@cabotstove
I'm sorry but how did we get to the point that raping a child doesn't result in a jail sentence?!
A world in which 1.5% of rapes reported to police (and we all know most don't report - I have so many friends who've been raped, and just one ever reported it)
even get charged - far less result in convictions. And a world in which Netflix can screen
Cuties and see nothing wrong with child actors portraying explicitly sexualised behaviour, at just eleven years old. Real children being instructed to do that, to be filmed for adult eyes. And nobody at Netflix saw a problem.
Rape has been decriminalised, in fact if not in theory. Women's rights have been in sharp reverse now for some time - conviction rates have fallen off a cliff in the past few years - but the media reporting insists women have never had it so good, so most women simply don't know that that's not true. And if you look at any society - any, worldwide - the rights, protections and outcomes for children within that society are directly and clearly linked to the status afforded to women by that society. A culture that values women, will value children.
There's lip service paid to the impact of male violence against women and girls. But the Establishment don't take it remotely seriously as the public health obscenity it is. Rape Crisis are so grotesquely underfunded many waiting lists are closed, and 60% of referrals to women's refuges are turned away because they're all full. Meanwhile, male people are housed in women's prisons, and Labour bully and victimise women who point out that sex, and not gender identity, is at the root of women's oppression and that forcing services for vulnerable women to become mixed sex harms the women who need them. Meanwhile, people claim that Women Do It Too, even though we know that statistically, that's bullshit. At least 98% of sexual offending is male.
We have never needed feminism more.
Anyone wanting to do something could do worse than to set up a small monthly donation to the Centre For Women's Justice. They're the last line of resistance for women's rights in law, and they do incredible work on almost no money. A fiver a month adds up to sixty quid a year, and if everyone who could, gave a sum they could afford to lose, they'd be infinitely better able to defend us all.
Meanwhile writing this letter, or sending this email, costs nothing at best and a stamp at worst. And all of us can do that.