Some men really hate women being single don't they?

[solidgoldbrass]

inspired by a couple of other threads including the separatism one. Have you ever noticed that if a man you don't like or know or fancy is trying to persuade you to date him or spend time with him or even just talk to him, the only really effective way to make him fuck off is to tell him that you are another man's property. Just saying No, leave me alone, no thanks, actually I am having a conversation with my female friend and am not interested in talking to you, never seems to work until you throw in My Boyfriend or My Husband.

If you look at the reports into the police handling of teh john warboys case and the reid case, it is clear that there have been and are serious problems relating to these issues.

Yes, many failures... there was a terrible story only a few months ago (which I can't link because I can't recall the names). I would still suggest that this is not an attitudinal problem, but one of resources.

I'd also suggest that there is far more to reporting a sexual assault than the expected police response.

Low conviction rates, to my mind, do not exclusively reflect attitudes either. One of the main problems with conviction is that you have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that there was not consent. It is not difficult to see how this may present difficulties for even the most diligent prosecution.

The reports into the warboys case especially showed up attitudinal problems - and these were officers working in the sapphire rape unit.

And this "I'd also suggest that there is far more to reporting a sexual assault than the expected police response. " You are right that there are many reasons women don't report, but fear of being disbelieved/turned away is one of them.

I think it's pretty clear it was attitude that was the problem with the Warboys case - lots of women reported him, they weren't believed.

I'm not convinced it is all that clear actually buzz, besides which 'one swallow doesn't make a summer'. However, I've no wish to sit here and try and defend that police - I was simply commenting on what I thought was an unfair and over simplistic generalisation.

Yes, that is almost certainly one of the considerations SQ

sorry it's the daily mail but it's the first on google!

SardineQueen, but we are not talking about nice, reasonable people here. We are talking about men who attack women.
Sure, nice people would not need to be told to stop doing something wrong, because they would not do that wrong thing in the first place!!!

People who are behaving wrongly, though, need pressure/punishment to change.

OMG You're not going to make me read the mail are you????

We aren't talking about men who attack women, are we?

I thought we were talking about men who pester women, persisting in giving them unwanted attention. And the fact that society pressures women to accept this behaviour.

If society disapproved strongly of this behaviour then most of them would stop doing it. The law is by no means the only means of social control. Other people, their example, what they will accept and what they will not accept, are very strong moderators of behaviour.

At the moment society does not tell men that it is wrong to do this. So they do it. If society told them not to the vast majority would stop.

So it is a question of changing how society views this behaviour, not to do with the law/police as you keep insisting.

5 officers were displined in the aftermath of the Worboys fiasco - can't get much clearer than that. Sorry can't read your link, sardine - I've got a tea & kittens auto-block for the Daily Mail .

Very sensible buzzsore

I am talking about men who threaten, abuse or attack women. If you think otherwise, then obviously wires have been crossed, because as I have already said a million times, a man who means no harm by being persistent who is only causing the woman irritation and nothing else is something I cannot get worked up about.

Negligence doesn't 'clearly mean' an attitude problem - that's all I'm saying.

I burnt the toast this morning - it doesn't mean I wanted to!

Then you don't believe the woman who said she was laughed at by the police, jenny? Or isn't it an attitude problem to laugh at a victim of a serious crime?

Wamster you just suggested women call the police if a man is pestering them.

You keep moving the goalposts

Jenny attitudinal problems were found in the officers working in the sapphire unit. The problem with this is that women are often not keen to approach the police when they are attacked anyway, the fact that they have read about cases like warboys in the papers where the police have been negligent and/or dismissed the women means they are even less likely to report.

If the police were serious about increasing reporting levels of this type of crime they would have run PR campaigns about it.

sardinequeen just wanted to say that I've enjoyed reading your posts

I think it would be great if they could run a "sex crimes amnesty" where people who have been sexually assaulted can go and report these crimes without having to take it further. I bet that they would get some of the same names / MOs come up time and time again and they would then be able to look more into those ones. Might get a lot of nasty serial offenders off the streets.

I believe it would also help some women to recover, being able to tell teh police what has happened and know that they will write it all down and log it somewhere.

Hey thanks penguin

No, I said if a man is threatening them or abusing or attacking them. This may not be the same as a man being persistent. A man who is persistent may mean no harm and the woman may not feel threatened by him.

I'm not suggesting a woman call the police because she is irritated, only if she feels threatened.

Wamster you said this:

"Seriously, if a woman can ring the police every time she feels hassled, the police will get fed up and this may bring about change.

If you are not prepared to take matters into your own hands when you can do something to change things, don't moan, because, seriously moaning but not being prepared to take action when a course of action is available is called whingeing."

You said that women should ring the police whenever men hassled them, and that if they did not do this then they were being pathetic. You later went on to say that if women did not ring the police when men hassled them, and subsequent violence that the man did to the woman would not be successfully prosecuted. Which is a bit scare-mongery when I come to write it down. You have said on this thread that if eg a man pesters a woman in a club, and then follows her home and rapes her, to not bother reporting it to the police as there is no chance of a conviction. You have excelled yourself there.

You do realise that making comments like that on public forums can result in real actual harm in real life, I hope. A woman in two minds about reporting something might have her decision made by that comment of yours.

My view has been consistent, though, and that is if a woman feels threatened, abused, or has been attacked by the man who is talking to her, she could contact the police..

If she is just being pestered by a bloke who means her no harm and she does not feel under threat, just irritated, then while this is not a good thing and nor is it desirable, because such behaviour is rude, I don't see it as being a thing to pay that much attention to.

Yes, the behaviour may be rude- who could argue with that? But, unless the woman feels threatened, well, I don't see it as anything else than a pain in the arse.

Not once have I said that it is OK for a man to threaten or abuse!

I didn't say that it would not be successfully prosecuted, just that a clever lawyer might be able to twist things - this is not doing women a disservice, it's pointing out what defence lawyers do i.e. defend their clients.

Jeez, and pointing this out is unreasonable. FGS!

And that's the point of the exercise isn't it. To shut down conversation. The sad thing is it works so much of the time.

Wamster:

"A woman who is attacked by a man who does not ring the police when she senses a threat (if she could have done so, of course) will be ripped apart by the defence lawyer in a courtroom.

'So you say you felt threatened, yet you had access to your mobile in the club, why did you not ring the police? Surely had you genuinely felt threatened you would have done so?'"

You think that reading that, a woman who had not rung the police when she was pestered, and was later attacked, would be encouraged to report that attack? I think not.

Between you and the police we can reach a really positive situation where sex crimes are eliminated entirely from the crime stats! Because no-one will be reporting them.