Pointless But It Does My Head In

[Benny B]

Mr Tea, you said this case was 'utterly indicative' of whats fucked about our society. But this case and verdict were highly irregular. AFAIK there isn't a trend of privileged women gaining impunity from assaulting men (or other crimes) because their career is deemed more important. But switch the gender around and I think you could probably find many examples of this happening (and a lot more sexual assault and harrassment cases too). As baboon was saying these anomalous cases getting blanket coverage aren't indicative of anything really if you just take them at face value. And it just feeds the misogynist trolls and commonly-held sexist myths embedded in public attitudes.

Clearly the public reaction to a case like this is far more important to you than the case itself, which is telling.

In a way yes its more valuable to look at public reactions and attitudes, how the media portrays women (whether they are the victims or the perps of the crime) and general trends of violence, rather than picking on an anomalous example and declaring the decline of civilisation or whatever- you'll almost always find sexism hidden in plain view when women are being judged by the court, by the media or by the public - regardless of whether she is guilty or not.

I just find it bizarre that your first reaction to a woman literally getting away with attempted murder - which story is obviously more about the privileges of wealth, class and education than it is about gender, but never mind - is try to bend it into your narrative of universal female victimhood. Well actually I don't, because it's entirely in keeping with the stuff you've been coming out with for ages, but it is nuts.

To be honest my first reaction was that it was quite an unusual case - a woman assaulting a man and getting away with it through privilege (though it can't be said that she had privilege over him, being a cambridge-educated white male himself). Then I thought, I bet the sexist media and the MRAs will have a field day with this and, lo and behold, I was right.

Then the reporting; photos taken from her facebook splashed everywhere (visible nipples: bonus!), she met the guy on tinder (so probably a slag then...), she's described as the 'Slasher Surgeon', info about her being abused in previous relationships and her 'troubled life' tucked away at the end of the article and more or less overlooked (or mocked in the comments). No surprises here then.

Then of course the usual palpable hatred of women in the comments boxes and on twitter.

So no, I don't think my reaction was bizarre or nutty at all actually.



edit, btw she apparently admitted a charge of unlawful wounding, so not 'literally attempted murder' then.

[sufi]

People who sign emails and posts at the end with: Peace
People who talk too loud
People who are late
People who call and don't leave a message
and sometimes just People...

Happy decade for this moaning thread Martin
Peace!

[Benny B]

Well whatever the (manifold) problems there are in our media culture, that's a separate issue from the miscarriage of the case itself.

I don't know if the media is necessarily harsher on women than on men in cases like this. I think it's more complicated than that. On one hand, much of the media effectively tried Amanda "Foxy Knoxy" Knox in absentia and decided she was guilty of Meredith Kercher's murder because she 'looked the sort' and because there was (allegedly) sex involved, and everyone loves a femme fatale. OTOH, I remember the media being overwhelmingly defensive of Louise Woodward, who of course turned out to be guilty as sin, because she was kind of baby-faced and innocent-looking. So it can certainly go both ways.

worth noting that both 'femme fatale' and 'baby-faced and innocent' are both sexist stereotypes that are not generally advantageous for women: they're two sides of the same coin.

[Mr. Tea]

worth noting that both 'femme fatale' and 'baby-faced and innocent' are both sexist stereotypes that are not generally advantageous for women.

Louise Woodward killed a baby and got off with less than ten months on remand as time served. There is no fucking way you can twist that into a woman being disadvantaged by stereotypes.

[Benny B]

Louise Woodward killed a baby and got off with less than ten months on remand as time served. There is no fucking way you can twist that into a woman being disadvantaged by stereotypes.

I didn't try to. Read what I wrote again and have a think about it.

[firefinga]

Happy decade for this moaning thread Martin
Peace!

Everybody loves a moaner!

To another decade!

[Mr. Tea]

Benny, we're only ever going to go round and round in circles in discussions about anything to do with gender because you hold this dogmatic position that every conceivable form of gender inequality benefits men at the expense of women. You stick to it with a religious conviction but it's demonstrably falsified by a wide range of statistics, from school achievement to suicide rates, that having conversations with you about it is like trying to discuss geology with a Flat Earther. It also prevents you from seeing that it's your insistence that anyone who doesn't share your orthodoxy must be an "MRA" and a misogynist, or a least a misogyny-apologist - a heretic, an infidel - is exactly the thing that's driving the anti-feminist backlash and this big resurgence in actual misogyny. We're not going to resolve this so I think we should probably just block each other.

[Benny B]

I think you might be getting a bit carried away Mr Tea. Read back over the conversation - I've been perfectly civil and haven't even said anything particularly controversial, or anything about you personally. I tried to stick to the point and back it up with a bit of evidence. All you've done is froth at the mouth, ignore or misread the majority of what I wrote, and accuse me personally of being some sort of lunatic.

[Mr. Tea]

It's not just this thread though, it's a persistent position you've taken loads of times before. I'm sure you're a great guy and have only good intentions, and god knows the world could do with more of that right now, but I see your arguments as coming from a very dogmatic kind of feminism that's heavily based in academia and the more fringe areas of activism and that's pretty far removed from most people's lived experiences, and in some respects is flatly contradicted by real-world facts, and which I think may be having negative effects on both women and men. (And that's without even going into the potentially much worse effects on transgender people, which subvert47 has repeatedly tried to discuss with you, to no great success.) So I'm sorry if that last post seemed unnecessarily personal, but at the same time, in an online space with a political centre of gravity that's pretty far to the left, it's specifically a lot of things that you've said about sex and gender that I think are unhelpful or harmful.

[baboon2004]

It also prevents you from seeing that it's your insistence that anyone who doesn't share your orthodoxy must be an "MRA" and a misogynist, or a least a misogyny-apologist - a heretic, an infidel - [I]is exactly the thing that's driving the anti-feminist backlash and this big resurgence in actual misogyny.

But that's a gobsmackingly outrageous claim. Lucky for you there are next to no women on this forum.

[droid]

Benny is indeed dogmatic on issues of gender.

That does not mean hes wrong in this case. Baboon is OTM.

[Mr. Tea]

But that's a gobsmackingly outrageous claim. Lucky for you there are next to no women on this forum.

Well that's how I see it. It's just obvious. On the one hand you have the misogynistic stereotype of the 'Feminazi', and on the other, feminists who are only too happy to fit that stereotype by being far more interested in demonizing men than in actual equality.

There used to be a woman on this forum. She had some worthwhile things to say sometimes but she also made claims like literally one third of all men are rapists, male schoolteachers are inherently creepy and the main reason divorced fathers want to see their kids is in order to fuck them. So yeah.

[john eden]

For the record there have been several women on this forum who have made great contributions. It wasn't always obvious from their usernames or posts that they were women either.

Hello if you still lurk here. And sorry about all this.

[john eden]

Also if she had a decent brief, she would have just claimed she was doing a bit of surgery homework.

[Mr. Tea]

I recall there were a few others very early on, around when I joined, but nomad was by far the most active. I think at one point she had the highest post count if you added up her three accounts. There's a lot she said that I disagreed with (obviously) but a lot that was interesting too. She seems like she'd be a fun person to go drinking with, meds allowing.

It was funny how zhao would sometimes appeal to her for backup when he was arguing with me or vimothy, but at other times she'd tear him to pieces after he came out with some gibberish about fruitarian proto-hominids or whatever.