To be worried about the Ched Evans threads on here

[corkysgran]

Sorry but this does seem like a witchunt to me. Many of the posters (who have signed the petition) obviously have little knowledge of the case. At one point a poster said Sports Direct would withdraw sponsorship if Evans was NOT signed and immediately others were vowing to boycott. Laughable and shows the level of thought before clicking. Online justice and the court of public opinion, not for me. As for expecting football, an industry corrupt from the very top (Sepp Blatter) and inherently sexist, to show any moral stance, get real.

I just had that horrid thought too, DB

DB, I don't think anyone has ever suggested CM or CE urinated on her.

Yy, AF.

thanks Yonic.

I was just wondering, and simply didn't know if everything would be tested as a matter of routine in circs like these when the woman simply does not know what has happened.

I said this on one of the other threads, and I'll say it again here: I object most strongly to being referred to as part of a witch hunt or mob, simply because I demonstrated my democratic right to express my opinion calmly and rationally on a petition.

Dismissing valid argument and discussion in this way is intended, as others have said, to close down debate, in much the same way as some men aim to get women to STFU by accusing them of 'nagging.'

Yeh well you know how hysterical women can be

Just echoing what others have said it's ridiculous to suggest that the posters here are part of a witch hunt or mob. I think fallingstar's comment about villagers was a reference to the mob (villagers with pitch forks and flaming torches?) Threatening violence to CE and his supporters is indefensible but I haven't seen that here. What I've seen here has been very heartening, lots of people expressing their disgust at the behaviour of CE and his supporters and thinking about practical, peaceful steps to demonstrate on this issue. The people who are making sexual threats to those connected with OA are not the people who are protesting on this issue they are just vile, misogynist trolls jumping on this bandwagon and probably gleefully enjoying causing fear but also revelling in derailing the message of the campaign.

Well only women can be 'Hyst'erical. From the Greek 'Hustera' meaning womb.

Apparently we have a disturbance of the womb which causes hysteria.

Bless us. Poor little things. Thank goodness we have menz to look after us and tell us what our opinions should be.

Do you know, I very seldom go all Norman in these situations, but while misogyny and rape apology has obviously been at the heart of this issue, I have been both disappointed at the participation of some women in denigrating Evans' victim BUT also heartened by the number of sensible decent men who have spoken out about how unacceptable re-signing him as a professional footballer would be.

It is clear that something needs to change among the dinosaurs at the centre of much of the game, but it is also encouraging to see that among many many supporters there is real appetite for that change.

There were some vox pops on the news and they had an OA fan saying how he was glad it had fallen through and that he wouldn't cheer on a rapist. I was silently cheering that guy.

Please can someone explain the jammy dodger emojis to me!

Calleigh, it means No Comment. IMHO it's a polite way of saying Fuck Off really.

I work in criminal justice and there were spontaneous cheers from all the men in my office when I told them Oldham had pulled out. They're all football fans who have been disgusted by Ched Evans and Karl Massey's attempts to get him back onto professional football.
One of them said of Massey "What kind of father has such little respect for his daughter"?
I'm proud to work with them.

I thought the jammy dodger meant that a post takes the biscuit i.e. it's really annoying or objectionable.

Thanks weirdcatlady i wont look at a jammy dodger the same again.

I hope this with ched evans is the start of expecting better general behaviour from professional athletes.

Nice to hear that sooty.

I was discussing this with my dd (13) and she couldn't comprehend how a woman would even consider staying with a man who had (in their opinion) cheated on her. "Does she have no self respect?" I was very proud.

This is a great blogpost from stevehynd.com:

JANUARY 7, 2015 · 12:23 PM

CHEERING ON A RAPIST

Picture the scene.

You are stood with your 10 year old son and 12 year old daughter on the terraces of your local football club. It is the first game you have taken them to but you can see by the way they are both responding to the ebbs and flows of the game that they are hooked.

You take a second to think back to the time you too stood in the same spot next to your own parents and feel happy with this sense of passed down community and belonging that local football clubs can gift to individuals.

As the game moves into the final 10 minutes and your team experience more near misses you see your kids nervously look at the clock. At that point all you hope for is a goal. A goal to be able to see your kids experience that communal elation as the terrace erupts in excitement.

As you reopen your eyes from a silent prayer you see your team’s new signing has picked up the ball deep in the oppositions half and cuts through two defenders before unleashing a strike into the top corner of the net. As the ball bulges the back of the net everyone around you roars and reaches for the sky in delight.

The normal celebrations though are cut short. As the opposition fans start chanting songs about the new signing being a rapist.

Confused your kids look up.

A second passes before your daughter, old enough to know exactly what a rapist is, asks you to explain what they are shouting about.

What can you say?

That prize arse Gordon Taylor is now comparing the CE case to Hillsborough now. Fucking clown.

You mean he's comparing Evans to the South Yorkshire police?

No? Thought not.

I'm glad that Oldham have seen sense, although it is a shame that the decision is clearly financial rather than moral.

I've been quite surprised, and horrified, by the reactions of some people. I can honestly say, hand on heart, that in every conversation I've had at work or with friends all of the men have condemned him, yet several women have said either 'how do we know because it's his word against hers' or basically blamed her for being to drunk to object. One teenage cousin even asked how he was supposed to know she didn't want to have sex with him if she couldn't say. Thankfully after her mother, horrified, had a pretty strong chat with her and it took her talking about how I have epilepsy; she used the line 'if Lyra had a seizure and a random man had sex with her when she couldn't say no would that be ok?' before she realised the girl was no way in the wrong.

Even on newsnight tonight we had a woman spouting about how if she had been on the jury she wouldn't have found him guilty. Apparently because we weren't there we don't know - if that makes his conviction dodgy then prison overcrowding will be sorted tomorrow because I reckon at least 90% would have to be released if being convicted isn't 'enough' to punish on.

Question Time, not Newsnight. Sorry.

Unfortunately LaLyra many people seem to think that choosing to get drunk is choosing to allow anything on earth to happen to you afterwards. We attach no moral judgement to a condition like epilepsy, but we do to drunkenness, because the element of choice (in becoming intoxicated) is then wrongly transferred to subsequent events.

In fact, this is reflected in the criminal law, in which voluntary intoxication is not a defence to many crimes, where you could reasonably foresee the effect of the drug. Including, interestingly, rape.

Unfortunately, among cloudy thinkers, that concept seems to bleed into consideration of complainants too.

Rape is a difficult crime because sex is something that a person may well consent to (as opposed to say, having your house burned down or your foot cut off (the law precludes consent to most cases of bodily harm, but that's another thread)). And drunkenness in many cases makes a person more likely to consent. We most of us know that from personal experience. A pp has written out her own example. But at some point, drunkenness becomes so severe that no meaningful consent can be formed. (And it's the role of expert testimony (like that given in the application to appeal by Prof John Birch), to illuminate what may actually have been the case based on the evidence given.)

All of these things are reasonable considerations that are put before juries and if you read the summary of the case linked above they were quite comprehensively covered in the judge's summing up (at first instance).

What is not reasonable is the assumption that because someone was drunk they consented or, worse, that their drunkenness negates the defendant's responsibility to form a reasonable belief in consent. This is not what the law says about rape (a point made over and over above, and why it is highly unlikely that CCRC will find grounds to send the case back to the CA).

I have throughout my adult life been horrified by how many women share this last view, and can only assume that as the potential or past victims of rape, they are the ones who have the greatest interest in denying it. That old cognitive dissonance again. (I am a woman, women are raped.)

Breaking News: Ched Evans compared to Mother Theresa

I hadn't heard that Evans claimed his victim was sober. Jeepers.