The latest battle in feminism's civil war. (Gari Garaialde/Getty Images)
In 2017, Gina Martin was the victim of a sexual offence that was not, at the time, a sexual offence. Martin was attending a festival when a stranger took a photograph up her skirt without her consent. For her, this was the moment when “politics became personal”; when she decided, with no prior experience of feminist activism, to start campaigning to change the law. It was “the most difficult work I have done, or will ever do”, she recently wrote in the Guardian. She was ultimately successful: in April 2019, “upskirting” was listed as a criminal offence under the Voyeurism Act, with perpetrators facing up to two years’ imprisonment and a place on the sex offenders register.
What Martin achieved in such a short space of time is remarkable. Like the criminalisation of marital rape, it is a change that forces us to reconsider social norms. When it comes to the body — particularly the female body — what is and is not illegal matters. It shapes how we understand both ourselves and how we expect to be treated by others. Following the law change, guidance on upskirting was added to the Department of Education’s Keeping Children Safe in Education booklet. This has not led to the imprisonment of multiple snap-happy teenage boys; its punitive impact is minimal. But as my partner, a teacher, tells me, there’s now an awareness in schools that it is unacceptable to dismiss upskirting on the basis that “boys will be boys”.
So, Martin deserves to feel proud of her activism. Yet in both her recent Guardian piece and her new book, No Offence, But, one gets the impression that she now feels torn. Partly, this is because she is now defined as “the upskirting girl”, her activism reduced to what was, for her, an experience of violation. But Martin also seems to be subtly distancing herself from what she actually achieved. “I’m proud that my political activism has had a lasting positive impact,” she writes, “but I also have a complex relationship with it.”
This complex relationship is very obvious throughout No Offence, But. Billed as a progressive handbook offering “a space to explore the problematic, distracting or lazy comments we so often encounter”, its chapters each focus on a particular phrase: “Not all men”, “I see no colour”, “I don’t do politics”. Some are written by Martin, others by guest contributors. The tone is one of preaching to the converted. In her own sections, Martin is keen to emphasise her growth, but she also seems unduly embarrassed by her former self. Both her furious feminist awakening and the visible, measurable achievements that ensued are suddenly positioned as somewhat immature, unsophisticated and, worst of all, privileged.
There’s a certain strand of social justice activism that is not always kind to feminists who get their hands dirty. Ten years ago, when Caroline Criado Perez fought a successful battle to have Jane Austen appear on the new £10 note, her detractors were keen to denounce hers as “banknote feminism”. Criado Perez’s campaign had stressed the importance of female visibility and heritage; her critics zeroed in on the fact that Austen’s image would be appearing on money, something that marginalised women sorely lacked. A straightforward achievement was belittled because it was associated with the Bank of England.
In a similar fashion, feminists who work with, or to change, the criminal justice system can find themselves denounced as “carceral feminists”. “The thrust of the accusation,” writes Julie Bindel in Feminism For Women, “is that those of us that want consequences for men who rape and otherwise abuse women are unconcerned with the fact that the prison system is a problem in general.” The accusers tend to ignore the fact that many feminist organisations, such as Bindel’s own Justice for Women, state that they would prefer it if prisons were not necessary, accepting them only as a last resort, given that no one has come up with anything more effective. As Bindel argues: “It should be possible to challenge the race and class hierarchies upheld by the criminal justice system” without putting women at risk by junking it completely.
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SubscribeThis piece just highlights feminism is the female component of those who identify with the left and is not about women’s rights. Julie Bindel questions whether feminists should ally themselves with the right in the fight against the over reach of trans ideology. I knew the woman who unveiled the plaque in London which commemorated the women’s war effort. She was the head of a department of the civil service during and after the war. She would have preferred to have married, had children and been a housewife but never had the opportunity. There was a shortage of men after the war. She supported men earning more than women on the basis they had a family to support and she didn’t. In the same way the trans ideologues hi jacked the movement for trans rights, feminists have hi jacked the women’s rights movement. I notice that Posy Parker does not call herself a feminist but says she is fighting for women’s rights, she used to be on the left but grew up/ woke up/ saw the light. She is subject to death threats and physical attack. In New Zealand she was in police protection after being attacked and her name had to be kept secret as she was a target for some of the New Zealand police. And Julie Bindel (paid by Unherd) has the gall to debate whether TERFs (trans exclusionary feminists) should collaborate with the right. As Black Lives Matter and the Democrats dictate what black people should think and Stonewall dictates what we all should think about gays, bis, trans etc, feminism now dictates what women should think. Feminism, like all ideological movements eventually do, is in the process of committing suicide.
Feminism should consider the (necessary) campaign for equality in the West already won and focus on major injustices in the Islamic world. Instead of ignoring the blatant bigotry and women-hatred of Islamic countries and fixating on contrived micro-aggressions in the West.
Yes, AND we need to lobby for much more arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment of men (including “marginalized” men) who commit sexual and domestic violence. Lock the bastards up!
We should be wondering why when it comes to prosecuting crimes that it is only the crimes AGAINST WOMEN that we are told that we should consider not prosecuting the criminals and predators, but instead give them second chances and sympathy like was given to Brian Golsby et al.
We should be wondering why when it comes to prosecuting crimes that it is only the crimes AGAINST WOMEN that we are told that we should consider not prosecuting the criminals and predators, but instead give them second chances and sympathy like was given to Brian Golsby et al.
The fact that feminism considers equality to be a “campaign” to be “won” explains a lot about the movement. For instance, why they don’t seem very bothered about the lack of equality when it comes to dying in Ukraine or family courts. Because it’s about “winning”.
I have a young daughter. Of course, some teenage brat harassing her, when she grows up, would piss me off. But far more of a concern would be teenage pregnancy or drugs, or as you point out, the prospect of a grooming gang nearby (though hopefully I can afford to stay in an area that’s not “culturally enriched”).
But none of those valid, much more serious issues would constitute “winning” against some mythical male conspiracy. So, no interest. It’s making laws about some young jerk taking offensive pics that matters.
And incidentally, I see a lot of young girls going to the nearby school as if it’s a disco. Very short skirts, etc.
And just like I expect boys at her school to behave respectfully, I would expect my daughter to dress properly for a place where it’s about learning, because equality also means not wearing sexually provocative provocative clothing around teenage, hormonal boys, and focusing on studying. Doesn’t mean she has to “cover up” or excuse bad behaviour from any boy, of course.
But then , that wouldn’t be “equality” because it implies my daughter has agency and responsibilities. And a lot of feminists would find it offensive to suggest that a girl shouldn’t dress like a tart at school or office – while defending headscarves and hijabs in muslims.
Because, equality, somehow.
Excellent comment. Thank you Unherd for your courage allowing these comments to be seen.
But it does precisely mean she has to cover up for a boy because your worry there was not that she dress in a manner that connotes she’s there to study but to avoid inciting hormonal boys. I’m not sure why feminism is supposed to feel one way or another about recreational drugs and teenagers. That’s kinda an off the wall attack. But it definitely has a stance on teenage pregnancy which as a rule, let’s avoid it. It fights it on forced marriage. It fights it adult men and younger women (a big cause of teen pregnancy). It fights it on lack of knowledge for kids. It fights it on accessibility of birth control by cost, kind and procurement. It fights it on how adoption works and birth mother rights. And with one exception fights by the right of choice, including the ability to go to a judge to get an abortion if parents are difficult. It only makes an exception if the teenager in question really wants to keep it.
So when you say they don’t care, you just don’t know what you are talking about. Family courts, at least in the US, only deal with custody when parents can’t agree. In that situation, they tend to favor the parent who did the most caregiving (which tends to be women) but they give giant latitude toward non-custodial parents. You don’t have to pay much of your child support to get to see your kid.Courts have even forced kids to visit their non-custodial parent in jail. They often force the custodial parent to say within the same state, even county. Feminism did that.
It also fought for women to not just in the military but in combat. It has been trench warfare the entire way, and it is hardly universal. If men want both sexes to be drafted, then they can a little of the work, instead of complaining women haven’t done it for them. We’ve done all the heavy lifting, no thanks to you.
As a parent of a now college age daughter, I will tell you sir that your priorities are messed up. Boys harassing your daughter should be more on your mind more than teenage pregnancy. The latter can be prevented largely by honest communication and being sure she knows to use birth control if she has sex as a teenager (the having sex at that age isn’t something I recommend as I told my kids). The harassing boys however start early. They’ve plagued my daughter since at least 6th grade. In 11th and 12th grade she was harassed by boys younger than her, which meant she had to be restrained on top of it all. Sometimes, the school makes a token attempt of stopping it but they are far more likely to tolerate a certain level. As for “going scantily clad”, yeah maybe that happens in warmer states, but where we live most of the year everyone lives in layers—except teenage boys who persist on wearing shorts all winter.
So let’s be real here. The reason you complain about feminism’s campaign trying to “win” is because you are looking at this only as a man. As a man you don’t want the idea of women being equal to be the new normal. You assume it won’t be as comfortable for you. Look at this as the loving father I’ve no doubt you are. Do you want your daughter going about life thinking she is and being treated as an inferior person? Someone whose needs and wants must always come second to any anonymous males in her vicinity?
Hmm, I didn’t think so. That is what is at stake.
What!? Very short skirts!
Excellent comment. Thank you Unherd for your courage allowing these comments to be seen.
But it does precisely mean she has to cover up for a boy because your worry there was not that she dress in a manner that connotes she’s there to study but to avoid inciting hormonal boys. I’m not sure why feminism is supposed to feel one way or another about recreational drugs and teenagers. That’s kinda an off the wall attack. But it definitely has a stance on teenage pregnancy which as a rule, let’s avoid it. It fights it on forced marriage. It fights it adult men and younger women (a big cause of teen pregnancy). It fights it on lack of knowledge for kids. It fights it on accessibility of birth control by cost, kind and procurement. It fights it on how adoption works and birth mother rights. And with one exception fights by the right of choice, including the ability to go to a judge to get an abortion if parents are difficult. It only makes an exception if the teenager in question really wants to keep it.
So when you say they don’t care, you just don’t know what you are talking about. Family courts, at least in the US, only deal with custody when parents can’t agree. In that situation, they tend to favor the parent who did the most caregiving (which tends to be women) but they give giant latitude toward non-custodial parents. You don’t have to pay much of your child support to get to see your kid.Courts have even forced kids to visit their non-custodial parent in jail. They often force the custodial parent to say within the same state, even county. Feminism did that.
It also fought for women to not just in the military but in combat. It has been trench warfare the entire way, and it is hardly universal. If men want both sexes to be drafted, then they can a little of the work, instead of complaining women haven’t done it for them. We’ve done all the heavy lifting, no thanks to you.
As a parent of a now college age daughter, I will tell you sir that your priorities are messed up. Boys harassing your daughter should be more on your mind more than teenage pregnancy. The latter can be prevented largely by honest communication and being sure she knows to use birth control if she has sex as a teenager (the having sex at that age isn’t something I recommend as I told my kids). The harassing boys however start early. They’ve plagued my daughter since at least 6th grade. In 11th and 12th grade she was harassed by boys younger than her, which meant she had to be restrained on top of it all. Sometimes, the school makes a token attempt of stopping it but they are far more likely to tolerate a certain level. As for “going scantily clad”, yeah maybe that happens in warmer states, but where we live most of the year everyone lives in layers—except teenage boys who persist on wearing shorts all winter.
So let’s be real here. The reason you complain about feminism’s campaign trying to “win” is because you are looking at this only as a man. As a man you don’t want the idea of women being equal to be the new normal. You assume it won’t be as comfortable for you. Look at this as the loving father I’ve no doubt you are. Do you want your daughter going about life thinking she is and being treated as an inferior person? Someone whose needs and wants must always come second to any anonymous males in her vicinity?
Hmm, I didn’t think so. That is what is at stake.
What!? Very short skirts!
Well, firstly it isn’t won. As can be observed in every board room, government body, most western religions, what is portrayed in Hollywood, the rape statistics, the domestic violence/murder stats, and the the lives of women in the west overall.
But secondly, western feminists can’t fight middle eastern feminists fight, for reasons that should be obvious. It is not as if feminism is corporation that is choosing to allocate its resources in certain departments. And even before the internet women elsewhere had heard of it. But one of the biggest arguments used against women in other places is that it is an import from the west. So according to those who want to continue mistreating women not valid culturally.
Well said,
One thing that continues to depress me is the complete absence of fellow-feeling demonstrated by Muslim women for those in Iran. I was really hoping there’d be a ‘drop the hijab day’ by British Muslim women, to demonstrate the fact that they are free to choose while those living in Iran’s ghastly theocracy aren’t. But – nope. Not so much as a glimmer.
Well said,
One thing that continues to depress me is the complete absence of fellow-feeling demonstrated by Muslim women for those in Iran. I was really hoping there’d be a ‘drop the hijab day’ by British Muslim women, to demonstrate the fact that they are free to choose while those living in Iran’s ghastly theocracy aren’t. But – nope. Not so much as a glimmer.
They also ignore the blatant bigotry and women-hatred of trans ‘women’ and their supporters.
I feel so disheartened when I see a woman wearing a hijab.
Me too. I’ve seen it become a fad in my own lifetime as a source of ‘identity’. Back in 1991 I spent three months in Malaysia, researching the adult education of women. Who, it turned out, were watching their rights go backwards – having to fight the political push for women and girls to ‘cover’ – wear the hijab. And they were losing. It’s still an ongoing battle.
And now? Now in my own UK city, I regularly see women in burqas for God’s sake – the whole ghastly bin-liner set-up. So, wholly obscuring your public presence as an individual is a source of ‘identity’. I’m not offended – I’m bl00dy outraged. To me it’s the ultimate insult. It makes me so angry and frustrated to see this warped misogyny tolerated as a ‘cultural norm’. It’s a gross cultural deformity about as positive as foot-binding and should be outlawed.
I share your passion it’s good to know you feel the same way.
There’s a young British news anchor on CNN who reports from London and wears a Hijab. She reports on women’s oppression in Iran and her hypocisy makes me so pissed off I have to turn the channel. I presume CNN wants her to wear it to appease Muslims and to be “inclusive” but I have complained. I think it sends a message of appeasement and we’re always having to appease them.
Female journalists cover their heads when reporting from the Middle East out of respect, but I never see that respect reciprocated. Men still wear all their head gear when they come to the US.
Good for you for complaining. And yes watching our own citizens grovelling to this dismal convention is he pits.
Good for you for complaining. And yes watching our own citizens grovelling to this dismal convention is he pits.
I share your passion it’s good to know you feel the same way.
There’s a young British news anchor on CNN who reports from London and wears a Hijab. She reports on women’s oppression in Iran and her hypocisy makes me so pissed off I have to turn the channel. I presume CNN wants her to wear it to appease Muslims and to be “inclusive” but I have complained. I think it sends a message of appeasement and we’re always having to appease them.
Female journalists cover their heads when reporting from the Middle East out of respect, but I never see that respect reciprocated. Men still wear all their head gear when they come to the US.
Me too. I’ve seen it become a fad in my own lifetime as a source of ‘identity’. Back in 1991 I spent three months in Malaysia, researching the adult education of women. Who, it turned out, were watching their rights go backwards – having to fight the political push for women and girls to ‘cover’ – wear the hijab. And they were losing. It’s still an ongoing battle.
And now? Now in my own UK city, I regularly see women in burqas for God’s sake – the whole ghastly bin-liner set-up. So, wholly obscuring your public presence as an individual is a source of ‘identity’. I’m not offended – I’m bl00dy outraged. To me it’s the ultimate insult. It makes me so angry and frustrated to see this warped misogyny tolerated as a ‘cultural norm’. It’s a gross cultural deformity about as positive as foot-binding and should be outlawed.
You might think the work of feminism is superfluous Only if you believe that the murder of four thousand women every year, a woman raped every three minutes, and a domestic violence attack on a female every 18 seconds in the USA according to government statistics are merely “contrived micro-aggressions.” Then we could forget about the Channon Christians, Renee Godwins, Jessica Chambers, Toyin Salaus and thousands of other women who die at the hands of misogynists like Douglas Donna Perry because there’s more open, blatant hatred of women in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, UAE, Mali, India, Israel, Kuwait, S. Africa, etc?
Well said.
Well said.
The work of feminists is superfluous only if you consider “contrived micro-aggressions” to be the murder of four thousand women every year, a rape every three minutes and a “domestic violence” attack on a woman every 18 seconds (according to USA government statistics). If you believe the killing of Renee Godwin, Linda Fricky, Toyin Salau, Jessica Chambers, Channon Christian, the victims of Douglas Donna Perry, Harvey Weinstein or Marcel Harvey and countless other women are just “contrived micro-aggressions” then obviously you believe women’s lives are of micro- concern. Just because the hatred of women is more open and blatant in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, UAE, India, Israel, Mali or S. Africa et al doesn’t mean that the lives of women destroyed by male violence in other Western countries is of no importance. Feminism arises organically, as well as by cross-pollination, in other countries where local women deal with the geographical variations of male supremacist violence as they best see fit. While we learn from each other to further our goals of ending the exploitation of and violence against women we feminists respect the variations of male supremacy in each culture.
Yes, AND we need to lobby for much more arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment of men (including “marginalized” men) who commit sexual and domestic violence. Lock the bastards up!
The fact that feminism considers equality to be a “campaign” to be “won” explains a lot about the movement. For instance, why they don’t seem very bothered about the lack of equality when it comes to dying in Ukraine or family courts. Because it’s about “winning”.
I have a young daughter. Of course, some teenage brat harassing her, when she grows up, would piss me off. But far more of a concern would be teenage pregnancy or drugs, or as you point out, the prospect of a grooming gang nearby (though hopefully I can afford to stay in an area that’s not “culturally enriched”).
But none of those valid, much more serious issues would constitute “winning” against some mythical male conspiracy. So, no interest. It’s making laws about some young jerk taking offensive pics that matters.
And incidentally, I see a lot of young girls going to the nearby school as if it’s a disco. Very short skirts, etc.
And just like I expect boys at her school to behave respectfully, I would expect my daughter to dress properly for a place where it’s about learning, because equality also means not wearing sexually provocative provocative clothing around teenage, hormonal boys, and focusing on studying. Doesn’t mean she has to “cover up” or excuse bad behaviour from any boy, of course.
But then , that wouldn’t be “equality” because it implies my daughter has agency and responsibilities. And a lot of feminists would find it offensive to suggest that a girl shouldn’t dress like a tart at school or office – while defending headscarves and hijabs in muslims.
Because, equality, somehow.
Well, firstly it isn’t won. As can be observed in every board room, government body, most western religions, what is portrayed in Hollywood, the rape statistics, the domestic violence/murder stats, and the the lives of women in the west overall.
But secondly, western feminists can’t fight middle eastern feminists fight, for reasons that should be obvious. It is not as if feminism is corporation that is choosing to allocate its resources in certain departments. And even before the internet women elsewhere had heard of it. But one of the biggest arguments used against women in other places is that it is an import from the west. So according to those who want to continue mistreating women not valid culturally.
They also ignore the blatant bigotry and women-hatred of trans ‘women’ and their supporters.
I feel so disheartened when I see a woman wearing a hijab.
You might think the work of feminism is superfluous Only if you believe that the murder of four thousand women every year, a woman raped every three minutes, and a domestic violence attack on a female every 18 seconds in the USA according to government statistics are merely “contrived micro-aggressions.” Then we could forget about the Channon Christians, Renee Godwins, Jessica Chambers, Toyin Salaus and thousands of other women who die at the hands of misogynists like Douglas Donna Perry because there’s more open, blatant hatred of women in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, UAE, Mali, India, Israel, Kuwait, S. Africa, etc?
The work of feminists is superfluous only if you consider “contrived micro-aggressions” to be the murder of four thousand women every year, a rape every three minutes and a “domestic violence” attack on a woman every 18 seconds (according to USA government statistics). If you believe the killing of Renee Godwin, Linda Fricky, Toyin Salau, Jessica Chambers, Channon Christian, the victims of Douglas Donna Perry, Harvey Weinstein or Marcel Harvey and countless other women are just “contrived micro-aggressions” then obviously you believe women’s lives are of micro- concern. Just because the hatred of women is more open and blatant in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, UAE, India, Israel, Mali or S. Africa et al doesn’t mean that the lives of women destroyed by male violence in other Western countries is of no importance. Feminism arises organically, as well as by cross-pollination, in other countries where local women deal with the geographical variations of male supremacist violence as they best see fit. While we learn from each other to further our goals of ending the exploitation of and violence against women we feminists respect the variations of male supremacy in each culture.
Standing ovation!
Yeah, this isn’t true at all. And I think if you read any number of feminists you’ll read they critique men of the left as well as the right. Men on the left often think they are in the clear because they are on the left but that’s hardly feminists problem. Now, it is true that the right at this point actively opposes women’s rights and feminism, in most though not all countries. This is largely because the right is allied with conservative religious organizations conservative religious institutions won’t let go of the idea of women as inferior. Some have updated how they present it but it still leaves men in charge and women adjuncts to those lives.
I’d note your point that “Black Lives Matters” and Democrats dictate what Black people should think is as wildly misinformed as it is offensive. BLM did not become a world phenomena because it was a contrived issue. It became a world movement because it is something that Black people have been worried about for quite a long time. It is only the presence of phones in which the rest of the world believes them but I heard these same stories when I was young and it was issues with the police that triggered the Detroit riots. Like America’s founding fathers, the citizens of East Germany and many others Black people don’t like to live in a police state.
As for the Democratic party telling them what to think. Hardly. Most Black people are dissatisfied with what it offers and wish it addressed their needs better and with a greater senes of urgency. However, at least it addresses them at all. The republicans offer only life is fine as it is and stoking the racist fears of white people. So they are stuck with the Dems. So are feminists to bring the convo back to its point.
We can’t really ally ourselves with an organization who not only brags about grabbing them by the p***y but whose proposed legislation reflects that attitude.We can’t align ourselves with an organization that has aligned itself with evangelical christians, a theology that holds the view that women may never be in a position of power over men (See the Southern Baptists recent conclave).
Interesting points – thank you.
Stupid woke racist moron capitalising “black” while not capitalising “White”. Begone.
Sounds like you are the moron Richard? What a thoroughly unpleasant comment! ‘Begone’
There is no need for a question mark after Richard being a moron.
There is no need for a question mark after Richard being a moron.
Relying on insult rather than argument really doesn’t help to prove your point.
—
Sounds like you are the moron Richard? What a thoroughly unpleasant comment! ‘Begone’
Relying on insult rather than argument really doesn’t help to prove your point.
—
BLM is a contrived issue. Black criminality in the USA is the cause of police attention which is proportionate to crime rates. Black culture is a cause of black criminality. The contrivance lies in externalising internal problems. Democrats are directly responsible for black immiseration, starting in poorly run progressive schools, removing the agency of black kids.
Thank you for your courage Terry.
Excellent points that explain a lot of the worsening misery of Australia’s Aborigines also.
Unherd published a great article on the macabre circus of “The Voice” referendum going into some detail:
https://unherd.com/2023/08/australias-divisive-race-referendum/
Rubbish.
The courage to be racist?
Rubbish.
The courage to be racist?
Rubbish
Thank you for your courage Terry.
Excellent points that explain a lot of the worsening misery of Australia’s Aborigines also.
Unherd published a great article on the macabre circus of “The Voice” referendum going into some detail:
https://unherd.com/2023/08/australias-divisive-race-referendum/
Rubbish
You are confusing feminism with the women’s rights movement. The two are not identical. Many women have contributed to the successful movement for women’s rights without being feminists. Particularly those who just demonstrated they could do the work without making a fuss. I have cited one such example. BLM became a world wide phenomenon because white people are terrified of being accused of racism. White people, particularly white men, have become humanity’s scapegoat, plus the tendency to virtue signal from certain sections of society. I have heard both Muslim women and Hindu women say they do not want their daughters mixing with white girls because of the risk of a teenage pregnancy. To a certain extent, I can understand their point of view. They do not perceive western culture as being superior to their own.
“White men have become humanity’s scapegoat”. Yikes! what planet do you live on? John Lennon said women are the n****** of the world.
Too bl00dy right.
Too bl00dy right.
Gosh of course not, a culture where a father beats his daughter with an iron bar for wearing make-up is obviously superior.
You don’t think that happens to white girls?
Do please reference a recent court case where a white man beat his daughter with an iron bar for wearing makeup.
Do please reference a recent court case where a white man beat his daughter with an iron bar for wearing makeup.
You don’t think that happens to white girls?
“White men have become humanity’s scapegoat”. Yikes! what planet do you live on? John Lennon said women are the n****** of the world.
Gosh of course not, a culture where a father beats his daughter with an iron bar for wearing make-up is obviously superior.
Suspect most ethnic conservatives would consider you a ‘racist’.because they would regard BLM as a ‘contrived movement’ of the political left trying to identify blacks as ‘victims’ when ethnic conservatives do not see themselves as ‘victims’ or wish their children brought up to see themselves as ‘victims’ and ethnic conservatives will suspect you consider them ‘mad bad or stupid ‘ for not supporting BLM.
In multi-cultural western societies the police try their best not to act in a racist way.Of course callous individual police officers will slip through the net but the idea that even those ‘bad eggs’ would beat up a law abiding ethnic citizen who treats a police officer with respect defies belief . Unfortunately for many brave honourable police officers black victims of wrong white police officer behaviour has become a form of pornography for the left.
In Britain there are a thousand plus white females who were raped by ethnic grooming gangs.And yet in the 10 years since the shocking news became public the leftish media have given those raped females less publicity than an Eddie Floyd gets in a month. .The reason why is because the Eddie Floyds are pornographic material for the political left whereas the left privately wish that all those raped white females would disappear because the rapists were ethnics and that does not fit the political left agenda.
What are “Ethnic conservatives? Who is Eddie Floyd? Do you mean George Floyd?
What are “Ethnic conservatives? Who is Eddie Floyd? Do you mean George Floyd?
The problems you mention appear greater in the USA; Britain has had three women and Hindu man, all Conservatives, as Prime Ministers and British men and women socialised with African American Soldiers in WW2
Heroes Among Us: Incident at Bamber Bridge – YouTube
Manners maketh man or woman- 1380 William de Wykeham. The manner in which one portrays oneselfs to he world is the manner in which is one judged. G Orwell noticed in the 1940s the African American soldiers were the only one with manners, not the white Americans
Compare Motown of late 1960s say Ross and Warwick with present day rap singers. Motown records had a lady who taught etiquette.
Dr M L King said judge me on my character.
Look at how swearing has become more common and more coarse.
The Swiss are heavily armed yet manage to refrain from killing each other with firearms.
Americans appear to be in the forefront of undermining self discipline, self control, modesty and manners; is it a lack of sense of responsibility and emotional maturity ?
Blacks vote 90% for the Democrat Party. In Chicago each weekend around ten people are killed – no media interest – similar in other big cities. BLM was a brilliant grifting organisation that raised $89m most of which has disappeared. Over $2bn in destruction – often in minority neighborhoods – and around 40 people killed. They were Marxists which aimed at the destruction of the family (the patriarchy as Engels called it.) No one in the UK knows this as the BBC branded it “mostly peaceful protests.” Most were but typical media, factual but not truthful.
Well put.
Well put.
But why then align yourself with an organization that actively promotes the institutional mutilation of children, particularly of young girls?
Interesting points – thank you.
Stupid woke racist moron capitalising “black” while not capitalising “White”. Begone.
BLM is a contrived issue. Black criminality in the USA is the cause of police attention which is proportionate to crime rates. Black culture is a cause of black criminality. The contrivance lies in externalising internal problems. Democrats are directly responsible for black immiseration, starting in poorly run progressive schools, removing the agency of black kids.
You are confusing feminism with the women’s rights movement. The two are not identical. Many women have contributed to the successful movement for women’s rights without being feminists. Particularly those who just demonstrated they could do the work without making a fuss. I have cited one such example. BLM became a world wide phenomenon because white people are terrified of being accused of racism. White people, particularly white men, have become humanity’s scapegoat, plus the tendency to virtue signal from certain sections of society. I have heard both Muslim women and Hindu women say they do not want their daughters mixing with white girls because of the risk of a teenage pregnancy. To a certain extent, I can understand their point of view. They do not perceive western culture as being superior to their own.
Suspect most ethnic conservatives would consider you a ‘racist’.because they would regard BLM as a ‘contrived movement’ of the political left trying to identify blacks as ‘victims’ when ethnic conservatives do not see themselves as ‘victims’ or wish their children brought up to see themselves as ‘victims’ and ethnic conservatives will suspect you consider them ‘mad bad or stupid ‘ for not supporting BLM.
In multi-cultural western societies the police try their best not to act in a racist way.Of course callous individual police officers will slip through the net but the idea that even those ‘bad eggs’ would beat up a law abiding ethnic citizen who treats a police officer with respect defies belief . Unfortunately for many brave honourable police officers black victims of wrong white police officer behaviour has become a form of pornography for the left.
In Britain there are a thousand plus white females who were raped by ethnic grooming gangs.And yet in the 10 years since the shocking news became public the leftish media have given those raped females less publicity than an Eddie Floyd gets in a month. .The reason why is because the Eddie Floyds are pornographic material for the political left whereas the left privately wish that all those raped white females would disappear because the rapists were ethnics and that does not fit the political left agenda.
The problems you mention appear greater in the USA; Britain has had three women and Hindu man, all Conservatives, as Prime Ministers and British men and women socialised with African American Soldiers in WW2
Heroes Among Us: Incident at Bamber Bridge – YouTube
Manners maketh man or woman- 1380 William de Wykeham. The manner in which one portrays oneselfs to he world is the manner in which is one judged. G Orwell noticed in the 1940s the African American soldiers were the only one with manners, not the white Americans
Compare Motown of late 1960s say Ross and Warwick with present day rap singers. Motown records had a lady who taught etiquette.
Dr M L King said judge me on my character.
Look at how swearing has become more common and more coarse.
The Swiss are heavily armed yet manage to refrain from killing each other with firearms.
Americans appear to be in the forefront of undermining self discipline, self control, modesty and manners; is it a lack of sense of responsibility and emotional maturity ?
Blacks vote 90% for the Democrat Party. In Chicago each weekend around ten people are killed – no media interest – similar in other big cities. BLM was a brilliant grifting organisation that raised $89m most of which has disappeared. Over $2bn in destruction – often in minority neighborhoods – and around 40 people killed. They were Marxists which aimed at the destruction of the family (the patriarchy as Engels called it.) No one in the UK knows this as the BBC branded it “mostly peaceful protests.” Most were but typical media, factual but not truthful.
But why then align yourself with an organization that actively promotes the institutional mutilation of children, particularly of young girls?
Feminism should consider the (necessary) campaign for equality in the West already won and focus on major injustices in the Islamic world. Instead of ignoring the blatant bigotry and women-hatred of Islamic countries and fixating on contrived micro-aggressions in the West.
Standing ovation!
Yeah, this isn’t true at all. And I think if you read any number of feminists you’ll read they critique men of the left as well as the right. Men on the left often think they are in the clear because they are on the left but that’s hardly feminists problem. Now, it is true that the right at this point actively opposes women’s rights and feminism, in most though not all countries. This is largely because the right is allied with conservative religious organizations conservative religious institutions won’t let go of the idea of women as inferior. Some have updated how they present it but it still leaves men in charge and women adjuncts to those lives.
I’d note your point that “Black Lives Matters” and Democrats dictate what Black people should think is as wildly misinformed as it is offensive. BLM did not become a world phenomena because it was a contrived issue. It became a world movement because it is something that Black people have been worried about for quite a long time. It is only the presence of phones in which the rest of the world believes them but I heard these same stories when I was young and it was issues with the police that triggered the Detroit riots. Like America’s founding fathers, the citizens of East Germany and many others Black people don’t like to live in a police state.
As for the Democratic party telling them what to think. Hardly. Most Black people are dissatisfied with what it offers and wish it addressed their needs better and with a greater senes of urgency. However, at least it addresses them at all. The republicans offer only life is fine as it is and stoking the racist fears of white people. So they are stuck with the Dems. So are feminists to bring the convo back to its point.
We can’t really ally ourselves with an organization who not only brags about grabbing them by the p***y but whose proposed legislation reflects that attitude.We can’t align ourselves with an organization that has aligned itself with evangelical christians, a theology that holds the view that women may never be in a position of power over men (See the Southern Baptists recent conclave).
This piece just highlights feminism is the female component of those who identify with the left and is not about women’s rights. Julie Bindel questions whether feminists should ally themselves with the right in the fight against the over reach of trans ideology. I knew the woman who unveiled the plaque in London which commemorated the women’s war effort. She was the head of a department of the civil service during and after the war. She would have preferred to have married, had children and been a housewife but never had the opportunity. There was a shortage of men after the war. She supported men earning more than women on the basis they had a family to support and she didn’t. In the same way the trans ideologues hi jacked the movement for trans rights, feminists have hi jacked the women’s rights movement. I notice that Posy Parker does not call herself a feminist but says she is fighting for women’s rights, she used to be on the left but grew up/ woke up/ saw the light. She is subject to death threats and physical attack. In New Zealand she was in police protection after being attacked and her name had to be kept secret as she was a target for some of the New Zealand police. And Julie Bindel (paid by Unherd) has the gall to debate whether TERFs (trans exclusionary feminists) should collaborate with the right. As Black Lives Matter and the Democrats dictate what black people should think and Stonewall dictates what we all should think about gays, bis, trans etc, feminism now dictates what women should think. Feminism, like all ideological movements eventually do, is in the process of committing suicide.
“it is a change that forces us to reconsider social norms.”
Since when was treating a woman with such a lack of respect, the social norm? If I had behaved in that way my mother, a straightforward woman, would not have engaged in earnest discussion about the need for yet another law, she would have gone apeshit. She understood that 90% of our behaviour is restrained, not by formal legal restrictions, but by custom, the rule book that we have internalised. When you throw away custom, law won’t save you.
“Since when was treating a woman with such a lack of respect”
Ironically, since feminism took off.
Beating a woman, harassing a young girl by taking indecent pics, getting someone pregnant and not caring about the child, sleeping around with girls as if they were objects….
All of these would be considered horrible behaviour by typical patriarchal western societies till a few decades back.
Newsflash: Beating a woman is still considered horrible behaviour.
You’re missing the point. As customs, manners, and traditions are rolled back because they are seen as inherently oppressive, cultural transmission between generations effectively vanish, to be replaced by laws that can easily be changed or distorted to suit the tastes of the day. It’s how we get to ridiculous situations like this:
https://www.sportskeeda.com/mma/news-when-transgender-fighter-fallon-fox-broke-opponent-s-skull-mma-fight
and this:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/crime/posie-parker-protest-activist-pleads-guilty-to-punching-elderly-woman-at-heated-auckland-trans-rights-protest/A5RG2HY2TJFLFKAP4OT7JLGIGU/
Just ten years ago this would have been seen as bizarre and vile behavior, now it’s becoming mainstreamed because men in drag have become grouped in with oppressed classes. Looking at the cases above, the first one occurred because it became politically incorrect to say that women are physically weaker than men and men wearing female garb does not actually make them women. In the second case, a woman spoke out for women’s rights and against men invading private female spaces. And she was punched for it, tragically proving her point.
Yes, we can make laws to combat these kinds of behaviors, but the problem there lies in the fact that laws themselves don’t stop bad behavior, they merely punish it. Little by little we have taught parents and teachers that disciplining children and teaching them right from wrong is oppressive and hopelessly antiquated. Now we are at the point where the state is acting in loco parentis. As we see here in the US the government seems hell-bent on doing away with the ‘traditional family structure’.
https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/edcentral/six-states-have-now-passed-lgbtq-inclusive-curriculum-legislationeach-with-a-different-definition-of-inclusion/
Could this be the reason why queer curricula are being pushed on to children even as young as kindergarten? It seems that the government is doing all it can to disassociate children from their families in order to turn them into yet another victim group that needs yet more laws and Big Government to protect their special rights.
I so hope Julian that your wisdom is shining through in physical space as well as through you comments on online articles. Views like these need to be heard far and wide. Thank you.
I so hope Julian that your wisdom is shining through in physical space as well as through you comments on online articles. Views like these need to be heard far and wide. Thank you.
“Beating a woman is still considered horrible behaviour”
Give it time. All you need is a generation of boys being brought up by women, ironically.
And, if you look at domestic violence rates amongst aborigines or native Americans, sexual crime rates among American blacks, average attitudes towards women amongst muslims, not much has changed. And, there is a lot of pressure to consider such behaviour as “acceptable” from these communities, even in West Europe or US.
Rubbish.
Ugh. There is so much to unpack in this and your need to make non-white people violent, all while dismissing your own sexist views.
So let’s take just this main idea that everyone keeps insisting on that among white, middle class society it was considered socially unacceptable to beat your wife. Yeah, maybe sort of, if you squint real hard. But here’s the thing, society solved that by never believing a woman who said she was beaten. By ignoring it. By refusing to “get involved in marital squabbles”, by saying he was just drunk and by saying she provoked him and “needed to be beaten” and etc. Also by making divorce immoral. (In the 80’s a Church of Christ minister in the town I lived in got defrocked for helping at a battered women’s shelter because those women should have stayed with their husbands) So ok it was officially unacceptable but that only meant that respectable people were never accused of doing it.
Then feminists got involved and made it something we had to look at. I’m sure to the ostrich who no longer can hide his head this seems like it is happening more.
Rubbish.
Ugh. There is so much to unpack in this and your need to make non-white people violent, all while dismissing your own sexist views.
So let’s take just this main idea that everyone keeps insisting on that among white, middle class society it was considered socially unacceptable to beat your wife. Yeah, maybe sort of, if you squint real hard. But here’s the thing, society solved that by never believing a woman who said she was beaten. By ignoring it. By refusing to “get involved in marital squabbles”, by saying he was just drunk and by saying she provoked him and “needed to be beaten” and etc. Also by making divorce immoral. (In the 80’s a Church of Christ minister in the town I lived in got defrocked for helping at a battered women’s shelter because those women should have stayed with their husbands) So ok it was officially unacceptable but that only meant that respectable people were never accused of doing it.
Then feminists got involved and made it something we had to look at. I’m sure to the ostrich who no longer can hide his head this seems like it is happening more.
But it doesn’t stop.
Not by gangsta rappers.
You’re missing the point. As customs, manners, and traditions are rolled back because they are seen as inherently oppressive, cultural transmission between generations effectively vanish, to be replaced by laws that can easily be changed or distorted to suit the tastes of the day. It’s how we get to ridiculous situations like this:
https://www.sportskeeda.com/mma/news-when-transgender-fighter-fallon-fox-broke-opponent-s-skull-mma-fight
and this:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/crime/posie-parker-protest-activist-pleads-guilty-to-punching-elderly-woman-at-heated-auckland-trans-rights-protest/A5RG2HY2TJFLFKAP4OT7JLGIGU/
Just ten years ago this would have been seen as bizarre and vile behavior, now it’s becoming mainstreamed because men in drag have become grouped in with oppressed classes. Looking at the cases above, the first one occurred because it became politically incorrect to say that women are physically weaker than men and men wearing female garb does not actually make them women. In the second case, a woman spoke out for women’s rights and against men invading private female spaces. And she was punched for it, tragically proving her point.
Yes, we can make laws to combat these kinds of behaviors, but the problem there lies in the fact that laws themselves don’t stop bad behavior, they merely punish it. Little by little we have taught parents and teachers that disciplining children and teaching them right from wrong is oppressive and hopelessly antiquated. Now we are at the point where the state is acting in loco parentis. As we see here in the US the government seems hell-bent on doing away with the ‘traditional family structure’.
https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/edcentral/six-states-have-now-passed-lgbtq-inclusive-curriculum-legislationeach-with-a-different-definition-of-inclusion/
Could this be the reason why queer curricula are being pushed on to children even as young as kindergarten? It seems that the government is doing all it can to disassociate children from their families in order to turn them into yet another victim group that needs yet more laws and Big Government to protect their special rights.
“Beating a woman is still considered horrible behaviour”
Give it time. All you need is a generation of boys being brought up by women, ironically.
And, if you look at domestic violence rates amongst aborigines or native Americans, sexual crime rates among American blacks, average attitudes towards women amongst muslims, not much has changed. And, there is a lot of pressure to consider such behaviour as “acceptable” from these communities, even in West Europe or US.
But it doesn’t stop.
Not by gangsta rappers.
Yeah that actually happened before feminism. A lot. It was considered the girls’ fault and she was sent away. In 1791 the police estimated 50,000 prostitutes, at least half were simply unmarried women living with a partner. In England in 1851 there were 42000 illegitimate children. Foundling hospitals abounded (that’s what happened to children their parents couldn’t care for, including children whose fathers made no provision) And I can say as a 56 year old woman, that respect was not the name of the game for women. It has absolutely gotten better as feminists have won more battles both in law and of mind.
You touched upon a couple of aspect of society then, which is the disdain for “illegitimate” children and how society frowned upon “living in sin”.
Everything is a tradeoff. Today, it’s great for a women who might want to sleep with someone or live together without being married, and can have multiple children with multiple partners while actually being supported by the state.
Whether that constitutes more “respect” for women, and leaves them better off, is another question altogether. It does have implications for how men in general look at women, as well, and young men today are far more likely to see women as someone to just sleep with and dump rather than a life partner.
And while you are absolutely right that a child born out of wedlock and possibly not even knowing the father, is better off today than in say 1600, that also means that there is disincentive for such to happen. And so the improvement in conditions for an individual child in that situation, is rather offset by the massive increase in such children, which isn’t exactly ideal for them or society.
42,000 illegitimate children in 1861, when this was discouraged, versus millions today living off welfare and with a single parent. Incentives work, I guess.
And conservatives are anti-abortion, hence more unwanted children are born to single parents. These children end up pregnant themselves and or drug addicted or in jail, if they’re black males.
Conservatives are not anti abortion in the UK. And your causal link from “conservatives” to” black men in jail” is overly simplistic.
No it’s not. I just don’t have the energy to enlarge on it.
No it’s not. I just don’t have the energy to enlarge on it.
Even in most conservative states, not just the US but in Europe or Asian countries, abortion IS allowed until 10 odd weeks. Which is rather enough time for a woman to decide whether to abort. Even if you ignore all the other alternatives, pill, condom, morning after, or plain old fashioned not sleeping around, no excuse for “unwanted children”.
What liberals mean by “pro abortion” is the right to abort a baby even in the 3rd trimester, and there are good reasons for that to be opposed.
Blacks in NYC have more abortions than actual births. That ease of extermination of unwanted babies doesn’t seem to help blacks there in terms of drug addiction or incarceration.
Well, firstly not true. You should read up. Secondly, since it is women won’t find out until they are 4 weeks pregnant earliest that leaves them 6 weeks to decide (which might involve the partner) find the money, find the venue and get there. If you are in any number of states, that’s not easy, even less so if you don’t have health insurance since even pills have required a doctor’s visit.
But some women won’t find out until 6 weeks or even 8 because they are too irregular. And if you are screening for developmental issues including Tay-Sacks, that doesn’t happen until 15 weeks at the earliest. It takes 2 weeks to get those results. That’s tends to be what second trimester abortions are about. (Also teenagers for a variety of reasons)
Issues that go wrong in pregnancy like hydroencephelitius, failures to develop etc.are often not caught until much later and that is when abortion in the last trimester is needed.
In the US, this was all covered under Roe. Elective until around 15-20 weeks then medical issues kicked in. It was perfectly reasonable, a compromise between the state’s interest in the fetus and the woman’s in her bodily integrity and left doctor’s the ability to make medical decisions based on medical considerations.
They’re not “babies” they’re fetuses that you can’t see with the naked eye. And anyway but the f**k does it have to do with you. Mind your own business. How would you feel if the government told you couldn’t get a a vascetomy and I agreed with them and kept telling you I agreed with them.
Well, firstly not true. You should read up. Secondly, since it is women won’t find out until they are 4 weeks pregnant earliest that leaves them 6 weeks to decide (which might involve the partner) find the money, find the venue and get there. If you are in any number of states, that’s not easy, even less so if you don’t have health insurance since even pills have required a doctor’s visit.
But some women won’t find out until 6 weeks or even 8 because they are too irregular. And if you are screening for developmental issues including Tay-Sacks, that doesn’t happen until 15 weeks at the earliest. It takes 2 weeks to get those results. That’s tends to be what second trimester abortions are about. (Also teenagers for a variety of reasons)
Issues that go wrong in pregnancy like hydroencephelitius, failures to develop etc.are often not caught until much later and that is when abortion in the last trimester is needed.
In the US, this was all covered under Roe. Elective until around 15-20 weeks then medical issues kicked in. It was perfectly reasonable, a compromise between the state’s interest in the fetus and the woman’s in her bodily integrity and left doctor’s the ability to make medical decisions based on medical considerations.
They’re not “babies” they’re fetuses that you can’t see with the naked eye. And anyway but the f**k does it have to do with you. Mind your own business. How would you feel if the government told you couldn’t get a a vascetomy and I agreed with them and kept telling you I agreed with them.
Conservatives are not anti abortion in the UK. And your causal link from “conservatives” to” black men in jail” is overly simplistic.
Even in most conservative states, not just the US but in Europe or Asian countries, abortion IS allowed until 10 odd weeks. Which is rather enough time for a woman to decide whether to abort. Even if you ignore all the other alternatives, pill, condom, morning after, or plain old fashioned not sleeping around, no excuse for “unwanted children”.
What liberals mean by “pro abortion” is the right to abort a baby even in the 3rd trimester, and there are good reasons for that to be opposed.
Blacks in NYC have more abortions than actual births. That ease of extermination of unwanted babies doesn’t seem to help blacks there in terms of drug addiction or incarceration.
You seem not to notice we have a lot more people than back in 1600. But yes, I’m going to say unequivocally that it is better now than then for women and men respect women more now than then. You only got the kind of respect you are talking about from men if you were a virgin and if you were of equal or superior social class. If you were a servant girl, your employer was not expected to make you his life partner. And if in raping you, or coercing sex your virginity was lost, then you no longer had the same value or had the same “respect”. Even being a widow meant a man might see your use for a temporary rather than a lifetime relationship.
Compare that to now when women marry men who they had sexual relations with prior to marriage. They do this even if they had sex with many men prior to marriage instead as back then having to go into sex work as a profession or starve. It is much better. I say this as one of these women, married 25 years to a man, I not only had sex with him before marriage but lived with too. He was not my first lover either.
You claim it would have been better the other way but I would not have met my husband then. So not better from my perspective. Indeed, why would I or any woman want a man who can only see me as a life partner because society leaves him no other choice? If a man just wants sex, (and I chose to have sex with him) Not matter what hopes I had for a relationship with a romantic partner, if that partner leaves the moment he gets sex, then good riddance. He’s spared me months of my life dithering with someone who would never be a suitable partner. My god I might have married the useless twit. My children might have had him as a father. Instead they have the good, decent wonderful father they do.
So yeah again, better. Much better.
And conservatives are anti-abortion, hence more unwanted children are born to single parents. These children end up pregnant themselves and or drug addicted or in jail, if they’re black males.
You seem not to notice we have a lot more people than back in 1600. But yes, I’m going to say unequivocally that it is better now than then for women and men respect women more now than then. You only got the kind of respect you are talking about from men if you were a virgin and if you were of equal or superior social class. If you were a servant girl, your employer was not expected to make you his life partner. And if in raping you, or coercing sex your virginity was lost, then you no longer had the same value or had the same “respect”. Even being a widow meant a man might see your use for a temporary rather than a lifetime relationship.
Compare that to now when women marry men who they had sexual relations with prior to marriage. They do this even if they had sex with many men prior to marriage instead as back then having to go into sex work as a profession or starve. It is much better. I say this as one of these women, married 25 years to a man, I not only had sex with him before marriage but lived with too. He was not my first lover either.
You claim it would have been better the other way but I would not have met my husband then. So not better from my perspective. Indeed, why would I or any woman want a man who can only see me as a life partner because society leaves him no other choice? If a man just wants sex, (and I chose to have sex with him) Not matter what hopes I had for a relationship with a romantic partner, if that partner leaves the moment he gets sex, then good riddance. He’s spared me months of my life dithering with someone who would never be a suitable partner. My god I might have married the useless twit. My children might have had him as a father. Instead they have the good, decent wonderful father they do.
So yeah again, better. Much better.
The issue you talk of were due to rapid industrialisation during the Napoleonic Wars resulting in massive overcrowding. Bradford, the worst slum in Britain went from 6,000 in 1800 to 120,000 in 1850. Four families living ina damp room smelling of sewage.
Women in British countryside of pre 1800 had a better quality of life in Bradford of 1850s. .
And your point is………..?
And your point is………..?
Of course it has, though not solely as a result of feminist action.
So why do so many feminists talk as if it’s never been worse?
Exactly, well said.
You touched upon a couple of aspect of society then, which is the disdain for “illegitimate” children and how society frowned upon “living in sin”.
Everything is a tradeoff. Today, it’s great for a women who might want to sleep with someone or live together without being married, and can have multiple children with multiple partners while actually being supported by the state.
Whether that constitutes more “respect” for women, and leaves them better off, is another question altogether. It does have implications for how men in general look at women, as well, and young men today are far more likely to see women as someone to just sleep with and dump rather than a life partner.
And while you are absolutely right that a child born out of wedlock and possibly not even knowing the father, is better off today than in say 1600, that also means that there is disincentive for such to happen. And so the improvement in conditions for an individual child in that situation, is rather offset by the massive increase in such children, which isn’t exactly ideal for them or society.
42,000 illegitimate children in 1861, when this was discouraged, versus millions today living off welfare and with a single parent. Incentives work, I guess.
The issue you talk of were due to rapid industrialisation during the Napoleonic Wars resulting in massive overcrowding. Bradford, the worst slum in Britain went from 6,000 in 1800 to 120,000 in 1850. Four families living ina damp room smelling of sewage.
Women in British countryside of pre 1800 had a better quality of life in Bradford of 1850s. .
Of course it has, though not solely as a result of feminist action.
So why do so many feminists talk as if it’s never been worse?
Exactly, well said.
Exactly. I’m convinced that the wider mentality surrounding the me too movement and campaigns to criminalise things like upskirting or wolf whistling is feminists’ way of trying to return to an age of male chivalry and female sexual modesty – without admitting that they were the ones who got rid of it in the first place.
Enforced male chivalry, but female sexual modesty decidedly optional.
I think it’s called respect.
Enforced male chivalry, but female sexual modesty decidedly optional.
I think it’s called respect.
Rubbish.
Rubbish 7 Consided responses 0
Rubbish 7 Consided responses 0
Life is a lot better for women than it used to be and this is because of women’s rights and feminism – both. I cannot think of the people behind the 19 likes!
Except for the pictures, this HAS been done to women. For millennia. Do you REALLY think prostitutes in past centuries ended up in that “profession “ by choice? A man could abandon his pregnant wife/wife to be (btw having sex before formal marriage was winked at once the bands were announced) with no consequences, and as women were denied entry into decent wage work, their few options meant prostitution was one way they could still look after their child. Until just a few decades ago a husband beating his wife was considered a private family matter. Please have a conversation with a woman over 60 to get a sense of how much has – and hasn’t – changed.
Newsflash: Beating a woman is still considered horrible behaviour.
Yeah that actually happened before feminism. A lot. It was considered the girls’ fault and she was sent away. In 1791 the police estimated 50,000 prostitutes, at least half were simply unmarried women living with a partner. In England in 1851 there were 42000 illegitimate children. Foundling hospitals abounded (that’s what happened to children their parents couldn’t care for, including children whose fathers made no provision) And I can say as a 56 year old woman, that respect was not the name of the game for women. It has absolutely gotten better as feminists have won more battles both in law and of mind.
Exactly. I’m convinced that the wider mentality surrounding the me too movement and campaigns to criminalise things like upskirting or wolf whistling is feminists’ way of trying to return to an age of male chivalry and female sexual modesty – without admitting that they were the ones who got rid of it in the first place.
Rubbish.
Life is a lot better for women than it used to be and this is because of women’s rights and feminism – both. I cannot think of the people behind the 19 likes!
Except for the pictures, this HAS been done to women. For millennia. Do you REALLY think prostitutes in past centuries ended up in that “profession “ by choice? A man could abandon his pregnant wife/wife to be (btw having sex before formal marriage was winked at once the bands were announced) with no consequences, and as women were denied entry into decent wage work, their few options meant prostitution was one way they could still look after their child. Until just a few decades ago a husband beating his wife was considered a private family matter. Please have a conversation with a woman over 60 to get a sense of how much has – and hasn’t – changed.
“Since when was treating a woman with such a lack of respect”
Ironically, since feminism took off.
Beating a woman, harassing a young girl by taking indecent pics, getting someone pregnant and not caring about the child, sleeping around with girls as if they were objects….
All of these would be considered horrible behaviour by typical patriarchal western societies till a few decades back.
“it is a change that forces us to reconsider social norms.”
Since when was treating a woman with such a lack of respect, the social norm? If I had behaved in that way my mother, a straightforward woman, would not have engaged in earnest discussion about the need for yet another law, she would have gone apeshit. She understood that 90% of our behaviour is restrained, not by formal legal restrictions, but by custom, the rule book that we have internalised. When you throw away custom, law won’t save you.
“And I find it hard to read her undermining her activism. “It wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties that I started to be more of a critical thinker,” she writes — meaning “someone who recognises cultural, social and geographical contexts and applies theories”, as opposed to someone whose analysis is “determined mostly by their automatic emotional response, their personal context and existing opinions”. Of course, Martin’s anger at being upskirted was an “automatic emotional response”; her highly successful legal campaign was rooted in her “personal context and existing opinions”. But now, it seems, she knows better than to let her feelings get the better of her.”
Of course her original instinct was correct.
Why on earth would anyone in their right mind shy away from justice because one didn’t want to be regarded as ‘privileged’?
Sorry, middle-class liberal ladies – your must-fit-in-with élite opinion attitude does you no favours at all.
I have no problem with the fact that the law against upskirting which Gina Martin campaigned for was passed. I have more of a problem with the circumstances in which this law was passed.
The MP who brought forward this legislation in Parliament and worked with Gina Martin was Wera Hobhouse who has been the Liberal Democrat MP for Bath since 2017. Gina Martin appears to have no connection with Bath. MPs are supposed to represent their constituents and if someone outside their constituency contacts them they are within their rights to ignore them or ask the person who contacted them to contact their own MP.
Before she became MP for Bath Wera Hobhouse was a councillor in Rochdale. She was first elected as a Conservative in 2004 before defecting to the Liberal Democrats in 2005 and in 2007 the Liberal Democrats took control of Rochdale Council. Between 2009 and 2010 Wera Hobhouse chaired the council’s health scrutiny committee. In 2010 Wera Hobhouse stood for Parliament in the Heywood and Middleton constituency but did not win and the Liberal Democrats also lost control of Rochdale Council in that year. In 2014 Wera Hobhouse retired from Rochdale Council and moved to Bath and stood in a series of elections in that area before entering Parliament in 2017.
From 2004 to 2014 Sara Rowbotham worked for the NHS in Rochdale as a sexual health worker. During that time she made 181 referrals to the police and social services in which she informed the authorities that underage girls in the town were being sexually abused by gangs of men. The girls were failed for years (which also prompted the resignation of the GMP police officer Margaret Oliver) but when the new regional CPS prosecutor Nazir Afzal overturned a decision not to prosecute suspects the authorities took the allegations made by the girls and Sara Rowbotham seriously which has resulted in the conviction of dozens of men.
Greater Manchester Police, the CPS and Rochdale Council have all apologised for failing the victims. I have no evidence that Wera Hobhouse, a councillor in Rochdale and the chair of the health scrutiny committee at the time those girls in Rochdale were being failed, has said anything about the systematic sexual abuse of girls in Rochdale, never mind apologised for being a member of the council that failed them. However, when a young woman was upskirted Wera Hobhouse was willing to speak and act on her behalf and has been hailed as a feminist heroine for doing so.
When women like Gina Martin or Laura Bates or Soma Sara call out sexism, misogyny or rape culture feminist activists are eager to support them, MPs are eager to help them and newspapers and book publishers are eager to offer them money for write for them. However, when thousands of underage girls are repeatedly raped by gangs of Muslim men under the noses of Guardian-reading public servants who have a legal duty to protect those girls almost no-one cares and the people who do are smeared as racists. That’s the real snobbery in feminist activism, politics and journalism.
Some excellent points there.
This is why we need to rehabilitate and use phrases like “Muslim paedophile rape gangs.”
Thank you for this.
Brilliant analysis, which deserves to be read more widely.
The reason is that fighting against cultures that are genuinely hostile to women, or treat women badly, is difficult. Because a) they are more likely to be unashamed about it (which is why those cultures are s**t to begin with) and, unlike with white men, berating a muslim man in Rochdale isn’t going to end well.
And b) there cultures are likely to be non white (whereas our brave feminists like to focus on white males) and find it easier to use “racism” accusations as a defense mechanism.
So berating white men has been so effective against the culture of the Catholic church which still insists on keeping women from being priests and which investigated their nuns for signs of feminism. It proved really effective for the Southern Baptists who lost their s**t at the thought of women preachers who are not being directly supervised by a man, even reconsidering letting them teach Sunday school.It is so effective in Israel where the Ultra-Orthodox are trying (and succeeding) at sex segregated busses.
Meanwhile feminists have gotten nowhere in the Middle East where women are literally risking their lives by taking off the veil–and are joined in that protest by men.
C’mon dude, your racism is showing. So is your sexism.
Religions are so oppressive to women.
Middle and upper class women had much freedom up to 1973 as demonstrated by those seen wearing mini skirts on newsreels.
The rise in influence of the Muslim Brotherhood post 1973 Yom Kippur War; over throw of the Shah by Khomeini in 1979: Saudi financial support of Salaafis/ Wahabis, from 1979; Zia ul Haq coming to power in Pakistan in 1978 and USSR invasion of Afghanistan led to reduction in freedom for women.
Arab and muslim women had more freedom in early 1973 than in 2023 and amongst the Beduin women of Arabia in the 1940s. In early 1980s, in Malaysia only mullahs wives wore headscarves, now most l Muslim women do.
Abdul Haq who led the Pushtun Mujahideen warned about the threat of Islamic extremism as early as 1985.
A major reason for the support of more restrictions on Muslim women is a reaction towards the sexual emancipation of women in the West. Suicide bombers ar happy to use mobile telephones to set off bombs so they are not against Western Technology, only the sexua lfreedom of western women.
The bombing of the Ariadne Concert which was attended by large numbers of girls and women was a direct attack on the sexual emanipation of women.
Manchester Arena bombing – Wikipedia
Extremist Muslims do not accept that women have the freedom to chose with whom they have sexual relations and are prepared to commit murder to impose their will.
Religions are so oppressive to women.
Middle and upper class women had much freedom up to 1973 as demonstrated by those seen wearing mini skirts on newsreels.
The rise in influence of the Muslim Brotherhood post 1973 Yom Kippur War; over throw of the Shah by Khomeini in 1979: Saudi financial support of Salaafis/ Wahabis, from 1979; Zia ul Haq coming to power in Pakistan in 1978 and USSR invasion of Afghanistan led to reduction in freedom for women.
Arab and muslim women had more freedom in early 1973 than in 2023 and amongst the Beduin women of Arabia in the 1940s. In early 1980s, in Malaysia only mullahs wives wore headscarves, now most l Muslim women do.
Abdul Haq who led the Pushtun Mujahideen warned about the threat of Islamic extremism as early as 1985.
A major reason for the support of more restrictions on Muslim women is a reaction towards the sexual emancipation of women in the West. Suicide bombers ar happy to use mobile telephones to set off bombs so they are not against Western Technology, only the sexua lfreedom of western women.
The bombing of the Ariadne Concert which was attended by large numbers of girls and women was a direct attack on the sexual emanipation of women.
Manchester Arena bombing – Wikipedia
Extremist Muslims do not accept that women have the freedom to chose with whom they have sexual relations and are prepared to commit murder to impose their will.
So berating white men has been so effective against the culture of the Catholic church which still insists on keeping women from being priests and which investigated their nuns for signs of feminism. It proved really effective for the Southern Baptists who lost their s**t at the thought of women preachers who are not being directly supervised by a man, even reconsidering letting them teach Sunday school.It is so effective in Israel where the Ultra-Orthodox are trying (and succeeding) at sex segregated busses.
Meanwhile feminists have gotten nowhere in the Middle East where women are literally risking their lives by taking off the veil–and are joined in that protest by men.
C’mon dude, your racism is showing. So is your sexism.
Excellent points, some fill me with envy.
White Australian cultural traditions consider crimes against women a stain, a permanent erosion of the victims’ value as human beings.
Australia’s women are expected to carry the burden of ongoing crimes with obedient resignation and silent dignity – out of sight.
Even if the woman never chose to have anything to do with the men committing devastating crimes against them.
See my long comment with details of my own experience in a leafy Melbourne suburb of million $ homes since 2009. Last unmissable physical crime yesterday evening.
It sounds awful and the rapes haven’t been covered in America that I know of.
Some excellent points there.
This is why we need to rehabilitate and use phrases like “Muslim paedophile rape gangs.”
Thank you for this.
Brilliant analysis, which deserves to be read more widely.
The reason is that fighting against cultures that are genuinely hostile to women, or treat women badly, is difficult. Because a) they are more likely to be unashamed about it (which is why those cultures are s**t to begin with) and, unlike with white men, berating a muslim man in Rochdale isn’t going to end well.
And b) there cultures are likely to be non white (whereas our brave feminists like to focus on white males) and find it easier to use “racism” accusations as a defense mechanism.
Excellent points, some fill me with envy.
White Australian cultural traditions consider crimes against women a stain, a permanent erosion of the victims’ value as human beings.
Australia’s women are expected to carry the burden of ongoing crimes with obedient resignation and silent dignity – out of sight.
Even if the woman never chose to have anything to do with the men committing devastating crimes against them.
See my long comment with details of my own experience in a leafy Melbourne suburb of million $ homes since 2009. Last unmissable physical crime yesterday evening.
It sounds awful and the rapes haven’t been covered in America that I know of.
We don’t all think alike.
I have no problem with the fact that the law against upskirting which Gina Martin campaigned for was passed. I have more of a problem with the circumstances in which this law was passed.
The MP who brought forward this legislation in Parliament and worked with Gina Martin was Wera Hobhouse who has been the Liberal Democrat MP for Bath since 2017. Gina Martin appears to have no connection with Bath. MPs are supposed to represent their constituents and if someone outside their constituency contacts them they are within their rights to ignore them or ask the person who contacted them to contact their own MP.
Before she became MP for Bath Wera Hobhouse was a councillor in Rochdale. She was first elected as a Conservative in 2004 before defecting to the Liberal Democrats in 2005 and in 2007 the Liberal Democrats took control of Rochdale Council. Between 2009 and 2010 Wera Hobhouse chaired the council’s health scrutiny committee. In 2010 Wera Hobhouse stood for Parliament in the Heywood and Middleton constituency but did not win and the Liberal Democrats also lost control of Rochdale Council in that year. In 2014 Wera Hobhouse retired from Rochdale Council and moved to Bath and stood in a series of elections in that area before entering Parliament in 2017.
From 2004 to 2014 Sara Rowbotham worked for the NHS in Rochdale as a sexual health worker. During that time she made 181 referrals to the police and social services in which she informed the authorities that underage girls in the town were being sexually abused by gangs of men. The girls were failed for years (which also prompted the resignation of the GMP police officer Margaret Oliver) but when the new regional CPS prosecutor Nazir Afzal overturned a decision not to prosecute suspects the authorities took the allegations made by the girls and Sara Rowbotham seriously which has resulted in the conviction of dozens of men.
Greater Manchester Police, the CPS and Rochdale Council have all apologised for failing the victims. I have no evidence that Wera Hobhouse, a councillor in Rochdale and the chair of the health scrutiny committee at the time those girls in Rochdale were being failed, has said anything about the systematic sexual abuse of girls in Rochdale, never mind apologised for being a member of the council that failed them. However, when a young woman was upskirted Wera Hobhouse was willing to speak and act on her behalf and has been hailed as a feminist heroine for doing so.
When women like Gina Martin or Laura Bates or Soma Sara call out sexism, misogyny or rape culture feminist activists are eager to support them, MPs are eager to help them and newspapers and book publishers are eager to offer them money for write for them. However, when thousands of underage girls are repeatedly raped by gangs of Muslim men under the noses of Guardian-reading public servants who have a legal duty to protect those girls almost no-one cares and the people who do are smeared as racists. That’s the real snobbery in feminist activism, politics and journalism.
We don’t all think alike.
“And I find it hard to read her undermining her activism. “It wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties that I started to be more of a critical thinker,” she writes — meaning “someone who recognises cultural, social and geographical contexts and applies theories”, as opposed to someone whose analysis is “determined mostly by their automatic emotional response, their personal context and existing opinions”. Of course, Martin’s anger at being upskirted was an “automatic emotional response”; her highly successful legal campaign was rooted in her “personal context and existing opinions”. But now, it seems, she knows better than to let her feelings get the better of her.”
Of course her original instinct was correct.
Why on earth would anyone in their right mind shy away from justice because one didn’t want to be regarded as ‘privileged’?
Sorry, middle-class liberal ladies – your must-fit-in-with élite opinion attitude does you no favours at all.
Upskirting was never a “social norm.” It’s a relatively-recent feature of modern tech (mobile phones with cameras) which the law was slow to catch up with; it was never regarded as normal.
There was a news segment tonight about a man caught on camera in a library looking up women’s skirts. The one woman turned around and asked him what he was doing and he said he was tying his shoes laces. I was rooting for her to hit him over the head with a book.
There was a news segment tonight about a man caught on camera in a library looking up women’s skirts. The one woman turned around and asked him what he was doing and he said he was tying his shoes laces. I was rooting for her to hit him over the head with a book.
Upskirting was never a “social norm.” It’s a relatively-recent feature of modern tech (mobile phones with cameras) which the law was slow to catch up with; it was never regarded as normal.
I believe the song “ Imagine” is responsible for much of the evil in the world today. Shallow thinkers have mistaken it for historical reality, with its implication that religion is responsible for all war, this after the bloodiest century in history, with nearly a hundred million deaths related to atheistic regimes.
I’ve always hated the song. A good antidote is “Only a Fool Would Say That” by Steely Dan, which was written as a specific rebuttal.
Hyperbole. But it is a silly song. It’s one of the reasons why the cultural centrality of pop music is such a bad thing.
Rubbish. It’s a beautiful song.
Love the video, where Lennon’s sitting behind his custom made white piano in his mansion, preaching, ‘Imagine no posessions’.
Love the video, where Lennon’s sitting behind his custom made white piano in his mansion, preaching, ‘Imagine no posessions’.
Rubbish. It’s a beautiful song.
It’s not atheist leaders that are the problem it’s patriarchal culture. And, yes, religion is responsible for most of what’s wrong in the world including overpopulation which has caused global warming. But god forbid we should say that since the pope encourages it, as do other religions, and of course Islam because they want more muslims, screw global warming.
The most effective form of contraception is wealth. The wealthier a nation, the lower the birth rate.
Not all people are wealthy within a wealthy nation.
Not all people are wealthy within a wealthy nation.
The most effective form of contraception is wealth. The wealthier a nation, the lower the birth rate.
I’ve always hated the song. A good antidote is “Only a Fool Would Say That” by Steely Dan, which was written as a specific rebuttal.
Hyperbole. But it is a silly song. It’s one of the reasons why the cultural centrality of pop music is such a bad thing.
It’s not atheist leaders that are the problem it’s patriarchal culture. And, yes, religion is responsible for most of what’s wrong in the world including overpopulation which has caused global warming. But god forbid we should say that since the pope encourages it, as do other religions, and of course Islam because they want more muslims, screw global warming.
I believe the song “ Imagine” is responsible for much of the evil in the world today. Shallow thinkers have mistaken it for historical reality, with its implication that religion is responsible for all war, this after the bloodiest century in history, with nearly a hundred million deaths related to atheistic regimes.
We’ve reached the point at which every leftist cause is coming into conflict with every other leftist cause, because no matter how liberal you are, somebody can go one better by being “more liberal” than you, which makes YOU the bad guy now.
True. But there’s always been a tendency for this on the left. It’s gotten a lot worse recently.
It’s basically free-market competition, applied to ideas, but with a pseudo-moral twist to make it that bit nastier, and with an added element of snobbery and demonisation. It’s getting pretty nasty!
Everything in moderation.
Including moderation.
Including moderation.
True. But there’s always been a tendency for this on the left. It’s gotten a lot worse recently.
It’s basically free-market competition, applied to ideas, but with a pseudo-moral twist to make it that bit nastier, and with an added element of snobbery and demonisation. It’s getting pretty nasty!
Everything in moderation.
We’ve reached the point at which every leftist cause is coming into conflict with every other leftist cause, because no matter how liberal you are, somebody can go one better by being “more liberal” than you, which makes YOU the bad guy now.
The expectation of women staying quiet after violation – and during ongoing violation in my case since 2009 in inner-Melbourne, Australia by an ex-coworker stalker whom I never even dated and his numerous accomplices who joined in for the free fun to be had – shocks me to the core still, after more than 14 years of unpunished, devastating, ongoing crimes.
Below are some details of the consequences of women in Australia being blamed for crimes committed against them, treated as if the crime victim contracted a disgusting, terminal illness on purpose, an illness the sufferers must carry with obedient resignation and silent dignity for whatever is left of their lives – out of sight.
My treatment came effortlessly and without hesitation every time since I became a victim: my treatment is the norm, not an exception (1). I have lived in leafy Melbourne suburbs for 35 years, never mixed with criminals, never committed a crime. I paid an enormous personal sacrifice escaping from the communist Hungary and bringing my babies to Australia, expecting us to be able to live in peace as law-abiding citizens.
Every crime suffered is taken as a stain on/erosion of the victims’ value as a human being, while criminals committing crimes are appeased, their future is always taken as bright and promising, their rehabilitation is of paramount importance. Murderous paedophiles are allowed to refuse treatment, yet they are released from prison. Their risk of recidivism is to be carried by the unsuspecting public – citing the Geneva Convention! Is Australia at war against her own children?
Criminals committing heinous crimes in broad daylight in Australia wear the resulting attitude like badges of honour: bikies brag about their government security clearances on social media, they self-identify as drug-traffickers, expect to be able to silence witnesses to their crimes with vulgar brutality on and offline. Risk-free criminality is evidently one of Australia’s longest traditions. A bikie is doing the usual posturing in front of my home as I am writing this comment. 3 laps so far this morning. Last cyber-crime was less than 4 hours ago. Bikies show off not just knowing where I live, delivering vulgar brutality to my door day and night at times in groups, but also keeping me under surveillance 24x7x365. I had been woken up by strange noises in the middle of the night, when I got out of bed to investigate the noises’ volume went down, when I went back to bed the volume went up, until I trained myself not to respond.
Victims, if they survive, are left to their own devices, the quality of their medical care necessitated by crimes depends on what the victim is able to afford herself – while having lost the ability to earn a salary, even earning rental income. Since ongoing crimes against me spill over to people associated with me, I haven’t had the callousness to rent out my investment properties for more than 2 years. The stalker’s crimes include theft, sabotage, vandalism, contamination of things I own, so my finances are further depleted by having to replace/fix things.
Those who don’t accept their “fate” silently and out of sight are palmed off to well-meaning but clueless volunteers providing infantilising, one-size-fits-all, time-wasting and infuriating “counselling” congratulating the victim for doing so well in spite of ongoing, increasingly devastating crimes in my case.
When I cut short one of these sessions, I was taught a lesson: a welfare crew came to my home with blaring sirens, blazing lights in quiet suburbia consisting of an ambulance and a police car with two officers each. They barged into my home ransacking it to find what I was going to kill myself with.
This stopped me from trying to report crimes until in 2018 crimes against me escalated to physical violence as a bikie assaulted me in an unprovoked attack using his helmet as a weapon causing concussion, permanent scarring that I had to get surgically corrected, etc. The bikie left the crime scene, when I started to bleed to give an obviously false statement to police. He was allowed to walk free as a bird in-spite of the assault and in-spite of the false statement. I called 000 the Australian emergency number, twice from the crime-scene, and waited for about 40 minutes. Bleeding. No one came. No one stopped to intervene either, while the bikie was obviously assaulting me on a busy Melbourne road on a sunny Sunday afternoon. The bikie had to bend down to keep hammering my face with his helmet, because he is significantly taller and bigger than I am.
No one makes any effort to stop crimes. Australia’s institutions, including law-enforcement provide an ILLUSION of law-and-order only, as my story shows. When a crime victim never even dated the perpetrators of crimes against her, the crime is not even domestic violence.
The stalker had (still has?) unrestricted access via his job (2) to every woman’s home address in Victoria Australia, possibly the whole of Australia as well as to the up-to-date whereabouts of people in witness protection. The stalker is a MEEHAN. To process my intervention order application I was asked to provide the stalker’s home address. Since I never chose to have anything to do with the stalker, I did not have his home address. My application was denied in 2015. In 2019 a judge confirmed that stalking victims need the stalkers’ home addresses for intervention order applications.
It was me who had to resign from and leave my job in a hurry, when I tried to report as a public servant witness (3) the stalker’s crimes to my manager at work first, and then to HR, when the manager who didn’t just turn a blind-eye to the stalker’s crimes at work but openly encouraged his behaviour via showering the stalker with signs of his approval of the stalker, dismissed my reporting attempt.
I tried to report the stalker’s crimes at work when I could no longer do my job, no matter how many hours I worked, because the stalker blocked the emails of my key-stakeholders. I tried to report his crimes to the police beforehand as he was breaking into my home at night also, while I was asleep inside on my own, leaving me unmissable signs of his overnight visits. I wasted thousands on changing locks. I had to change doors to be able to install barrel-locks on the inside. I never know who is waiting for me when I get home though, to this day. I was notified of several break-ins this year (2023) already via typical stalking signs. I will never know the total number of break-ins, only the occasions when the stalker decides to leave a sign that I cannot miss.
As a former refugee turned e-commerce world champion MBA workaholic I witnessed the stalker’s crimes 2009-2012 at an Australian government department. Opportunity makes thieves everywhere.
Since the stalker’s targets are forced to get to know him, his cringe-worthy cowardice/incompetence at work sharply contrasted his fearlessness as a criminal breaking into my home/car while I was working long hours already in 2009, the sophistication, resource intensity, professional consistency with which his crimes are being delivered.
As I tried to contort my life around the stalker’s crimes, tried to find protection/work-arounds to the increasingly devastating impact of the stalker’s crimes, I had to learn that much of the technology used in crimes against me are not known at the time to civilian experts (4). I only learned in 2019, that Victoria Police, our sole law-enforcement entity are corrupt, not just incompetent, they participate in crimes themselves, discrediting crime victims via bizarre crimes often at absurd scale. Using tech resources not known to civilian experts does wonders to discredit and hence isolate crime victims.
From 2019 technology used in crimes against me has included a range of remote physical harm capabilities. The worst of these incidents in terms of immediate impact happened on the 9th of July 2022 at my gym – away from home for the first time. I was incapacitated vomiting for about 10 hours at the slightest move. It took over 7 months for my symptoms to taper off, for my body to adapt to the new normal, whatever that is. My symptoms made no sense to the doctors I visited.
I am risking ridicule and attacks for disclosing these details with brutal honesty, because I am so horrified and so outraged by what I am forced to learn, I lost all ability to fear anyone and anything beyond not being able to communicate clearly enough to the largest possible audience what lies underneath Australia’s fake facade of law and order.
Australia never had functional law-enforcement, has never been able to control information, rogue cops or technology.
Australia’s fabulous crime statistics are achieved via crimes never investigated = crimes never happened.
Australia’s tradition of crime-hiding, terrorising witnesses and victims of heinous crimes into silent oblivion, discrediting witnesses and victims of crimes whom police participating in crimes cannot terrorise into silence works so well, I lived within a 10km radius 1988-2008 from where the stalker’s onslaught of crimes against me started in 2009, and knew nothing of Australia’s lawlessness. In the meantime Australia faked its way into Five Eyes, AUKUS and who knows what else, so agency/remote-weapons-grade technology is pouring into Australia.
I cannot bear the burden of silence about what I am being forced to learn about Australia’s lawlessness, because the Internet is everywhere.
I didn’t make poor life-decisions or costly mistakes.
I never called a friend of any kind the stalker, Victoria Police officers, bikies, hackers or any other criminals.
The stalker added me to his already extensive list of concurrent targets, when I became an e-commerce world-champion in my postgrad studies while working as a Business Analyst at the Victorian Electoral Commission (5). What is done to me can be done to anyone.
Victims of even violent, devastating crimes are not just left to their own devices in Australia, they are forced to fight law-enforcement trying to silence them, as well as brazen criminals who have an evident need to advertise, assert/re-assert their risk-free, at times obviously lucrative criminality – our bikies make billions $ in the drug-trade yearly.
I have made many public interest disclosures (5) since I learned that our authorities have the same objectives as the stalker. Sharing what I am forced to learn shifts my role from a victim of senseless, brutal, devastating crimes to an observer. Following in the footsteps of Viktor E. Frankl.
#ididnotstaysilent
—
(1) “Victoria Police Corruption”, Raymond T. Hoser, Kotabi, 1999. ISBN 0-9586769-6-8
“Victoria Police Corruption”, Raymond T. Hoser, Kotabi, 2000. ISBN 0-9586769-7-6
Lorraine Wilson and Wendy Evans: kidnapped, repeatedly gang-raped in public, tortured over several days, at least one witness tried to report to police the crimes, police did nothing until after the decomposing corpses were found.
Jennifer Tanner’s murder was classified as unsuspicious suicide via 2 separate, perfectly aimed gunshots through the woman’s forehead with a long-barrelled shotgun. The victim being assumed to have pulled the trigger with her toes, yet achieving perfect aim. TWICE.
Colleen South – police refused to investigate, ignored crime reporting attempts.
Tina Greer murdered – bikie ex-boyfriend never even questioned in spite of history of violence.
Also, police did nothing with Paul Onions’ crime reporting attempt – Mr Onions escaped Ivan MILAT serial killer in a typical hitch-hiker hunting scenario in 1990. Ivan MILAT continued hunting and killing hitch-hikers for ANOTHER TWO YEARS undisturbed! No one knows how many he killed in total.
(2) IT Helpdesk Assistant, Victorian Electoral Commission (https://www.vec.vic.gov.au/)
(3) Business Analyst, Victorian Electoral Commission (https://www.vec.vic.gov.au/)
(4) Ongoing from
2009 mobile phone remote restart/sabotage >=12x/day, laptop turned back on remotely after being turned off routinely
2011 smart-meter hacking, cutting off power to circuits, devices as a form of harassment, e.g. turning off power to my tenants’ fridge overnight in a heatwave
2015 car electronics’ hacking, fake caller-ID calls/text messages, blocking calls/messages, muting/distorting phone audio, disconnecting calls/muting one or both sides, fake message received notifications, battery had to be removed from my Android phone to stop it being used to harass me overnight
2016 iPhone 6/6s hacking & sabotage
2016 being logged off mid-sentence from my Mac computer at a workplace after the VEC
2019 air-gap breaching + whatever causes variations of “Havana Syndrome” type incidents
2022 Faraday Cage penetration
(5) https://www.linkedin.com/in/katalin-kish-38750b154/
https://www.facebook.com/Katalin.Kish.Perfect.Crime.Showcase.Exhibit.VEC/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/MeehanThugsBentleighEastFerntreeGully/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/illstandwithyou/
That sounds truly hellish. I’m not saying your efforts are not brave and worthwhile, but maybe there’s a way you can re-locate?
Thank you for caring and apologies for the long comment. Without context the facts are no doubt unbelievable. The chasm between Australia’s reality and its successfully faked image is too great.
My only options beyond trying to alert the whole world to the risks Australia’s lawlessness pose to everyone, since we are interconnected, are
1) to become a homeless fugitive in Australia never again using anything with Internet capabilities, never using medical care again or driving a car. I would also need to constantly watch out for cameras as facial recognition is in wide circulation. Otherwise in Australia the stalker and his accomplices will always know where I am.
2) Or to commit suicide.
I cannot leave Australia because my access to information as well as to electronic communication is sabotaged to the extent, I cannot rely on what I can reach.
I am not cut out to become a homeless fugitive, and I am too angry to commit suicide.
That seems like a manufactured binary extreme. How about moving to somewhere that you are not known to the local malefactors, including the bikers (as we call them in the States)?
As to being the target of an all-encompassing surveillance and stalking campaign that will follow you or “sabotage” you no matter what you do or where you go, I must admit that I think you are not as helpless as you claim, and that you may be at least somewhat paranoid. Understandably so if so, given what you’ve experienced.
I hope you’ll forgive me if my response to your voluminous posts is way off the mark, as I do not fully understand the details or have the time and connections to examine and corroborate the documentation behind your more extraordinary claims.
In any case, I hope this fraught situation will not continue to rule your entire life to the extent it has over such a long time. Good luck and please don’t give up.
Your comment demonstrates the behavioural aim of bizarre crimes often at absurd scale.
I would have reacted the same way you do here, prior to 2019, when remote harm started alongside uniformed Victoria Police officers showing off participating in the stalker’s crimes in broad daylight, while forcing me to fight at court in an admitted silencing attempt, tried to entrap me at least twice for good measure. Then in 2020 reading the stories of dozens of Australian police-crime victims exposed the crime strategies bizarre acts are part of (“Victoria Police Corruption”, Raymond T. Hoser, Kotabi, 1999. ISBN 0-9586769-6-8).
The only thing I can do is tell the world what I am forced to learn whether I attract alienation, abuse, and attacks or not. Until/unless people experience Australia’s crime reality first-hand and in depth, it is indeed unbelievable. Not that it makes any difference to the devastation suffered whether we believe the mechanics of what we are forced to experience or not.
There are no specifics.
Your comment demonstrates the behavioural aim of bizarre crimes often at absurd scale.
I would have reacted the same way you do here, prior to 2019, when remote harm started alongside uniformed Victoria Police officers showing off participating in the stalker’s crimes in broad daylight, while forcing me to fight at court in an admitted silencing attempt, tried to entrap me at least twice for good measure. Then in 2020 reading the stories of dozens of Australian police-crime victims exposed the crime strategies bizarre acts are part of (“Victoria Police Corruption”, Raymond T. Hoser, Kotabi, 1999. ISBN 0-9586769-6-8).
The only thing I can do is tell the world what I am forced to learn whether I attract alienation, abuse, and attacks or not. Until/unless people experience Australia’s crime reality first-hand and in depth, it is indeed unbelievable. Not that it makes any difference to the devastation suffered whether we believe the mechanics of what we are forced to experience or not.
There are no specifics.
PS: I am writing all this to help others survive Australia’s barbaric lawlessness. My story is the norm in Australia, not an exception.
I wrote two comments on this page about the pointlessness of uprooting myself after 35 years in Australia given the level of surveillance tech capabilities flaunted by the stalker and his accomplices, in addition to their unlimited access to information everyone must provide to government entities in Australia.
It took me a while after reading replies to my comments here to verbalise the gut feeling of unacceptable financial risks of trying to move to another country. Here it goes:
The stalker’s crimes against me have included bizarre financial crimes since 2011 at least (1), some listed in my ‘perfect crimes’ LinkedIn (2) post. Bizarre crimes are used by Australia’s corrupt police officers and their accomplices to discredit crime witnesses and victims and thus make committing crimes risk-free.
There was also an outright, substantial theft in 2021 from the savings I am forced to live on. It is impossible to prove who was the thief, since Australia’s pretend law-enforcement are an insurmountable obstacle to justice, themselves participating in crimes in broad daylight. I did not even attempt to report this crime. I stopped trying to report crimes in 2018 altogether (3).
My financial service provider reimbursed me in 2021.
I cannot afford to find out whether they would reimburse me or not, again, if the monies I would get selling off my still existing assets in Australia were also stolen in the process of trying to move to another country.
Given the continuously demonstrated triviality of committing devastating crimes in Australia, and the opportunism of the MEEHAN Horde of Thugs, robbing me of the lump sum everything I have would convert into is a very likely outcome. And, since I have lived in Australia for the past 35+ years, there is no one I could turn to for help.
—
(1) At least one purchase for which I had the receipt proving payment in 2011 never showed up on my credit card statement. The amount was less than $200 from memory. By then I was treated like a raging lunatic so many times trying to compensate for bizarre crimes, I didn’t dare to go back to the shop and tell them of their missing income. Bizarre crimes are ideal indeed in discrediting and hence isolating crime witnesses and victims.
As one of the victims of last year’s data-breaches in Australia, I had to do a credit check, which showed an address where I never lived, a place that was a rental property at the time of its link to my credit history in 2010. The stalker had unrestricted access to my emails, to all of my government records via his job, and since he kept breaking into my home while I worked long hours, everything in hard copy also. I only know of his break-ins when he left me typically sick psycho signs I could not miss. The last such break-in signs I could not miss were in April 2023. I block out all I can, escaping into denial whenever possible.
I have no means of finding out on whose behalf this address was added to my credit history, and what I paid off, when, on behalf of whoever used my identity fraudulently in 2010 – and since? I checked my credit card statements as due diligence, hence I discovered the missing payment. Missing monies were not large enough to peel me away from work, and stopped when I switched banks in 2017. I was with the same bank from 2009 when the stalker’s crimes started until switching in 2017.
(2) https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/perfect-crimes-y-australia-katalin-kish/
(3) https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/michael-eremias-unpunished-crimes-katalin-kish/
That seems like a manufactured binary extreme. How about moving to somewhere that you are not known to the local malefactors, including the bikers (as we call them in the States)?
As to being the target of an all-encompassing surveillance and stalking campaign that will follow you or “sabotage” you no matter what you do or where you go, I must admit that I think you are not as helpless as you claim, and that you may be at least somewhat paranoid. Understandably so if so, given what you’ve experienced.
I hope you’ll forgive me if my response to your voluminous posts is way off the mark, as I do not fully understand the details or have the time and connections to examine and corroborate the documentation behind your more extraordinary claims.
In any case, I hope this fraught situation will not continue to rule your entire life to the extent it has over such a long time. Good luck and please don’t give up.
PS: I am writing all this to help others survive Australia’s barbaric lawlessness. My story is the norm in Australia, not an exception.
I wrote two comments on this page about the pointlessness of uprooting myself after 35 years in Australia given the level of surveillance tech capabilities flaunted by the stalker and his accomplices, in addition to their unlimited access to information everyone must provide to government entities in Australia.
It took me a while after reading replies to my comments here to verbalise the gut feeling of unacceptable financial risks of trying to move to another country. Here it goes:
The stalker’s crimes against me have included bizarre financial crimes since 2011 at least (1), some listed in my ‘perfect crimes’ LinkedIn (2) post. Bizarre crimes are used by Australia’s corrupt police officers and their accomplices to discredit crime witnesses and victims and thus make committing crimes risk-free.
There was also an outright, substantial theft in 2021 from the savings I am forced to live on. It is impossible to prove who was the thief, since Australia’s pretend law-enforcement are an insurmountable obstacle to justice, themselves participating in crimes in broad daylight. I did not even attempt to report this crime. I stopped trying to report crimes in 2018 altogether (3).
My financial service provider reimbursed me in 2021.
I cannot afford to find out whether they would reimburse me or not, again, if the monies I would get selling off my still existing assets in Australia were also stolen in the process of trying to move to another country.
Given the continuously demonstrated triviality of committing devastating crimes in Australia, and the opportunism of the MEEHAN Horde of Thugs, robbing me of the lump sum everything I have would convert into is a very likely outcome. And, since I have lived in Australia for the past 35+ years, there is no one I could turn to for help.
—
(1) At least one purchase for which I had the receipt proving payment in 2011 never showed up on my credit card statement. The amount was less than $200 from memory. By then I was treated like a raging lunatic so many times trying to compensate for bizarre crimes, I didn’t dare to go back to the shop and tell them of their missing income. Bizarre crimes are ideal indeed in discrediting and hence isolating crime witnesses and victims.
As one of the victims of last year’s data-breaches in Australia, I had to do a credit check, which showed an address where I never lived, a place that was a rental property at the time of its link to my credit history in 2010. The stalker had unrestricted access to my emails, to all of my government records via his job, and since he kept breaking into my home while I worked long hours, everything in hard copy also. I only know of his break-ins when he left me typically sick psycho signs I could not miss. The last such break-in signs I could not miss were in April 2023. I block out all I can, escaping into denial whenever possible.
I have no means of finding out on whose behalf this address was added to my credit history, and what I paid off, when, on behalf of whoever used my identity fraudulently in 2010 – and since? I checked my credit card statements as due diligence, hence I discovered the missing payment. Missing monies were not large enough to peel me away from work, and stopped when I switched banks in 2017. I was with the same bank from 2009 when the stalker’s crimes started until switching in 2017.
(2) https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/perfect-crimes-y-australia-katalin-kish/
(3) https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/michael-eremias-unpunished-crimes-katalin-kish/
Thank you for caring and apologies for the long comment. Without context the facts are no doubt unbelievable. The chasm between Australia’s reality and its successfully faked image is too great.
My only options beyond trying to alert the whole world to the risks Australia’s lawlessness pose to everyone, since we are interconnected, are
1) to become a homeless fugitive in Australia never again using anything with Internet capabilities, never using medical care again or driving a car. I would also need to constantly watch out for cameras as facial recognition is in wide circulation. Otherwise in Australia the stalker and his accomplices will always know where I am.
2) Or to commit suicide.
I cannot leave Australia because my access to information as well as to electronic communication is sabotaged to the extent, I cannot rely on what I can reach.
I am not cut out to become a homeless fugitive, and I am too angry to commit suicide.
Talpa Australis, perhaps?
TLDR
Would you care to go into a little more detail?
My ‘perfect crimes’ article (1) on LinkedIn has more details with some photos of crimes that left physical evidence. I also wrote hundreds of pages on my Google account (2), including copies of emails sent to my PTSD therapist while I had the hope of being able to afford in-person sessions, and a section describing some of what I experienced in terms of remote physical harm since in 2019 (3), from when I declared self-representation at court against Victoria Police. My PTSD renewed daily/hourly affects my writing.
(1) https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/perfect-crimes-y-australia-katalin-kish
(2) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JKo9WSH-Ri6e3aUtvXGjNZtmb3uSnzzea2roIx6HnwA/
(3) https://docs.google.com/document/d/19NP6gd2gwXt0nJvKwQ8giMrebRPUF9Bl-pbZ4Ag1dxI/
My response disappeared, it may not come back. I am immensely grateful for Unherd to have allowed me to write what is published already.
Look up the ‘about‘ section of my LinkedIn profile linked in footnote (5) of my long comment. There is a link to my Google account in the header. I have published hundreds of pages over the past few years via Google documents and images, as the impact of Australia’s lawlessness dawned on me.
That’s funny, Richard, but I don’t know if it’s meant to be.
My ‘perfect crimes’ article (1) on LinkedIn has more details with some photos of crimes that left physical evidence. I also wrote hundreds of pages on my Google account (2), including copies of emails sent to my PTSD therapist while I had the hope of being able to afford in-person sessions, and a section describing some of what I experienced in terms of remote physical harm since in 2019 (3), from when I declared self-representation at court against Victoria Police. My PTSD renewed daily/hourly affects my writing.
(1) https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/perfect-crimes-y-australia-katalin-kish
(2) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JKo9WSH-Ri6e3aUtvXGjNZtmb3uSnzzea2roIx6HnwA/
(3) https://docs.google.com/document/d/19NP6gd2gwXt0nJvKwQ8giMrebRPUF9Bl-pbZ4Ag1dxI/
My response disappeared, it may not come back. I am immensely grateful for Unherd to have allowed me to write what is published already.
Look up the ‘about‘ section of my LinkedIn profile linked in footnote (5) of my long comment. There is a link to my Google account in the header. I have published hundreds of pages over the past few years via Google documents and images, as the impact of Australia’s lawlessness dawned on me.
That’s funny, Richard, but I don’t know if it’s meant to be.
That was a difficult read, not just because of what you went through, but the implications in terms of the utter lack of support from those who are supposed to help you.
This also agrees with what I have experience first hand or heard from close friends here in the UK. Drugged sex pest on the loose, brazen car thefts, burglaries, assault, sexual harassment….the reaction from police was we don’t care.
The main reason why I am making these public interest disclosures is to warn others about what to expect in/from Australia. Our law-enforcement don’t just enforce risk-free criminality, not the law, they serve as an insurmountable obstacle to justice. The false security police provide augments everyone’s vulnerability manifold – except for the likes of Clare O’Neil our Sleeping Beauty Minister for Cyber Security and Home Affairs (no less) of course, whose willful blindness cements the status quo.
I am reading Joanne Lees‘ book about the murder/disappearance of Peter Falconio, and her own ordeal. The police’s incompetence and callousness are very familiar. Anyone thinking of coming to Australia should read this book. It is very reasonably priced as an ebook:
https://www.ebooks.com/en-au/book/95693419/no-turning-back/joanne-lees/
PS: crimes against me are ongoing. There is no chance of ever being free from retaliation for daring to go against Australia’s tradition of victims fading into silent oblivion. The worst risk is via remote harm, because it is not known what is being delivered, let alone being able to shield oneself. Bikies are also so certain about their god-given right to risk-free criminality, they have presented in such large numbers while harassing me, once I lost count after 50. I have had to come to terms with having no hope of escaping crimes years ago. I just hope I can save at least some others from devastating their lives expecting Australia to be a safe country.
My whole family emigrated to Australia, and is now an extended family. They have all led very happy lives. I have many friends there, all over the country, who have also lived care- free lives. I’ve lived there myself and had no problems. I would encourage anyone to emigrate because the quality of life is superb, and the lack of gun violence compared to the US, is refreshing.
I think, based in what you wrote, the only solution is to leave Australia and have a fresh start.
My whole family emigrated to Australia, and is now an extended family. They have all led very happy lives. I have many friends there, all over the country, who have also lived care- free lives. I’ve lived there myself and had no problems. I would encourage anyone to emigrate because the quality of life is superb, and the lack of gun violence compared to the US, is refreshing.
I think, based in what you wrote, the only solution is to leave Australia and have a fresh start.
The main reason why I am making these public interest disclosures is to warn others about what to expect in/from Australia. Our law-enforcement don’t just enforce risk-free criminality, not the law, they serve as an insurmountable obstacle to justice. The false security police provide augments everyone’s vulnerability manifold – except for the likes of Clare O’Neil our Sleeping Beauty Minister for Cyber Security and Home Affairs (no less) of course, whose willful blindness cements the status quo.
I am reading Joanne Lees‘ book about the murder/disappearance of Peter Falconio, and her own ordeal. The police’s incompetence and callousness are very familiar. Anyone thinking of coming to Australia should read this book. It is very reasonably priced as an ebook:
https://www.ebooks.com/en-au/book/95693419/no-turning-back/joanne-lees/
PS: crimes against me are ongoing. There is no chance of ever being free from retaliation for daring to go against Australia’s tradition of victims fading into silent oblivion. The worst risk is via remote harm, because it is not known what is being delivered, let alone being able to shield oneself. Bikies are also so certain about their god-given right to risk-free criminality, they have presented in such large numbers while harassing me, once I lost count after 50. I have had to come to terms with having no hope of escaping crimes years ago. I just hope I can save at least some others from devastating their lives expecting Australia to be a safe country.
Immigrate to the US or get a long gun. You may have to off a few before you have any peace. At least in the US we have the option of killing the criminals.
Thank you for caring Jim.
I cannot leave Australia because my access to information and my ability to communicate in any ways have been at the mercy of the stalker and his accomplices since 2009.
My physical mail have vanished for years too, in addition to the ongoing sabotage of my electronic communication/blocking my access to info via the Internet.
I have lost to ongoing crimes all but an elderly neighbour and a Maths genius friend. They are no match for what is available to Australia’s organised crime participants featuring our police and militant bikies asserting their rights to commit crimes risk-free.
Talking to even these two is traumatic as the worst crimes I am forced to live with are so bizarre, I cannot tell anyone what I am dealing with. Bizarre crimes have been used by Australia’s criminals to discredit and isolate victims and witnesses likely for hundreds of years, because of its effectiveness.
Gun ownership is extremely restricted in Australia, and, if I get a gun I can expect the same fate as Jennifer Tanner’s: unsuspicious suicide via TWO separate, perfectly aimed gunshots with a long barrelled gun through her forehead. The trigger pulled with her toes, yet achieving perfect aim. TWICE.
“I cannot tell anyone” I think you just did.
“I cannot tell anyone” I think you just did.
Not in every state. I wouldn’t encourage anyone to emigrate to the US. Australia is preferable.
Thank you for caring Jim.
I cannot leave Australia because my access to information and my ability to communicate in any ways have been at the mercy of the stalker and his accomplices since 2009.
My physical mail have vanished for years too, in addition to the ongoing sabotage of my electronic communication/blocking my access to info via the Internet.
I have lost to ongoing crimes all but an elderly neighbour and a Maths genius friend. They are no match for what is available to Australia’s organised crime participants featuring our police and militant bikies asserting their rights to commit crimes risk-free.
Talking to even these two is traumatic as the worst crimes I am forced to live with are so bizarre, I cannot tell anyone what I am dealing with. Bizarre crimes have been used by Australia’s criminals to discredit and isolate victims and witnesses likely for hundreds of years, because of its effectiveness.
Gun ownership is extremely restricted in Australia, and, if I get a gun I can expect the same fate as Jennifer Tanner’s: unsuspicious suicide via TWO separate, perfectly aimed gunshots with a long barrelled gun through her forehead. The trigger pulled with her toes, yet achieving perfect aim. TWICE.
Not in every state. I wouldn’t encourage anyone to emigrate to the US. Australia is preferable.
This all sounds a bit paranoid.
That sounds truly hellish. I’m not saying your efforts are not brave and worthwhile, but maybe there’s a way you can re-locate?
Talpa Australis, perhaps?
TLDR
Would you care to go into a little more detail?
That was a difficult read, not just because of what you went through, but the implications in terms of the utter lack of support from those who are supposed to help you.
This also agrees with what I have experience first hand or heard from close friends here in the UK. Drugged sex pest on the loose, brazen car thefts, burglaries, assault, sexual harassment….the reaction from police was we don’t care.
Immigrate to the US or get a long gun. You may have to off a few before you have any peace. At least in the US we have the option of killing the criminals.
This all sounds a bit paranoid.
The expectation of women staying quiet after violation – and during ongoing violation in my case since 2009 in inner-Melbourne, Australia by an ex-coworker stalker whom I never even dated and his numerous accomplices who joined in for the free fun to be had – shocks me to the core still, after more than 14 years of unpunished, devastating, ongoing crimes.
Below are some details of the consequences of women in Australia being blamed for crimes committed against them, treated as if the crime victim contracted a disgusting, terminal illness on purpose, an illness the sufferers must carry with obedient resignation and silent dignity for whatever is left of their lives – out of sight.
My treatment came effortlessly and without hesitation every time since I became a victim: my treatment is the norm, not an exception (1). I have lived in leafy Melbourne suburbs for 35 years, never mixed with criminals, never committed a crime. I paid an enormous personal sacrifice escaping from the communist Hungary and bringing my babies to Australia, expecting us to be able to live in peace as law-abiding citizens.
Every crime suffered is taken as a stain on/erosion of the victims’ value as a human being, while criminals committing crimes are appeased, their future is always taken as bright and promising, their rehabilitation is of paramount importance. Murderous paedophiles are allowed to refuse treatment, yet they are released from prison. Their risk of recidivism is to be carried by the unsuspecting public – citing the Geneva Convention! Is Australia at war against her own children?
Criminals committing heinous crimes in broad daylight in Australia wear the resulting attitude like badges of honour: bikies brag about their government security clearances on social media, they self-identify as drug-traffickers, expect to be able to silence witnesses to their crimes with vulgar brutality on and offline. Risk-free criminality is evidently one of Australia’s longest traditions. A bikie is doing the usual posturing in front of my home as I am writing this comment. 3 laps so far this morning. Last cyber-crime was less than 4 hours ago. Bikies show off not just knowing where I live, delivering vulgar brutality to my door day and night at times in groups, but also keeping me under surveillance 24x7x365. I had been woken up by strange noises in the middle of the night, when I got out of bed to investigate the noises’ volume went down, when I went back to bed the volume went up, until I trained myself not to respond.
Victims, if they survive, are left to their own devices, the quality of their medical care necessitated by crimes depends on what the victim is able to afford herself – while having lost the ability to earn a salary, even earning rental income. Since ongoing crimes against me spill over to people associated with me, I haven’t had the callousness to rent out my investment properties for more than 2 years. The stalker’s crimes include theft, sabotage, vandalism, contamination of things I own, so my finances are further depleted by having to replace/fix things.
Those who don’t accept their “fate” silently and out of sight are palmed off to well-meaning but clueless volunteers providing infantilising, one-size-fits-all, time-wasting and infuriating “counselling” congratulating the victim for doing so well in spite of ongoing, increasingly devastating crimes in my case.
When I cut short one of these sessions, I was taught a lesson: a welfare crew came to my home with blaring sirens, blazing lights in quiet suburbia consisting of an ambulance and a police car with two officers each. They barged into my home ransacking it to find what I was going to kill myself with.
This stopped me from trying to report crimes until in 2018 crimes against me escalated to physical violence as a bikie assaulted me in an unprovoked attack using his helmet as a weapon causing concussion, permanent scarring that I had to get surgically corrected, etc. The bikie left the crime scene, when I started to bleed to give an obviously false statement to police. He was allowed to walk free as a bird in-spite of the assault and in-spite of the false statement. I called 000 the Australian emergency number, twice from the crime-scene, and waited for about 40 minutes. Bleeding. No one came. No one stopped to intervene either, while the bikie was obviously assaulting me on a busy Melbourne road on a sunny Sunday afternoon. The bikie had to bend down to keep hammering my face with his helmet, because he is significantly taller and bigger than I am.
No one makes any effort to stop crimes. Australia’s institutions, including law-enforcement provide an ILLUSION of law-and-order only, as my story shows. When a crime victim never even dated the perpetrators of crimes against her, the crime is not even domestic violence.
The stalker had (still has?) unrestricted access via his job (2) to every woman’s home address in Victoria Australia, possibly the whole of Australia as well as to the up-to-date whereabouts of people in witness protection. The stalker is a MEEHAN. To process my intervention order application I was asked to provide the stalker’s home address. Since I never chose to have anything to do with the stalker, I did not have his home address. My application was denied in 2015. In 2019 a judge confirmed that stalking victims need the stalkers’ home addresses for intervention order applications.
It was me who had to resign from and leave my job in a hurry, when I tried to report as a public servant witness (3) the stalker’s crimes to my manager at work first, and then to HR, when the manager who didn’t just turn a blind-eye to the stalker’s crimes at work but openly encouraged his behaviour via showering the stalker with signs of his approval of the stalker, dismissed my reporting attempt.
I tried to report the stalker’s crimes at work when I could no longer do my job, no matter how many hours I worked, because the stalker blocked the emails of my key-stakeholders. I tried to report his crimes to the police beforehand as he was breaking into my home at night also, while I was asleep inside on my own, leaving me unmissable signs of his overnight visits. I wasted thousands on changing locks. I had to change doors to be able to install barrel-locks on the inside. I never know who is waiting for me when I get home though, to this day. I was notified of several break-ins this year (2023) already via typical stalking signs. I will never know the total number of break-ins, only the occasions when the stalker decides to leave a sign that I cannot miss.
As a former refugee turned e-commerce world champion MBA workaholic I witnessed the stalker’s crimes 2009-2012 at an Australian government department. Opportunity makes thieves everywhere.
Since the stalker’s targets are forced to get to know him, his cringe-worthy cowardice/incompetence at work sharply contrasted his fearlessness as a criminal breaking into my home/car while I was working long hours already in 2009, the sophistication, resource intensity, professional consistency with which his crimes are being delivered.
As I tried to contort my life around the stalker’s crimes, tried to find protection/work-arounds to the increasingly devastating impact of the stalker’s crimes, I had to learn that much of the technology used in crimes against me are not known at the time to civilian experts (4). I only learned in 2019, that Victoria Police, our sole law-enforcement entity are corrupt, not just incompetent, they participate in crimes themselves, discrediting crime victims via bizarre crimes often at absurd scale. Using tech resources not known to civilian experts does wonders to discredit and hence isolate crime victims.
From 2019 technology used in crimes against me has included a range of remote physical harm capabilities. The worst of these incidents in terms of immediate impact happened on the 9th of July 2022 at my gym – away from home for the first time. I was incapacitated vomiting for about 10 hours at the slightest move. It took over 7 months for my symptoms to taper off, for my body to adapt to the new normal, whatever that is. My symptoms made no sense to the doctors I visited.
I am risking ridicule and attacks for disclosing these details with brutal honesty, because I am so horrified and so outraged by what I am forced to learn, I lost all ability to fear anyone and anything beyond not being able to communicate clearly enough to the largest possible audience what lies underneath Australia’s fake facade of law and order.
Australia never had functional law-enforcement, has never been able to control information, rogue cops or technology.
Australia’s fabulous crime statistics are achieved via crimes never investigated = crimes never happened.
Australia’s tradition of crime-hiding, terrorising witnesses and victims of heinous crimes into silent oblivion, discrediting witnesses and victims of crimes whom police participating in crimes cannot terrorise into silence works so well, I lived within a 10km radius 1988-2008 from where the stalker’s onslaught of crimes against me started in 2009, and knew nothing of Australia’s lawlessness. In the meantime Australia faked its way into Five Eyes, AUKUS and who knows what else, so agency/remote-weapons-grade technology is pouring into Australia.
I cannot bear the burden of silence about what I am being forced to learn about Australia’s lawlessness, because the Internet is everywhere.
I didn’t make poor life-decisions or costly mistakes.
I never called a friend of any kind the stalker, Victoria Police officers, bikies, hackers or any other criminals.
The stalker added me to his already extensive list of concurrent targets, when I became an e-commerce world-champion in my postgrad studies while working as a Business Analyst at the Victorian Electoral Commission (5). What is done to me can be done to anyone.
Victims of even violent, devastating crimes are not just left to their own devices in Australia, they are forced to fight law-enforcement trying to silence them, as well as brazen criminals who have an evident need to advertise, assert/re-assert their risk-free, at times obviously lucrative criminality – our bikies make billions $ in the drug-trade yearly.
I have made many public interest disclosures (5) since I learned that our authorities have the same objectives as the stalker. Sharing what I am forced to learn shifts my role from a victim of senseless, brutal, devastating crimes to an observer. Following in the footsteps of Viktor E. Frankl.
#ididnotstaysilent
—
(1) “Victoria Police Corruption”, Raymond T. Hoser, Kotabi, 1999. ISBN 0-9586769-6-8
“Victoria Police Corruption”, Raymond T. Hoser, Kotabi, 2000. ISBN 0-9586769-7-6
Lorraine Wilson and Wendy Evans: kidnapped, repeatedly gang-raped in public, tortured over several days, at least one witness tried to report to police the crimes, police did nothing until after the decomposing corpses were found.
Jennifer Tanner’s murder was classified as unsuspicious suicide via 2 separate, perfectly aimed gunshots through the woman’s forehead with a long-barrelled shotgun. The victim being assumed to have pulled the trigger with her toes, yet achieving perfect aim. TWICE.
Colleen South – police refused to investigate, ignored crime reporting attempts.
Tina Greer murdered – bikie ex-boyfriend never even questioned in spite of history of violence.
Also, police did nothing with Paul Onions’ crime reporting attempt – Mr Onions escaped Ivan MILAT serial killer in a typical hitch-hiker hunting scenario in 1990. Ivan MILAT continued hunting and killing hitch-hikers for ANOTHER TWO YEARS undisturbed! No one knows how many he killed in total.
(2) IT Helpdesk Assistant, Victorian Electoral Commission (https://www.vec.vic.gov.au/)
(3) Business Analyst, Victorian Electoral Commission (https://www.vec.vic.gov.au/)
(4) Ongoing from
2009 mobile phone remote restart/sabotage >=12x/day, laptop turned back on remotely after being turned off routinely
2011 smart-meter hacking, cutting off power to circuits, devices as a form of harassment, e.g. turning off power to my tenants’ fridge overnight in a heatwave
2015 car electronics’ hacking, fake caller-ID calls/text messages, blocking calls/messages, muting/distorting phone audio, disconnecting calls/muting one or both sides, fake message received notifications, battery had to be removed from my Android phone to stop it being used to harass me overnight
2016 iPhone 6/6s hacking & sabotage
2016 being logged off mid-sentence from my Mac computer at a workplace after the VEC
2019 air-gap breaching + whatever causes variations of “Havana Syndrome” type incidents
2022 Faraday Cage penetration
(5) https://www.linkedin.com/in/katalin-kish-38750b154/
https://www.facebook.com/Katalin.Kish.Perfect.Crime.Showcase.Exhibit.VEC/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/MeehanThugsBentleighEastFerntreeGully/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/illstandwithyou/
It would seem that some feminists derive a sadistic pleasure from tying themselves in knots.
By the way, I have never believed the myth that upskirting was legal until someone invented a new law against it. This was performative and unnecessary legislation introduced simply because ‘something must be (seen to be) done!’
Masochistic pleasure?
I think that’s what I meant to say but I wasn’t sure how to spell it.
Understood. That lack of certainty leads to some awkward misunderstandings among sadomasochists, er…so I’ve heard. 😉
Does your bad spelling dictate much of what you write?! It’s too bad there’s no spell check on Unherd. You’d think it would be easy enough to install with AI. I’m not a good speller myself so I google words while I’m writing.
Understood. That lack of certainty leads to some awkward misunderstandings among sadomasochists, er…so I’ve heard. 😉
Does your bad spelling dictate much of what you write?! It’s too bad there’s no spell check on Unherd. You’d think it would be easy enough to install with AI. I’m not a good speller myself so I google words while I’m writing.
Could be both if they’re bipolar.
I think that’s what I meant to say but I wasn’t sure how to spell it.
Could be both if they’re bipolar.
Actually, what happened to Gina MArtin was that, when she was upskirted, she reported it to the police and showed them the photos. Their conclusion was that nothing illegal had happened because she had “chosen” to wear knickers. So she was left having been violated with no recourse to the law
Clare, can you explain that one. Was the view that because she had knickers on nothing was really revealed?? So the picture was no different to a pic in a swimming costume? Just trying to get the logic of it.
This is going to get confusing there are two Clares here. I just got edited for using the word w***e. Isn’t that a bit coy Unheard editors or AI?
This is going to get confusing there are two Clares here. I just got edited for using the word w***e. Isn’t that a bit coy Unheard editors or AI?
For real?!! If she’d had no knickers on she would have been thought of as a w***e, or that she was “asking for it” You can’t win!
Clare, can you explain that one. Was the view that because she had knickers on nothing was really revealed?? So the picture was no different to a pic in a swimming costume? Just trying to get the logic of it.
For real?!! If she’d had no knickers on she would have been thought of as a w***e, or that she was “asking for it” You can’t win!
I wouldn’t have thought it was a widespread issue, but lo and behold there was a news story this evening, on tv, about an upskirter, my first exposure, so to speak. He was caught on camera so I saw the footage. He was, apparently, a peeping tom as well. An equal opportunity peeper you might say.
Masochistic pleasure?
Actually, what happened to Gina MArtin was that, when she was upskirted, she reported it to the police and showed them the photos. Their conclusion was that nothing illegal had happened because she had “chosen” to wear knickers. So she was left having been violated with no recourse to the law
I wouldn’t have thought it was a widespread issue, but lo and behold there was a news story this evening, on tv, about an upskirter, my first exposure, so to speak. He was caught on camera so I saw the footage. He was, apparently, a peeping tom as well. An equal opportunity peeper you might say.
It would seem that some feminists derive a sadistic pleasure from tying themselves in knots.
By the way, I have never believed the myth that upskirting was legal until someone invented a new law against it. This was performative and unnecessary legislation introduced simply because ‘something must be (seen to be) done!’
When Fathers stopped teaching their sons to be gentlemen, women have these sorts of problems..
Having a father in the home would be a start.
Many boys don’t have fathers.
Having a father in the home would be a start.
Many boys don’t have fathers.
When Fathers stopped teaching their sons to be gentlemen, women have these sorts of problems..
In other words, feminists hate the fact that they need good men to protect them from bad men, so why can’t bad men just not exist?
Well in a manner of speaking yes. Why do women need “good men” to protect us? Why not simply have men treat us in a civil manner as the norm and when there is a criminal matter the government take action as it does men, a government made up more or less equally of men and women. Men don’t speak of needing good men to protect them from bad men do they?
Yes, they do. At least in the US, the pro-military patriotism, the celebration of past victories (especially WWII), all the praise of the police: most of that is exactly men speaking of the need for good men to protect us from the bad men.
The left wing middle class have been undermining chivalry, gallantry and good manners since 1789, the result Epstein, Weinstein and others. Ibn Khaldun said when men are protected by walls and garrisons, they lose their uprightness and manliness. He was comparing town dwellers with Beduin. Orwell said good people sleep peacefully abed because rough men stand ready to do violence.
Orwell said we have spent two hundred years sawing away the branch which supports us and what is below is not a bed of roses but a cess pit full of barbed wire.
Gallantry – courageous behaviour and polite attention paid by men to women.
A Bryant, historian said in Regency Britain boxing was the national nursery of manliness. A gentleman was expected to be a proper man with his fists and know how to clear lane of men with his morleys. Historically, boys from all ages were taught to box from the age of five or six years which combined with other sports meant they were fit by the age of sixteen years..
A gentleman was expcted to be able to defend a lady with hist fist, cane or sword, engage with her in polite conversation, treat her with respect and dance with her. Two hundred and fifty years of villification of gallantry by The Left and it produces Epstein and Weinstein. Manners have so declined that it now requires a law to make it illegal to film up a lady’s skirt.
Over the centuries Britain produced a society with a very low level of crime compared to others by promoting honesty, gallantry and good manners which require emotional maturity, a sense of responsibility, self discipline and self control. Cpmpare the lyrics of ” Love Child ” with gangsta rap.
The Supremes , Love Child 1968 – YouTube
The post 1960s Left Wing Middle Class have mocked all these traditional values and supported a hedonistic, if it feels good do it, mentality. Consequently we have loutish men and unlady like women. The massive increase in bad behaviour, including rape, harms women more than men.
My grandfather was an athlete. He was county champion when he was 14. He only owned one pair of shoes which were worn on Sundays. He ran in bare feet. When he retired, he taught underprivileged boys, as they were called then, to box. A charitable endeavour. He believed sport kept boys out of trouble.
Your Grandfather was correct.Edith Summerskill, a Labour MP had boxing removed from British state schools in the mid 1960s. Public schools were based upon Christianity, Competitive Sports, Classics, manners and dying for one’s ecountry. The Left Wing Middle Class of 1960s were opposed to all these and we wonder why women are treated badly by louts.
Yes, my grandfather also attended church services daily. He was raised with no religion but converted to Roman Catholicism when he married my grandmother who was a member of an Irish family with links to the IRA. He was very devout and took his religious charitable duties very seriously.
The lack of boxing is hardly the reason for women being treated badly. They’re treated badly by their domestic partners.
Yes, my grandfather also attended church services daily. He was raised with no religion but converted to Roman Catholicism when he married my grandmother who was a member of an Irish family with links to the IRA. He was very devout and took his religious charitable duties very seriously.
The lack of boxing is hardly the reason for women being treated badly. They’re treated badly by their domestic partners.
I think it probably does.
Your Grandfather was correct.Edith Summerskill, a Labour MP had boxing removed from British state schools in the mid 1960s. Public schools were based upon Christianity, Competitive Sports, Classics, manners and dying for one’s ecountry. The Left Wing Middle Class of 1960s were opposed to all these and we wonder why women are treated badly by louts.
I think it probably does.
They also had the sheer rude temerity to pass child labor laws and urge the end of slavery in Britain. Genteel owners of overseas plantation operations and exploitative factories lose a few chivalry points in my book, be they never so genteel on the surface. Consider how they treated some of your laboring class ancestors, and mine too. And some of the rather more ruthless profiteers were among the prosperous merchant middle class, or bourgeoisie, granted. Why do you labor to cut out the middle, while seeming lionize to the laboring class and the Old Ruling Order?
And women were treated with such unstinting respect and honor prior to the late-18th century: never beaten, raped, prostituted, disowned for pre-marital pregnancy, or murdered? Must have been a wonderland.
“What is a lording’s pomp? A cumbrous load / Disguising oft the wretch of human kind / Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refined” -Robert Burns
It was the Baptists, Quakers, Methodists middle class, the Evangelical Pitts, Wilberforces and Earl of Shaftesbury and Cobbetts who pushed reforms.
Compare Britain with other countries at the same time.As I said before the workers houses built in the 1780s were of a good quality. Britain was at at war with Revolutionary France from 1789 to 1815, 26 years. Britain financed the resistance to France, banned slavery and the Industrial Revolution took off. Markets were opened and closed according to Napoleon’s victories; making planning over a year impossible. The new towns of the Industrial Area grew 20 fold in fifty years( Bradford – worst slum in Britain ). Unfortunately the rapid growth of 1800 to 1815 resulted in slums being constructed and there was a slump after the war. The1840s- The Hungry Fourties were bad.
The British navigators of 1780s breakfasted on steak and beer while the poor of Paris could not afford bread. A navvigator could shift wheel barrows containing 440LB and 20 T a day, only possible on a meat rich diet and two years of training.
Going further back in time the yoman archer could fire 24 arrows in 2 minutes with draw weights of up to 200lb and at fouteen a lad was expected to draw a 95 lb bow. . This can only be achieved by a protein rich diet. Read A Toynbee, the ability of a populace to eat a protein rich diet; meat, egs, cheese and fish compared to a farinaceous one, is a sign of wealth and produces large strong people. The most obvious sign of wealth distinctions within a nation is size and strength of population. The largest people in Europe used to those of the Highlands and Island of Scotland due to a diet of fish, meat, root crops, oats, and water free from pathogens.
The slums of the 19th century had produced a decline in the size , strength and health of population as noticed by recruitment for the Boer war and was of a concern by the Fabian Society and Kipling.
There was one law in the land, for rich and poor alike, compare with pre Revolutionary France and where the Feudal system survived. The Prussian Junkers Officers of the early 20 th century practically had a separate legal system. Read Arthur Bryant where he quotes foreigners who have travelled through Britian. One comment which stands out is German who notices Britons can afford to eat butcher’s meat once a day. In the 1940s Sicily there were fifty year old men who had never eaten meat!
Many of Britain’s problems come from the creation of slums in the period of 1789 to 1840, the rise in prostitution which is largely an urban issue, being one of them .
As Orwell said Britain was far more peaceful than other countries, less violence’ far greater freedom of speech , an absence of a secret Police and militarised gendarmeries, a home was the castle and the King’s men could not enter without a warrant.
Compare like with like for the same period.
Ok, Charles. More interesting details piled on to re-enforce the same umbrella argument, although I notice that of late “left wing intellectuals” are history’s more complete and consistent villains in your telling. And, as usual, some good points on your part too.
Orwell seems by far your favorite Left-wing Intellectual–perhaps he’s mine too– which I guess is partly because he was willing to face combat and also did rough work including the job of “plongeur” (I liked Down and Out in Paris and London a lot).
By the way I’ll remind you that I think Left-wing Intellectual is way of the mark to describe me, which you did on another board, in an indirect but clear way, when Mr. Stanhope and I were “getting into it”. Are poets and musicians mere intellectuals not worth a damn unless they also do sewer or brick work? Do Shakespeare and Handel get a pass from you? (I consider myself more of a poet, writer, and musician–though an obscure one who’s been unable to make a living at it thus far*–than any type of intellectual. And in my further “defense”, I have done many years of carpentry and building work, mostly for my dad and younger brother who are both general contractors).
Good point about the religious affiliations of the reformers. However, one might call the Quakers in particular quite far to the left, given their determined pacifism and lack of a church hierarchy in their levelled Society of Friends.
I very much agree with your repeated point concerning robust health and strength for young men, for all people who can manage it. Some of the malaise and self-sorry navel-gazing that so plague our times could be alleviated by going outside more, and learning to swing a hammer, use a spanner, and even kick or throw a ball.
Not a full-fledged solution mind you, the emptiness and lack of purpose goes much deeper. The society is too materialistic and self-oriented on the whole, even in Britain I think but certainly here in the States.
I’ll try to read some Toynbee (I know who he is and have come across excerpts) when I get a bit farther down my overcrowded things-to-read stack.
(*And if I’m being realistic, relaxing the grip of my stubborn hopefulness, likely never will).
Your claims are all a matter of perspective. One can’t dismiss the problem of Britain’s slums as “mainly an urban problem” as if a) that doesn’t make it still Britain’s problem and b, the existence of those slums happened naturally and wasn’t highly influenced by the enclosure act which transferred public land into private hands at the governments behest for a long, rolling period of time. The effect of which a lot people had nowhere to go and no way to feed themselves but to move to urban areas.
I very much doubt that all the people colonized by Britain would regard it as a “peaceful nation”. American Indians suffered much more at the hands of British colonists than the French. The British may have ended slavery eventually but not before they introduced chattel slavery and profited very nicely from it, including fueling their industrial revolution. Italy didn’t have a colonial empire as such which had in no small part to do with why people lived better. The East India company was already committing a significant amount of violence in the time you mention. Britain was not alone to be sure but to pretend their economic stability came from good clean living is just wrong.
As is comparing the diet of a British navigator (who was almost always at least a warrant officer) to the poorest French peasant, well seriously sir, who are you trying to fool?
A navigator was the name given to a labourer who dug out the ground for canals and railways. It was shortened to Navvy. Lives of Engineers G Stephenson p162 English Navvy used wheel barrow which took 3 to 4 cwt while the French Navvy was content with half of that. English Navvy was paid twice that of French Navvy.
Your claims on land enclosures are partly correct as A Bryant has mentioned but you ignore the industrialisation during the French Wars. Poor Laws were created under Elizabeth I due to withdrawal of services provided by monasteries. They were based upon the Parish and by 1700 they were the largest expenditure in Britain. The cotton and woollen mills were constructed in the remote valleys to use water power and because the climate was damp ( threads did not break so easily) where no villages had existed previously. Therefore there were no Poor Laws support . The rapid openeing and closing of markets led to jerry building of workers home. Those built by Matthew Boulton in Birmingham pre- 1789 were far better quality. I suggest you read Arthur Bryant and GM Trevelyan.
K S Lal, Indian historian put the death toll due to the 26 muslim invasions of India from 1000 AD to 1756 AD at 88M. In 1756 The Afghan Ruler Ahmad Shah Durrani sacked Delhi and Northern India. The death of the heir to the Mughal empire in about 1700 AD led to it’s collapse such that the EIC was asked to collect taxes for Bengal, Orissa and Bihar in about 1750s. The EIC company stopped the Muslim Invasions of India.
When it comes to N America various warlike tribes attacked killed and enslaved the less warlike. The Commanche being the most warlike.
The tribal migrations of southern Africa led to massive numbers of deaths. The migrations were stopped by Shaka who conquered an area of Europe but was killed by his half brother. The book ” Shaka Zulu ”
Shaka Zulu By E.A. Ritter | Used | 9780140048261 | World of Books (wob.com)
is biography of Shaka.
If one looks at history, the mass movement of peoples has often produced mass slaughter; Genghis Khan killed 40M. In one day the Mongols slaughtered 1.2M. The Aztecs sacrificed 80K people a year, a reason why tribes supported the Spanish.
I suggest you study human sacrifice.
Human sacrifice – Wikipedia
One way of assessing conditions is to determine whether populations are increasing or decreasing and the size,fitness and health of the people.If a population is increasing in number plus their height and weight, then conditions are improving.
In much of human history, food, especially protein has been scarce and water has carried disease. If we add TB, Malaria, Typhoid, Cholera, Small Pox to malnutrition, periodic invasions by other peoples and excessive taxations, then much of the peoples of the World are never able to progress beyond subsistance. Statement made by A Toynbee.
As someone said about most peoples lives, they are short, brutal and nasty. The question is which civilisations made peoples lives, less short, brutal and nasty.
A navigator was the name given to a labourer who dug out the ground for canals and railways. It was shortened to Navvy. Lives of Engineers G Stephenson p162 English Navvy used wheel barrow which took 3 to 4 cwt while the French Navvy was content with half of that. English Navvy was paid twice that of French Navvy.
Your claims on land enclosures are partly correct as A Bryant has mentioned but you ignore the industrialisation during the French Wars. Poor Laws were created under Elizabeth I due to withdrawal of services provided by monasteries. They were based upon the Parish and by 1700 they were the largest expenditure in Britain. The cotton and woollen mills were constructed in the remote valleys to use water power and because the climate was damp ( threads did not break so easily) where no villages had existed previously. Therefore there were no Poor Laws support . The rapid openeing and closing of markets led to jerry building of workers home. Those built by Matthew Boulton in Birmingham pre- 1789 were far better quality. I suggest you read Arthur Bryant and GM Trevelyan.
K S Lal, Indian historian put the death toll due to the 26 muslim invasions of India from 1000 AD to 1756 AD at 88M. In 1756 The Afghan Ruler Ahmad Shah Durrani sacked Delhi and Northern India. The death of the heir to the Mughal empire in about 1700 AD led to it’s collapse such that the EIC was asked to collect taxes for Bengal, Orissa and Bihar in about 1750s. The EIC company stopped the Muslim Invasions of India.
When it comes to N America various warlike tribes attacked killed and enslaved the less warlike. The Commanche being the most warlike.
The tribal migrations of southern Africa led to massive numbers of deaths. The migrations were stopped by Shaka who conquered an area of Europe but was killed by his half brother. The book ” Shaka Zulu ”
Shaka Zulu By E.A. Ritter | Used | 9780140048261 | World of Books (wob.com)
is biography of Shaka.
If one looks at history, the mass movement of peoples has often produced mass slaughter; Genghis Khan killed 40M. In one day the Mongols slaughtered 1.2M. The Aztecs sacrificed 80K people a year, a reason why tribes supported the Spanish.
I suggest you study human sacrifice.
Human sacrifice – Wikipedia
One way of assessing conditions is to determine whether populations are increasing or decreasing and the size,fitness and health of the people.If a population is increasing in number plus their height and weight, then conditions are improving.
In much of human history, food, especially protein has been scarce and water has carried disease. If we add TB, Malaria, Typhoid, Cholera, Small Pox to malnutrition, periodic invasions by other peoples and excessive taxations, then much of the peoples of the World are never able to progress beyond subsistance. Statement made by A Toynbee.
As someone said about most peoples lives, they are short, brutal and nasty. The question is which civilisations made peoples lives, less short, brutal and nasty.
Ok, Charles. More interesting details piled on to re-enforce the same umbrella argument, although I notice that of late “left wing intellectuals” are history’s more complete and consistent villains in your telling. And, as usual, some good points on your part too.
Orwell seems by far your favorite Left-wing Intellectual–perhaps he’s mine too– which I guess is partly because he was willing to face combat and also did rough work including the job of “plongeur” (I liked Down and Out in Paris and London a lot).
By the way I’ll remind you that I think Left-wing Intellectual is way of the mark to describe me, which you did on another board, in an indirect but clear way, when Mr. Stanhope and I were “getting into it”. Are poets and musicians mere intellectuals not worth a damn unless they also do sewer or brick work? Do Shakespeare and Handel get a pass from you? (I consider myself more of a poet, writer, and musician–though an obscure one who’s been unable to make a living at it thus far*–than any type of intellectual. And in my further “defense”, I have done many years of carpentry and building work, mostly for my dad and younger brother who are both general contractors).
Good point about the religious affiliations of the reformers. However, one might call the Quakers in particular quite far to the left, given their determined pacifism and lack of a church hierarchy in their levelled Society of Friends.
I very much agree with your repeated point concerning robust health and strength for young men, for all people who can manage it. Some of the malaise and self-sorry navel-gazing that so plague our times could be alleviated by going outside more, and learning to swing a hammer, use a spanner, and even kick or throw a ball.
Not a full-fledged solution mind you, the emptiness and lack of purpose goes much deeper. The society is too materialistic and self-oriented on the whole, even in Britain I think but certainly here in the States.
I’ll try to read some Toynbee (I know who he is and have come across excerpts) when I get a bit farther down my overcrowded things-to-read stack.
(*And if I’m being realistic, relaxing the grip of my stubborn hopefulness, likely never will).
Your claims are all a matter of perspective. One can’t dismiss the problem of Britain’s slums as “mainly an urban problem” as if a) that doesn’t make it still Britain’s problem and b, the existence of those slums happened naturally and wasn’t highly influenced by the enclosure act which transferred public land into private hands at the governments behest for a long, rolling period of time. The effect of which a lot people had nowhere to go and no way to feed themselves but to move to urban areas.
I very much doubt that all the people colonized by Britain would regard it as a “peaceful nation”. American Indians suffered much more at the hands of British colonists than the French. The British may have ended slavery eventually but not before they introduced chattel slavery and profited very nicely from it, including fueling their industrial revolution. Italy didn’t have a colonial empire as such which had in no small part to do with why people lived better. The East India company was already committing a significant amount of violence in the time you mention. Britain was not alone to be sure but to pretend their economic stability came from good clean living is just wrong.
As is comparing the diet of a British navigator (who was almost always at least a warrant officer) to the poorest French peasant, well seriously sir, who are you trying to fool?
It was the Baptists, Quakers, Methodists middle class, the Evangelical Pitts, Wilberforces and Earl of Shaftesbury and Cobbetts who pushed reforms.
Compare Britain with other countries at the same time.As I said before the workers houses built in the 1780s were of a good quality. Britain was at at war with Revolutionary France from 1789 to 1815, 26 years. Britain financed the resistance to France, banned slavery and the Industrial Revolution took off. Markets were opened and closed according to Napoleon’s victories; making planning over a year impossible. The new towns of the Industrial Area grew 20 fold in fifty years( Bradford – worst slum in Britain ). Unfortunately the rapid growth of 1800 to 1815 resulted in slums being constructed and there was a slump after the war. The1840s- The Hungry Fourties were bad.
The British navigators of 1780s breakfasted on steak and beer while the poor of Paris could not afford bread. A navvigator could shift wheel barrows containing 440LB and 20 T a day, only possible on a meat rich diet and two years of training.
Going further back in time the yoman archer could fire 24 arrows in 2 minutes with draw weights of up to 200lb and at fouteen a lad was expected to draw a 95 lb bow. . This can only be achieved by a protein rich diet. Read A Toynbee, the ability of a populace to eat a protein rich diet; meat, egs, cheese and fish compared to a farinaceous one, is a sign of wealth and produces large strong people. The most obvious sign of wealth distinctions within a nation is size and strength of population. The largest people in Europe used to those of the Highlands and Island of Scotland due to a diet of fish, meat, root crops, oats, and water free from pathogens.
The slums of the 19th century had produced a decline in the size , strength and health of population as noticed by recruitment for the Boer war and was of a concern by the Fabian Society and Kipling.
There was one law in the land, for rich and poor alike, compare with pre Revolutionary France and where the Feudal system survived. The Prussian Junkers Officers of the early 20 th century practically had a separate legal system. Read Arthur Bryant where he quotes foreigners who have travelled through Britian. One comment which stands out is German who notices Britons can afford to eat butcher’s meat once a day. In the 1940s Sicily there were fifty year old men who had never eaten meat!
Many of Britain’s problems come from the creation of slums in the period of 1789 to 1840, the rise in prostitution which is largely an urban issue, being one of them .
As Orwell said Britain was far more peaceful than other countries, less violence’ far greater freedom of speech , an absence of a secret Police and militarised gendarmeries, a home was the castle and the King’s men could not enter without a warrant.
Compare like with like for the same period.
Nah.
I mean ok sure regency gentlemen were taught that but they were also were permitted to rape their wives. While the law said you had to house and feed your wife, it permitted you to drag her from wherever you wanted her to be which might include an attic, or a prisoner in her own home without access to her own children (The prince regent for which that period gets its name did that to his wife, so even being a Queen didn’t protect you). They also got all your money when you married unless some complicated legal maneuvering happened. And all this gallantry was only owed women of your social class and above. You did not have to be gallant to the kitchenmaid, or even necessarily the governess. While it was somewhat frowned on to canoodle with either of those, if you did and got her “in trouble”, she was the one thrown out with a reference. You could also as a gallant regency gent sell your minor daughter into marriage to pay your debts or refuse her permission to who she did want to marry.
And if you were a regency gent who’d gotten in a bit of money problems, there was always the heiress escape. Yes, the best way was to convince her to marry you but if that didn’t work or her father was against it, you could abduct her and rape her and then they’d consent to the marriage to save her reputation. So no, again, I’ll take men who didn’t study up on boxing or gallantry over those that period any day of the week. It makes a great setting for novels because you need conflict and obstacles to make a good story but for a good life the less of it the better.
My grandfather was an athlete. He was county champion when he was 14. He only owned one pair of shoes which were worn on Sundays. He ran in bare feet. When he retired, he taught underprivileged boys, as they were called then, to box. A charitable endeavour. He believed sport kept boys out of trouble.
They also had the sheer rude temerity to pass child labor laws and urge the end of slavery in Britain. Genteel owners of overseas plantation operations and exploitative factories lose a few chivalry points in my book, be they never so genteel on the surface. Consider how they treated some of your laboring class ancestors, and mine too. And some of the rather more ruthless profiteers were among the prosperous merchant middle class, or bourgeoisie, granted. Why do you labor to cut out the middle, while seeming lionize to the laboring class and the Old Ruling Order?
And women were treated with such unstinting respect and honor prior to the late-18th century: never beaten, raped, prostituted, disowned for pre-marital pregnancy, or murdered? Must have been a wonderland.
“What is a lording’s pomp? A cumbrous load / Disguising oft the wretch of human kind / Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refined” -Robert Burns
Nah.
I mean ok sure regency gentlemen were taught that but they were also were permitted to rape their wives. While the law said you had to house and feed your wife, it permitted you to drag her from wherever you wanted her to be which might include an attic, or a prisoner in her own home without access to her own children (The prince regent for which that period gets its name did that to his wife, so even being a Queen didn’t protect you). They also got all your money when you married unless some complicated legal maneuvering happened. And all this gallantry was only owed women of your social class and above. You did not have to be gallant to the kitchenmaid, or even necessarily the governess. While it was somewhat frowned on to canoodle with either of those, if you did and got her “in trouble”, she was the one thrown out with a reference. You could also as a gallant regency gent sell your minor daughter into marriage to pay your debts or refuse her permission to who she did want to marry.
And if you were a regency gent who’d gotten in a bit of money problems, there was always the heiress escape. Yes, the best way was to convince her to marry you but if that didn’t work or her father was against it, you could abduct her and rape her and then they’d consent to the marriage to save her reputation. So no, again, I’ll take men who didn’t study up on boxing or gallantry over those that period any day of the week. It makes a great setting for novels because you need conflict and obstacles to make a good story but for a good life the less of it the better.
Because they have guns.
Yes, they do. At least in the US, the pro-military patriotism, the celebration of past victories (especially WWII), all the praise of the police: most of that is exactly men speaking of the need for good men to protect us from the bad men.
The left wing middle class have been undermining chivalry, gallantry and good manners since 1789, the result Epstein, Weinstein and others. Ibn Khaldun said when men are protected by walls and garrisons, they lose their uprightness and manliness. He was comparing town dwellers with Beduin. Orwell said good people sleep peacefully abed because rough men stand ready to do violence.
Orwell said we have spent two hundred years sawing away the branch which supports us and what is below is not a bed of roses but a cess pit full of barbed wire.
Gallantry – courageous behaviour and polite attention paid by men to women.
A Bryant, historian said in Regency Britain boxing was the national nursery of manliness. A gentleman was expected to be a proper man with his fists and know how to clear lane of men with his morleys. Historically, boys from all ages were taught to box from the age of five or six years which combined with other sports meant they were fit by the age of sixteen years..
A gentleman was expcted to be able to defend a lady with hist fist, cane or sword, engage with her in polite conversation, treat her with respect and dance with her. Two hundred and fifty years of villification of gallantry by The Left and it produces Epstein and Weinstein. Manners have so declined that it now requires a law to make it illegal to film up a lady’s skirt.
Over the centuries Britain produced a society with a very low level of crime compared to others by promoting honesty, gallantry and good manners which require emotional maturity, a sense of responsibility, self discipline and self control. Cpmpare the lyrics of ” Love Child ” with gangsta rap.
The Supremes , Love Child 1968 – YouTube
The post 1960s Left Wing Middle Class have mocked all these traditional values and supported a hedonistic, if it feels good do it, mentality. Consequently we have loutish men and unlady like women. The massive increase in bad behaviour, including rape, harms women more than men.
Because they have guns.
Well in a manner of speaking yes. Why do women need “good men” to protect us? Why not simply have men treat us in a civil manner as the norm and when there is a criminal matter the government take action as it does men, a government made up more or less equally of men and women. Men don’t speak of needing good men to protect them from bad men do they?
In other words, feminists hate the fact that they need good men to protect them from bad men, so why can’t bad men just not exist?
Criado Perez is a self-publicist whose campaign to get Jane Austen on a banknote conveniently overlooked the fact that Elizabeth Fry and Florence Nightingale had already been so honoured.
Criado Perez is a self-publicist whose campaign to get Jane Austen on a banknote conveniently overlooked the fact that Elizabeth Fry and Florence Nightingale had already been so honoured.
What explicitly is Phipps doing to make this dream of no prisons a reality? Other than pointing out her problem with other women, what is she DOING to FIX things? Writing a book isn’t it, sweetie. I rail against the likes of Bindel who sit behind their computers writing opinion pieces, but what is actually being done? Bindel vilifies the likes of Kellie Jay Keen who is out there doing the work, putting her safety at risk, to bring the public’s attention to what’s going on with the trans lobby.
Thank you to Martin for her work getting upskirting made illegal. When I was 16 I was shopping at a secondhand store when an employee got on his hands and knees behind a rack of clothing, reached under with a mirror in hand and attempted to hold it under my skirt. Thankfully this was before smartphones so he didn’t get a picture.
What explicitly is Phipps doing to make this dream of no prisons a reality? Other than pointing out her problem with other women, what is she DOING to FIX things? Writing a book isn’t it, sweetie. I rail against the likes of Bindel who sit behind their computers writing opinion pieces, but what is actually being done? Bindel vilifies the likes of Kellie Jay Keen who is out there doing the work, putting her safety at risk, to bring the public’s attention to what’s going on with the trans lobby.
Thank you to Martin for her work getting upskirting made illegal. When I was 16 I was shopping at a secondhand store when an employee got on his hands and knees behind a rack of clothing, reached under with a mirror in hand and attempted to hold it under my skirt. Thankfully this was before smartphones so he didn’t get a picture.
So, if a woman is violated by the rich and powerful (Jeffrey Epstein et al), justice is hard to come by. Nothing new there. But now to the left, if she is violated by someone marginalized and oppressed (immigrants, people of color), her quest for justice becomes an exercise in racism and oppression. I can’t blame her for wondering if the game is rigged!
Virginia Guiffre got very rich by suing Prince Andrew and she was hardly a victim at age 17. She proudly called her mother to say she was being banged by a prince. There may have been others who were actually victimized who didn’t have such good lawyers.
Virginia Guiffre got very rich by suing Prince Andrew and she was hardly a victim at age 17. She proudly called her mother to say she was being banged by a prince. There may have been others who were actually victimized who didn’t have such good lawyers.
So, if a woman is violated by the rich and powerful (Jeffrey Epstein et al), justice is hard to come by. Nothing new there. But now to the left, if she is violated by someone marginalized and oppressed (immigrants, people of color), her quest for justice becomes an exercise in racism and oppression. I can’t blame her for wondering if the game is rigged!
Great article – thanks, Victoria.
Great article – thanks, Victoria.
From the heyday of BBC upskirting:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=5uxnZAMY7oM&feature=sharea
Benny Hill would have gotten laughs for upskirting. Times have changed.
My GOD…..what women do to each other is just astounding.
And as politically incorrect and potentially offensive as this statement is….
Why does it seem that wherever there is some level of shear insanity around some social issue/cause, that there is a cohort of white, progressive women right at the heart of it?
Is there a group out there more capable of getting themselves twisted in mental and emotional knots?
My GOD…..what women do to each other is just astounding.
And as politically incorrect and potentially offensive as this statement is….
Why does it seem that wherever there is some level of shear insanity around some social issue/cause, that there is a cohort of white, progressive women right at the heart of it?
Is there a group out there more capable of getting themselves twisted in mental and emotional knots?
What is there still to achieve that is feasible without totalitarianism? Love to know.
Terrific piece, Victoria (said she through her tears), and thank you for this new law, Gina Martin. The moral I draw is this: now, we’re not even allowed to have our accomplishments. Which is where I came in . . .
Only a few years ago the leftist mantra was “believe all women” when they were trying to stall Kavanaugh from being sworn in to the SCOTUS. There are no principals in politics, only convenient narratives to enrich those in power.
Strange coincidence isn’t it that when it comes to violent crimes like rape, assault and murder it’s only in cases where women are the victims that we hear the Hew and Cry that prisons are so bad that rapists, batterers and murderers should not be subjected to it.
Seems to me that there is sort of a continuum of offences here:
“Up-skirting”:- Didn’t used to be a crime, but now is.
“Underground Staring”:- Epitomised by posters on the London Underground warning that “intrusive staring of a sexual nature is not tolerated’. Notwithstanding that warning I think it is still not actually a crime on the Tube to look at a pretty girl.
“Standing on the corner watching all the girls go by” a la Dean Martin, who further opined: “Buddy you can’t go to gaol for what you’re thinking”:- At least not yet. But if the femi-nazis get their way it will be a crime very shortly! As will other thought crimes.
Seems to me that there is sort of a continuum of offences here:
“Up-skirting”:- Didn’t used to be a crime, but now is.
“Underground Staring”:- Epitomised by posters on the London Underground warning that “intrusive staring of a sexual nature is not tolerated’. Notwithstanding that warning I think it is still not actually a crime on the Tube to look at a pretty girl.
“Standing on the corner watching all the girls go by” a la Dean Martin, who further opined: “Buddy you can’t go to gaol for what you’re thinking”:- At least not yet. But if the femi-nazis get their way it will be a crime very shortly! As will other thought crimes.
A strange piece, with rhetorical tricks and quotations which look like they were taken out of context for effect.
The argument seems to be that feminism should eschew psychological and sociological interests in the name of a kind of childish moral simplicity.
The subject of the piece seems to have grown up a bit. The author perhaps less so.
I’m not sure what you’re saying here. When a woman is attacked by a man, she should endeavor to take into account the sociological and psychological context within which the attack took place?
No. When feminists think, or write articles for Unherd, or reflect on issues or events, then it should be based on more than immediate anger or ideological tropes.
The author is critical of feminists who want to look a bit deeper, or even – god forbid – reflect on their own assumptions.
I understand. Thanks for clarifying. I’m all for women taking self-defense or situational awareness classes. There are bad men out there; unfortunately modern feminists often use them as an example of how all men are.
Which leads you to suspect that for many of them the psychological pleasure they get out of hating on men outweighs everything else.
Even the obvious advantage of having good men on your side.
Even on here some of them just can’t help being obnoxious, even if they create resistance to their cause in the process.
It seems to me it’s more sexist men who dominate the comments here.
But if you are the kind of men who goes around talking about feminists hating men and how obnoxious people feminists are, are you in fact a good man? Are you in fact on woman’s side? Or are you just squeamish?
It seems to me it’s more sexist men who dominate the comments here.
But if you are the kind of men who goes around talking about feminists hating men and how obnoxious people feminists are, are you in fact a good man? Are you in fact on woman’s side? Or are you just squeamish?
Except we don’t. This is what folks like you claim for us. But you don’t actually read what feminists write. You take a snippet here and a snippet there and more often than not the interpretation of a snippet that someone who disapproves of feminism and then launch yourselves there. And always, always you confuse a dislike of patriarchy with a hatred of men. As if disliking a system that keeps oneself with inferior rights and inferior social status is irrational. Because it would be so much more rational to agree one should be harmed.
Which leads you to suspect that for many of them the psychological pleasure they get out of hating on men outweighs everything else.
Even the obvious advantage of having good men on your side.
Even on here some of them just can’t help being obnoxious, even if they create resistance to their cause in the process.
Except we don’t. This is what folks like you claim for us. But you don’t actually read what feminists write. You take a snippet here and a snippet there and more often than not the interpretation of a snippet that someone who disapproves of feminism and then launch yourselves there. And always, always you confuse a dislike of patriarchy with a hatred of men. As if disliking a system that keeps oneself with inferior rights and inferior social status is irrational. Because it would be so much more rational to agree one should be harmed.
I understand. Thanks for clarifying. I’m all for women taking self-defense or situational awareness classes. There are bad men out there; unfortunately modern feminists often use them as an example of how all men are.
No. When feminists think, or write articles for Unherd, or reflect on issues or events, then it should be based on more than immediate anger or ideological tropes.
The author is critical of feminists who want to look a bit deeper, or even – god forbid – reflect on their own assumptions.
I’m not sure what you’re saying here. When a woman is attacked by a man, she should endeavor to take into account the sociological and psychological context within which the attack took place?
A strange piece, with rhetorical tricks and quotations which look like they were taken out of context for effect.
The argument seems to be that feminism should eschew psychological and sociological interests in the name of a kind of childish moral simplicity.
The subject of the piece seems to have grown up a bit. The author perhaps less so.