in thinking where are the feminists for the 1,400?

[ChoochiWoo]

This occured to me whilst watching the topless protests for Strauss Kahn, amongst other twitter campaigns like #yesallwomen, The horrible treatment of Ched Evans victim via twitter partly inspired 'we believe you campaign' ...page 3, ...the Rotherham abuse scandal breaks?* tumbleweed..... why has this not been subject of much feminist discussion on here? Especially here! ...its quite surprising. AIBU to think this is odd for a site such as this?

Rina What are you actually talking about

You perpetuate what most people detest about feminists and come across as utterly delusional.

Like are you on the same site as me?

I don't think so; I'm on Mumsnet; im pretty sure you're not.

Annie this is the conviction
www.thestar.co.uk/news/crime/man-jailed-for-child-sexual-exploitation-in-rotherham-1-7098607

Not in national but local.

It's 3 years total, not three for each girl.
He did it last September at the height of the abuse scandal.
Should be out in a year or so

Sadly the police officer who asked the victims out on dates has been killed.
www.thestar.co.uk/news/inquest-opened-into-death-of-sheffield-police-officer-facing-investigation-1-7099265?WT.mc_id=Outbrain_text&obref=obinsite

The new Casey report makes hard reading.

Sorry for the late reply ..thanks for replies even as imagine some of them will be a bit off colour, I haven't seen many on the fem section or places other than in the news section, ched evans, and julian assange which is still shady bizness generated more.than this,.there quite noted by there absence I know there was one big one back in September.

whether he is gulity or not the way the Star handled to Ali Hassan story was horrific and disgraceful. ...he'd been dead a few hours at the most. Let his family At least get him in the ground first.

Honestly, there are over 14 threads with Rotherham in the title relating to this. There will be others without that title.

I do wonder what you are trying to suggest by saying it is not on the feminist radar...

14?

I counted 'em!

Im not slagging anyone off the campaigns do great work , i just had.a lurk at the fem section yesterday and realised It was Rotherham desert and theres not much feminist protest either its just a racist stomping ground now, seems like they've been forgotten a bit. And page 3 seems more of a focus.

Did you? Recent ones?

Id like to clarify Rotherham is a far right stomping ground, not the fem section

Don't make me link them!

I think they do tend to be hi-jacked by racists, which is a problem.

Links at bay! Hmm i get that in some respect like on fb...but here? its uber feminista ...oh well it waa just an observation.

Oh I see you've been on some of them - and indeed have started one or more.

Do you feel feminists have not been as outspoken/active in this as you'd like them to be? Why do you think that is? Have you started a thread in the feminist section?

In terms of the visibility of the issue in wider society rather than on here, Julie Bindel was one of the first people to raise the issue but she gets no-platformed for what she has said on other issues.

I think this is part of it tbh - there's an overlap between the feminists who focus on sexual exploitation, and those who are anti-porn and gender critical, and they are increasingly getting silenced which is handy for those who want sexual exploitation to continue unchallenged.

There's a great piece here about the way liberals have ceded free speech to the Right, by imposing ever more stringent controls on what it's permissible to say and making adherence to these controls a condition of membership of the liberal 'nice people'.

The outcome is a situation where issues which merit feminist outrage - such as the abuse in Rotherham - being treated as off-limits for fear of violating these restrictions.

Then you end up with the frankly insane situation where the only people standing up for a particular set of abused girls are right-wingers

I agree with you OP, when the 'not fit for purpose' story was broadcasted on the BBC I logged on to see what was being said and there was nothing. I searched 'rotherham' and the threads were all a few months old. It surprised me too. Maybe I should have started a thread.

And I read the forum through Active, so I think I get a relatively broad view of MNetters. I would definitely not agree that they victim blame drunk girls who get raped.

As a northerner myself, I'm inclined to think that is less about race and more about the attitude of older northern men to young economically disadvantaged women.

There seem to be several people who are confused by the concept that people can have more than one thought at once.

Feminists can be shocked by what was allowed to happen in Rochdale, condone it and still have conversations on other topics.
Muslims can submit petitions to Downing Street about denouncing those who do not act civilly to one another and still be abhorred by beheading and immolation.

It really isn't that difficult to understand - you can be a feminist and still talk about trashy TV. You can be Muslim and still talk about cookery. I can pick my kids up from nursery whilst doing an online shop on my phone. If I feel strongly about one topic, I do not talk about it exclusively to the detriment of my work, life, friends and other topics.

I suspect that on Mumsnet it's because everyone actually agrees that these are terrible crimes and so there isn't much to discuss.

However, in wider society, I think there is an odd lack of discussion about this. I think it's about changing mores, and the fact that we don't want to admit that we HAVE changed.

When I was growing up in a working class neighbourhood the 1990s, it was seen as 'normal' for working class girls of 13 and 14 to be having sex with older men. (It was very, very definitely a class thing). They were not seen as children in need of protection from predatory men - instead, men had a right to them. Most of the girls at my comprehensive school were regularly assaulted, on an almost daily basis, by teenage boys who felt that they had a right to grab us and put their hands up our shirts or down our skirts or on our legs. I'm sure I'm not the only person who remembers this! Teachers weren't much better - two of them at my old school have been jailed for sex offences against young girls.

Clearly, a similar culture permeated the entertainment industry in the 70s and 80s!

Thank goodness this has changed and we have begun to see these things - quite rightly - as terrible crimes. However, I think we don't want to face the change that has happened. I suspect that this is because we don't want to admit that society was more relaxed about the sexuality of children thirty or forty years ago, because we want to maintain a comfortable fiction that it has ALWAYS been the case that it's been as taboo as it is today, even though it clearly wasn't a while back, hence the public existence of things like PIE. I think we're also confused by the fact that we've been sold a narrative about sexual 'freedom' being a good thing, and Victorian 'repression' being a bad thing, and that these cases actually question that and point to the fact that certain kinds of 'freedom' can conceal a deeply patriarchal culture of oppression, which ignores the need for consent on the part of both women AND children for sex to be truly free. I think that this is therefore connected in a deep way to the discussions we have about Ched Evans and other issues - because the more we stand up against a whole culture of objectifying women, the more we will stop things like Rotherham from being tolerated.

YY shovetheholly, well said.

Rotherham wasnt tollerated it was actively brushed under the carpet, that is a totally different scenario, also this downplaying of a particular race/culture in these instances is what helped it all in the first place.

I hate to come across as a right wing nutjob but if the gangs of perpetrators was any other specific ethnicity (ie:white) and on this scale across several cities you can garuntee there would be more people willing to discuss.

As others have said, there have been threads about Rotherham. However, I haven't seen any about similar things happening in other parts of the country. For example, in Scarborough www.thescarboroughnews.co.uk/news/crime/fresh-jaconelli-claims-as-council-told-not-to-let-his-associates-escape-1-7052924 Where complaints were made to police as long ago as 1968.

Surely, it is horrific that this is happening anywhere!

Just the men under suspicion in Scarborough are exclusively white.

Rina - your experience of MN seems to be the exact opposite of mine

I see feminists talking all the time about ways to stop child abuse (inc Rotherham) and ways to support those who have been abused.

Maybe you need to widen your circle a bit?