Observer campaign to tackle femicide.

MNHQ has a post about statistics from Mumsnet that made an appearance on Peston's show:

You'll see they show a graph showing how many Mumsnet users clicked on Talk threads that mention words to do with violence against women. (The search words we used were: sexual harassment|sexual violence|rape|violence against women|sexual assault|domestic violence| - and for the last two weeks, we added the search term 'sarah everard').

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_campaigns/4195391-Mumsnet-stats-on-violence-against-women-featured-on-the-Peston-show-last-night?

Not sure what you mean by "male centralised anything" grotbogs but the book Invisible Women has hundreds of citations of evidence where the male default is harmful.

I'm sure you won't read it, though - after all, it might have some "clever wording" in it.

@UppityPuppity

To claim our justice system comes anything close to legalising rape is naive and quite frankly ludicrous. Rape is a difficult crime to convict. That's not the fault of the justice system it's simply the characteristics of the crime itself.

I've never met anyone who wants to see rapists roaming free, quite the opposite, so I feel your anger is definately misplaced.

Rape convictions are much in line with other serious crime stats, it really isn't some national conspiracy. If you really want to go for an under convicted crime then car crime may be a better topic to slate the justice system for.

And as for male centralised anything, I've never seen any evidence of this whatsoever.

Duplicating from other thread.

I was looking round for more clarity on the previous and current age cap and learned that it will be removed altogether next year.

The age cap applies to the intimate violence module in the CSEW, so domestic abuse against 75+ not currently captured. Until 2017 the age cap was 59. Has been announced it will lift altogether from next year. Not age cap on homicides as data comes from police/homicide index [.] However the headline findings published by ONS do not focus on age and the data tables provided alongside the reports don’t allow for meaningful disaggregation of the data. I cover this here:

academic.oup.com/bjsw/article/49/5/1234/5211414

[Further discussion about age cap]

Well the original jurisdiction was particularly shocking as it was based on an argument that people aged 60+ couldn’t use a computer to complete the survey and even if they could this should be viewed as elder abuse not domestic abuse[.] I talk about this here from page 16 onwards

etheses.dur.ac.uk/11941/1/Full_final_thesis_PDF_version.pdf?DDD34

Above from this thread: twitter.com/Hannah_Bows/status/1368546457108758531

If anyone wants to know how these issues are ignored, minimised and dismissed even when signposted and highlighted, they only need to read Grotbog's post above.

Yep - nothing to see here...what are you moaning about...very proud of our criminal justice system which effectively legalises rape due to minuscule conviction rates... figures going down despite figures going up...women only refuges being defunded...walks away with hands in the pocket whistling happily...world back to re-centeting men, including those who commit femicide.

If anyone wants to know how these issues are ignored, minimised and dismissed even when signposted and highlighted, they only need to read Grotbog's post above.
Excellent campaign by the Observer. I only wish the Guardian would take a leaf out of their book.

Thank you for sharing this.

I think this is clever wording to promote the charity these women work for. I'm all for protecting women in need but this article really does lay on the fear mongering.

I think it would be a good thing to reduce all murders of any persons, but the claim that any are being silenced just simply isn't true. If a murder is suspected then its investigated regardless of the age of the person and I see no evidence provided that this isn't being done or is being done to a poor standard.

We have a criminal justice system to be proud of, which is one that is benchmarked the world over. Criminals are tried and jailed once found guilty.

No woman should have to suffer murder, but thankfully we're in the minority as its a fate faced predominantly by men.

If care homes aren't included in the figures I can't think why but any murders there by carers are likely to be by women as they make up the vast majority of staff same as with refuges.

I don't understand what the issue is they're highlighting. Of course less femicide would be better and figures over the past decade show its going down, but exactly what they plan anyone does is a mystery that they've missed out.

There is a call to action outlined here with the specifics of the 3 things that need to happen:

If you want to join our campaign, write to or email your local MP and ask them to support our three calls to action.

www.tortoisemedia.com/2021/01/26/what-you-can-do/

There's also a good website: Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse

www.aafda.org.uk/

I was so glad to see this campaign launched today! How are people not constantly outraged at all this?

59 !!! So post menopausal women.

Shocking and but so glad they're highlighting this. I had no idea.

Thank you for posting. A great campaign and so very much needed.

Excellent campaign thanks for posting OP

It is just too sad for words.

If domestic abuse isn’t believed, if rapes aren’t prosecuted, if killing means a man may receive a few years in prison or even walk free, if a woman’s death in suspicious circumstances is not properly investigated, then these are crimes hidden in plain sight – in the name of justice, that has to stop,

This.

Well done The Observer.

All in society should be ashamed of itself - the killing of our Mothers, Sisters, Daughters - hidden in plain sight.

Almost at International Woman’s Day - where soon in some parts of this country where saying a ‘woman is an adult human female’ may soon be classed as hate speech.

Police, Judiciary, CPS, political parties - what the hell are you going to do to show you actually give a shit about women and stop this abuse against women because they are women?

Abuse flourishes in a permissive environment - and whether there's no data collection or recognition, there's an atmosphere of impunity.

Completely agree.

I was a carer for my mum for years. I know how hard it is .. I used to wonder how many elderly people were abused by their carers. I loved my mum and know how close I was to the edge sometimes, it's frightening how many vulnerable elderly people are under the radar. On occasions when mum was in hospital (on geriatric wards) I was shocked by the callousness of some of the staff. Most were fantastic but there were definitely people working there who seemed completely lacking in compassion and empathy. I'm sure there's so much abuse that's just invisible. I dread being old and frail like my mum and having to rely on other people.

I deeply want to understand the reasoning behind omitting care homes and refuges from the data collection.

Abuse flourishes in a permissive environment - and whether there's no data collection or recognition, there's an atmosphere of impunity. Like for other crimes even when they're prosecuted there are 'off-the-shelf 'ready-to-go' defence packages that mostly end up with modified charges and sentences.

I would hope not but I am not comfortable with the reality that it's entirely possible that women have been abused and even killed in plain sight and we don't know about it. And we still won't know if it happens in care homes or refuges or beyond certain ages.

Viola (as I have said on the other thread about this article) - I dont think the campaign has anything to do with nia. It is associated with Karen Ingala Smith because of the work she has done of the Femicide Census - although you may be aware that her "ownderhsip" of the project has led to some women complaining that their contribution has been erased.

Karen Ingala Smith may (still?) work at nia, but as has been said many times, nia is in fact Hackney Women's Aid and as such does much the same sort of work as most refuges, ie not compile stats for a census!

Sorry if this seems a niggle, but it is only right to be clear about the sources of something. And who does the work.

As it says in the article: "We are working in conjunction with Karen Ingala Smith and Clarrie O’Callaghan, creators of the unique Femicide Census."

As if there are men who actually can't see how dumb that idea is. I suppose it's an idea about when women stop being generally considered to be sexually attractive?

There's a mortality and morbidity rate associated with the male gaze and perspective* being used to frame laws and even how we gather, report and use statistics. For me, this makes the importance of recording sex in the Census more important than ever.

*I'm not overlooking the internalised misogyny and frank ageism that is too often on display from other women when victim blaming or saying that somebody can't be surprised her DH had left her when she'd 'let herself go' etc. In some MN threads it sometimes feels as if somebody only has to be in her 50s for someone to ask if she's got early dementia.

Shocked. As if only younger women suffer rape etc. As if there are men who actually can't see how dumb that idea is. I suppose it's an idea about when women stop being generally considered to be sexually attractive?

Excellent podcast reportage (multi-media) about this from Tortoise, which I would recommend to everyone : www.tortoisemedia.com/audio/hidden-in-plain-sight/

I'm 'listening' to this (via PowerPoint subtitles so it might not always be accurate) but I've had to stop because of the waves of anger passing through me. I'll resume later. It's excellent but I'm sick and heartsick. Oh, Katie.

I would second Viola's recommendation of this brilliant series of podcasts. They're about women their families believe were murdered but the police simply haven't bothered to investigate that possibility.

www.tortoisemedia.com/audio/hidden-in-plain-sight/