Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

to think Stephen Fry is a shit

332 replies

AgaPanthers · 13/07/2014 15:01

Apparently he thinks Operation Yewtree is a sham and we need tougher laws against people making up sexual abuse allegations.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/stephen-fry-criticises-operation-yewtree-in-dinner-party-rant-calling-for-tougher-laws-to-deter-false-sex-abuse-allegations-9602686.html

I thought he was supposed to be intelligent? Surely he realises that

OP posts:
ConstantCraving · 14/07/2014 20:42

Taxi they would be found guilty. Ignorance is not an excuse in law.

settingsitting · 14/07/2014 20:44

*If someone is found "not guilty" then we (as a society) should accept they are innocent.

They are innocent in law.

If you go beyond that and say "well it's not proven, but I still think he's guilty" where do we go from there? Do we distrust every person who was ever charged with anything because they weren't "proven innocent".

You can't start down that slippery slope.*

Absolutely agree with all of this.
I think that this is one of the worst aspects of what mumsnet posters think in general across the board. And sorry to say that the feminist board is the worst of the lot for this.

Maryz · 14/07/2014 20:45

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

NotNewButNameChanged · 14/07/2014 20:46

whatever - no, you've misunderstood me. I'm not saying the woman may be mistaken about being raped, but she may be genuinely mistaken about the perpetrator. They may not have had a proper look at their assailant and someone very similar looking has been wrongly accused. This has actually happened.

Maryz · 14/07/2014 20:46

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

TillyTellTale · 14/07/2014 20:49

Someone (male or female, I won't specify either) could be raped, but the courts might find the defendant not guilty, because they do not have enough evidence to be certain that the defendant realised he was raping the victim or they may not feel able to say that a reasonable person in the same situation would have realised they were committing rape.

If someone is found not guilty, that doesn't mean the accuser isn't in need of support.

whatever5 · 14/07/2014 21:07

If you follow that logic, whatever, you are saying that anyone who is charged with rape is by definition guilty of rape.

Well no, because it may be proven that they didn't commit the rape. However, if they were found "not guilty" because there wasn't enough evidence to convict and it is just one persons word against the other then I would think that we just don't know what happened.

scandip · 14/07/2014 21:18

Give it a rest maryz. I found the tone bullying. I find your repeated badgering me to make an apology quite bullying too.

Maryz · 14/07/2014 21:27

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

queenofthemountain · 14/07/2014 21:37

No way is Maryz bullying ??? Mystified by that one?

TillyTellTale · 14/07/2014 21:39

Scandi

Unless you are the OP, I'm not even sure limited was even addressing you, to start with as the OP also linked to the Independent.

OP I neither like or dislike Stephen Fry. Sometimes I agree with him, sometimes I don't and most times I don't have an opinion one way or the other.

You called her, as a person, a bully, because she called your apologies "mimsy"? Do you not think that's a bit out of proportion?

That wasn't tit-for-tat, that was punch-for-tat!

TillyTellTale · 14/07/2014 21:44

This thread is bloody stupid.

I wish people wouldn't get so shocked when Stephen Fry says something a bit odd/questionable. You'd think the man had 11 Oxbridge degrees. But if he says something odd, people act as if they've caught him out as a intellectual fraud who bought his A-level certificates by mail-order. It's not just this thread.

He's a wordsmith and a comedian, not the Supreme Being!

scandip · 14/07/2014 22:08

Why are you on the thread then Tilly?

TillyTellTale · 14/07/2014 22:11

Why shouldn't I be?

scandip · 15/07/2014 10:59

Seems rather pointless if you think it's 'stupid.'
Anyway, there is an interesting point in this article about how false claims of abuse are extremely rare.
www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10966212/Does-Stephen-Fry-ever-think-before-he-opens-his-mouth.html

CaptChaos · 15/07/2014 11:26

I would think it very rare that a woman makes a mistake about whether or not she was raped

Really? Even if what happened wasn't consensual, she was underage or 'went along with it'? There are plenty of threads in relationships where a woman will say, 'X happened' and people on the outside will tell them 'That's rape'.

Sometimes women believe they have been raped, or assaulted, when in law they haven't.

I know that some people's lives are destroyed by rape allegations, but a lot are not. In fact, you can happily go to prison for rape and your victim will be named, villified, hounded out of her home town and when you get out, you go back to your highly paid job. You can be told by a judge that, even though you have previous for battery, you're of good character and you'll get X pathetic sentence. You can be told by a judge that, because you're a promising athlete, you obviously didn't mean to orally rape that underage girl, so, not only can you have this pathetic sentence, but you can also feel that, going on to a paper's website and slagging off your victim is perfectly ok.

These are examples of convicted rapists, not people who have been accused.

Rape is such an emotive topic. Paedophilia and Hebephilia even more so. It all boils down to his word against hers most of the time.

And...... back over to SF. Sorry for the digression.

TillyTellTale · 15/07/2014 11:38

Seems rather pointless if you think it's 'stupid.'

This must be one of those cases of diametrically opposed world views! I think stupid threads need the most attention*, so to me, it's not pointless.

*Simpsons did it.

whatever5 · 15/07/2014 11:45

You have picked on something I said in reply to someone else and have taken it out of context CaptChaos. Hmm

CaptChaos · 15/07/2014 11:52

Apologies *whatever5^ I'll reproduce your entire post to clarify.

whatever - actually, no you are NOT automatically saying the woman is lying. She could genuinely be mistaken.

I would think it very rare that a woman makes a mistake about whether or not she was raped Hmm

NigellasDealer · 15/07/2014 11:54

Stephen Fry is an utter knob and people think he is 'clever' - no he is vg at cutting pasting wiki

whatever5 · 15/07/2014 11:58

That post was part of a conversation I was having with another poster though Captchaos.

CaptChaos · 15/07/2014 12:14

whatever5 I get that. However, you did intimate that a woman is unlikely to make a mistake about being raped. All I tried to do was show that that isn't always the case. I wasn't attacking you in any way, sorry if you thought I was.

Most of my post was to do with how lightly convicted rapist tend to get sentenced and was a response to a much earlier post about how people who are found not guilty of rape are still vilified, which I subsequently lost Blush

whatever5 · 15/07/2014 12:26

CaptChaos- I realise that there are situations where women have thought that they were raped but weren't or visa versa. However, I think few of those would get to court. Usually (N.B. I haven't said every single case), if the case has gone to court, the woman saying she has been raped, either has been raped or she is lying.

CaptChaos · 15/07/2014 12:36

We shall have to agree to differ then.

I tend to believe women when they tell their stories. So few rape cases make it to court anyway that whether or not someone has realised as it was happening that they had been raped is moot. Even fewer are reported.

CaptChaos · 15/07/2014 12:45

Anyway, this has nothing to do with the OP, so.

As you were.

Swipe left for the next trending thread