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?

Saskia The political abuse groups operate because their position gives them privilege.

The celeb abusers use their fame and notoriety.

But we can openly talk about how despicable they are to carry out their crimes and abuse of position/power.

The grooming gangs are shielded because of their race and religion.
People are blaming everything but the true cause.
It's easier to duck the hot potato and hope it will go away than risk being called a racist and try to deal with it.
Poor Anne Cryer was crucified with racist labels yet she stuck to her guns.

End result is evil fuckers will abuse, white, black whatever colour.
The main difference here is two fold.

There is stifled debate because normal thinking people are afraid of the label.

And the abuse is happening right now.
The authorities ignored the Jay report completely.
I live close by a woods with a war memorial where they congregate.
I will go out later with the dog and see who is there so I can say with certainty it's still happening.

if I don't update that, I've been arrested I've been told to stay away by pcso because i was causing a breech of the peace

Look, as I pointed out earlier, there have (sadly) been exploitative bastards out there raping girls since the dawn of time. Some are black (the gang in Rotherham), some are white (Saville, Glitter, Harris).

The real issue here is an institutional one: why has it been SO hard to get organisations (largely run by white, middle class people) to take these allegations so seriously? What does this tell us about institutional sexism and the way that complaints against women have been handled?

What absolutely blows my mind is that we're not having a debate about South Yorkshire Police. They are clearly the most utterly corrupt bunch of bent coppers ever. It's not just Rotherham - it's Hillsborough, Orgreave - and dozens of other smaller cases. They have been shown time and time again to be completely self-serving, to have lied and cheated their way through case after case to get the outcomes that they wanted rather than those that were just. I live in their area, and frankly I have no trust in them whatsoever. It's about time some serious action was taken to hold police to more account.

Couldn't agree more about the SYP Holly there will be more and more to come from that end.

Them thing is, the anti feminists want a load of racism from feminists. However feminists prefer to name the actual problem in the teeth of opposition - it's make violence against women and it happens independent of colour, creed or nationality. It's widespread and the actual problem that everyone ducks.

Fatstacks I'm sorry but I have to disagree with you about the racism angle. Rotherham has been front page news in national newspapers. I can remember seeing reports on the local tv news about Rotherham and Bradford as far back as ten years ago. People have been talking about it quite openly. IMO, the reason it continued for so long was not because of the ethnicity of the abusers, but because of the low status afforded to the victims. It wasn't that no one believed them, but that the people who should have helped them thought they somehow deserved it.

Scarborough has received almost no coverage apart from in the local press, despite many similarities in the way the abuse was carried out and the treatment of victims. Even now, despite an investigation showing that certain police officers and council employees were complicit in covering it up, nothing has been done. It's very likely it will be brushed back under the carpet. I can only think that is because rich, white business men and celebrity friends of former PMs have considerably more power than Asian taxi-drivers.

"End result is evil fuckers will abuse, white, black whatever colour."

I do agree with this though!

Saskia I don't for a second mean that these abusers are targeting white girls.
They will target anyone, as long as they can establish control over them and victimise they aren't fussy.

The way this has been handled is racist, it said it in the Jay report and now again six months later in the Casey report.

The authorities who should have done their jobs had a low opinion of the girls, absolutely.
The police are lazy, misogynistic and possibly complicit.

But the reason, the excuse people are giving for failing the girls, being derelict in their duty is because they are scared of admitting that this (gang grooming) abuse is committed by mainly pakistani heritage men.

Extreme parts of Islam/ closed communities/ corrupt officials/ general cultural disdain for females.

My DC are mixed race, or dual heritage is more modern.
I'm not trying to make this all about race, it's so much harder than that but if the people who are supposed to act don't/ won't or can't because of the ethnicity.

It has more in line with Catholic church scandal, where religion was perverted and customs used to allow abusers free reign.

On another forum I use the Scarboro discussion is pulled the instant it's started so I can see another pile of shit topping that too

I disagree race , while not ththe whole issue was mostly certainly part of it, d
Racism, classism and sexism.

My take on the hideous scandal at Rotherham is this. An organized gang of men groomed and raped 1400 young girls. 1400, wasn't it? Aged between eleven and fifteen years? Over a considerable number of years. The ethnicity and religious background of these men seems to have earnt them a free pass and the whole affair deliberately swept under the carpet by authorities who did not want to be seen as racist or tangle with a certain religion. The victims were working class girls of Anglo ethnicity. Absolutely disgusting and inexcusable. These people were entrusted with the welfare of vulnerable kids, in one way or another, and these girls were abandoned by those who should have protected them. I don't think you need to be a feminist or left leaning to be revolted by that.

Yes it has been discussed, you may not have noticed because feminist are campaigning against all rapists, not just British Asians of Pakistani descent, we campaign against all rape (the majority of children who are raped are raped by white men).

There is also the idea of what we can do, we can actively take part in stopping football clubs employing the rapist evans and keep pressure up that he will take down the victim blaming website. That is a tangible thing, a thing that can be achieved and publicised, the same with page 3.

What exactly do you think a campaign in Rotherham should focus on? How can success be achieved?

What do you think is being done? Do you think targeting the council who ignored the report isn't good enough? Asking councilors to resign? Actually campaigning against the people who could have stopped this? The majority of who were white?

Or would you prefer things were changed so we just complain about men with brown skin?

Last night near the memorial there were 10-12 young men and two girls.
Men ranged between 16-30 girls were 14-16 maximum.
They weren't even smoking weed so I couldn't call 101 probably for the best

Or would you prefer things were changed so we just complain about men with brown skin?

Really unhelpful and the root cause of this particular scandal.

Forget the men with brown skin, and forget trying to shut people up with the fear of a racist label.

Just like in the Catholic church their is a 'the perfect storm' of circumstances for rapists and abusers to flourish.

Really unhelpful and the root cause of this particular scandal

Silly me thinking this was about some men seeing some women and girls as being there for their pleasure and not as equals and other men think girls like that are not worth protecting.

It's true that sexual violence happens against women in all cultures. But I think part of the problem here is that people conflate race and culture in a way that makes it impossible to discuss culture without being accused of racism.

It would be crackers to suggest that men of Asian origin are somehow intrinsically more prone to sexual violence. Similar slurs were made against African-Americans in pre-Civil Rights America and it's clearly nasty bullshit.

But that said, there does seem to have been a toxic combination of beliefs and attitudes specific to the culture - not the race,, the culture - from which most of these men came, that played a part in their feeling entitled to abuse these girls. Notably a scorn for the 'low morals' of white girls and a belief that they were 'easy meat' who could be fucked with impunity while girls of the perpetrators' own culture remained 'pure'. No-one is suggesting that such beliefs even originate only in that culture but among these men of Pakistani Asian (pretty uneducated, IIRC mostly Pashtun?) origin they did. And they helped the perpetrators justify their appalling actions.

As these beliefs played a part in abuse that happened on a frankly unimaginable scale I think it is absolutely appropriate that they get the same level of feminist critique as the beliefs endemic in the local police forces that led officers to write the girls off as 'trash' who were probably 'asking for it'. If that critique isn't happening, because white English feminists are nervous of challenging other (non-English) cultures with the same vigour as they might critique their own, then that is a problem.

Manatee said exactly what I wanted to say, but in an articulate and erudite way

Errrr, Sash ....not everyone is a racist, maybe you are ...but Im not, so if you'll kindly stop inferring the tone of this thread is and go provoke reaction elsewhere theres a good girl! Manatee makes a very good point.