Can we have a sensible discussion about Cologne.

[HelenaDove]

I feel very uneasy about the way the discussions on the news board are going.

Can we have a discussion on the events of Cologne that isnt racist or sexist (meaning no sexism towards British OR refugee women) I find it very hard to believe that a feminist would refer to young women as girlies or talk about them as if their pregnancies were immaculate conceptions. Yet i have seen someone refer to young British women in this way as well as ask why some of the refugee women are pregnant.

Some of the comments ive seen are making me very uneasy and i hope i am articulating this in the right way that it is intended.

I am especially disappointed in the feminist response

There was an appalling example early on on this thread by someone trying to belittle the discussion along the lines of it being yet another thread about brown men bad , white women good.

Lass yes, that was disgraceful.

Is it easier/safer to attack the hapless crickets or scientists as they aren't likely to react in anything but a western, liberal, apologetic way?

Is it fear silencing this usually vocal crowd?

I hear them being angry and shouting about cereal hipsters and denying depression pointless self-regarding shit, but nothing about my safety or that of our daughters.

I don't have much time for the fashionable feminist causes such as breastfeeding in John Lewis or marching with my bra showing or making 50% of C-suite leaders women (whatever happened to meritocracy ?) .

I do have a massive problem with being told to cover up, not go out at night and getting digitally raped by a group of caterwauling savages.

I too am baffled by the lack of response from feminists, isn't the basic premise of being a feminist "don't rape me cheers"? :(

lass I agree -but that actually made me roll my eyes more than anything. Absolutely typical attempt to divert and avoid facing up to the reality of the situation. Head in the sand.
To be open about these things makes certain people uncomfortable - they are in some ways more racist than the BNP.
They don't see or treat 'brown' people as equals - they treat them inferiors who need their (white, middle class, hand-wringing, guilt ridden) protection.
And it would be very odd if I thought brown men= bad seeing as long term DP is of NA descent...(unless of course I only got with him out of sympathy for his poor life chances and thought he needed the help my white privilege would bring ...which isn't the case. And he was born in the EU so it isn't for a visa either...)
Actually I think I might blow some people's minds - but I never considered him to be different because he has darker skin than me. It didn't enter my head. He is who he is. He has his faults and his good points but neither are really due to the colour of his skin. (Except maybe he is (over) sensitive about some things due to racism he experienced when he was growing up, but then we all have issues carried over from our childhoods). Apart from on threads like these I don't even think about it ...

There's a daily drip-feed of horrendous assaults on women and children in Sweden, Germany and Austria and I hear nothing, nothing from my feminist friends, whose main concern at the moment is the under representation of women in Irish theatre. Because that's so fucking important as against the prospect of our daughters not being able to travel in Europe unmolested and everything feminism has gained in a century being rolled back in a few months. I don't like the Daily Mail but at least it's reporting these stories, with links to the original reports to show they aren't making it up.

You really shouldn't be surprised. A good proportion of feminists belong to the regressive left where (accusations of) racism trumps feminism. That's what we saw with the Guardian. They daren't recognise the attacks as the result of cultural beliefs as they thought they would be accused of racism, so they parked feminism and sat at their computers like startled rabbits caught in the headlights.

I am a feminist by the way and my response to being falsely accused of racism would be a shrug.

Someone on here described the guardian as the left wing daily mail recently. I have to say I agree with them.

We are in danger of regression- all the advances we have made in women's rights, equality of the sexes, gay rights etc - all in danger of being rolled back.

I do not want to live in a country where the response to male sexual aggression is to curtail women's freedoms. I do not want to live in a country where people tip toe around other cultures and religions in order not to cause offense. I do not want to live in s country where I'm afraid to go out at night or take my little boy to the pool. And I do not want to live in a country where I can't loudly criticise repressive backwards religions.

The level of appeasement in the guardian is frankly shocking. The law is the law. Culture or religious belief does not excuse criminal behaviour.

The silence from the feminist lobby is troubling.

Are we so afraid of being labelled islamophobic? And frankly what's wrong with being critical of a religion? It's not the same as discriminatory behaviour against a person holding a religion. It's used to shut down debate - it's a technique that's extremely powerful.

Zaurak - I've got Sensible Post Envy - thank you for all that.

Some excellent posts on this thread.

Thankfully, people seem to be coming to the realisation that you can be concerned about the effects of Islamofascism on women, homosexuals and other religions without being racist.

About time.

"I do not want to live in a country where people tip toe around other cultures and religions in order not to cause offense."

I would love to live in a country like that. Doesn't mean people are OK to break the law.

very good post zaurak, but sadly we are being silenced in so many ways by so many people.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3485473/The-small-Swedish-town-terrorized-string-sex-attacks-eight-assaults-past-three-weeks-leaves-women-terrified-walk-dark.html

I posted this link on another thread. The DM seems to be the only paper fighting our corner.

The DM seems to be the only paper fighting our corner

Indeed. And they reported recently on how the Swedish media are silencing this debate too.

Other European media sources aren't afraid to report the phenomena.

I have long since lost any hope that the British media, particularly the Guardian, whose reporting on this issue was shameful, will have the balls to talk about such incidents.

However, Welby has today absolved them of the terror of being thought racist. Which seems to be far worse than journalistic principles of actual truth-telling.

So we will see.

Why on earth is the Daily Mail the only paper to report this stuff?? I am shocked that the most infamously misogynist paper going is he ONLY be to braising awareness!!

The only one to be raising awareness!! Stupid voddie!

I'm glad they do, I feel really let down by The Independent (my former favourite) and The Guardian. The Guardian has been particularly disgraceful in its (non) coverage of attacks on women across the EU and the erosion of women's freedoms. It has minimised at best and denied at worst. I now feel a strange fondness for the DM - I didnt expect to feel that!

Me too Anna...it is like feeling fond of the creepy boss you have had to avoid for 14 years! It's weird!! But good on 'em!

I now feel a strange fondness for the DM - I didnt expect to feel that!

I was brought up as far left as you can imagine.

I have a strange fondness, since January of this year, for Nigel Farage and David Davies who were the only MEPs to stand up and talk about what happened in Cologne and ask difficult questions.

Louise Honeyball, MEP (Lab) in an EU forum an women's safety, said nobody was to discuss Cologne because that would be 'wrong and racist.'

A female labour MEP, disgraced by two males, Conservative and UKIP.

Shame on her. I hope Justin Welby has a quiet word.

Well, I am a boring centrist where politics are concerned, but if Cologne has done nothing else it has corrected the irritating delusion many suffer from that the left holds some sort of moral high ground.

The right are not realy defending women, they are defending 'our' women.
Better than nothing but not as good as it could be.

Better than the left , and women on the left ,crying racist.

I was disappointed and angry at the Guardian's minimising. Indie was slow to report but got there in the end.

Cologne made me realise that my feminism comes before my desire for sensitivity on cultural issues. Whenever there's a conflict between the two I go with feminism, as (in my opinion) promoting feminism is ultimately beneficial to men and women of all cultures.

I thought this quote from here was interesting. Sorry if it's already been referenced.

Then there is a desperate desire among the modern left to abide by the creed of ‘white male privilege’. What happened in Cologne doesn’t fit into this ideology – being neither white nor privileged – hence the contorted attempt to rationalise the incidents. It must be media invention. Or something to do with the legacy of colonialism. The perpetrators are men foremost, and race and religion are of secondary importance, relevant only to the awful white xenophobes on Twitter luxuriating in all their privilege. This is what happens when people mentally imprison themselves in ideology.

Interesting article. I think that the quote is partly true Indigo. But the bigger problem, I think, is that we have been taught that making generalisations and assumptions about particular groups or cultures is racist (which of course it very often is).

This is helpful when trying to prevent discrimination. It is not helpful when tackling cultural norms that we do not support. I think that the left largely recognises the cultural challenges of mass migration, but doesn't know how to articulate its concern.

So, less 'white men are the problem!', more, 'there's a problem here that I recognise but can't describe in a non-racist way, so I won't say anything'.

I agree with Indigo. There is a desperate need to blame white men for everything. If they aren't directly responsible then whatever bad thing happened is due to their cultural oppression. If that doesn't work then divert the conversation into "but white men do terrible things too"

It happened on a previous thread. For example, 2 right wing, anti-goverment nutters in an armed stand off with the FBI were dragged into the conversation, despite being completely irrelevant to what happened in Cologne.