"Break the silence around rape and violence against women" but don't mention grooming gang rape and violence against girls

No one gives a shit about eating seafood, wearing mixed fibres or the other silly dictates of religions. But they are all over the bits that oppress women (and gay people). That goes for almost all organized religion.

Yes Vestal. In fact I'd go so far as to say the Abrahamic religions take the form they do because they evolved in order to prop up patriarchy.

You only have to look at the attitude of fundy Christians in America towards women, the gay community and (often in the case of some of the white southern churches) other races.

In fact one of the things I like about living in the UK is that it is no longer a Christian country, it is largely a secular country (whereas the majority of Americans say that they do believe in god).

Thank you. I'm saddened.

Can you explain the difference in views on homosexuality (which I think we can assume translate into different behaviours towards gay people) between Muslims in the UK and the general population? I believe the difference in the percentage of these two groups who think homosexuality is acceptable are stark

Yes, but that's not because Christianity is a superior religion, but because Muslims in the UK are immigrants from places with different cultures.

There are few people to whom religion is the reason to hold a certain view, for most, religion is just the excuse to do exactly what they want.
I mean, Islam does not tell its followers to molest women they are not married to. And how many of the Muslims who behave in horrible ways actually obey the rules when it comes to not drinking alcohol?

I am happy to criticise religions any day, but while Islam is a symptom of patriarchal society, I do not think it is the cause.
If Christianity was allowed and practised in the places those men come from, the Christians would quite probably be just as misogynist as the Muslims.

Homosexuality is condemned in the Bible, too. If religion were the sole reason then there'd be no difference in attitudes.

I'm sure Guardian journalists and editors manage to read about grooming gangs, Cologne etc without turning into rabid racists. Why can't they accept that the same is true of their readers, and even, heaven forbid, other people?

Either they look down on their readers ... or, and I think that not unlikely, they are not actually able to read about grooming gangs without becoming racists themselves.

After all, the only way to react to hearing about such a thing would be to:

a) acknowledge that male violence is a problem and is enabled by misogyny that permeates society

or

b) blame the evil foreigners.

Well, one of those options is much more comfortable for white men and their supporters than the other.

But they do not want to do b), as they realize that would make them look bad to their readers.

So instead of choosing a), which they can simply not cope with, they just ignore the whole thing altogether, in the hope that it will go away if they pretend it doesn't exist.

pickle, yes they definitely happened.

But, prompted by your post, I checked to see what Snopes had to say. And it's interesting. Whereas normally Snopes just says something along the lines of factually accurate, may be true, unsubstantiated, definitely fabricated... here it offers no overall assessment. Instead it offers us a version of what I now think of as the Jess Philips lack of analysis ("worse things happen in Birmingham New Street on a Saturday night") namely "we all know male sexual violence and street harrassment is endemic, there's no reason to think there was a cultural explanation for these events or any sense that they weren't business as usual." In other words, the refusal to discuss and analyse that the Guardian and BBC were guilty of.

Incidentally the "worse happens in New Street" minimisation is one which spectacularly fails MrsTP's tests: often said by lefty dude-bros who didn't give a shit about that until they wanted a reason to ignore the Cologne attacks. (on this charge, I except JP herself who has a long and honourable track record of fighting male violence - I think this was a lone, if very bad, mistake on her part).

FWIW I think there is space for a detailed cultural analysis. There's a whole load of questions I'd like to see raised.

Were the Cologne attacks an example of Taharrush Gamea, i.e. not merely opportunistic sexual assaults but part of a world view which sees sexual assault as a way of policing women's behaviour and limiting their access to the public sphere? (There were some good analyses of this by Egyptian feminists and political writers of both sexes in connection with the use of sexual assault during the Tahir Square).

How, if at all, does Taharrush Gamea differ from institutionalised sexual violence in western culture, such as gang rapes in frat houses on American campuses?

What does it tell us about wider German culture? Is the square outside Cologne station becoming a no-go area for women in any way different from the fact that there are signs on lamp-posts outside the red-light district in Hamburg telling women not to enter unless they are sex-workers? What should be a public space, denied to women because of the threat of male sexual violence. Why, at the time of the attacks, were most of them not actually crimes under the German criminal code because at that point (only rectified last summer) rape and sexual assault were only criminal offences if you could demonstrate that you'd fought back - failure to fight back physically was deemed to be consent (even the word "no" was not enough)?

Without a decent analysis of these questions the left renders itself powerless in the face of racists like the one I encountered online last week who said "immigration is turning Sweden into the rape capital of Europe" (of course, it's not, it is mostly an artefact of the fact that the Swedes catalogue the stats round sexual violence much more rigorously than anyone else - but in the face of reports that they also do not record the ethnicity of the perpetrators for fear of stoking racism, it becomes hard to come up with really sound knock-down arguments).

Are comments about past cases being deleted too? If it is the comments about ongoing court cases then that is likely to be avoiding being in contempt of court for sub judice.

Violence is always happening.

What do you do about that? Genuine question.

user - never mind the "potential" for violence against women and girls, it's already here, and already happening

It seems odd to leave religion of the list of reasons for perpetrators to believe they are superior and to dehumanise others, particularly in the Bosnian context.

That's almost irrelevant. Anyone can think up a reason to believe they are superior to and more human than others. It can be a religious ideology or a secular one. It does not matter. The ideology is secondary. If the ideology were to vanish tomorrow, another would be devised. Power comes first, ideology second. This why the ideologies of revolutionary movements become repressive when power is won. They were not oppressive to begin with, but once power is secured they become so because they are required to justify that power. Hence one power system is only ever replaced with another.

The Left-Right dichotomy should be wholly dispensed with, because they are meaningless.

Issues of social justice come down to the degree to which fundamental human needs are met within a given society.

The need to be securely sheltered and accommodated within a community in which one feels safe.
Freedom from abuse and exploitation - whether sexual, economic or political.
Secure, remunerative employment that guarantees provision in the event of illness, old age and all the other contingencies of the life cycle along with a degree of disposable income.
Fair law and order that applies equally to the highest and lowest in society.
A coherent moral and economic culture which provides the individual with a sense of self, meaning and identity.

Such conditions should be met for all individuals, whatever their status or level of ability. Of course a utopia in which they are met for everyone all the time might be impossible, but nevertheless the greater the degree to which they are not met the greater the psychosocial dysfunction in society. This is a given.

When an individuals aforementioned needs are not met then they are liable to regress. They become frightened and enraged. Society wide standards of mental health decline. Scapegoats become sought - whether women, Muslims, 'infidels', Jews or whoever. If people are subject to a very extreme level of socioeconomic stress, then there is the potential for violence, pogroms, mass psychosis.

I do so agree with the statement that both left and right pick up women's issues solely when it suits their real agenda. I would say the same about the left and people with disabilities, as the parent of a child with asd. All they are is a stick to beat nasty benefit cutting tories with. Try and engage them in the notion that maybe they gave a role in society beyond being benefit claimants and the justification for public sector employment and you get nowhere.

I used to think that if Breitbart were reporting something and The Guardian or BBC weren't, then it might be made up. Now I think that Breitbart might be accurate and The Guardian or BBC are deliberately not reporting something. That's incredibly dangerous.

Absolutely - and it leads to all sorts of problems. For instance, the fake news story I got caught by while trying to make sense of what was going on in Turkey last summer (BBC not reporting because budget cuts simply mean they don't have enough foreign correspondents on the ground) was the one in RT that Incirlik airbase was surrounded and cut off from support. Obviously it was part of a Russian fake-news strategy to try to whip up western sentiment into saying "we must get our cruise missiles out of such a politically volatile part of the world rather than leaving them at risk of falling into the hands of armed insurgents" - but it made sense at the time in the context of a news vacuum from reputable sources (with the exception, I would say, of the Torygraph in that particular instance).

I think it was also at the heart of Clinton's loss. Such was the emphasis on "Trump is evil" (which he clearly was and is) and "only deplorables would vote for him" (which made me cringe and think "seriously, did you learn NOTHING from the failure of the yes campaign and the Brexit vote?") that there was an information vacuum on the left surrounding debunking the the right-wing fake news about Clinton's hawkishness in the ME - and the vote was very, very close in the swing states. I honestly think this particular line of fake news and the e-mail rumours (Trump's "she has 33,000 hidden emails" tweet ten minutes after his son's meeting with Russian agents, the Comey statement ten days or so before the election) swung the election by driving democrat voters either to vote independent or abstain completely. Remember it was a tiny margin - it didn't take much to swing it.

You don't need people to think that sources like Breitbart are true, you just need to sow enough doubt that they wonder whether they might be, and wonder whether the left/centre media they've always trusted might not be telling them the truth. The most effective propaganda isn't in your face, it's subtle misinformation at the margins.

See this is what happens @picklemepopcorn. The Cologne assaults absolutely happened. No question. There were false reports in Frankfurt. That, coupled with the lack of mainstream reporting on Cologne, led to people muddling them up and assuming that Cologne didn't happen.

Cologne definitely happened pickle.
You might be thinking of Frankfurt?

I thought the Cologne attacks didn't actually happen. The news year's eve rampage where dozens of women were assaulted? Apparently turned out to be a politically motivated fabrication- unless I'm confusing it with another incident.

I'm totally using your tests, MrsTP!

It's a topsy turvey time. War is peace, freedom is slavery etc.

but others will get sucked in by the racism and also trust the less racist sources less in future.

I used to think that if Breitbart were reporting something and The Guardian or BBC weren't, then it might be made up. Now I think that Breitbart might be accurate and The Guardian or BBC are deliberately not reporting something. That's incredibly dangerous.

The state of The Guardian depresses me even more than the state of The Telegraph these days. Both of them now read like parodies of themselves.

Brilliant tests, MrsTP

YY MrsTP. The information vacuum was shocking, and drove one to all sorts of strange sources (though I found the mainstream US papers plus German papers and google translate helped a lot).

What the left don't seem to realise is that this sort of self-censorship is a total own goal. As an editor, you have three choices: firstly, refuse to report at all, because it might stir up racism; second, report, but in a balanced, measured way; third, report in such a way as to deliberately stir up racism. If you go for option one instead of option two (the Graun's editorial policy) you drive people to sources which embrace option three as their editorial policy. Some people will go there with their noses held, able to filter out the information from the racist shite, but others will get sucked in by the racism.

I like your set of tests very much!

I remember having to go to Breitbart of all bloody places to get news about Cologne. And their coverage was absolutely problematic.

I totally agree that the right uses women to make a point about immigrants and the left throws women under the bus to protect men (who often happen to be immigrants). Both sides are treating women as things; arguing points instead of people.

My rule with this is "did you care before?".

Did you care about male rape before you were making a point about female rape?
Did you care about women before you made a point about sexual harassment by immigrants?
Did you care about intersex people before you made a point about trans people?
Did you care about male victims of DV before you made a point about shelters?

The answer is invariably NO.