...to think that women should be able to warn other women....

[thebrollachan]

...about the behaviour of specific men in their friendship group?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cancel-culture-death-oxford-university-b2643626.html

(The incident appears to have happened a few days before his death, was sexual in nature, and involved an ex-girlfriend.)

Maybe it was a lie. Or a mistake. Or it really happened and she didn't want other women to run the same risk.

What it wasnt was "cancel culture".

Subtle and sophisticated analysis. How very dare you? 😉

The pendulum swings back and forth. So some people hear 'cancel culture' as '#MeToo has gone too far and now women should just STFU'.

Completely agree. This is the most reasonable post on the entire thread.

Proper channels don't work. So you really think women should just STFU about sexual assault.

Apropos the idea of mean students ostracising a friend whom they assume has done something wrong, and quite aside from this case - and not just in alleged sexual assault cases - I am aware from experience that in large organisation, if a person has allegedly done something wrong and is suspended from their job pending an investigation, all their former friends and colleagues within the organisation are told to ostracise them, and they are told not to speak to anyone.

@MrsTerryPratchett nobody is suggesting women should stfu about sexual assault. But why does someone have to be completely ostracised by their entire friendship group / community on the basis of an allegation?

Why can’t you express your anger, disapproval and disgust with a friend over something they’ve done while still supporting them in finding a way to navigate through their massive fuck up.

If a member of my family did something shitty I wouldn’t cut them off and nor would I necessarily cut off a close friend. What’s the point of friends if they desert you at your lowest point.

Quite.

Often too in a school setting it is not uncommon for any girl who tries to tell her friends she has been sexually assaulted by one of their friends, to be the one disbelieved and ostracised, especially if the boy was popular and attractive. And there will normally be no “proper channels” to go through.

She may the one to develop an eating disorder, become alcoholic, or kill herself while the boy goes on to great things.

In fact in Scotland not so long ago the “proper channels” let a young man off convicted rape as he was under 25 and wanted to take up a scholarship in the USA.
Or think of the Dutch rapist-of-a-12-year old athlete representing his country in the Olympics last summer. How are those girls doing?

I do though feel sorry for the young man here, and the girls too. He was evidently sorry and surely there could have been some other form of resolution. The girls may now feel they have killed him. It is all tragic.

I literally quoted someone who did want women to either go through proper channels (i.e. not be believed and not get a conviction because almost no one does) or STFU. The proper channels are utterly useless.

And no, if a man I knew sexually assaulted someone I wouldn't help him 'navigate' it. It's not a fuck up or a mistake. Sexual offending has a very high recidivism rate, people tend to escalate, and the only real way to stop yourself being a victim is to avoid that person. And tell as many women as possible about it. So they can avoid him too.

I'm going to post the picture again because everyone seems to be unaware that the vast majority of sex offending is completely without consequence for the man.

@MrsTerryPratchett the girl in this case is quoted as having expressed “discomfort” over a sexual interaction with the boy. Discomfort does not seem to imply she was alleging a serious sexual assault.

I'm not specifically talking about this case. However, PP said that the young man concerned referred to the incident as 'unforgivable'.

Which still tells us nothing. People are reacting to this case like we have any details at all, when we don't. I'm a survivor of rape and assault myself so it's not like I don't stand up for survivors, but I have also known rumours to harm innocent people (a friend of mine was accused of assault, then cleared due to security camera footage showing he hadn't been at the location). People are treating this like it's a Brock Turner case when there is no information either way.

Presumably people on this thread who think a person accused of any sort of sexual assault should be permanently ostracised also have a “lock up and throw away the key” attitude to prisoners.

What did the boy do? I'm confused. It never says.

Actually, just about everyone here agrees that spreading malicious gossip and orchestrating a mass-shunning are both really bad (though, as it happens, neither thing happened in this particular case).

Your conversation with @MrsTerryPratchett made me realise there is a potential tension between 'safety first' and friends helping a flawed individual become his better self. Not everyone is a callous recidivist.

We shouldn't speculate about the incident itself, I think.

I've worked with sex offenders. They do not become 'safe'. Ever. Similarly men who abuse their partners almost never stop. It's something like a 90% recidivism rate. And a similarly high number of accused but not convicted men are in fact, guilty. It just doesn't pass the 'beyond a reasonable doubt' bar.

That doesn't mean locking them up forever, but it does mean being realistic that the issue we are talking about is pervasive, pernicious and serious. The justice system doesn't work, rape is essentially legal, and we are doing nothing to deal with the causes.

And the idea that not only do women need to accept this state of affairs, but also remain friends with men who are probably rapists, is offensive to a degree I find hard to stomach.

If we lived in a different world, there would probably be a different way to deal with sex offending. Expert panels of judges rather than juries just for one. But it won't happen.

I accept that sex offenders may pose a life long threat to women but this doesn’t quite explain why male friends of a male accused of assault are also justified in totally and permanently ostracising their friend. I’m not talking about rape here but assault which can be unwanted touching. This is a moral judgement and is potentially a somewhat dangerous path to go down. Where do you start with permanently ostracising friends? Speeding? Drink Driving? Racism?

Isn’t it better to work with your friends in helping to support, educate and hopefully rehabilitate them rather than cutting them off from their community with no regard for their mental health.

Indeed. So little has been released. Yet some posters have assumed rape. It may have been or discomfort might be rough sex, inexperienced sex, sex after getting lessons online porn, or anything else. We don't actually know

Wait a minute - you think people should only be able to drop a friend if that friend poses a personal danger to them? Most people want friends with values that align with their own, regardless of whether they post a personal threat. For me that rules out homophobes, men who abuse their wives and a whole load of others....

I would definitely drop a friend for racism, because it's incompatible with my values. There is plenty of anti-racism stuff out there they can use to educate themselves, it's not my responsibility to do so.

Drink driving - if a one-off, I'd have a serious word with them. If it was something they did regularly/intentionally, then yes, I'd drop them. I don't want to be friends with people who are deliberately reckless about endangering other people's lives.

If I had a friend who I thought/knew had sexually assaulted men, then they might not be a threat to me as a woman, but I'd sure as hell still drop them. And again, it wouldn't be my responsibility to rehabilitate them so they stop sex offending.

'Discomfort' could mean anything - up to and including rape.

I've lost count of the number of times I've seen a thread on MN started by an OP who describes herself as being 'uncomfortable' with a sexual encounter, when the description she gives clearly indicates rape. Women frequently minimise what has happened to them, often because accepting the reality is hard and scary.

So I wouldn't assume that the mildness of the word 'discomfort' can tell you anything meaningful.

@TarantinoIsAMisogynist personally I wouldn't drop a friend who made a terrible mistake or committed an awful act if they recognised that what they did was wrong and vowed to ensure it wouldn’t happen again. I believe in redemption.

If that mistake was rape or beating up their wife? I would, and wouldn't feel the slightest bit of regret. If the mistake was more minor - it would depend what/when/how the thing happened.

People very rarely act "out of character". An action might reflect a part of their character that you didn't previously know about, but what someone does is a reflection of who they are as a person. Being drunk would not be an excuse in my view - in vino veritas.

I am not perfect, and I have made mistakes in my life. But those mistakes have never included sexual assault.

I also wouldn't minimise the more minor sexual crimes. Wayne Couzens' penchant for indecent exposure was considered 'minor'. Even commiting a more minor crime says a lot about someone's values and who they really are underneath.

Even if I was a man, would I want to have a friend that I couldn't introudce to my female friends or relatives in case he assaulted them? Imaging having a party, inviting your sex offender friend, and having to warn the female attendees to keep their distance?

We don't know what the incident was, we never will know, and speculating about it might get the thread deleted.

His friends didn't permanently ostracise him. They said they didn't want to see him for a while, and they certainly didn't encourage other people to put the boot in. This was an argument within a small group of friends.

I'm a believer in redemption. Maybe they should just have given him an almighty bollocking and forced him to apologise. Easy to be wise after the event.

@MrsTerryPratchett 's post was chilling. I really hope she's wrong and that at least some offenders can be rehabilitated. Otherwise we might just as well treat them like dangerous dogs.

Women's priority should be their own safety, though.

I think the coroner was amiss in using the phrase ‘cancel culture’. This was a messy, tragic and complicated situation and the coroner has oversimplified it by latching on to a phrase that is very ‘current’. By doing so, they’ve turned this young man’s suicide into a media circus. And lain blame at the feet of the girl who had something ‘unforgiveable’ done to her and 3 other young men.

What happens when ‘cancel culture’ cancels them?

this doesn’t quite explain why male friends of a male accused of assault are also justified in totally and permanently ostracising their friend

It is because in recent years, especially following on from “Everyone is Invited”, people have been trying to teach boys to stand against the idea of Bros before ‘ho’s.

Boys are on the one hand getting Andrew Tate teaching of how to rule those sluts and/or porn instruction on how they should bugger and strangle, and on the other, being taught that decent men do not aid and abet any form of no consent: good men do not stand by and say nothing.
It is a very difficult line to balance no doubt.

It seems likely too, as another poster suggested, that the young man who took his life was generally troubled and under pressure already, but this is certainly tragic.

I don't think they are.

What they're told I think, as I was when I was a whistle-blower, was not to communicate with the person being investigated and suspended because it could prejudice the investigation. And not to speak to anyone outside of thise dealing with the investigation because again, it could prejudice the investigation.

Which is shit for them if the person accused is innocent and cut off from their colleagues or support network but at least they know there'll be an investigation and an end to it whether in their favour or not. And they are or should be, given support by managers and signposted to unions, legal help or other support services.

And when I was involved, it didn't seem at all to prevent the gossip and lies and people acting weird towards me even though no-one was supposed to know I was a whistle-blower .

And that was an official investigation where things had been formally reported.

I got a lot of fantastic advice on MN at the time and some, not so much lol.

That isn't the same as someone not being formally accused of something but being ostracised because of rumours or unreported allegations.