Thread to discuss the reality of parts of the UK absorbing large numbers of men from other cultures

@awomansvoice I think its to do with the absolutely glacial pace of the asylums process and the backlog. It means that people who don't really have a case are left in those hostels for a long time. It also means people who absolutely have a genuine case are left in limbo sometimes for years - impacting their ability to get jobs/education, deal with their trauma, build lives and integrate. Its shit for everyone.
I agree, immigration should be needs based not class/education based. But that should come with the understanding that people from vastly different backgrounds will need a lot of help to integrate with the UK and a willingness to provide that help. And a willingness to demonstrate what is not tolerated under UK law and culture.

The vast majority of men from Albania are having their applications turned down, though a high proportion of the women's claims are being accepted.

we cannot keep taking tens of thousands of young men every day. I feel somewhat bad about coming to this view, like it's the 'wrong' view to hold, but it's what I'm thinking.
As I don't live in the UK at the moment, perhaps I'm a bit out of touch, but I don't understand why there is an influx of men from Albania and why they are being housed in hotels. The men and women I worked with had leave to remain, which meant they were genuine cases, usually from war-torn countries. Albania is not.
Having worked with these groups, it's obvious to me that you have to limit immigration numbers, because I've seen how much support people need. It takes a lot of time before people can integrate in any way, financially or socially, and it costs a lot of money, takes up a lot of resources, all of which are finite. The whole of every impoverished nation on Earth cannot move to the UK, it's not possible, so there have to be limits. I don't think we should only allow educated people to enter the UK, as it's not the fault of illiterate rural Afghani men, for example, that they are from that background. I don't think the right to immigrate and escape war should be class-based. That said, we have to be realistic about what can be achieved and the detrimental effects of shoving hundreds of such men in hostels and expecting them to suddenly become fully integrated citizens who embrace the #metoo movement and are pouring their money into the economy.

Yes, maybe the people I’ve met who gave me that impression have been urbane. I didn’t feel any cultural tension at all.

Thoughts on maybe a blog to collate these stories? Hopefully at least we can save the thread!

Nepeta, I think multiculturalism is great when it comes to things like food, festivals, clothes etc. But when it comes to basic values about how society operates, I don't think we can afford to have lots of different cultures in the mix. I think when you have smaller, maybe religious, communities, that's okay as long as they abide by the law of the land. There are subcultures that intersect and overlap mainstream culture, and there are small communities that are somewhat more isolated, like Buddhist monks or Catholic convents, where there is some integration but communities are also somewhat self-sufficient. But beyond that, I think we have to be clear that we're a secular country, we have equality laws to protect minorities, we have rights as women to live as freely as men do.

It's scary that our rights are under attack from so many different angles.

I am coming around to the view that we need to limit immigration into the UK. I don't see what else we can do if we continue to have thousands of young males coming here. We've heard how towns and communities are being changed beyond recognition and women and girls made unsafe. We talked upthread about possible solutions, such as education programs, public awareness programs, dispersing immigrants to different places etc. But ultimately I think the most effective thing would be to limit immigration altogether. Other countries limit immigration and protect their borders, and we are an island - we cannot keep taking tens of thousands of young men every day. I feel somewhat bad about coming to this view, like it's the 'wrong' view to hold, but it's what I'm thinking.

Everything you and your daughter have been through sounds absolutely horrendous, ReformedWaywardTeen. And you're right, you've all been failed, that boy and those female teachers too, by the woefully inadequate response. This is what I'm talking about, we need new policies putting in place to deal with these kinds of issues, no more hand waving these things away or making things up on the spot.

Oh trust me, the times I had to stop her Dad leaving the house to confront his dad were many. At one point our older nephews wanted to visit just to pick her up and being 14 they hoped to scare them into leaving her alone.

But with that gang of them, it wouldn't have worked. I hate to use the term her best mates nan used for them but they were feral. They told teachers to fuck off. The ringleader had an altercation after we withdrew our two the next year group. She was a no nonsense type and refused to put up with the trio of them in her class. Within weeks she had a disagreement with him as he refused to do work. He called her a whore. He then used terms which were clearly derogatory but in another language as the other two boys laughed at her.

She told all three to leave her classroom. The ring leader told her to fuck off and she should leave. She was nothing apparently, and he didn't have to listen. She walked over to him, and got quite angry, telling him to leave, now.

At that point, according to her mates and her mates mum who called me horrified, he stood up, got in her face, spat at her, shoved her and then said "fuck you you fucking white slag".

She literally walked out the classroom, went next door and got her male colleague, who frogmarched him out the class to the head teacher.

Yet he still wasn't excluded. He had to miss his lunchtime for a week.

The teacher refused to have him back in her class, and he went to the male teacher.

I can't imagine trying to teach in that environment as a female of any race when you have boys who see you as lesser.

But however angry I got, it wasn't at him. I felt sorry for him. He must have had a shit understanding of the world. His dad was vile, 5ft 2, yet clearly muscular to the point of looking like his arms would burst. He sat at pick up, staring and huffing at us all. Never joined the dad's. Always on his own. There were other Asian dad's there but they never spoke to him. There may have been some hierarchy. He clearly wanted to intimidate us all but I'm 5ft 8 and not exactly tiny. We used to ignore him.

And the sad fact is, the boy has no friends at secondary. In sixth form. He is always alone. He no longer has his gang. They all went to the other local school. He isn't liked by a lot of the year group because DDs group of girls and boys from that school, even after she moved, kept in touch and they used to see her after school and weekends.

So when they joined secondary, they told people how nasty he was , watch out for that kid, he's violent, he picks on girls.

So yes, I feel for him. He's been let down at home and at primary. He's now isolated.

And he can't be the only one.

I have thought in the past, and in somewhat different contexts, that the multi-cultural society idea (which assumes that cultural groups should be left alone to rule their own people within a larger country and that all such cultures should be treated as equal) will unavoidably result in women and girls and gays and Lesbians within some of the cultures not being treated equally with women and girls and gays and Lesbians outside those cultures.

This is true as long as the cultures differ in their views on the sexes and on sexual orientation, and it becomes quite clear when newspapers report on the views of a whole community on the basis of what their spokesmen say. Those are sometimes very patriarchal leaders whose views might not reflect any kind of democratic consensus within that specific culture, but assumes that all its members think exactly the same.

The argument that some things should be excused for some men because of cultural differences reflects this.

What makes addressing this difficult is of course that similar-seeming (though different) arguments can also used to discriminate against some cultures in a multi-cultural society.

The only way out of this would probably be to prioritise certain basic human rights above the respect for cultural values and to apply that ruling to all cultures exactly equally. The problem with that, of course, is that different cultures differ on what they view as human rights and, in particular, women's and girls' rights.

I have a feeling that many old feminist battles will have to be fought again in the countries which already thought the matters settled by most.

Not to say people aren't suffering under the Taliban obviously. Apart from the violence and poverty most people, even in very traditional areas seem upset about the removal of education for girls in particular.

Absolutely. I had a neighbour who moved from Afghanistan to Europe years earlier as a child and he was fine. On the one hand he took parcels in, on the other hand he played music very loudly a few times at night and pissed me of. Just a regular neighbour basically.
However, I will say in Afghanistan, people from Kabul might well remember "what life was like before the Taliban" when society was a lot freer for many women. For many people in the very rural, poor villages there wasn't as much social change as you'd think. Rural areas were very isolated, very poor and had seen decades of conflict even before the most recent one. Just completely different ways of life. Culture shock of all sorts is inevitable in those circumstances.

Oh yes, I also remember being lectured by a right-on male colleague, when there was a male client who didn't want to shake hands with the female staff. This issue doesn't really bother me too much, but myself and a young female colleague were trying to tell him that no, we didn't find it respectful, because an innocent action was being sexualised on account of being women and we preferred to be treated the same as men at work. The male colleague was being very self-righteous in lecturing us. It's not the place of men of any ethnicity to dictate to women what is respectful towards them or not, but again, because of a lack of clear codes of conduct on these new phenomena, women's rights just get swept aside in favour of 'being kind' to immigrant men, no matter how misogynistic their behaviour.

Maybe. I feel like mine is just one story, anecdotal. It would be good to see the stories of individual women collected together on this issue. Until the data we are all asking for is collected - and as I've mentioned, data is never going to paint the full picture as so many low-level crimes and issues are not reported - these stories are all we have.

More than anything, I'd like to see politicians taking this issue seriously and putting better policies in place that protect women's rights when it comes to the mass immigration of young men. I was given very little training for my job and none that related to the treatment of young female staff, what was to be expected or how to handle it. It was brushed off and joked about more than anything, as though they were just cheeky chappies. In fact, again, some of the older women working there had strange attitudes, and when myself or other young women were being pestered by these men to go out with them, one of them suggested we 'give them a chance', as though use of our bodies were to be part of their integration process. Not only do I feel it would be inappropriate to date a client in this situation due to the power imbalance, but these men had already shown poor respect of boundaries by refusing to take no for an answer. I'm of course not saying that men from these cultures are all like that.

I think at every level there needs to be clear codes of conduct in place that users of a service must sign, about what is acceptable and what to do when these codes are violated - in schools, integration schemes like the one I was on, in workplaces etc. Mass groups of men hanging around in public and harassing women need to be dispersed by the police, as do the ones the other poster referred to hanging around schools and molesting schoolgirls. Our society has rapidly changed due to this influx, and just as we have managed to have it accepted that it's not OK to pinch your secretary's bottom etc we now have a mass influx of men whose attitudes to women are far more outdated that we have to contend with, and we haven't yet learned how to deal with this.

I don’t want to be all ‘namalt’ but.. In this it is worth remembering that there are people, men and women from Afghanistan, for example, who remember what life was like before the Taliban, feeling aghast about what was happening to women, but keeping quiet, to stay safe. A bit like when the Nazis were rising and Hitler Youth were stomping around, many people just kept their heads down.
When there is a massive influx of people from a conflict zone, there’ll be a mix of thoughtful political dissidents and gung-ho Hitler Youth equivalents as well as a majority with no particular political take.

What is the long term plan for these males ,what happens when they get approval to live here permanently

and how important it is to understand that the boys and men will need rather a lot of input to accept that their worldview and view on women, which they have been steeped in all their lives, is NOT wanted
Agree completely and would like to add that I think a significant amount of this input will need to be from our good and decent men because men from these backward cultures will not listen to or accept anything that women say

«I think if you haven't spent a lot of time with immigrants from countries where women are lesser and the culture is radically different, people have no appreciation of how big the culture clash actually is. One very nice young lad from Afghanistan was telling me how shocked he was at seeing a pregnant woman's belly, as he had never seen that before. A young woman I worked with from Afghanistan simply couldn't get her head around another female client in the group, who was from an African country, having a baby but not being married. She wasn't being bitchy, it just did not compute and she kept trying to correct her, thinking the other woman was expressing herself wrong due to bad English, 'No, you are married'.»
@awomansvoice

absolutely this.
and how important it is to understand that the boys and men will need rather a lot of input to accept that their worldview and view on women, which they have been steeped in all their lives, is NOT wanted.

to say they don’t know what they are doing is NOT a solution.
to house them in big groups in one place is NOT a solution, because then they will confirm eachothers misogyni and amplify it.

to respect other people’s culture is one thing. The moment culture overrides basic human rights is the moment my respect ends and I demand they change.

awomansvoice - have you thought of publishing your story somewhere? I'm sure you could do it anonymously.

I remember a huge row breaking out between three Iranian women in a class I was teaching years ago. One was a strict Muslim and the other two explained that they had left Iran because their freedom was taken away. The Muslim woman basically accused them of being slags. When working with Bangladeshi women there were always lots of stories about how they were bullied by their mothers in law and older women. I got the impression that, as Nonie Wardesh says in the interview I quoted from uptrend, there's very little solidarity possible between women who are so oppressed.

I agree, RoyalCorgi, and when there's the extra racial element, we see even more excuses made for male behaviour, because it's 'cultural'. As I mentioned in my post, I didn't feel supported by my colleagues apart from a few other young women who worked with me and experienced the same kinds of things. If anything I would be blamed, either overtly or suggestively, that I 'can't handle' these men because I was young and inexperienced, rather than their misogyny being called out for what it is. Rather than criticising their constant disrespect and overstepping of boundaries, mine would be questioned - you shouldn't wear that, why are you talking about this. I wasn't rocking up in mini-skirts, although a British Asian colleague did do that to prove a point that she wasn't a Muslim and didn't have to follow Islamic dress codes after a male client was criticising her outfit, and good for her.

What infuriated me about this thread and what prompted me to write was the amount of gaslighting by certain posters, still suggesting that women who had experienced or reported harassment and assault by immigrant men were racist. These people do not have women's best interests at heart, and frankly sound like they have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. Far too often the onus is put on women to adapt to the culture of the immigrant males rather than the immigrant males treating Western women with respect. If I was working in the Middle East, I would follow the codes of behaviour and dress prescribed, not least for my own safety. In my own country where women have fought for the right to equal treatment, at least in law, I don't expect to have to limit my activities, where I can go, what I can do, who I can talk to or look at and see women's rights in these areas disintegrate, with any discussion of this being taboo. I shouldn't have to hide the fact I live with a boyfriend or go out drinking, lest I be considered a 'Western slag'.

One female colleague I worked with was pregnant and lived with her partner, but was unmarried. The clients had been gossiping about her because of this, and they're hardly subtle, so she sat down with them and gave them a talk about how not everyone gets married in the UK, it's a personal choice. I think if you haven't spent a lot of time with immigrants from countries where women are lesser and the culture is radically different, people have no appreciation of how big the culture clash actually is. One very nice young lad from Afghanistan was telling me how shocked he was at seeing a pregnant woman's belly, as he had never seen that before. A young woman I worked with from Afghanistan simply couldn't get her head around another female client in the group, who was from an African country, having a baby but not being married. She wasn't being bitchy, it just did not compute and she kept trying to correct her, thinking the other woman was expressing herself wrong due to bad English, 'No, you are married'. In my view, women who experience misogyny and abuse within these cultures are kept from even acknowledging their own feelings about it lest anyone accuse them of being just like one of those 'Western slags'.

@RoyalCorgi agree!

@Soothsayer1 These boys have been trained by their home culture that they they are perfectly entitled to administer corporal punishment to girls who do not obey them☹️ Agree and unfortunately that's only 50% of the problem. The other 50% is that has been reinforced by the society around them. In this case the school teacher but lets face it in many cases also the police council authorities politicians. The lesson given loud and clear is "you are right these (predominantly) working class girls don't matter and their needs are inferior to yours."

I agree that self defence for girls can be useful but it isn't a panacea, boys and men will always be stronger than girls and women respectively. It can be invaluable if it comes to clearing enough physical space to leg it but it is no substitute for a society doing one of the things inherent in any healthy society and protecting children. (I know you weren't arguing it was)

Some pretty horrifying stories here.

The biggest problem is that we don't take sexual violence against women and girls seriously. Even when I was in school many years ago teachers would turn a blind eye to boys harassing girls (this was in an all-white school). If we lived in a society where abuse of girls was frowned upon and punished, then men and boys wouldn't try and get away with it.

This is a very important thread particularly the personal examples given. Often people ( men as well as women) are not allowed to voice their concerns or are shouted down for doing so when all they want to do is to be heard and action taken against those doing these kinds of things. Thank you to those writing them.

In my comment a few pages up that we should not have to be adversely affected by new people amongst us with old fashioned attitudes I said if they were not harming us that was fine. I did not really mean to say that. I am sorry for every traveller girl obliged to leave school at 12 or Pakistani girl shipped back to Pakistan for marriage 15 and even the people on my street whose little girls have to cover their heads. Loads of the very very young little primary school girls in the nearest state primary to my house are obliged presumably by their families (as who makes a free choice aged 5?) to cover up.

The interesting part is when you don't move but those around you change so much you might well have moved and the impact on the host country on a day to day basis in a vast amounts of circumstances from noise at night to catcalling etc.

Also, I want to refute the earlier point about it being beneficial for asylum-seekers to be effectively ghettoised to help them recover from the trauma.

That's not what I said though.

The point I was trying to make is that when refugees first arrive they need people around who understand their language and culture.

There is a huge area of compromise between immediately dispersing them to the back arse of beyond in ones and twos, and ghettoising them in huge numbers for months and years.