Mass sexual assaults in Cologne on New Years Eve Part II

[Pinkchampchoccies]

Just in case people want to continue discussing this.

Cultural differences is difficult as it is often referred to as a static factor when it is very fluctuating. I worked in the Middle East for 15 years on and off between 1989 and 2005 and within that time like Europe it was a melting pot of similarities and differences between countries, but I did notice that as each year passed tolerance towards women slipped.
Even within the UK we have 2nd 3rd generation women who have less freedom than those of their parents/ grand parents who some moved to give their daughters more rights. It is too easy to confuse cultural with the need of males (and even women) to control women and to use physical power and physcological pressure to do this.

Luna - Not all followers of Islam disrespect women, gays, apostates, Jews, atheists and pretty much anyone outside that ideology. If you support freedom, then you support the right to religious freedom. The right to religious freedom has to apply to all, Muslims, Jews, Christians, everyone else. I think supporting that is important. The right to religion freedom must coexist with the other rights we enjoy and should not restrict them, but sometimes it does raise challenges which are not limited to Muslims. I have heard a number of times when orthodox Jews have refused to sit next to women on planes, for example.

This is a conflation of individuals with ideology. Not all Jews, Muslims or Christians disrespect women, gays and apostates but the ideologies do. Thus, the individuals following these belief systems need to practise, at an individual level, lots of cognitive dissonance to get from the point of 'apostates should be killed' to 'apostates should not be killed'. The subsequent behaviour then begins to be subject to individual whims - an individual's discretion to either behave in the prescribed manner, or not. It's clearly wrong to suggest that religious doctrines do not variously advocate all of the things that you mention. They do. If we accept this, then we do not have to tie ourselves up in knots trying to justify atrocities alongside 'but what about freedom to believe'. The solution becomes a simple one - change, amend or delete altogether those aspects of the belief system which are bad - and we do all agree that advocating marginalisation or worse of women, apostates, gays etc. is wrong, don't we?

The latest Guardian piece is irritating. Lets understand theses Poor males now cut off from at their only ego boost of lording over females in countries of origin. I won't be the docile, kind female adherent and buy this crock of manure.

That telegraph article is the most sensible I've read on the subject.

I was so pleased to read that article from Allison Pearson (something I wouldn't normally write!). Well done to her for her strong response in support of women's rights.

With the comments it is usually a full time task toread them in real time as it were before they are deleted! Wait o catch up later and you will never know..

The Guardian piece is examining belly button fluff really.

I am catching up with all the posts since last night. The topic must really have hit a nerve. When OP started this thread in In the News I thought only a handful of people would comment. It feels a little bit like with the disappearance of the Malaysian aircraft; people came here to talk because the event was unprecedented, felt like the beginning of something new and sinister and that mainstream media were covering up something. The incident didn't add up and neither do the incidents in Cologne and possible other European cities.

Regarding Claig's theory of a supranational power: I find it interesting, parts of it seem feasable but I don't sees why men like Soros who are described as liberal philanthropists (Wiki ) would want one large state... Experience suggests that Muslim migrants do not adapt readily to Judo-Christian traditions. In fact due to the now dominant Wahhabi trend this is even less likely. Therefore Europe is becoming increasingly Muslim due to the growing number of Muslims (see Exams and Ramadan).. Christianity has little to hold against this in Western Europe as people in the are mostly not very religious. Anyway, I can't get my head around this concept..

Frankie
"Re the mayor's advice, quite a few (men) have suggested to me that this is the same as saying you should lock up your house to avoid being burgled. I know it's not, but I'm struggling to counter it affectively."
People have control over their door lock, they usually have a key and are able to lock their homes. The women on NYE did not have the option to keep the mob at arm length and being in a group of friends did nothing to protect them as they were chased by dozens of men and groped by dozens of hands. how do you keep this mob at arm length, it's a victim blaming, ludicrous suggestion. the women and girls did not have control over their personal space. It was violated. Maybe an octopuss would be able to keep several men at 'arm' length simultaneously, women have not evolved to do this yet.

I'm thinking things through here. We live in a culture we and our forebears struggled to build. It is similar to the culture of many other countries in Europe. It's a culture I value (even though it isn't perfect), and I don't want to see it destroyed (rather, I want to see it developed further and made stronger). If these sorts of mass attacks become frequent, then a huge aspect of that culture - the part about women's freedom - is under threat. That is something we should resist, starting now. I have daughters. I will probably have granddaughters. I know the sort of country I want for them, and it's not the one on display outside Cologne Station on NYE.

If nothing else, it's insanely rude and arrogant to turn up in someone else's country and say, No, you have to do it MY way. I boggle at the mindset. (And no, I'm NOT saying that all the attackers were recent immigrants, but it does seem that a lot of them were).

Ego, I'm generally thought of as quite bright but this had never occurred to me before:
But like I said on the other thread, South Africa was subject to sanctions etc over the way black people were treated. But countries where women are treated as second class citizens (stoning for adultery) are actively supported by the West and a blind eye is turned.

I gave up on the Guardian years ago: it annoyed the hell out of DH and I, for overlapping reasons. I've seen nothing of it since that has persuaded me to start reading it again.

Liesel

Your post is excellent .

"It sounds like women being punished for the actions of men and if they end up not going out after dark then it has big implications for women. It limits their job choices, it limits their social life, it limits their education choices, as if they travel to uni and it's dark when they need to go home, then what can they do?"

^yy
You are not exaggerating. I say it again, a bad situation (mob attacking women) ha been made 100X worse by the Ms Reker's response and subsequent refusal to backtrack from the non-sense she suggested. I still think that Ms Reker ought to apologise to the victims as they could not have kept the men at arm length how i hate this phrase. I hope this the end of Ms Reker's political career, she has done a bloody disservice to german women.

I haven't managed to do more than scan the new thread, but can I ask for your help?

I am a youth leader and have 20 teenage girls who are very interested in this and I would like to give them some information as to how to keep safe (for those who weren't on the other thread we live in Cologne). However I would like to balance this info with some useful links to feminist thought, perhaps groups/websites which would give them a good start into feminist thinking.

Unfortunately it hasn't occurred to many of them that "armlaenge" etc places the blame back onto the victim. I'd like to introduce them to some ideas which might "see them right" as they approach adulthood. After all, they are very likely to have to defend themselves physically but also defend their views on women in the very near future (as do we all).

Sorry, that's very garbled, but does anyone have any ideas?

One of the commenters in the Guardian article correctly described what happened to the women as 'kettling' with the intention to assault. It does underpin the predetermination of what happened

fourmummy, There was a programme that raised some of the points you've made that was about Tommy Robinson's alleged renouncement of his former far right views.

' The solution becomes a simple one - change, amend or delete altogether those aspects of the belief system which are bad - and we do all agree that advocating marginalisation or worse of women, apostates, gays etc. is wrong, don't we?'

There was some discussion of the what you raise by Muslims in the programme. I thought it was interesting.

Love the posts that suggest men's freedoms should be curtailed with women's. If women can't go out safely, curfews for all; groups of men broken up; no entrance unless coed groups, etc. Very insightful and sharp.

My thoughts:

1. Nation states still exist. Fundamentally, you can decide who to let into your country for any reason. If politicians don't act like that: hold them to account.
2. With everything being minimised in the media, some huge demonstrations are needed. The sort of million women marches that tie up capitals and cannot be ignored. This would force the discussion and focus political attention. At the moment it's not even on the agenda, and it is convenient for politicians not to even discuss it.
3. I don't go for conspiracy theories. I think incompetence and a lack of intellectual acumen can explain most of this.
4. Where multiculturalism and women's rights collide, I side with women. every. single. time.

Re Guardian article

"Rightwing politicians are salivating at this juicy new angle of attack on Angela Merkel’s “open door” refugee policy – although German authorities say the perpetrators’ origins are unknown and there’s no evidence linking recently arrived refugees to the attacks."

She is wrong, the attacks have been linked to recent immigrants. She writes polemically against the "salivating right wing politicians" but very sympathetically about the male attackers who "scrape by at the bottom of Europe’s social and economic food chain".

She also bloody generalises wrt the allegedly privileged victims i.e. "Young German women thankfully enjoy historically unprecedented economic and sexual freedom, with their expensive smartphones and their right to celebrate New Year’s Eve however they want."

What evidence has she that the girls have expensive smart phones? How is this even bloody relevant. This article makes me so very angry . I am getting a bit emotional here but I detest this 'whataboutism' attitude and the fact that women are silenced where sexist attitudes of migrant men are concerned. I was raised to be truthful and this whitewashing feels like gaslighting .

onthephone I don't know what to say. It is very difficult. I think their generation should do what the baby boomers did. Be loud and politically active. March, protest, and demand to be heard.

The Women should be loud in lobbyinh politicians and the press, in person and on social media.

The discussion is at 38.00 on sharia law and interpretation.

I got as far this in the Guardian article:
'The first is that pushing victims under the carpet for the sake of cohesion is dangerous'
It's not just dangerous, it's morally wrong. If she can't get that, I have to wonder about her thought processes.

I don't go for conspiracy theories, either. I've worked in central and local government. I spend a lot of time in archives. Now and then something is premeditated, but there's a lot of stupidity, arsiness, point-scoring and short-term thinking.

Do we know who these gangs were yet. Were they migrants?