The Acceptable Face Of Prejudice by Les May

WHEN Davina McCall tweeted: 'Female abduction / murder is extremely rare. Yes we should all be vigilant when out alone. But this level of fear-mongering isn’t healthy. And men’s mental health is an issue as well. Calling all men out as dangerous is bad for our sons, brothers, partners.' she found herself being attacked by people eager to prove the equivalent of ‘black is white’.

As I pointed out a few days ago in the past eleven years an average 28% of killings of women were by someone not known to them compared with 51% of killings of men. In the same period on average more than twice as many men were murdered each year than women, 408 men and 189 women.

When I read that some of the responses referred to ‘an epidemic of violence against women’ I thought that either the definition of violence had been subtly changed whilst I wasn’t looking or the people who were making them were talking about something other than the seemingly random killing of a young woman which had prompted McCall’s original tweet.

What is not in question is that over the same 11 year period where the killer was known to a male victim in 6% of cases the killer was a partner or ex-partner, but where the victim was a woman the killer was a partner or ex-partner in 60% of cases. In spite of their marked asymmetry what these figures demonstrate is that violence leading to death is not exclusively the preserve of men. Some women are violent too and no amount of excuses designed to exonerate them will change that.

A common assumption is that domestic abuse is also something which is exclusively carried out be men. But the term itself embraces all forms of abuse within a domestic situation irrespective of the relationship between perpetrator and victim. A more useful approach is to examine ‘partner abuse’ which occurs within/between married or cohabiting couples.

Data from the Office for National Statistics shows that for the 12 months ending March this year 4% of people aged 16 to 74 were victims of partner abuse, e.g. non-physical, threats, force, sexual and stalking, on one or more occasions. A frequent complaint by women eager to over egg the pudding is that there is under reporting to the police of such incidents.

Not subject to this complaint as they were collected from a random sample of adults by means of a questionnaire, are data taken from the Home Office Statistical Bulletin published in 2012. This does not report sexual abuse and stalking by partners separately from the domestic context, however it does report non-physical abuse, threats and force by partners and it shows that 5% of women and 3% of men reported one or more such incidents in the previous year. It also reported that 24% of women and 12% of men claimed to have experienced at least one incident of non-physical abuse, threats and force by partners at some time in their lives between the ages of 16 and 59. What is clear is that women as well as men abuse their partners; only the extent of abuse differs. Vague talk about ‘changing the culture’ or demanding that misogyny be made a hate crime whilst always insisting that men are the problem and women are the victims, will not change things. It is no more than the socially acceptable face of prejudice. Similar levels of prejudice on the basis of skin colour would result in howls of protest. If we are shocked that 1 in 20 women experience abuse by a partner in any one year, we ought to be equally shocked that 1 in 33 men experience the same. If we are shocked that an average of 52 women a year die in random attacks we should be equally shocked to discover that for men the figure is four time higher at 209.

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The Wrong Colour Of Black? by Les May

IN November 2018, I wrote an article for Northern Voices with the title ‘The Silent Sisterhood’. It raised the question of why feminist politicians and journalists had so little to say about the plight of Asia Bibi, a poor Christian woman who had fallen foul of Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy laws, had spent eight years in jail, had finally been declared innocent by the Supreme Court, and was still being held in custody so that the court’s decision could be ‘reviewed’ as a sop to the mobs demanding that she be hanged.

As I pointed out at the time there has never been any shortage of white, affluent, western feminists ready to discover examples of ‘misogyny’. Just another case of selective outrage it would seem. Is it going to happen all over again with the Black Lives Matter supporters displaying their own unique brand of selective outrage?

On Tuesday a 22-year-old woman died of severe injuries in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh after being gang raped. The same day another 19-year-old woman died two weeks after she was gang-raped and strangled by upper caste men. Both were Dalits and in India's caste-based hierarchy Dalits are ranked the lowest and have been referred to as ‘untouchables’ in the past. Last month, a 13 year old Dalit girl was raped and murdered in the same state. Last year, two Dalit children were allegedly beaten to death after defecating in the open.

As with religious minorities in Pakistan where Christians like Asia Bibi are persecuted and young Hindu women forcibly converted to Islam before being married to older men, India’s caste system is structural discrimination because although in both cases technically illegal, it is built into the fabric of those societies.

Concern is expressed about Facebook, Instagram and Twitter becoming echo chambers reinforcing the existing attitudes and prejudices of their users. We hear nothing about how the choice of issues by the mainstream media determines what is ‘news’ and what is not; what causes outrage and what does not. We all know and can remember the name of George Floyd because his murder has been extensively covered in the press and on television. Unlike the USA, India and Pakistan are not part of the affluent West where ‘people are just like us’ and those of us who happen to have been born with a white skin can be made to feel guilty about events which happened a long time ago and in which we played no part.

Will anyone be asked if they will ‘take a knee’ in memory of these two young Dalit women; will some ‘Royal’ chip in his four penn’orth? I doubt it; selective outrage is the order of the day!

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Review: Transsexuals vs Cocks in Frocks?

 by Les May

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 "Shit Wigs and Steroids: Anarchism's (and the left's) Tolerance of Delusion" 

 'BOOKFAIRS & BULLSHIT'

This booklet is an A5 size 24-page critique of identity politics which challenges what it sees as the dominant politics of a 'wannabe' London based elite who are setting themselves up as a mouthpiece for current anarchist thought in the UK.  It claims to be rooted in a northern working-class perspective based on anti-authoritatianism.  It is a collective project that questions what it sees as the 'bogus claims of the transgender headcases' ; it entitles itself under the e-mail address:  newoffensive01@gmail.com

 Price £2 including postage & packing.

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I WAS asked to review this booklet by someone who had erroneously been identified as the author.  When this came to the attention of the real author he initiated contact with the supposed author, which led to me receiving a review copy.  Any opinions in this review are entirely my own and should not be attributed to anyone else.

Reviewing this booklet is not easy.  It is difficult to discern a linear sequence and it can be read in a number of different ways.  At one level it is one episode of an anarchist soap opera in which the horny handed sons of toil from the gritty north take on the effete, never done a proper day’s work in their lives, London scribblers and their acolytes.  The title says it all ‘Shit Wigs and Steroids. Anarchism’s and the left’s Tolerance of Delusion.  Bookfairs & Bullshit’.

Eager to wash anarchism’s dirty washing in public we get three pages, or should that be six pages, I said it was difficult to discern a linear sequence, of ‘What Happened at the Liverpool ‘Anarchist’ Bookfair 2018’.  Certainly nothing for the bookfair organisers to be proud of.  At this point you realise that the author’s way of expressing things is, shall we say, OTT.  Here’s a sample ‘… his gang of ponces have supported violence against women through attempting to stop free speech in a public environment’.  So far as I am concerned their ‘crime’ is nothing to do with violence against women, it is attempting to stifle debate on transgender issues.  At this point I began to wonder if the author had swallowed the whole of the feminist lexicon.  Here’s another sample which is the title of a booklet the author encourages us to read, ‘Gender is not an Identity, it is a Tool of Patriarchy a Feminist View of Gender Identity Politics’.  Patriarchy, Feminist, Gender all in one sentence, pass me the sick bag please!

Usually when I read this sort of stuff I assume the writer is what I call one of ‘The Leg Over Brigade’, i.e. a man who spouts feminist pleasing language in the hope of being viewed favourably in the amorous stakes.  I don’t think this is the case here, the author seems to genuinely believe what he is writing and I doubt that his overuse of the slang terms for female genetalia as descriptions for people who views he disagrees with, will endear him to many feminists.

Anarchism he says ‘has pretty much become a wendy house for children to play in’.  He means of course the ‘London effete’ version of anarchism and lays at its door ‘authoritarian behaviour, censorship, bullying and (yawn) misogyny’.  These charges are not unique to anarchism, ‘the Left’ is riddled with similar exponents.  ‘The transgender arguments are at best nonsense, at worst (yawn) misogynistic, indulgent and delusional’, he tells us.  Well that’s a point of view, an opinion, an assertion.  This is anger talking.

But if you first strip away the anger, then all of the feminist rhetoric, you realise he has a point, you’ve just got to unearth it.

What this booklet is all about is the proposed changes to the 2004 Gender Recognition Act (GRA) which could move away from medical assessment to ‘self certifying’, and about the people who refuse to engage in discussion about the implications of such a change and want to bully the rest of society into accepting it without question.

I’ve written previously about what I see as the absurdity of a man with a full set of wedding tackle being allowed to claim he is a woman and be housed in a women’s prison, the ‘Cocks in Frocks’ syndrome as the author rather nicely puts it.

What I had not considered is how the 5000 transexual women for whom the 2004 GRA was created, might view self certifying.  It’s an interesting perspective.  The rational, understanding, empathetic way the 14 contributors to this piece have structured their argument and their recognition that whilst it is women who will be most affected, changes to the GRA will affect the whole of society, is an example of how this debate should be conducted.

I found this so striking that I was initially tempted to quote it in full.  I won’t; you’ll have to get hold of a copy of the booklet and read it for yourself. Significantly some of the contributors to this are older women who ‘transitioned’ up to 50 years ago.  Almost all the noise comes from those of university age,

Much of the author’s anger is directed at the politicisation of identity, of irrelevant lifestyle choices, of ‘Look at me, me, me I’m non-binary’ or the way that some people portray individual decisions as somehow taking a radical stance, and think we should all take notice. I’m inclined to agree.  My wife, my sister, my sisters-in-law, my daughters, my granddaughters, couldn’t care less. 

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The Silent Sisterhood

by Les May

Asia Bibi

THERE’s a pub in Slaithwaite, or ‘Slawit’ as the locals call it, by the name of ‘The Silent Woman’. I imagine it has done a roaring trade recently as all feminist journalists and politicians hide there in case someone should chance to raise with them the case of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who has fallen foul of Pakistan’s draconian, but vague, blasphemy laws.

A year ago the Twitterati were obsessing about the self promoting #MeToo movement; Harriet Harman was in full flow demanding anonymous ‘hot lines’ so that supposed male miscreants could be ‘outed’ and Clive Lewis was being pilloried by MPs Stella Creasy, Yvette Cooper, Jess Phillips, Mims Davies, Justine Greening and Guardian journalist Nadia Khomami, about something he said, which none of them actually witnessed.   More recently Boris Johnson was being accused of ‘Islamophobia’ for a comment about some women wearing burkas.

So what have this self righteous bunch had to say about the Asia Bibi case?  Not a lot it would seem.  Whilst they are keen to promote the idea that western women are living in fear of walking down the street in case some man wolf whistles at them, makes some tasteless remark or just says something they don’t like, a poor Pakistani woman who has just had her sentence overturned after eight years in jail with the prospect of death by hanging to look forward to, has been abandoned to her fate by these supposed liberals.

If anyone in this world is a victim it is Asia Bibi.  She picked up a drinking cup belonging to a Muslim woman and was accused of ‘polluting’ it simply by being a Christian woman and hence ‘unclean’.  An argument followed and lead to her being accused of blasphemy.   First she was beaten up by a mob which broke into her house, then she was charged with blasphemy, found guilty and sentenced to death.   This was upheld by a higher court.   Last week this sentence was overturned by the Pakistan Supreme Court which said the women who had made the accusations against her were lying.

What followed was that mobs demanding she be hanged rioted for several days doing what has been claimed to be £900 million of damage.  Imran Khan, the prime minister, struck a deal with the rioters that she would no be allowed to leave the country until the verdict had been ‘reviewed’.  Forcing her to stay in a country where tens of thousands of people want to kill her is inhumane.  Her lawyer has left the country in fear of his life.

I am normally very reluctant to resort to the word ‘racism’ to describe someone’s attitudes or beliefs, but I cannot help noticing that Asia Bibi is a poor, brown, ‘asian’ woman and the women who do the shouting about ‘misogyny’ are affluent, white and western.

The failure of these women to use their positions to draw the attention of the British public to Asia Bibi’s plight is difficult to explain unless they simply do not care, don’t think it will raise their profile in circles which will help them in their career or are afraid that they will be accused of ‘Islamophobia’.

There is one bit of good news. Heywood and Middleton MP Liz McInnes has written to the Minister of State, Mark Field, about this case and asked him to encourage his colleagues at the Home Office to consider the religious elements of this matter before making decisions on asylum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia_Bibi_blasphemy_case