Sarah Champion

[Timefortea99]

Anyone one else enraged/disturbed about her resignation as Shadow Equalities & Women's minister? Gave an article to The Sun (probably not the wisest choice of newspaper) talking about Asian grooming gangs in her constituency and the rest of the UK. There is a problem, we are letting people down if we do not talk about it. It is still going on. Yet now the woman who arguably knows quite a lot on the subject, has been silenced. I actually don't think I could vote for labour ever again. They are morphing into a misogynistic party.

The tone of debate veers towards not debating the racist element at all Yes. What is the point of wringing our hands and saying it's all about men and their entitlement. This a particular scenario which needs focused examination. More work needs to be done to protect vulnerable children from abusers wherever they attack. That means naming those situations eg abusers in care homes, abusers who target children in sport, abusers who run grooming gangs.

Jeremy Corbyn being grilled by Michael Crick on CH 4 news now about this issue. He didn't do himself any favours. He doesn't want to demonise people. It's all about 'people's safety'. Appalling

Sod demonising people. Children are being abused.

She's absolutely right & Corbyn is a complete arse.

Sexual offending against women and children presents in any number of contexts. This is one of them. We have seen it now in oxford, Bradford, Rotherham and that's just off the top of my head. Certain ideas about girls and women prevalent within certain cultures influenced both the offenders and those who should have acted against them and protected the girls. The refusal to acknowledge and examine this is really just another way of saying girls and women matter less than, for example, the ability of certain communities to continue to ignore the behaviour and attitudes of some of their members.
No surprise to see Corbyn taking this line. I think he is somewhat confused as to whether girls and women are still allowed to exist - isn't acknowledging their existence offensive to some far more important group of people?

I really thought that we were moving to a position where it was possible to have an open debate about sexual abuse and organised groups of predominantly Muslim men - and then in parachutes Corbyn (criticising yet another woman MP) and exemplifying all the values which stopped people in those communities from tackling this abuse.

It's yet another example of the misogyny that is so ingrained in the labour party - and Corbyn just doesn't get it. Given an opportunity to stand up for vulnerable girls, he protects the male abusers. So depressing.

I agree enoughisenough12 - but what is equally depressing is the lack of response / interest this thread has received. & yes. I know this topic is never as busy as chat or aibu, but I doubt this thread would have generated much more interest even there. Feminists are remarkable quiet on this issue, & that for me, is more worrying than a male politician shutting down debate.

I think the problem lies in the juxtaposition of various cards in all the headlines: -sexual abuse - race. As feminists, we are acutely aware of how carefully language needs to be handled. If someone says school girls are bad at physics, we rightly rail against the implication (even though as a group they do less well than boys).

Here, we have groups of a/ men b/dark skinned individuals (Muslim, Pakistani?) who target and rape white girls. The racial element has to be important: it's the common denominator. When police and others investigate these crimes they need to profile the criminals. When they decide on how to prosecute, they need to know if it will try for a conviction on just child abuse/rape or whether the race element constitutes a hate crime.

Was Champion right to say “Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls"? I've been mulling this over for the last day or so, which is why I came on here for further clarification and debate about the topic. I think I favour the answer: no, she wasn't.

When some feminists say 'men rape' - and then qualify it as a group statement etc. well, I can understand why people get upset, even as I understand the logic of using group statements within feminist debates. So when Champion uses the same formula, she may strictly be correct in what she says but she is totally misunderstanding the audience (look at how the Sun quoted her words to justify the "Muslim problem"). When we deal out the race and abuse cards side-by-side, whether we like it or not the message assimilated in our minds is: Pakistani men rape our girls. This message is deeply wrong and the problem lies in the formulation of the phrases we use.

But the men in these cases are predominantly Pakistani / Muslim.
So there is a problem. But still it's being denied, years on, even though it's still happening.
I'm just wondering what the reaction would be ( from feminists ) if these gangs were mostly white men, trans, or anything other than what they actually are.

You know what it occurs to me that I don't know the answer to an important question with regards to this issue. Are middle eastern men more or less likely to groom and rape underage girls?

I mean obviously it happens but is it out of proportion with the rest of the male population? Not that any proportion is acceptable mind you. It's just that if it is then it's not racist to name the problem and in fact absurd not to. If it's about the same or even less than then yes it's racist to single out these men.

In fact it's a bit racist not to hold every man to the same standard required of our society on the grounds of race/culture. As if these groups are somehow inferior and cannot be held to the same standard of behaviour.

But the men in these cases are predominantly Pakistani / Muslim. That is an undeniable truth. I may be completely naive but I thought that being a feminist was about the rights of women and girls. Not protecting evil abusers. If the abuse was being perpetrated by gangs of far right white men the response would be different.

There is no doubt in my mind that white men perpetuate these kind of crimes to the same extent or more.

I was a victim of similar abuse in my teen years by white men.

There was someone on another thread recently who works in a CSA survivor charity saying that it's not a racial problem, it's a man problem. The fact that Muslim men have been disproportionately 'caught' / sentenced could be taken as proof of racism. I mean, surely no one actually believes the police aren't racist towards non-white communities?

Also I do wonder if non-white men might need to coordinate more in order to abuse, due to the greater suspicions they are under, being non-white. White men are just being men doing 'what men do' with loose girls, so can be more loosely organised with it all. And 'gangs' are easier to infiltrate / gather evidence towards maybe?

I think Sarah Champion was wrong and I'm glad she was called out for it. The more people class this as a race problem the more the true deep issues with have with CSA and treatment of young girls are ignored.

The fact that Muslim men have been disproportionately 'caught' / sentenced could be taken as proof of racism. I mean, surely no one actually believes the police aren't racist towards non-white communities? But the police ignored the problem for years because they did not want to be accused of racism.

Rotherham was exclusively Muslim men. And got national press. There was a similar case in Yorkshire at the same time where the perpetrators were white and the girls from various. BAME communities. The judge banned press coverage during the trial and no national media covered it following the convictions of the gang of white men.

This is why Sarah Champion was required to resign. She ignores the vast majority of perpetrators and erased a huge number of child victims in order to go with dog whistle racism in one of the most racist publications in the US.

Framing CSE as a 'Muslim problem' is no different than any of the garbage Trump has come up with about migrants. You don't get to play the racism card and then whine when you're held accountable for your actions.

The vast majority of child rapists in this country are white men. If you refuse to acknowledge this reality and talk about white men, then you're insisting that their victims don't count. That they aren't important enough to care about.

Is that true though derxa?

Or did they ignore it for years because no one gives a crap about 14 year old drop out / loose / lifestyle slags being the sex toys of older men?

And then when they finally had to act it was all oh but I didn't want to be racist... and everyone feels sorry for them, PC gorn mad etc, rather than saying hmmm what a convenient cover for abandoning those girls. Not even just abandoning but judging and belittling.

Sisterhoodis % wise as well?

And there is a difference between individuals being sick and thus attracted to children and an entire culture where this is seen as the norm. That's something you can address. Finding out individuals is much harder. Not that nothing should be done, but to liken them is unproductive as they require different solutions.

The abuse of young girls of any colour by older white men who are 'clean' in all other respects is rarely met with outrage. That is my experience. It's treated as the girls wanted to grow up too soon the silly things, oooh aren't they such flirts, he's just sowing his seeds before he settles down blah blah.

As soon as the men have an undesirable characteristic - non-white, involved with other crime like drugs, etc suddenly it's shocking and terrible.

Makes me sick to be honest.

an entire culture where this is seen as the norm

Like white British culture you mean?

It isn't a Muslim nor a Pakistani issue.

It is men from tiny little backwaters, in this case from Pakistan, where they treat women like it is the dark ages, to feel superior.
None of these men would have been educated nor from a community which gives a toss about women. Therefore they are quite easy to identify.

we can address this by educating people, quite aggressively from a young age, or later if they come to the uk later.

The uk shouldn't allow such big ghettos to form and local councils can do something about this.

I would also ban any new religious schools from opening, Muslim, Christian whatever and for those that are already open keep close tabs on what is being taught.

Something like 87% of our society are white so white anything will comprise "the vast majority" of anything. The question of are any demographic more or less likely to commit child abuse I still cannot answer.

A curious comparison I'd like to point out if we're going to equate this to religion is that we're all over it when abuse is uncovered within Christian churches, why do Muslims get a pass?

I'll also make a guess as I don't have figures for it but sex crimes go up massively when men outnumber women so an unchecked migration of which the vast majority are men what do people think is going to happen?

I'm not against immigration, and maybe we should be making sure that women enjoy an equal opportunity to come here otherwise we're just loading the dice against women in general.

The vast majority of child rapists in this country are white men. If you refuse to acknowledge this reality and talk about white men, then you're insisting that their victims don't count. That they aren't important enough to care about*

No one here had said anything remotely like that.

The white population of the UK is 87% , 92% in Scotland and those figures will be skewed by a small number of English cities so it would be rather surprising if most criminals in the UK were not white.

One poster has objected to these men being "othered" yet that is exactly what these men are doing to their victims- white trash who don't matter. Male entitlement with extra added racism.

This was discussed on the Jeremy Vine Show on Radio 2 yesterday. His guests for the discussion were Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Dr Taj Hargey, who is an Imam. Both were very clear that this is a serious and on-going problem and that what the perpetrators have in common is that they are Muslim, and "are brown". They both saw race and religion as being at the centre of this, and both agreed with what Sarah Champion said, and that she was right to say it. This needs to be discussed.

I think part of the difficulty in discussing this, apart from the reluctance to name faith and ethnicity/culture as key, is the failure to name to acknowledge that violence is male. We need to be able to name the problem first of all as male violence. This is first and foremost about misogyny which is more openly expressed in the faith and cultural backgrounds to which those particular men belong. But if we try to pretend that misogyny doesn't exist in white British circles, then we can't even start to talk about this.

Yesterday, Yasmin said that she had spoken to the wives of some of the men convicted in Rotherham, maybe, can't remember, and that they all had been routinely maritally raped by those men.

We need to start talking about male violence towards women and girls.

I am not surprised the Corbyn has done this. For over 15 years people have tried to deflect this, to down play it, to call racist and islamophobe to anybody who did to raise the subject, and shamefully even to the parents of some of these children.

Both online and in the real world I'm afraid one thing that all of these people have in common is that they were left wing. I have never seen anybody from the right either online or in the real world do this.
Of course not everybody on the left did this, but everybody that did do it was on the left.
It shameful.

'The judge banned press coverage during the trial and no national media covered it following the convictions of the gang of white men.'

It was covered in the national press at the time, and compared to Rotherham.