...to think that women should be able to warn other women....

@TarantinoIsAMisogynist personally I wouldn't drop a friend who made a terrible mistake or committed an awful act if they recognised that what they did was wrong and vowed to ensure it wouldn’t happen again. I believe in redemption.

'Discomfort' could mean anything - up to and including rape.

I've lost count of the number of times I've seen a thread on MN started by an OP who describes herself as being 'uncomfortable' with a sexual encounter, when the description she gives clearly indicates rape. Women frequently minimise what has happened to them, often because accepting the reality is hard and scary.

So I wouldn't assume that the mildness of the word 'discomfort' can tell you anything meaningful.

Wait a minute - you think people should only be able to drop a friend if that friend poses a personal danger to them? Most people want friends with values that align with their own, regardless of whether they post a personal threat. For me that rules out homophobes, men who abuse their wives and a whole load of others....

I would definitely drop a friend for racism, because it's incompatible with my values. There is plenty of anti-racism stuff out there they can use to educate themselves, it's not my responsibility to do so.

Drink driving - if a one-off, I'd have a serious word with them. If it was something they did regularly/intentionally, then yes, I'd drop them. I don't want to be friends with people who are deliberately reckless about endangering other people's lives.

If I had a friend who I thought/knew had sexually assaulted men, then they might not be a threat to me as a woman, but I'd sure as hell still drop them. And again, it wouldn't be my responsibility to rehabilitate them so they stop sex offending.

Indeed. So little has been released. Yet some posters have assumed rape. It may have been or discomfort might be rough sex, inexperienced sex, sex after getting lessons online porn, or anything else. We don't actually know

I accept that sex offenders may pose a life long threat to women but this doesn’t quite explain why male friends of a male accused of assault are also justified in totally and permanently ostracising their friend. I’m not talking about rape here but assault which can be unwanted touching. This is a moral judgement and is potentially a somewhat dangerous path to go down. Where do you start with permanently ostracising friends? Speeding? Drink Driving? Racism?

Isn’t it better to work with your friends in helping to support, educate and hopefully rehabilitate them rather than cutting them off from their community with no regard for their mental health.

I've worked with sex offenders. They do not become 'safe'. Ever. Similarly men who abuse their partners almost never stop. It's something like a 90% recidivism rate. And a similarly high number of accused but not convicted men are in fact, guilty. It just doesn't pass the 'beyond a reasonable doubt' bar.

That doesn't mean locking them up forever, but it does mean being realistic that the issue we are talking about is pervasive, pernicious and serious. The justice system doesn't work, rape is essentially legal, and we are doing nothing to deal with the causes.

And the idea that not only do women need to accept this state of affairs, but also remain friends with men who are probably rapists, is offensive to a degree I find hard to stomach.

If we lived in a different world, there would probably be a different way to deal with sex offending. Expert panels of judges rather than juries just for one. But it won't happen.

What did the boy do? I'm confused. It never says.

Presumably people on this thread who think a person accused of any sort of sexual assault should be permanently ostracised also have a “lock up and throw away the key” attitude to prisoners.

Which still tells us nothing. People are reacting to this case like we have any details at all, when we don't. I'm a survivor of rape and assault myself so it's not like I don't stand up for survivors, but I have also known rumours to harm innocent people (a friend of mine was accused of assault, then cleared due to security camera footage showing he hadn't been at the location). People are treating this like it's a Brock Turner case when there is no information either way.

I'm not specifically talking about this case. However, PP said that the young man concerned referred to the incident as 'unforgivable'.

@MrsTerryPratchett the girl in this case is quoted as having expressed “discomfort” over a sexual interaction with the boy. Discomfort does not seem to imply she was alleging a serious sexual assault.

I literally quoted someone who did want women to either go through proper channels (i.e. not be believed and not get a conviction because almost no one does) or STFU. The proper channels are utterly useless.

And no, if a man I knew sexually assaulted someone I wouldn't help him 'navigate' it. It's not a fuck up or a mistake. Sexual offending has a very high recidivism rate, people tend to escalate, and the only real way to stop yourself being a victim is to avoid that person. And tell as many women as possible about it. So they can avoid him too.

I'm going to post the picture again because everyone seems to be unaware that the vast majority of sex offending is completely without consequence for the man.

Quite.

Often too in a school setting it is not uncommon for any girl who tries to tell her friends she has been sexually assaulted by one of their friends, to be the one disbelieved and ostracised, especially if the boy was popular and attractive. And there will normally be no “proper channels” to go through.

She may the one to develop an eating disorder, become alcoholic, or kill herself while the boy goes on to great things.

In fact in Scotland not so long ago the “proper channels” let a young man off convicted rape as he was under 25 and wanted to take up a scholarship in the USA.
Or think of the Dutch rapist-of-a-12-year old athlete representing his country in the Olympics last summer. How are those girls doing?

I do though feel sorry for the young man here, and the girls too. He was evidently sorry and surely there could have been some other form of resolution. The girls may now feel they have killed him. It is all tragic.

@MrsTerryPratchett nobody is suggesting women should stfu about sexual assault. But why does someone have to be completely ostracised by their entire friendship group / community on the basis of an allegation?

Why can’t you express your anger, disapproval and disgust with a friend over something they’ve done while still supporting them in finding a way to navigate through their massive fuck up.

If a member of my family did something shitty I wouldn’t cut them off and nor would I necessarily cut off a close friend. What’s the point of friends if they desert you at your lowest point.

Apropos the idea of mean students ostracising a friend whom they assume has done something wrong, and quite aside from this case - and not just in alleged sexual assault cases - I am aware from experience that in large organisation, if a person has allegedly done something wrong and is suspended from their job pending an investigation, all their former friends and colleagues within the organisation are told to ostracise them, and they are told not to speak to anyone.

Proper channels don't work. So you really think women should just STFU about sexual assault.

Completely agree. This is the most reasonable post on the entire thread.

Exactly.

A tragic suicide in the wake of a sexual assault is a story we're all familiar with, unfortunately. It's usually the victim, shamed and disbelieved and isolated.

It's still a tragedy when it's the alleged perpetrator - but the shoe being on the other foot for once isn't evidence of modern society gone wrong. The only positive I can take from this awful story is that a young woman who felt violated was able to talk to her peers, male and female, and she was believed.

I agree that it could have happened in past years. But I don't think it would have.
I suspect even 10 years ago it wouldn't have been seen as a dreadful thing to be accused of.
20 years ago the attitude would have probably been far more on the "good on you, mate, bet she enjoyed it". Or "she asked for it" level. Which we know to be wrong now, but that is how it often was.
The woman would most likely not have spoken out for fear of being shamed-and definitely not to any male friends.

When I was at school, bullying was something that wasn't talked about really except in an abstract sort of detached way.
Now being accused of bullying is seen as been (rightfully) bad, but I've also seen it used in a way which is in itself bullying "if you don't do as I say, then I'll say you're bullying me". That wouldn't have happened when I was at school because being bullied would have been seen as something to be ashamed of.

We need to learn to navigate this situation where victims are believed, in a way they weren't in the past. However we also need to be able to look after people who are accused, and judged by their peers on the word of one person - which this sort of thing always would be.

I don't have any answers to this. It is tricky because it will come down to one against another every time, with strong feelings all ways - and there will be times where there is no right or wrong side.
And I think online stuff doesn't help in this way with things like the "Fifty Shade" stuff, which glamorises being "rough".
So we also need to be educating young men on this, I'm not sure saying protect them from it is going to work, but educating them.

There is no easy answer which protects all victims from abuse but also from slander (and that can happen to either side)

This is not making any comment on which side the case in point comes down on, more a general comment on how things are currently in the world.

How can anyone really say “cancel culture” isn’t a thing? What do people think happened with women such as Kathleen Stock or Maya Forstater if cancel
culture isn’t a thing?

Pure good sense from gannett in the post above mine.

"And he couldn't have escaped. He was living there, eating there, attending lectures together."

Presumably so was the woman. So either she cuts herself off from the group for a while , inflicting punishment on herself for what he did and makes up some lie to explain her absence from all the fun stuff and the day to day life, while he continues on with the rest of the pals.

Or she tells nobody and carries on with the group with him in it like nothing happened.

Or she tells his mates that he did something shitty and they put him on the naughty step for a couple of weeks while she can carry on with group life.

I can't think of any alternatives.

No, this isn't cancel culture. Cancel culture isn't a thing. It's a buzzword used by right-wing culture warriors to foment fear about the modern world and anything progressive.

Women warning other women, and talking to other men, about men who've made them feel sexually uncomfortable, is not new. People withdrawing their friendship from men who make women sexually uncomfortable is not new. It hasn't been commonplace and it probably still doesn't happen enough, but those things went on when I was at university 20 years ago and in many different social circles since. Using a unique tragedy to spin that as an example of "woke cancel culture" and discouraging it is absolutely vile of the Telegraph.

And the point of women warning women (and men) in this manner is that sexual assault and sexual coercion should carry a social stigma - for the perpetrators, not the victims. That is how the message is hammered home.

Of course the information we're missing (and not entitled to) is what exactly Alexander Rogers did or didn't do, which could be anything from unintended and brief boundary-crossing to full-on assault. And if we're being honest at the former end of the scale, it's bloody hard and awkward to navigate if you're young and inexperienced at sex, and for whatever reason there's a miscommunication between you and your partner. So it's a tragedy. It's not one that needs to be turned into an example, though.