Gutted about Rebekah Brooks

[BornSicky]

Fully aware that this is probably the last consideration on most people's minds fiven the gravity of the growing offences NI, NOTW and its staff are involved in, but wanted to voice this.

Journalism, especially tabloid journalism is such a male and historically misogynistic area, that to see a woman at the top of such a large organisation is rare and some might say a big achievement. Rebekah Brooks must have clawed her way up there and dealt with some pretty nasty crappy to get there, so why, oh why is she embroiled in, if not responsible for this disgusting series of events which may yet prove to be criminal?

I know that many women don't want to be seen as a standard bearer for their gender, but it is miserable (for me), to see such a senior and well known business woman that has such poor ethics.

I sometimes wonder if at that kind of business level women adopt more masculine associated traits (machismo), a la Thatcher, to keep in their field to the detriment of their character and identity.

Brooks wrote in her staff letter about doing positive things for high profile cases involving the abuse/murder of women and girls. Awful to now see that she is potentially guilty of harming most the people she claimed to care for most...

I have been puzzling over why Murdoch loves her so much.

And of course, someone on the World Tonight pointed it out - as long as everyone is gunning for her, demanding she step down, wondering why the fuck this domestic violence merchant is worth 200 people's jobs and a 168 year old newspaper, no-one is focusing on James Murdoch. If she goes, the Murdoch family starts to be the focus of attention. She's taking the heat off James.

Still don't feel sorry for her though. She has been allowed to be the woman at the top of her profession, because she's doing what the men in charge want her to.

What I think I meant was that she seems to have no real empathy towards women as a whole or even for individual women (relatives of servicemen, murder victims, etc) so your kindness towards her is like pearls before swine.

Then you miss my point entirely. I said i was gutted About not for her.

Are you gutted that she let the side down? I don't think she saw herself on anyone's side but her own. All that so-called positive stuff she wrote about was done in the interest of selling more papers, and to write about it all in a letter at this point is self-serving. I'm sure the staff, men and women alike, were boaking as they read it.

If women are a 'side let down' then are you implying that women occupy a higher road than men do? I just don't think this is the case. Lots of women have felt justified in doing rotten/criminal/barbaric things. For me it is a miserable experience to see anyone in a high position demonstrating a lack of ethics, not just a woman.

Do you think she is being unfairly blamed for what 'may or may not yet prove to be crimes'? Are you saying it is easy to scapegoat a woman (with red hair to boot)? For a smart woman she seems to be oblivious to the effect all this focus on her is having -- distraction of attention from the men involved who are now arrested and silent, and distraction from her mentors the Murdochs. Shame on her for being a double tool therefore.

LOL at her being a double tool.

Flame-haired double-tool husband-batterer Wade...

Good point about taking the heat off James HerBex. What's the story with the DV?

From what I remember, she was arrested for beating up her partner at the time, the actor who played one of the Mitchell brothers in Eastenders.

She's a frightening woman.

I do despair at how the narrative of real life events are twisted to fit people's point of view. For all the 'sisters' looking to advance their feminist agenda, it's amazing how quickly all this is blamed on how a woman can only succeed in a man's world if she acts just as badly as men do. Excuse me? 'Men are bad and women are great unless corrupted by men', seems to be the argument. What a crock of poop. The uncomfortable truth is that, in this world, some people respond to pressurised situations by doing things that are ethically unsound. Some of those people are men and some are women. Historically we only really heard about men doing bad things because ALL we ever heard about was men doing things and, to some extent, it WAS only men who were active and involved in the world's major affairs. Thankfully that has now changed. Something you'll have to get used to now we aren't all chained to the kitchen sink is that we are just as capable of human frailty as men are. Let's stop, then, with all this horse manure about men being the root cause of all evil and be brave enough to abandon the institutionalised misandry that is so convenient - in this case for explaining away appalling behaviour.

Oh please spare us the institutionalised misandry bullshit.

When men are raped or sexually assaulted at the rate of 1 in 4, when most of them don't bother to report it because there's a culture that says they probably asked for it or are lying about it (even though the figures shwo that about 2-3% lie, that means 97% are telling the truth) when they have a 6% conviction rate if they do bother to report, when they are paid less than women simply for being men, when they only have 10% representation in parliament and when every gathering of powerful decision makers on Planet Earth, consists of 95% women, then you can talk about institutional misandry.

Until then, we live on Planet Earth.

welcome to Mumsnet, Jenny.

First post from Jenny was it?

Imagine my surprise.

I love James's 'we'.
Do you think he puts on women's clothes when he posts as a woman?

right!

mathanxiety no, i don't think of it as sides necessarily, but I do think "FFS, women worked hard to get the opportunity to do things like this, so why the hell are you screwing it up for you (because you wanted it so badly) and potentially for others." N.B I'm an existentialist, so I do think that actions that we take can make us "legislators for (wo)mankind".

and on all the other stuff to do with perceived sympathy, or sentimentality about Rebekah Brooks herself, no chance. I think she's abhorrent and that what she's done is abhorrent. If she'd have been a man,I would have thought the same; there's just the added dimension for me, because she is a woman.

Is there any sympathy or sentimentality about her?

I don't think there is, I haven't seen any. Everyone hates her don't they?

I don't believe she is screwing it up for other women who want to be journalists or get ahead in any other profession though. I just don't think there is an almighty figure handing out promotions based on how ethical a woman is in any profession, above and beyond the standard expected of men in any given profession.

It may be the case that there are obstacles to promotion that women face and men don't in a lot of areas, but I don't think ethics is a factor that comes into play. In fact I think it is notions about what women intrinsically are (including one about women lacking the killer instinct/being nice people/softies) that gets used against us where promotion to leadership roles is concerned. Then there are also places (perhaps like NotW) where there may even be an element of tokenism involved in the promotion of a woman.

(I would like to think bad behaviour in any sphere will come back and bite you on the bum eventually however.)

sorry herbex, I think mathanxiety was asking if I felt sympathetic towards her.

I think she is a magnet for a lot of the hate right now, and I think she would be well advised to resign as a result. Digging in at the moment only serves to distract attention from the men who have resigned and their actions. Unless of course that is the function for which she is being paid. I'm not sure she isn't a bit of a karma believer herself -- if so I think she is possibly misguided. I'm not sure if the Murdochs have a good track record where rewarding loyalty goes.

All I can say is QED, really, HerBex. From entrenched positions, statistics about rape roll forth and the accusations fly... men are all rapists and until 'they' (all 3bn) have it as bad as 'us' (because such easy solidarity can exist between the other 3bn), there can be no such thing as sexism against men and if a women dares say there is, then she's clearly a man, or in cahoots with men or is a man dressed as a woman or mad or, or, or... (Frantically discredit / ignore argument)

Equally, all this has very little to do with the general crapiness of NI staff who happily catered to OUR most base needs and some of whom are women (Brooks being the most well known). I do believe that was the purpose of the post, but oh how quickly some people step back into battle! I said I despair and I still do.

the accusations fly? Like the one about feminists saying all men are rapists, you mean?

What accusations flying jenny? Who is suggesting solidarity exists amongst women? You are the one calling us "sisters". What is your issue with what has been said on this thread - as I can't see it myself from what you have posted (although I admit you aren't making much sense to me)?

I agree with everything mathanxiety says btw.

I am actually a man and maybe dress as a woman. Isn't that an accusation?

BornSicky uses the word solidarity and, actually, the whole theme of the thread is that RB is 'letting the side down', hence my point that 3bn people can hardly all be lumped together into a 'side' with shared values and opinions; it's ludicrous! It is also this idea that somehow we can all relate with each other purely on the basis of chromosomes - thereby creating a 'them' and 'us' scenario - that leads into this soul-searching when someone like RB turns up. "How could she do that to us?" is the question asked at the beginning of the thread and, thus, I questioned 'us'. Before I know it however, I'm embroiled in a conversation about rape! I mean, wow! It's a bit like that research that says that all arguments reach a point where someone envokes Hitler...

jenny I didn't say that at all. In fact I went onto clarify what exactly I meant in the second to last post.

"it's about solidarity with other members of my sex". Not what you said at all? Ok, maybe you meant something else, but it's what you said. Don't make a liar out of me too, please! Here's a question, so we can be clear: how can you feel solidarity for 3 billion people, some of whom possess every sort of character flaw and 99.9% of whom you will never meet, most of whom have lifestyles and culture you'll never understand and some of whom endure real, hard and violent sexism and would laugh at your casual assertions of misogyny in Britain's red top media.

Now I have no doubt that you can accuse the red tops of vile intrusions, anti-intellectualism, sexual objectification and rabble-rousing, but to suggest that they, as instituitions, actually hate women is, to my mind, off the target. However, it is my suggestion that casual misandry often invades debates such as this ("Oh well, of course all male journos are wankers and so RB became one too...") - a claim I stand by - that attracts all the opprobrium! Doesn't that just underline my claim that we love to jump up and down on anyone who doesn't 'get with the (feminist) programme'?

Listen, I'm clearly not in line with the thoughts here and I have no doubt that anyone will read this without automatically trying to pick holes in it (judging by all the feedback I've had), so why bother. Peace, out.