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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

You think you've seen it all. But you won't believe this.

70 replies

Charliethefeminist · 27/10/2018 23:52

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6324297/Girl-15-conceived-son-rape-held-sex-slave.html

How much can one rage? This poor girl

OP posts:
R0wantrees · 28/10/2018 09:48

I am sure there must be more to this.

Of course there is. It is a very complex case, much of which can't be reported.

Understanding the impact of the long term systematic abuse by men who are part of 'grooming gangs' is still catching up with the deep-seated & wide-ranging effects this has had on so many girls and their families.

As Lang describes above, there are particular issues with court and social work systems/frameworks.

Bowchicawowow · 28/10/2018 09:49

I read it earlier and it’s utterly disgusting.

R0wantrees · 28/10/2018 09:54

SpartacusAutisticusAHF Thank you

@LangCleg from the Filia workshop:

"Elizabeth Gordon is an artist and a campaigner against Non State Torture. She advocates for non state torture to be named and recognised for what it is, so that the voices of survivors have the words to name the violence they suffered. She campaigns for a human rights based approach to supporting survivors"

filia.org.uk/podcasts/2018/10/3/filia-meets-elizabeth-gordon-non-state-torture

Some info on her here:
filia.org.uk/artists-2016/2016/11/17/elizabeth-gordon

user1457017537 · 28/10/2018 10:20

I agree it is hard to think that a mum met and hugged her daughter in a supermarket and then she was dragged away by the gang and whisked off by car. I can only imagine the girls parents were terrified of these people. I would like to know if the police were called on this occasion knowing that she had previously been reported missing. Had threats been made to her family directly and not just to the girl. If so what sort of world are we living in where people are allowed to get away with this.

Femaledisrespectful · 28/10/2018 10:31

Fucking depressing isn't it LangClegg - the scale of what has happened and how inadequately it has been dealt with. It will continue to unfold for years to come.

Maybe83 · 28/10/2018 10:35

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

arranfan · 28/10/2018 10:54

The complexities of this are wretched. The disdain for Sarah and her family seems palpable and I know that there are reporting restrictions in place that make it difficult to have a full understanding of what is happening.

My anger over this is looking for a focus for something that will address it instead of writing it off as something that is so politically and socially contentious that it can't be resolved.

LangCleg · 28/10/2018 11:12

Thank you, R0wan and Spartacus - I'm going to watch and research. This looks incredibly helpful.

LangCleg · 28/10/2018 11:17

Fucking depressing isn't it LangClegg - the scale of what has happened and how inadequately it has been dealt with. It will continue to unfold for years to come.

Yes, it is.

I like the Children Act. I think it is generally wonderful for children and that our family courts generally do a good job on behalf of children. The act itself is beautifully simple and even quite young minors can have it explained to them.

But all the good things about it for children are also the bad things about it for mothers who are victims.

In a supreme irony - the "intersectional movement" currently prioritising heterosexual white males on the basis of subjective inner identity completely ignores - cannot even see - this actual intersectionality, where systems come together and fail to meet the needs of particular groups of vulnerable women who exist at their intersections.

Veganfortheanimals · 28/10/2018 11:18

And this is why social services get a bad name.the people involved in taking these children away need naming and shaming..then charging and forced to justify themselves in court

Femaledisrespectful · 28/10/2018 11:39

@LangCleg I couldn't agree more.

@Veganfortheanimals Social Care work within legal frameworks, it would be better to look towards how these operate, rather than blaming individuals. And I'll say it again: media reporting of Social Care issues are always inherently skewed. But Social Care also do very little to counter this by not not being proactive in the media.

Veganfortheanimals · 28/10/2018 11:43

Someone will of made the decision to invite a rapist to have an opinion on the child's future...when instead they should of been helping her take her rapists to court...

Femaledisrespectful · 28/10/2018 11:48

The law did vegan, the law. It is not the arbitrary choice of one person. The article does not say how much weight was given to his opinion, if any. The legal status of his alleged crimes against Sarah are separate and I agree that these should be investigated and dealt with as appropriate.

arranfan · 28/10/2018 11:50

Dropping in some items from the Notts Hearing:

"I was prosecuted when older men paid for me to have sex with them in a public toilet - I was only 15 or 16. I can't get my head round it, I never could."

twitter.com/InquiryCSA/status/1055742992013766656

In that same thread, from Telford_gurl :

I was first arrested 40 miles from home with a girl much older that lived another 40 miles away, too young to drive and no direct train. How did I get there and how did I know her? Police didn't bother verifying my address never mind contacting my parents.

Femaledisrespectful · 28/10/2018 11:56

@arranfan I think I remember hearing about attempts to have the criminal convictions that these victims have accumulated during their abuse removed but I have no idea how far that has got. One would hope that sense would prevail. The whole thing is a shit show.

LangCleg · 28/10/2018 12:03

Vegan - a lot of this happens because we have forced/involuntary adoption in this country.

Let's take an example that does not related to grooming gangs. Thinking of the child which is what our legislation, the Children Act, specifically does, should that child be forcibly adopted out, does it have the right to any contact with or information about its father, even if that father is, say, a convicted murderer?

We know that adopted children are likely to have identity concerns and issues as they grow up and need to have information about their backgrounds, and that is why the legislation and courts prioritise their needs above all else.

As we've been saying on this thread - the blindspot in the legislation that always centres the child is that it sometimes results in unjust outcomes for mothers who have been abused by fathers.

Veganfortheanimals · 28/10/2018 12:03

This whole situation of hundreds of girls being abused for years ,is sickening..

R0wantrees · 28/10/2018 12:09

important thread which collates some of the failings /failures of child protection & safeguarding frameworks:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3301266-Safeguarding-girls-and-protecting-women-post-Jimmy-Saville-metoo

Bowlofbabelfish · 28/10/2018 12:34

There’s a huge class issue here as well. This simply would NOT have happened to an upper middle class child - all the stops would have been pulled out to find and return them.
I’m from one of the northern cities which has huge grooming issues, the disdain for working class people, and working class women and girls is palpable. I read these cases with utter horror and I know there’s more to come. The rings in my home area haven’t been uncovered yet, but they exist. In one of the poorest wards in the country.

When this attitude meets the general attitude of women and girls being worthless anyway, the results are catastrophic.

(And that’s what intersectionality was supposed to tell us, ffs.)

Bowchicawowow · 28/10/2018 12:41

Spot on bowlofbbelfish.

NothingOnTellyAgain · 28/10/2018 12:47

Would it have happened to a boy?

If a boy had been kidnapped from a supermarket aged 15 and repeatedly raped by a gang of men would the police have acted?

I think they would.

I think this whole thing is an absolute shitshow of sexist, classist fuckery with the race of the perpetrators used as an excuse not to act to defend these children.

The part about the kidnap being reported to police and the parents reporting multiple times and the police not doing anything needs to be reported as well.

They were complicit as so often they have been >> they see girls who they deem to be of very low value and they support the men. This is very basic sexism. And happens all teh time irrespective of the race of the men >> awful case in ?wales recently for example where police said to man is she ok and he says yep fine and they leave again multiple times.

This all points back at a very subconscious level to females still being the property of males and that should not be interfered with. Old school ideas about "domestics" leave it to the man to sort his woman (girl) out.

Until we change the appalling attitudes in society generally this won't change.

And they fucking took her children. Just unbelievable.

AngryAttackKittens · 28/10/2018 12:58

I guess my issue is that I don't believe having a man who was part of a grooming gang in their life could ever be the best thing for a child, or that a man who's abused the mother is safe for the child to be around even if you take the mother's feelings about that out of the equation. I don't believe that men who're abusive to women are safe for children to be around either.

And what I just said is exactly why F4J hates feminists.

arranfan · 28/10/2018 13:00

And happens all teh time irrespective of the race of the men >> awful case in ?wales recently for example where police said to man is she ok and he says yep fine and they leave again multiple times.

Conducive context can be a useful way of looking at this:

With respect to violence against women and girls one of the earliest insights from feminist research was the challenge the notion of the home/family as a safe place, a ‘haven in a heartless world’. The family turned out to be an extremely unsafe space for women and children.

Theorising about contexts became more significant when successive United Nations, and therefore globally influential, definitions of violence against women conflated forms of violence and the contexts in which they take place. This much cited descriptive definition is contained in the 1993 Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women:

(a) Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring in the family, including battering, sexual abuse of female children in the household, dowry-related violence, marital rape, female genital mutilation and other traditional practices harmful to women, non-spousal violence and violence related to exploitation; (b) Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring within the general community, including rape, sexual abuse, sexual harassment and intimidation at work, in educational institutions and elsewhere, trafficking in women and forced prostitution; (c) Physical, sexual and psychological violence perpetrated or condoned by the State, wherever it occurs.

The elisions that take place here are unhelpful, serving to disguise the ways forms of violence traverse contexts: sexual abuse of girls can take place in and outside the family; rape in households is not limited to those that take place in the context of marriage; family members may be involved in sexual exploitation and trafficking

discoversociety.org/2016/03/01/theorising-violence-against-women-and-girls/

LangCleg · 28/10/2018 13:30

I guess my issue is that I don't believe having a man who was part of a grooming gang in their life could ever be the best thing for a child, or that a man who's abused the mother is safe for the child to be around even if you take the mother's feelings about that out of the equation. I don't believe that men who're abusive to women are safe for children to be around either.

To be fair, neither do the courts. Like I say, hopeless reporting always around child protection.

The child in question was being adopted out. The legislation dictates that the situation of both parents - regardless of criminal convictions, regardless of any abuse between them - be taken into account when determining a) whether the adoption should proceed and b) what contact or information the child should have or be given post adoption.

So yes - the father was "involved". That's the law. But nobody was sitting down, stroking their chin, and taking his "advice".

Reporting of this stuff is so bad. Even Andrew Gilligan, a talented, careful, journalist, managed to misreport the case in which a judge banned the mother from contact with Mermaids. He reported that Mermaids were ordered to not contact the family by the judge, which allowed Mermaids to say they had received no such order. They didn't, because Mermaids weren't a party to proceedings (mother, father, local authority were) and the judge would only issue orders to parties.

See what I mean?

If people understood how it all works better, we could identify the problems and seek solutions. But nobody understands how it works and media reporting gets it badly wrong so we don't only not understand, we're completely misinformed.

R0wantrees · 28/10/2018 13:38

Elizabeth Gordon (who spoke at FiLiA 2018) article & resources about codifying 'non-state torture': artprintspace.net/
(extracts)
"In March 2018 I submitted the text below to the Women’s Resource Centre for the WRC Shadow Report for the UK’s upcoming CEDAW examination in Geneva in 2019. This text was written by Jeanne Sarson and Linda MacDonald of Persons Against Non-State Torture and is currently visible on the WRC website: – Home Page – Our Work – CEDAW – Evidence 2018 -Trafficking: thewomensresourcecentre.org.uk/our-work/cedaw/

“Non-State torture must be specifically criminalised into national law as it is inflicted against women or girls who are subjected to human trafficking and sexualised exploitation. 1, 2 This ensures that the State adopts appropriate legal protection thereby eliminating human rights discrimination against women – Article 2.”

An excerpt from my email to WRC dated 7 June 2018:

“We cannot further the human rights of women and girls not to be subjected to torture unless we face and name the uncomfortable and disturbing reality that women and girls do suffer torture by family, by parents, intimate partners and through trafficking and prostitution. Please do not discriminate by invisibilising the torture women and girls suffer by leaving this population behind.”

Its really worth following the link to read more.

Elizabeth Gordon's artwork, 'Out of the Shadows'

You think you've seen it all. But you won't believe this.