort of thing. But we know that for example the gang in Cornwall was prosecuted and received broadly appropriate sentences (again though for CSA I’d be pushing for life sentences). In the end covering up CSA has cost the Archbishop of Canterbury his job. The injustice of the Pakistani gangs comes from the cover ups, the obfuscation and the absolutely pitiful sentences handed down as and when someone actually got to court, not to mention that a lot of people involved in covering it up retain reasonably senior jobs in public life.

I disagree that I have misled with the data, everything I have quoted was clearly labelled and I assumed the majority on here can understand that. I also provided the source of the data for you and others to look at. The CSA data provides a wider context within which group based CSA takes place
and is a measure of the wider CSA problem we have in the UK. I agree that the data about 'grooming gangs' is difficult which is why I referred earlier to the Gov 'Group Base CSA Report' of 2020, prefaced by Priti Patel which states:

'Based on the existing evidence, and our understanding of the flaws in the existing data, it seems most likely that the ethnicity of group-based CSE offenders is in line with CSA more generally and with the general population, with the majority of offenders being White.'

This is why I provided the wider CSA data and the % of the population info and the statement above seems to contradict your position about them being predominately Pakistani and Bangladeshi.

The other reason for looking at the wider CSA data is it is well documented that rapists, including those involved in group CSA, have a history of other CSA crimes and build up to rape and murder. The case of Wayne Cousins, although not involved in group CSA, is a good example - history of exposing himself including when at work, allegation of CSA, possession of indecent images including bestiality, sexual assaults on nights out in London, owned pornographic videos and was given the nickname of 'The Rapist' by his Met colleagues! Everyone turned a blind eye, didnt speak up or joked about their colleague and his behaviors. How many of us have done the same?

Unfortunately some of those who are convicted of a 'lesser' CSA will become the perpetrators of rape and murder so it is important to see the wider picture and to treat all CSA as important. The point I was trying to make about the folk we know, is like with Couzins in the Met, we all too often turn the other cheek or treat misogyny as a joke with folk we know rather than challenging it and seeing it for what it is. It becomes normalized and accepted. Who would have thought there was a mass rape of an elderly woman over a number of years in a quiet French village of c6,000 population by a gang of white, French men is an extreme example but a real one.

As for sentencing, I will let others address that suffice to say that the sentencing guidelines, determined by the Sentencing Council, will determine the sentences handed down to those convicted - see https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/se ... g-council/

[inactionman]

On a more lighthearted note, there's talk that the space Karen wants to buy Liverpool football club.

I'm torn, it could be hilarious, but ultimately it's a dickhead with too much money fucking around with things that matter to average people.

[Tichtheid]

The point I was trying to make about the folk we know, is like with Couzins in the Met, we all too often turn the other cheek or treat misogyny as a joke with folk we know rather than challenging it and seeing it for what it is. It becomes normalized and accepted. Who would have thought there was a mass rape of an elderly woman over a number of years in a quiet French village of c6,000 population by a gang of white, French men is an extreme example but a real one.

I read this the other day on FB;

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐖𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐀 𝐖𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐃𝐨 𝐓𝐨 𝐀𝐧 𝐔𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐌𝐚𝐧 𝐈𝐟 𝐒𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐍𝐨-𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐖𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐎𝐮𝐭?
𝐀𝐍𝐍𝐀 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐎𝐍
𝐃𝐄𝐂 𝟏𝟗, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟒

I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the course of the trial of Dominique Pelicot and his fellow accused: what would a woman do to an unconscious man if she thought no-one would find out?
Because we know now what men would do. And not just some men. Many men. So many men in fact, they had a nickname for them during the trial, Monsieur Tout Le Monde - Mr Everyman. Because the men who joined Pelicot in the dock were bakers, they were journalists, they were prison officers, they were accountants, they were young, they were old, they were single, they were married, they were fathers to daughters. But they all had one thing in common, a desire to dominate, to defile, to control, to penetrate, to humiliate. A love of rape.
Some of them knew Gisele Pelicot, some of them made small talk with her in the street, in the boulangerie, all the time knowing what she didn’t, that they had raped her as she lay unconscious in her bed and her husband had filmed them.
And so I asked myself, what would a woman do to an unconscious man if she thought no-one would find out?
There was another case in the UK last week, the case of Natalie Shotter, a 37-year-old mother of three who had a rare night out with her friends, drank too much and walked home alone, collapsing on a park bench where a man found her, where a man watched and waited and then raped her until her body gave out and she had a heart attack and died.
That’s what another man did when he thought no-one would find out.
That woman wasn’t safe walking home, Gisele Pelicot wasn’t safe in her own home.

I’ve thought also of the performance art of Marina Abramovic during this trial, the one she did in Naples in the 1970s where she lay out a table with 69 objects on it and invited those who attended her exhibition to do what they wanted to her, as she stood naked – vulnerable – in front of them.
The table of 69 objects recreated at the Royal Academy this year
I stood in front of that reconstructed table and those 69 objects when I attended her show at the Royal Academy earlier this year, it had an impact on me that I wasn’t expecting, to see knives, a gun, a bullet, an axe, a saw, alongside objects which can give pleasure: a feather, a rose, a hairbrush, a drink. Guess which ones the men picked up to use on her? They cut her, they defiled her, they did what they would with her while she stood there in front of them. Even in a gallery (nice men who go to galleries) they saw her as a piece of meat, not a human, just as those men had who stood in the dock in Avignon these last couple of months.
Marina Abramovic’s hair went grey overnight at the shock of what men did to her
Those men, Messieurs Tout Le Monde, didn’t think they were rapists, they would agree I am sure, that the man who raped and killed Natalie Shotter is, but not them. And here is where one very specific problem lies, the issue of consent, because most men do not understand it. They see rapists as ‘other’, they don’t know that stealthing (where you remove a condom without a woman’s knowledge) is rape, they don’t know that having sex with your sleeping wife is rape, and apparently these men didn’t know that if you go to a particular area of the internet and find a site which has another particular area called ‘without her knowledge’ then it is what it says on the tin, it is seeking out someone who has not consented to sex and so that made them all rapists. No ifs, no buts.
And France had a moment to teach the men of this world about rape, the justice system could explain consent to all those at home who have been following this trial, it could have explained that if you have sex with a woman who is unable to give consent every time then you are a rapist. But it seems to me that even the French justice system does not understand consent and so how could it send this message to others? Because rape in France carries a sentence of 15 years, and yet the judge sentenced these men to between three and thirteen years. Some of them walked free from court today having served time on remand, others will serve only a couple of years of their sentence.

A rapist is a rapist is a rapist. What difference is there between that opportunist killer in the park and those men who sought out a website to penetrate a woman, to insert themselves inside her body, without consent? You could argue she has more right to believe she is safe inside her own home than passed out in a public park. You could argue that makes the rape more of an aggravated assault, but clearly the judge did not think so, and those light sentences tell us one thing, that somewhere, in the deep, dark recesses of that judge’s mind, he also believes that Dominique Pelicot had a right to give consent for his wife, so these men were, in some ways, victims of him too and should not be punished in the same way as he has been. (Remember before the mid-nineties it was legal to rape your wife here in the UK. The law changes, but minds don’t.)
What would a woman do to an unconscious man if she thought no-one would find out?
There’s another issue that we need to talk about, and that is sexual health. One of the rapists asked Pelicot if his wife was free of diseases because he was allowing men to penetrate her without any protection. Her health has suffered as a result, she made many trips to the doctor and, I believe, was diagnosed with numerous STDs. Men don’t care about STDs, they care about getting women pregnant, of getting ‘caught’ or ‘trapped’ by women because that would have ramifications for them, but they don’t care about compromising their health – although that particular rapist did, maybe because if he went home to his wife and gave her something she would put a stop to his late night raping.

But STDs have long term and devastating impacts on female health, HPV which can cause genital warts has been linked to cervical cancer, it is an STD that men don’t worry about, yet it could kill us. Chlamydia can cause infertility in women, yet mostly it shows no symptoms, certainly not for men who carry it and pass it on to us. Herpes will lay dormant in your system forever, there is no cure, for some women it is deeply debilitating, today I saw a headline linking it to Alzheimers. HIV used to kill people, now – thankfully – people live with it, but their health is compromised as a result.
Gisele Pelicot had no opportunity to protect her own health, but this concern would be way down the list of priorities for men because they don’t suffer like women do and so they don’t need to understand it.
Last week another case in the UK of a man who did what he wanted to a female when he thought no-one would find out, the father of 10-year-old Sara Sharif. I don’t want to list here the abuse he wreaked on her tiny body, but this man’s history was littered with allegations from his former partner about his abuse of her, those allegations were heard in court, they were heard by Cafcass (the court appointed advisory service) and yet because we don’t take seriously violence against women, this child was put into her father’s care and he killed her, slowly and painfully.
I listened to the radio the next day, a discussion between the presenter and some expert about how they could have possibly known what he was doing behind closed doors, they came up with nothing. But they did know, they knew he had harmed another female in his life, but the suffering of women and children is not taken seriously, and if it had been that little girl, and many kids like her, would still be alive because the fact he likes to harm his wife says something about his psychology.

Dominique Pelicot had a history of being abused as a child, as many of these people do, as many perpetrators of all types of crime do, not just violent crimes. If, for just one generation, we took seriously violence against women and children, do you know what an impact that would have on society? If you believed women just for once, instead of believing the clichés men say about them to cover up their crimes.
Taking violence seriously against women would have meant each of those rapists receiving a fifteen year sentence. It would have been a message to all the men in the world, an education in consent, an opportunity to acknowledge that more men than we like to think are Messieurs Tout Le Monde.

As for Gisele Pelicot, she is a heroine to me and all women I speak to. There are no words to express our admiration for her. She is all of us, and she insisted on that trial being public because she wanted other women who have been raped to know, if she had the strength to go through that trial, given all that happened to her, so could they.
‘I’ve decided not to be ashamed, I’ve done nothing wrong,’ she said, ‘they are the ones who must be ashamed.’
In many ways this was an open and shut case, the jury sat through hours of footage showing Gisele unconscious, silent, as those men did what they wanted to her limp body. If she had been awake, if she had spoken, if she had put one foot ‘wrong’ then they would have diverted all attention away from the men and onto her behaviour, as is so often the case. It is easier to find fault in women than hold a man accountable for his crimes. So, for them, she was a ‘perfect victim’. That’s how they like us: silent, passive, unresponsive.
Well she is not anymore.

Do any of us women feel safer knowing that 50 men in Avignon were jailed today? No, we feel more unsafe than ever. Because we know these Messieurs Tout Le Monde, they are the men who joke with us at the bakeries, too. But what would they do to us if they thought no-one would ever know?

And so back to the question I asked at the top of this page, what would a woman do to an unconscious man if she thought no-one would find out?
I don’t think Mesdames Tout Le Monde would harm him, we don’t carry the same weapons they do. I think she would take his shoes off, let him sleep in his socks. I think she would lay a blanket over him, perhaps put a glass of water beside his bed.
Then she would turn out the light and leave him to sleep.

[inactionman]

The point I was trying to make about the folk we know, is like with Couzins in the Met, we all too often turn the other cheek or treat misogyny as a joke with folk we know rather than challenging it and seeing it for what it is. It becomes normalized and accepted. Who would have thought there was a mass rape of an elderly woman over a number of years in a quiet French village of c6,000 population by a gang of white, French men is an extreme example but a real one.

I read this the other day on FB;

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐖𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐀 𝐖𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐃𝐨 𝐓𝐨 𝐀𝐧 𝐔𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐌𝐚𝐧 𝐈𝐟 𝐒𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐍𝐨-𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐖𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐎𝐮𝐭?
𝐀𝐍𝐍𝐀 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐎𝐍
𝐃𝐄𝐂 𝟏𝟗, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟒

I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the course of the trial of Dominique Pelicot and his fellow accused: what would a woman do to an unconscious man if she thought no-one would find out?
Because we know now what men would do. And not just some men. Many men. So many men in fact, they had a nickname for them during the trial, Monsieur Tout Le Monde - Mr Everyman. Because the men who joined Pelicot in the dock were bakers, they were journalists, they were prison officers, they were accountants, they were young, they were old, they were single, they were married, they were fathers to daughters. But they all had one thing in common, a desire to dominate, to defile, to control, to penetrate, to humiliate. A love of rape.
Some of them knew Gisele Pelicot, some of them made small talk with her in the street, in the boulangerie, all the time knowing what she didn’t, that they had raped her as she lay unconscious in her bed and her husband had filmed them.
And so I asked myself, what would a woman do to an unconscious man if she thought no-one would find out?
There was another case in the UK last week, the case of Natalie Shotter, a 37-year-old mother of three who had a rare night out with her friends, drank too much and walked home alone, collapsing on a park bench where a man found her, where a man watched and waited and then raped her until her body gave out and she had a heart attack and died.
That’s what another man did when he thought no-one would find out.
That woman wasn’t safe walking home, Gisele Pelicot wasn’t safe in her own home.

I’ve thought also of the performance art of Marina Abramovic during this trial, the one she did in Naples in the 1970s where she lay out a table with 69 objects on it and invited those who attended her exhibition to do what they wanted to her, as she stood naked – vulnerable – in front of them.
The table of 69 objects recreated at the Royal Academy this year
I stood in front of that reconstructed table and those 69 objects when I attended her show at the Royal Academy earlier this year, it had an impact on me that I wasn’t expecting, to see knives, a gun, a bullet, an axe, a saw, alongside objects which can give pleasure: a feather, a rose, a hairbrush, a drink. Guess which ones the men picked up to use on her? They cut her, they defiled her, they did what they would with her while she stood there in front of them. Even in a gallery (nice men who go to galleries) they saw her as a piece of meat, not a human, just as those men had who stood in the dock in Avignon these last couple of months.
Marina Abramovic’s hair went grey overnight at the shock of what men did to her
Those men, Messieurs Tout Le Monde, didn’t think they were rapists, they would agree I am sure, that the man who raped and killed Natalie Shotter is, but not them. And here is where one very specific problem lies, the issue of consent, because most men do not understand it. They see rapists as ‘other’, they don’t know that stealthing (where you remove a condom without a woman’s knowledge) is rape, they don’t know that having sex with your sleeping wife is rape, and apparently these men didn’t know that if you go to a particular area of the internet and find a site which has another particular area called ‘without her knowledge’ then it is what it says on the tin, it is seeking out someone who has not consented to sex and so that made them all rapists. No ifs, no buts.
And France had a moment to teach the men of this world about rape, the justice system could explain consent to all those at home who have been following this trial, it could have explained that if you have sex with a woman who is unable to give consent every time then you are a rapist. But it seems to me that even the French justice system does not understand consent and so how could it send this message to others? Because rape in France carries a sentence of 15 years, and yet the judge sentenced these men to between three and thirteen years. Some of them walked free from court today having served time on remand, others will serve only a couple of years of their sentence.

A rapist is a rapist is a rapist. What difference is there between that opportunist killer in the park and those men who sought out a website to penetrate a woman, to insert themselves inside her body, without consent? You could argue she has more right to believe she is safe inside her own home than passed out in a public park. You could argue that makes the rape more of an aggravated assault, but clearly the judge did not think so, and those light sentences tell us one thing, that somewhere, in the deep, dark recesses of that judge’s mind, he also believes that Dominique Pelicot had a right to give consent for his wife, so these men were, in some ways, victims of him too and should not be punished in the same way as he has been. (Remember before the mid-nineties it was legal to rape your wife here in the UK. The law changes, but minds don’t.)
What would a woman do to an unconscious man if she thought no-one would find out?
There’s another issue that we need to talk about, and that is sexual health. One of the rapists asked Pelicot if his wife was free of diseases because he was allowing men to penetrate her without any protection. Her health has suffered as a result, she made many trips to the doctor and, I believe, was diagnosed with numerous STDs. Men don’t care about STDs, they care about getting women pregnant, of getting ‘caught’ or ‘trapped’ by women because that would have ramifications for them, but they don’t care about compromising their health – although that particular rapist did, maybe because if he went home to his wife and gave her something she would put a stop to his late night raping.

But STDs have long term and devastating impacts on female health, HPV which can cause genital warts has been linked to cervical cancer, it is an STD that men don’t worry about, yet it could kill us. Chlamydia can cause infertility in women, yet mostly it shows no symptoms, certainly not for men who carry it and pass it on to us. Herpes will lay dormant in your system forever, there is no cure, for some women it is deeply debilitating, today I saw a headline linking it to Alzheimers. HIV used to kill people, now – thankfully – people live with it, but their health is compromised as a result.
Gisele Pelicot had no opportunity to protect her own health, but this concern would be way down the list of priorities for men because they don’t suffer like women do and so they don’t need to understand it.
Last week another case in the UK of a man who did what he wanted to a female when he thought no-one would find out, the father of 10-year-old Sara Sharif. I don’t want to list here the abuse he wreaked on her tiny body, but this man’s history was littered with allegations from his former partner about his abuse of her, those allegations were heard in court, they were heard by Cafcass (the court appointed advisory service) and yet because we don’t take seriously violence against women, this child was put into her father’s care and he killed her, slowly and painfully.
I listened to the radio the next day, a discussion between the presenter and some expert about how they could have possibly known what he was doing behind closed doors, they came up with nothing. But they did know, they knew he had harmed another female in his life, but the suffering of women and children is not taken seriously, and if it had been that little girl, and many kids like her, would still be alive because the fact he likes to harm his wife says something about his psychology.

Dominique Pelicot had a history of being abused as a child, as many of these people do, as many perpetrators of all types of crime do, not just violent crimes. If, for just one generation, we took seriously violence against women and children, do you know what an impact that would have on society? If you believed women just for once, instead of believing the clichés men say about them to cover up their crimes.
Taking violence seriously against women would have meant each of those rapists receiving a fifteen year sentence. It would have been a message to all the men in the world, an education in consent, an opportunity to acknowledge that more men than we like to think are Messieurs Tout Le Monde.

As for Gisele Pelicot, she is a heroine to me and all women I speak to. There are no words to express our admiration for her. She is all of us, and she insisted on that trial being public because she wanted other women who have been raped to know, if she had the strength to go through that trial, given all that happened to her, so could they.
‘I’ve decided not to be ashamed, I’ve done nothing wrong,’ she said, ‘they are the ones who must be ashamed.’
In many ways this was an open and shut case, the jury sat through hours of footage showing Gisele unconscious, silent, as those men did what they wanted to her limp body. If she had been awake, if she had spoken, if she had put one foot ‘wrong’ then they would have diverted all attention away from the men and onto her behaviour, as is so often the case. It is easier to find fault in women than hold a man accountable for his crimes. So, for them, she was a ‘perfect victim’. That’s how they like us: silent, passive, unresponsive.
Well she is not anymore.

Do any of us women feel safer knowing that 50 men in Avignon were jailed today? No, we feel more unsafe than ever. Because we know these Messieurs Tout Le Monde, they are the men who joke with us at the bakeries, too. But what would they do to us if they thought no-one would ever know?

And so back to the question I asked at the top of this page, what would a woman do to an unconscious man if she thought no-one would find out?
I don’t think Mesdames Tout Le Monde would harm him, we don’t carry the same weapons they do. I think she would take his shoes off, let him sleep in his socks. I think she would lay a blanket over him, perhaps put a glass of water beside his bed.
Then she would turn out the light and leave him to sleep.

I'd like to think most men would too, to be honest.

[laurent]

She has been an amazing person throughout this ordeal.

I have seen a lot of women comment on this (in asocial networks) however I feel completely disqualified on offering anything as this is pretty much the illustration of ALL MEN...

Dreadful stuff as opposed to absolute stoicism and determination.

PS the attorney for Dominique Pelicot has also been very classy.
There was a few news item on her and she appear to have done her job without the usual crass we can see in some rape trials (other attorneys not so much in the same trial).

[Calculon]

[
. Who would have thought there was a mass rape of an elderly woman over a number of years in a quiet French village of c6,000 population by a gang of white, French men is an extreme example but a real one.

They weren't all white

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c785nm5g5y1o

[Calculon]

The point I was trying to make about the folk we know, is like with Couzins in the Met, we all too often turn the other cheek or treat misogyny as a joke with folk we know rather than challenging it and seeing it for what it is. It becomes normalized and accepted. Who would have thought there was a mass rape of an elderly woman over a number of years in a quiet French village of c6,000 population by a gang of white, French men is an extreme example but a real one.

I read this the other day on FB;

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐖𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐀 𝐖𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐃𝐨 𝐓𝐨 𝐀𝐧 𝐔𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐌𝐚𝐧 𝐈𝐟 𝐒𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐍𝐨-𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐖𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐎𝐮𝐭?
𝐀𝐍𝐍𝐀 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐎𝐍
𝐃𝐄𝐂 𝟏𝟗, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟒

I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the course of the trial of Dominique Pelicot and his fellow accused: what would a woman do to an unconscious man if she thought no-one would find out?
Because we know now what men would do. And not just some men. Many men. So many men in fact, they had a nickname for them during the trial, Monsieur Tout Le Monde - Mr Everyman. Because the men who joined Pelicot in the dock were bakers, they were journalists, they were prison officers, they were accountants, they were young, they were old, they were single, they were married, they were fathers to daughters. But they all had one thing in common, a desire to dominate, to defile, to control, to penetrate, to humiliate. A love of rape.
Some of them knew Gisele Pelicot, some of them made small talk with her in the street, in the boulangerie, all the time knowing what she didn’t, that they had raped her as she lay unconscious in her bed and her husband had filmed them.
And so I asked myself, what would a woman do to an unconscious man if she thought no-one would find out?
There was another case in the UK last week, the case of Natalie Shotter, a 37-year-old mother of three who had a rare night out with her friends, drank too much and walked home alone, collapsing on a park bench where a man found her, where a man watched and waited and then raped her until her body gave out and she had a heart attack and died.
That’s what another man did when he thought no-one would find out.
That woman wasn’t safe walking home, Gisele Pelicot wasn’t safe in her own home.

I’ve thought also of the performance art of Marina Abramovic during this trial, the one she did in Naples in the 1970s where she lay out a table with 69 objects on it and invited those who attended her exhibition to do what they wanted to her, as she stood naked – vulnerable – in front of them.
The table of 69 objects recreated at the Royal Academy this year
I stood in front of that reconstructed table and those 69 objects when I attended her show at the Royal Academy earlier this year, it had an impact on me that I wasn’t expecting, to see knives, a gun, a bullet, an axe, a saw, alongside objects which can give pleasure: a feather, a rose, a hairbrush, a drink. Guess which ones the men picked up to use on her? They cut her, they defiled her, they did what they would with her while she stood there in front of them. Even in a gallery (nice men who go to galleries) they saw her as a piece of meat, not a human, just as those men had who stood in the dock in Avignon these last couple of months.
Marina Abramovic’s hair went grey overnight at the shock of what men did to her
Those men, Messieurs Tout Le Monde, didn’t think they were rapists, they would agree I am sure, that the man who raped and killed Natalie Shotter is, but not them. And here is where one very specific problem lies, the issue of consent, because most men do not understand it. They see rapists as ‘other’, they don’t know that stealthing (where you remove a condom without a woman’s knowledge) is rape, they don’t know that having sex with your sleeping wife is rape, and apparently these men didn’t know that if you go to a particular area of the internet and find a site which has another particular area called ‘without her knowledge’ then it is what it says on the tin, it is seeking out someone who has not consented to sex and so that made them all rapists. No ifs, no buts.
And France had a moment to teach the men of this world about rape, the justice system could explain consent to all those at home who have been following this trial, it could have explained that if you have sex with a woman who is unable to give consent every time then you are a rapist. But it seems to me that even the French justice system does not understand consent and so how could it send this message to others? Because rape in France carries a sentence of 15 years, and yet the judge sentenced these men to between three and thirteen years. Some of them walked free from court today having served time on remand, others will serve only a couple of years of their sentence.

A rapist is a rapist is a rapist. What difference is there between that opportunist killer in the park and those men who sought out a website to penetrate a woman, to insert themselves inside her body, without consent? You could argue she has more right to believe she is safe inside her own home than passed out in a public park. You could argue that makes the rape more of an aggravated assault, but clearly the judge did not think so, and those light sentences tell us one thing, that somewhere, in the deep, dark recesses of that judge’s mind, he also believes that Dominique Pelicot had a right to give consent for his wife, so these men were, in some ways, victims of him too and should not be punished in the same way as he has been. (Remember before the mid-nineties it was legal to rape your wife here in the UK. The law changes, but minds don’t.)
What would a woman do to an unconscious man if she thought no-one would find out?
There’s another issue that we need to talk about, and that is sexual health. One of the rapists asked Pelicot if his wife was free of diseases because he was allowing men to penetrate her without any protection. Her health has suffered as a result, she made many trips to the doctor and, I believe, was diagnosed with numerous STDs. Men don’t care about STDs, they care about getting women pregnant, of getting ‘caught’ or ‘trapped’ by women because that would have ramifications for them, but they don’t care about compromising their health – although that particular rapist did, maybe because if he went home to his wife and gave her something she would put a stop to his late night raping.

But STDs have long term and devastating impacts on female health, HPV which can cause genital warts has been linked to cervical cancer, it is an STD that men don’t worry about, yet it could kill us. Chlamydia can cause infertility in women, yet mostly it shows no symptoms, certainly not for men who carry it and pass it on to us. Herpes will lay dormant in your system forever, there is no cure, for some women it is deeply debilitating, today I saw a headline linking it to Alzheimers. HIV used to kill people, now – thankfully – people live with it, but their health is compromised as a result.
Gisele Pelicot had no opportunity to protect her own health, but this concern would be way down the list of priorities for men because they don’t suffer like women do and so they don’t need to understand it.
Last week another case in the UK of a man who did what he wanted to a female when he thought no-one would find out, the father of 10-year-old Sara Sharif. I don’t want to list here the abuse he wreaked on her tiny body, but this man’s history was littered with allegations from his former partner about his abuse of her, those allegations were heard in court, they were heard by Cafcass (the court appointed advisory service) and yet because we don’t take seriously violence against women, this child was put into her father’s care and he killed her, slowly and painfully.
I listened to the radio the next day, a discussion between the presenter and some expert about how they could have possibly known what he was doing behind closed doors, they came up with nothing. But they did know, they knew he had harmed another female in his life, but the suffering of women and children is not taken seriously, and if it had been that little girl, and many kids like her, would still be alive because the fact he likes to harm his wife says something about his psychology.

Dominique Pelicot had a history of being abused as a child, as many of these people do, as many perpetrators of all types of crime do, not just violent crimes. If, for just one generation, we took seriously violence against women and children, do you know what an impact that would have on society? If you believed women just for once, instead of believing the clichés men say about them to cover up their crimes.
Taking violence seriously against women would have meant each of those rapists receiving a fifteen year sentence. It would have been a message to all the men in the world, an education in consent, an opportunity to acknowledge that more men than we like to think are Messieurs Tout Le Monde.

As for Gisele Pelicot, she is a heroine to me and all women I speak to. There are no words to express our admiration for her. She is all of us, and she insisted on that trial being public because she wanted other women who have been raped to know, if she had the strength to go through that trial, given all that happened to her, so could they.
‘I’ve decided not to be ashamed, I’ve done nothing wrong,’ she said, ‘they are the ones who must be ashamed.’
In many ways this was an open and shut case, the jury sat through hours of footage showing Gisele unconscious, silent, as those men did what they wanted to her limp body. If she had been awake, if she had spoken, if she had put one foot ‘wrong’ then they would have diverted all attention away from the men and onto her behaviour, as is so often the case. It is easier to find fault in women than hold a man accountable for his crimes. So, for them, she was a ‘perfect victim’. That’s how they like us: silent, passive, unresponsive.
Well she is not anymore.

Do any of us women feel safer knowing that 50 men in Avignon were jailed today? No, we feel more unsafe than ever. Because we know these Messieurs Tout Le Monde, they are the men who joke with us at the bakeries, too. But what would they do to us if they thought no-one would ever know?

And so back to the question I asked at the top of this page, what would a woman do to an unconscious man if she thought no-one would find out?
I don’t think Mesdames Tout Le Monde would harm him, we don’t carry the same weapons they do. I think she would take his shoes off, let him sleep in his socks. I think she would lay a blanket over him, perhaps put a glass of water beside his bed.
Then she would turn out the light and leave him to sleep.

Not sure it's helpful to portray all men as potential rapist. As to why they didn't all get the maximum sentence

Pretty obvious why this guy:

Joseph Cocco, 69, retired
Cocca was not charged with rape, but denied sexually assaulting the grandmother after meeting Pelicot for a threesome in June 2020.

Video of the encounter shows him touching Gisèle on the buttock as she slept.

He left when he heard her snoring, but failed to call the police. He was found guilty of aggravated sexual assault and sentenced to three years.

Isn't going to get the same sentence as this guy:


Nizar Hamida, 41, unemployed
The qualified hairdresser has eight previous convictions, including for domestic violence and trying to abduct his child with a former partner.

He told the court: “I’m not a rapist. Why would I go and rape a 66-year-old woman?”

He said the October 2020 sexual encounter was his ‘bachelor party’ after marrying a young woman in Tunisia.

He was found guilty of aggravated rape and sentenced to ten years.


Also 31 out of the 49 had previous criminal convictions

[dpedin]

[
. Who would have thought there was a mass rape of an elderly woman over a number of years in a quiet French village of c6,000 population by a gang of white, French men is an extreme example but a real one.

They weren't all white

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c785nm5g5y1o

You're correct apologies!

[Tichtheid]

Not sure it's helpful to portray all men as potential rapist.

Bravo.

To take that as the main take away is the most spectacular example of missing the writer's point