Dear Mumsnet
As you are no doubt aware, there has been the most extraordinary hate campaign waged this week by some football fans, against a rape victim in the wake of the Ched Evans Guilty Verdict.
The jist of the hatespeak, has been that a drunk woman has no right to expect the basic human right of not having her body penetrated without her active participation in that sexual act, or even her passive consent. Presumably because men (or at least footballers and their friends) have the right to penetrate women who are incapable of consent. And that if a man rapes you, it is because you are a slut, a slag and all the other hate-speak words used to de-humanise women and make it easier for people not to empathise with us when we are abused.
This week has seen the really ugly spectacle, of a bunch of men asserting their right to rape women, handmaidens supporting that right and both of them sending out a clear warning to all other rape victims, to know what to expect if they dare to pursue justice if they are raped.
If there had been a similar outpouring of hatred against any other historically oppressed group, the rest of the media would have been tearing their hair out analysing why some men hated this group so much, where the hatred came from, why it existed, what could be done about it; but ironically apart from the Daily Fail, there has been very little comment in response to the Twitter hate-campaign. If Twitter had buzzed with indignation at the jailing of the man who posted hate-speak about Fabrice Muamba, I?ve no doubt that the FA would have tracked down the posters and banned them from football matches. Because they?re busy kicking racism out of football. Sexism, though, is fine. They can give a bloody award to a convicted rapist, while their supporters conduct what must be a terrifying hate campaign against his teenage victim? right now, football fans don?t look all that much better than the Taliban, do they?
Mumsnet, will you use the voice you have against this horrible hate campaign? Will you tell the woman that Ched Evans raped, that We Believe Her? Will you ask the FA to state publicly, that they too, believe her and that in future, they will work as hard to kick sexism out of football, as they do to kick racism out?
Thank You.