Can we have a feminist outcry about this please?

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From the report - a flawed report, for sure, but valuable nonetheless - by Labour MP Anne Coffey and commissioned by Greater Manchester Police. If we want to know one of the biggest reasons why we're failing to protect girls and young women from rape and abuse try this:

In a normally confidential file, prosecutors spell out how a young abuse victim dressing in provocative clothes was enough for them not to take the case to court.

It states: ‘The victim is known (as highlighted by social workers) to tend to wear sexualised clothes when she is out of school, such as cropped tops.’

‘While her age at the time and the date of the decision are not given, it gives two similarly disturbing examples for prosecutors not proceeding with abuse allegations. One said how a girl’s “unsettled background” made her “far from an ideal victim”’, while another pointed out, “I note her father has referred to her to a social worker as being a slag, saying she is responsible for what has happened”.

Can we be clear about this once and for all - how a girl dresses, how she speaks and how much vodka she's consumed are not invitations for men to rape her. Yet that is precisely what the police, social services and the prosecutors are saying. And, as a result, rapists are getting away with it. These are girls - children - and we've a duty to protect them. We aren't.

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Is it feminist to say rape is a male problem?

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We debated child sexual abuse at Bradford's full council meeting this evening. The debate was, as these things always are, something of a mixed bag. There's no doubt that we're all genuinely concerned about the problem - both the historic abuse and the real truth of continuing abuse in our city today.

I spoke and gave over part of my speech to the vexed matter of misogyny. After all 90% of the cases we're dealing with here involve the raping and repeated sexual abuse of teenaged girls. And I made the observation that this is about a culture that sees women as either distant and mysterious princesses or else as sluts, slaves and servants of male desire. In prosaic terms too many men see women as either wives or whores.

After the meeting I did a little interview. The interviewer asked me to go over the main points of my speech. Or rather, as she hesitatingly put it, my...er...feminist speech. I repeated my belief - stated in the speech that rape in a male problem and that men have to challenge the definition of women by their role rather than by their character. If it is women who set out that challenge then it's all to easy for the man to respond with 'you're a women, you would say that'. Making light of sexual violence needs to be challenged just as we would challenge any other glorification of violence. And it must be challenged by men.

Now I don't consider this a matter of feminism but rather that the idea of treating another person as merely an object of self-gratification is pretty repulsive. But I am curious how saying rape is a male problem - women don't ask to be raped however dressed, spoken or drunk - is somehow a reflection of feminism rather than a matter of how we make a better human society. Perhaps that's what feminism is about?

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"Bad sexual ettiquette" - George Galloway is becoming an embarrassment to Bradford

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OK, George Galloway is a contravertialist, ever willing to say the unsayable, to defend the undefendable and to march fearlessly into the corridors of power shooting from the hip. But this might just tell us rather more about George, and it ain't good:

I mean not everybody needs to be asked prior to each insertion. Some people believe that when you go to bed with somebody, take off your clothes, and have sex with them and then fall asleep, you're already in the sex game with them.

It might be really bad manners not to have tapped her on the shoulder and said, "do you mind if I do it again?". It might be really sordid and bad sexual etiquette, but whatever else it is, it is not rape or you bankrupt the term rape of all meaning. . .

I don't adhere to the tedious "all men are rapists" argument heard too often from feminist agitators but it does seem to me that having "another insertion" without the woman's agreement is rape. George Galloway is entitled to take the view that the women in the Assange case weren't assaulted (although we'd know the answer to this if the dear old chap would pop over to Sweden for his trial) but to describe penetrative sex without the woman's consent as anything other than rape is quite appalling.

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Pondering on power and the politics of sex

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Sex and the politics of sex have been at the forefront of the news in recent days. From the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn on an accusation of rape in New York through Nadine Dorries’ crass assertions about ‘sex abuse’ to Ken Clarke’s bumbling, clumsy attempt to explain that not all rape case are the same. As ever we must be struck by the nature of the response to these events – from attempts to argue that Strauss-Kahn is somehow the victim of a ‘set up’ to a tirade of ad hominem attacks on the characters of the two sinning Tory MPs.

In all this debate – setting aside the liberal lefts tendency to skate over the sins of its favoured sons in these matters – we get a glimpse of the real discussion we need to have, a discussion that doesn’t characterise someone who argues against sexual liberation as some form of evil misogynist. Nor for that matter a debate that describes the advocate of sexual freedom as some form of corrupt libertine. The real discussion – the politics of sex – is far more important than the froth and bother about Nadine Dorries. Indeed, by allowing Nadine to promote her view while the contrary view is drowned out by bile and vituperation does the cause of freedom no good at all.

The politics of sex is further characterised by the difference between our personal attitude and that we promote in political debate – I have no doubt that there are many bleeding heart liberal men who urge abstinence on their daughters while taking a more laissez-faire attitude – “don’t do anything daft” – to the sexual education of their sons. And good Christian men and women have often struggled with balancing a public commitment to Biblical teachings on sex with their own personal thoughts and feelings - and with the sexual choices of their children. The debate about sex is a tangle of conflicts between personal and private, liberal and controlling – all wrapped about with a preference in debating these issues to leap to judgment, to condemn and (that word so loved of the left) to demonise.

However, in all this there is (for me at least) one central theme – an area of profound significance that plays out in everything from tales of seduction through to the ghastliness of rape. This is that the exploitation of power to get sex is wrong – whether it be the great French intellectual or mighty businessman using his position to coax another into sex or a seventeen-year-old boy insisting on sex with a fifteen-year-old girl. And here I know that Nadine Dorries and those who seem to hate her so much agree – the disagreement is in how we respond, in terms of public policy, to the problem of men (and it is mostly men) using their strength and power to get sex.

For some the response is that openness, honesty and information will act to protect those most vulnerable – with, of course, appropriate support for victims and education for perpetrators (or possible perpetrators). Others see this approach – in all its non-judging, touchy-feeliness – as failing the interests of the weak. These argue for hellfire, for punishment and for condemnation – sex as sin (or as sin in some circumstances), if you will.

Through all this there is a path – a balance between teaching young people what is right, telling them that using power, strength or position to get sex is wrong and allowing them the ability to explore and understand sexuality with all its stresses, angst and wonder. I do not feel those charged with this difficult task are helped by the way in which we are conducting our debate, the politics of sex has become puerile, accusatory and lacks the essential characteristic of good debate – actually listening and considering the other side’s argument.

I am a ‘don’t know’, a doubter in all this debate – I can see the strength in the arguments for sex education having a moral context and worry about non-judgemental approaches as they seem value-free. But which moral context do we choose? Our culture has largely rejected the strictness of many religious codes – we no longer condemn homosexuality, we are tolerating of extra-marital sex and mostly accept that what goes on between consenting adults in private is their business (unless, of course, it involves smoking). However, we still want values to be attached to how we learn about sex – the importance of relationships, the purpose of commitment and the social hazards of promiscuity. In end I suspect that the task of teachers in this tricky area is to provide children with the tools that enable moral choice, that help protect from abuse and that promote respect for others.

Finally, in all this debate, I wonder whether – if the allegations are true – we should worry more about our reaction to Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s case than about Ken Clark’s bumbling confusion or Nadine Dorries’ proposals for teaching girls sexual abstention. Indeed, it is the excusing of sexual aggression in powerful men that gives the lie to sexual ‘liberation’. And if we are to debate the issues of rape it is this aggression and the message it sends to young men that should be concerning us rather than screaming at each other for cheap political advantage.

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Wives or whores? Thoughts on 'grooming'....

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It is a sensitive issue, one that contains more elephant traps for politicians than almost any other issue but which I know will stick in the minds of those I represent. And, in the end, the voters decide what is, or isn’t, important. I refer to the matter of ‘grooming’ (as the papers like to put it) of mostly white girls by ‘gangs’ of young Asian men.

Following from a case in Derby – and referring to an earlier case in Keighley – we are expected to extrapolate to a conclusion that, in every Northern town, there is at least one gang of young Asians organising sex parties for each other’s entertainment at which these groomed young girls feature. In the Derby case:

Three trials held under reporting restrictions last year heard how the nine-strong gang cruised around Derby in a BMW or a Range Rover – which Saddique referred to as the ‘Rape Rover’ – looking for vulnerable young girls.

They were then offered rides in the car to ‘link and chill’ with the men, plied with vodka stored under the seats and taken to parks, hotel rooms or houses, where they were sometimes offered cocaine before being pressured into sex.

Now this mirrors quite closely the nature of the earlier Keighley case – which resulted in convictions as well – where the coincidence of the debate with elections led to Channel 4 pulling a documentary (on the police’s request) on the issue after the BNP described it as a ‘party political broadcast’.

...the documentary examined the area of child abuse known as "grooming". It reported that white girls as young as 11 were being sexually abused by Asian men who encouraged their dependency on drugs over a period of time.

Yet again the issue has become political and, as usual, mainstream politicians are struggling to frame the debate in our comfort zone. Some, like Jack Straw, have stepped as close to the edge of that zone as they dare:

Mr Straw said: "Pakistanis, let's be clear, are not the only people who commit sexual offences, and overwhelmingly the sex offenders' wings of prisons are full of white sex offenders. But there is a specific problem which involves Pakistani heritage men ... who target vulnerable young white girls.

"We need to get the Pakistani community to think much more clearly about why this is going on and to be more open about the problems that are leading to a number of Pakistani heritage men thinking it is OK to target white girls in this way."

Now I have two problems with this statement – why are we shifting the responsibility for addressing the problem from the mainstream authorities to the “Pakistani community”? And why do we carry on believing the lies of bearded (and the occasionally unbearded) community leaders that they can speak with authority on behalf of two million and more people? But at least Jack Straw is trying to frame the debate in asking why a few young, mostly Pakistani men have done this ‘grooming’. 

At the heart of all this isn’t race or religion but attitudes to women and especially the view that women fall into two categories – wives or whores. This is an attitude common among young Asian men but we are kidding ourselves if we think the cultural problem is wholly imported or even restricted to Pakistanis. What doesn’t help is that when someone says to the Asian community in Derby or Keighley that they have a problem, the first response of that community's representatives is denial – usually followed by allegations of racism or of “fuelling the BNP”.

The problem is that these cases do seem to involve a disproportionate number of young Asians – so either the police are letting white, afro-caribbean or mixed race gangs off the hook or else it really is a type of crime associated with young Asian men.  And an exploitative, cruel and oppressive attitude to women – seeing girls as sex toys – sits at the heart of the problem.

For many of us - including plenty of Pakistani men - adopting such an attitude would result in short shrift but in all communities there are men passing on the evil doctrine that women are mere chattels fit only for making babies, feeding men and cleaning house – unless they’re whores when they just provide sex. 

So long as some communities – and this includes parts of the Pakistani community – define women by role rather than as individuals, these problems will persist. In the meantime we should support the efforts of police and social workers to deal with men like those found guilty of these offences in Derby and Keighley.

But we have to cut out the political correctness. If in Bradford the problem is with Asian men – we should say so. I do not become a rapist because another white man is a rapist. And my Asian friends and neighbours don’t become ‘groomers of young girls’ because some other Asian men have committed that crime. And I’m pretty sure that most of the Asian men I know would like to see these rapists and paedophiles behind bars – whatever colour or creed they might be.

 
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Anonymity, rape and the burkha

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Two issues that have exercised the febrile minds of our chattering classes – anonymity in rape cases and banning (or not banning) the burkha. And there’s a link in the hypocrisy and self-righteous smugness of the cuddly lefties who like to pontificate on such matters.

Banning the burkha is wrong but authorities should be allowed to require the veils removal for justified reasons of identification. And, other than when that person’s safety is at risk, there should be no anonymity in the court system – whether in rape or any other crime.

The arguments put up by those most indignant about the proposals to grant some anonymity to those accused of rape are a pile of piffle constructed from the ruins of an army of straw men. If –dear lefty women – it is right to grant anonymity to the victim, it must also be right to grant anonymity to the accused. I know you like the word – that is FAIR. Stupid…but fair. A bit like granting anonymity to victims who might otherwise “not come forward because of the stigma” (one of the more nonsensical notions in all this debate).

In all this the lefties share common ground with the frothing nutters (and the French it seems) who think that the law should have anything to say about what we should or shouldn’t wear while going about our normal business. Ah, they say – we don’t know who they are, we can’t see their faces, they might be terrorists! This is the same argument as that used to argue against granting anonymity to men accused of rape – they might be serial rapists, there might be other witnesses, they might be allowed to walk free!

I don’t like burkhas or rapists but find the arguments about special treatment in both cases to be without any logic or sense – but that’s what we expect from the racist left and the cuddly left.

Hypocrisy.

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