Thread to discuss the reality of parts of the UK absorbing large numbers of men from other cultures

[BernardBlacksMolluscs]

This thread is to replace the one that got deleted earlier today, and the TAATs that came after it.

As per MNHQ in site stuff, we're OK to have this conversatrion

www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/4687254-how-do-we-discuss-the-reality-of-parts-of-the-uk-absorbing-large-numbers-of-men-from-other-cultures?reply=121883255

I find this interesting, particularly in terms of "western values."

I'm of a multi-ethnic background, as is DH, and we have relatives in other parts of the world. Cultural disruption caused by large flows of males from one region to another is not confined to Western Europe by any means. It's causing quite serious issues in Turkey and impacting significantly on Turkish female behaviour in some areas (and many young Turkish women are not very happy about it at all).

My reading of the issue is this: whenever you have movements of large groups of males from a "home" space, where those males are within a context of social and cultural policing, to an "other" space, where that policing is largely non-existent, you run the risk of allowing a "Lord of the Flies" scenario. You are essentially enabling a situation where there is virtually no oversight of that male behaviour, apart from what the state can observe and because of the nature of these groupings, the state can observe very little.

That's your problem.

The question is not why these groups are engaging in these types of assaults, but why you don't see a similar level of related phenomena occurring with "native to an area" male groups. And that answer to that is social and cultural policing: in short, living within a context where people know you and who you are, and where you have a lot to lose, particularly if the result of a behaviour is stark social ostracism.

It's the same dynamic you see in young lads going bonkers in Magaluf, the whole Italian heroin London phase in the 90s, and the development of one-nationality criminal gang networks across Europe -- only this issue is also complicated by the scale of the various male migrations taking place, the background of differing cultural assumptions and preconceptions, and the difference in language etc.

The thing is that sometimes the dynamic works in a positive way. Bronski Beat even wrote a song about it, called Smalltown Boy. But what we are discussing here is the dark side of the coin.

That’s part of the problem. The other part is racially and religiously aggravated misogyny which is cultural.

@Torunette
I found your post very interesting thank you, it's hard not to conclude that men are a problem and need to be kept under surveillance 👀

Here is what happened to one young feminist in Tahrir Square - I found the link when I was trying to find a report of another American journalist who went through an identical ordeal. Who are these men, on their own home turf, overseen by their fellow countrymen, who suddenly seize the opportunity to violently sexually assault a woman because they can get away with it? How come none intervene to save her, instead taking a turn to assault her themselves?

I've just listened to the first 20 minutes of Heretic.

I really believe it is essential reading for anyone wanting to have a sensible discussion on this.

The point she raises about Western views of Islamophobia stifling debate and enabling terrorists is absolutely on point imo.

She already comes across as outstandingly personally brave, she has had death threats for her opinions and she also speaks out about being silenced by organisations who do not want to have discussions.

Thank you, I'd actually never heard of her before this thread.

How come none intervene to save her, instead taking a turn to assault her themselves?
Because men like to admire other men and copy their behaviour because they like to bond with each other and doing it whilst they are exploiting abusing and harming women seems to depend the bond☹️
Because they would have felt like sissies if they had helped her and can't cope with feeling embarrassed in front of other men ☹️
Because if they haven't joined in it would have felt like an implicit criticism of the rapists and it feels too dangerous to criticise men who are raping ☹️
Or maybe if you are man with a group of men who are raping you face 2 choices join in with the raping or they will turn on you and rape you☹️

I think it is the mob.

When people experience that frisson together, knowing “are you thinking what I’m thinking?”, the energy, the excitement.

Coupled with the fact that these women it happened to are white Westerners (I was disturbed to see how many identical news stories I found).

So why was it almost exclusively men protesting in the square? Is it because the local women are safely indoors, knowing what the men are capable of - and it means a naïve western female journalist seems to present herself for assault, by having the temerity to be outdoors, in the thick of things, reporting on what is happening? Should she be chaste, modest and hidden?

So I believe the reason the male mob attacks female western journalists in this way, is because the men who make up the mob have shared, sexist beliefs, so they are able to function as ‘one’, according to those beliefs. If there was a lot of disagreement between those men about expectations of women, particularly Western women, then they wouldn’t be able to act as one mind and some of them would step in and intervene.

Nothing to do with politics, but experience of Parisian life.

Do I believe she was sexually harassed a lot? Absolutely.

Do I believe it was all or even predominantly Algerian immigrants? Well it doesn’t tally with my personal experience of pan-cultural harassment or with the socio-demographics of French immigration which includes U.K., Italy, Spain and Portugal; from N.Africa includes Tunisia and Morocco; and globally includes French West Africa, French West Indies and Asia. She also makes the assumption that the “Algerians” she encountered were all first generation.

Meanwhile, France has a major problem with entitled white middle-aged male sexual behaviour - in which the cases of Strauss-Kahn, Nicolas Hulot, Julien Bayou, Georges Tron, Patrick Poivre-d’Arvor, Olivier Duhamel, Claude Lévêque, Gabriel Matzneff etc are merely the tip of the iceberg.

But you can choose to believe what’s “politically convenient” to you.

I think it creates tension in this discussions about these phenomena when people mention nationalities. You can feel hackles rising. I can see why Algerians are going to be pissed off if a group of slightly similar-looking men from different countries who are behaving badly, are presumed to be from Algeria. I don’t know what the solution is though, if people want to discuss specific situations.

Mass sexual assault of female protesters had been going on for some years before the Arab Spring and it got progressively worse for several years afterwards (not sure what it's like there now). It wasn't just journalists or western women, it was Egyptian female protesters as well.

www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/05/egypt-women-rape-sexual-assault-tahrir-square

It's designed to drive women out of public life. For a very brief time in early 2011 women came and protested alonside men in huge numbers. This is their punishment.

edition.cnn.com/2011/11/25/world/meast/egypt-women-sexual-harassment/index.html

Just to comment on the whataboutery.

No one on this thread has stated that white men don't behave abhorrently to women as well. The opposite has been stated.

We should be able to talk about all of the men who treat women badly and this should not be limited or shut down at the point of talking about the fact that there might be different cultural reasons for bad treatment depending on which cultural group the man comes from.

Some migrant groups come from areas and hold religious and cultural beliefs that women are property. We should be able to talk about that.. Whether they are first generation migrants or second generation migrants born to families who still hold the same beliefs . So whether the men are first second or third generation migrants is irrelevant if we can't address belief systems or assume that once migrants arrive from places that treat women as property lose those beliefs once they cross borders.

And I don't know if the men who harassed me were first or second generation immigrants so I don't know why it is assumed that I think they were first. I haven't stated that anywhere on this thread.

Thanks @LangClegsInSpace . It’s fucking awful. I had limited my search to female journalists in Tahrir Square. Horrific. It is sexism, misogyny, controlling women and removing women’s right to participate in public life through sexual harassment and violence. I am feeling disturbed to realise my knowledge was a mere tip of the iceberg.

So, back to the UK, a large influx of men with a similar culturally nurtured sense of entitlement to control the freedoms of women through sexual harassment and violence. What do we do about it?

I remember a lot of media astonishment when the BNP got some council seats in various part of the country in the 2000-2010 era. Media pundits speculated why people had voted for them, but couldn't reach any conclusion. If you google, you'll find archived articles pondering it. One of those places was Rotherham in 2008. Two seats to the BNP. I wonder what those councillors might have promised voters on the doorstep when they canvassed the areas, don't you? This is how the Socialist Workers Party reacted at the time: Socialist WorkerThose councillors lost their seats at the next election, maybe because the electorate decided they were useless, maybe because the scandal had finally broken in national media. I don't know. But with the benefit of hindsight, the media pundits should have left their houses to work out why the BNP wasn't losing all its electoral deposits any more and asked the local voters about it.

Oh for fuck's sake. MN has removed my paragraph breaks again.

I remember a lot of media astonishment when the BNP got some council seats in various part of the country in the 2000-2010 era. Media pundits speculated why people had voted for them, but couldn't reach any conclusion.

If you google, you'll find archived articles pondering it. One of those places was Rotherham in 2008. Two seats to the BNP. I wonder what those councillors might have promised voters on the doorstep when they canvassed the areas, don't you?

Those councillors lost their seats at the next election, maybe because the electorate decided they were useless, maybe because the scandal had finally broken in national media. I don't know. But with the benefit of hindsight, the media pundits should have left their houses to work out why the BNP wasn't losing all its electoral deposits any more and asked the local voters about it.

How the SWP reacted at the time

Lifeturnsonadime We should be able to talk about all of the men who treat women badly and this should not be limited or shut down at the point of talking about the fact that there might be different cultural reasons for bad treatment depending on which cultural group the man comes from.

Usually women are shut down when they speak about sexual violence with calls of "Not All Men Are Like This" or NAMALT.

On this thread, we're experiencing All Men Are Like This. It's also used to shut women down! I'm not sure why it's been decided it's progressive and liberal to claim that male violence against women and girls is solely biological with no cultural facets, and thus consistent across all countries and cultures, but apparently it has been. I am learning that all men are equally violent and that cultural attitudes cannot exacerbate their level of violence or improve it. This comes across as rather manhating to me...

I lived with my ex in the Midlands for a while where there was a growing number of young Albanian males. It was one of the reasons I was glad to leave.
As a single woman I feel vulnerable when they are around, their attitude to women on the street is vile. I seldom go into the city now, and never at night.
My rural backwater is at least safe.

Then don't participate in it.

Your style on this thread is that of a 19 year old male - ooooh, sorry, enby - undergrad at SOAS who's read some Marcuse and now thinks he knows everything about moral and cultural relativity so will insert himself into conversations he clearly doesn't understand.

You're not interested in engaging in this discussion in good faith; you merely want to signify your moral superiority. All you are doing is signalling your emotional immaturity. I'm not going to engage with you further.

@lifeturnsonadime

We should be able to talk about all of the men who treat women badly

But that’s precisely what you don’t want to talk about. ALL of the men who treat women badly includes white men. White men treating women badly in their own countries and white men travelling abroad to exploit women there - exactly what you complain of in other cultures.

This thread needs to decide: do you just want to have a moan about immigrants or do you want to address male sexual misbehaviour? If the latter - then focusing on a fraction of the population will only produce a partial view.

As to first generation immigrant issue, your precise words were:

”the way in which men from northern African communities have been raised to view women might impact on their behaviour towards women. Do you imagine these men forget the cultures they come from and can’t do bad things once they are immigrants?”

The words “culture they come from” & “once they are immigrants” implies first generation. For second generation+ the culture “they come from” is France.

In 2021, people born outside the UK made up an estimated 14.4% of the UK's population, or 9.5 million people. Compared to the UK born, migrants are more likely to be aged 26 to 64, and less likely to be children or people of retirement age.

Although the numbers of both female and male migrants have increased over time, women constitute a small majority of the UK’s migrant population. In 2019, about 53% of the foreign-born population were women or girls, according to APS data.

migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migrants-in-the-uk-an-overview/

Migration watch Nov 2020

www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefing-paper/484/foreign-national-offenders

There are 18,400 foreign national offenders (FNOs) in the UK, including 9,000 in prisons (who made up 11% of a total prison population in 2019 of 82,200)

About a third were convicted of violent or sexual offences, about a fifth for drug charges, and others for burglary, fraud, robbery and other serious crimes.

Nations with the largest numbers of their citizens in UK prisons are: 1) Poland 2) Albania 3) Romania 4) Ireland 5) Jamaica 6) Lithuania 7) Pakistan 8) Somalia 9) India and 10) Portugal.[11]

More recently

www.gov.uk/government/statistics/offender-management-statistics-quarterly-january-to-march-2022/offender-management-statistics-quarterly-january-to-march-2022

Foreign National Offenders (FNOs)
There were 9,682 (2,743 remand, 6,214 sentenced and 725 non-criminal) foreign nationals held in custody as at 30 June 2022; representing 12% of the total prison population. The number of FNOs in the prison population has decreased by 1% compared to 30 June 2021, driven by a 19% fall in the number of non-criminal foreign national prisoners.

The most common nationalities after British Nationals in prisons are Albanian (14% of the FNO prison population), Polish (9%), Romanian (8%), Irish (7%), Lithuanian (4%), and Jamaican (4%).

These are the figures for the Non-British population of the United Kingdom in 2020/21, by nationality(in 1,000s)

India 896
Poland 682
Pakistan 456
Republic of Ireland 412
Germany 347
Romania 329
Nigeria 312
South Africa 298
Italy 280
China 245
Bangladesh 223
United States of America 196
Portugal 170

www.statista.com/statistics/759859/non-british-population-in-united-kingdom-by-nationality/

We should be able to talk about all of the men who treat women badly

But that’s precisely what you don’t want to talk about. ALL of the men who treat women badly includes white men.

Is that a deliberate misunderstanding Mirabai?

As far as I am aware, this forum has been criticising men, even specifically white men, for years. No one bats an eyelid if you discuss ‘toxic masculinity’ and ‘white, male privilege’… The men whose misogyny we aren’t really able to discuss (although this thread has unusually been allowed to stand), is those men who are not white, or who are raised in the values of other cultures, either abroad or within the near confines of a subculture here, as second, third generation.

That’s what is meant by talking about ALL of the men. All of the men includes those we are generally prohibited from discussing. We are in no way prohibited from, or avoid, criticising white men, their behaviour here or their behaviour abroad. Nothing taboo whatsoever.

The words “culture they come from” & “once they are immigrants” implies first generation. For second generation+ the culture “they come from” is France

So you think that all immigrants assimilate into their host countries cultural values within a generation?

What makes you believe that is the case? I find this really interesting. I think sometimes and in some circumstances this is true but definitely not in all cases.

Especially in areas where pockets of migrants live together and carry on their lives much as they did before still mostly speaking the natal languages , setting up their own shops & restaurants and following the same cultural and religious beliefs. What makes you think it is about living in a different country that changes their belief systems?

I have been friendly with 2 Muslim women neither of whom were first generation migrants during my working life. One of them definitely considered her self to be British the other felt like a Muslim living in Britain but didn't consider that she shares values of people from the West. She and her brothers were open about this in the early 2000s not long after the terrorist attacks on the WTC.

It’s interesting that as I read your post MintJulia I feel myself do a little pearl-clutching gasp because you mentioned a specific nationality.

It makes me realise I am as reactive as many of the posters here, fearful of causing a backlash. I am not trying to achieve anything with this post. Just noting my programming in action.

I hesitated for a long while before posting that. But I felt a distinct difference.

The Albanian men I came across didn't only target young girls who were vulnerable or could be sweet-talked as other men, Brits and others, do. They were openly aggressive in their sexism, not trying to make out it was admiring. I really felt like piece of meat, the way I was treated, and I'm no spring chicken. It was a sort of aggressive belligerent contempt, as if I had no right to be treated as a human being.

No misunderstanding, simply a reflection of the disingenuousness of the terms of discussion.

If no-one bats an eyelid about discussing misogyny then you can’t claim to be a poor silenced minority that really wants to talk about misogyny but can’t. As if the Rotherham and Oxford cases et al hadn’t been done to death on here and all over the internet. In a multicultural country such as the U.K., the men whose behaviour is criticised are thus multicultural.

I understand. I have felt something similar- a feeling of contemptuous misogyny, not from Albanians, but from men I presume to be Bangladeshi. Being treated as though I should ‘get back indoors’, was the feeling -that I was some sort of contemptible upstart for not deferently scurrying around with my head bowed and covered up under a massive sheet with a grill of fabric over my eyes. A very odd experience to have in the UK. Not sexual harassment to embarrass and unnerve me as I am use to, but to shame me for being out in public.

I don’t think Rotherham, Oxford, Telford or anywhere else that these racially and religiously motivated misogynist hate crimes have been done to death at all on MN. People tend to be very careful, lots of whataboutery.

On the rest of the internet, I have no idea. I assume I must be contained inside an echo chamber of my own choosing, where the subject needs very careful handling. Maybe you are reading more ‘far right’ websites than me 😉