Shabana Mahmood claims most women coming on small boats have been raped.

[Signalbox]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/oct/04/women-small-boats-raped-shabana-mahmood-asylum-migration

Sadly, I’m not at all surprised by this story. It’s strangely worded though.

“You can almost guarantee that every woman that’s in the north of France has probably been raped along the journey.”

Indeed you are correct, I did forgot to add that particular aspect to my Apple Notes page of far right dogwhistles, I will have to add that under the category of 'lifestyle accessories'. Thanks for reminding me. You cannot be too careful these days. If it weren't for my handy and accessible list I would never have thought to refer my friend's son to PREVENT for reading 1984.

God not this again. 🤦

Ask yourself....

Why are sex crimes in Japan mainly perpetrated by Japanese men?

Why are sex crimes in France mainly perpetrated by French men?

Why are sex crimes in England mainly perpetrated by English men?

It's about how many they commit in proportion to their numbers. 500 crimes per 1000 men reflects worse on that demographic than 2000 crimes per 10,000 men.

This isn't hard to understand and if you really think you'd be safer in Afghanistan then I think you probs deserve to be sent there. 🤣

@MaIeficent exactly… there’s a huge lack of understanding of statistics and probability on this thread.

Indeed. I would add that we don't have reliable estimates of offending rates by ethnicity/country of origin in the UK (because we don't have reliable estimates of the UK population by ethnicity) which makes these arguments very difficult to navigate sensibly. Even knowing the offending rates in other countries isn't very helpful because crimes rarely have universal definitions and we don't know if immigrants are reflect the country they came from or are systematically better/worse in this respect (or anything else).

I too would really recommend listening the leading episode from the rest is politics podcast this week.

I think we need to come up with a better system to remove very rapidly all men who arrive by boat. It seems France is being tricky about taking them back too. So the idea of having a 3rd safe country to send them to whilst their applications are processed seems a viable option. If 100% of male arrivals were immediately removed from the UK I think boat arrivals would cease pretty quickly. From the interview on leading it does seem like this is one of the avenues that the government is considering.

I am very uncomfortable about women also being removed. I don’t see that the small number of women who arrive are much of a threat. Indeed I suspect they are incredibly vulnerable. So I feel women and small children should be provided with some form of safe housing in the UK whilst their applications are processed.

Safe routes are being opened up and it is right that we take our fair share of (particularly women) asylum seekers who have a genuine need.

Agree with all of this except for listening to the rest is politics. I have plenty of misogynists who think women don't deserve equal rights mansplaining to me in real life, so I'm not keen to listen to two of the worst offenders in my free time.

Thank goodness we have women who DO think women deserve rights as both Home Secretary and leader of the opposition and Rory and Alistair are nowhere near any kind of political power. Have you seen AC on triggernometry? He came across as an ignorant, bigoted, arrogant bore. Huge respect to the clearly more intelligent Francis and Konstantin for remaining so polite, quite a herculean task given the rubbish AC was spouting.

Yes I saw him on Triggernometry. Agree he came across as a complete dick.

I believe her. All the murders on boats are of women too, and I’m not sure how you can blame any other group for those.

Back on topic: removing all men who arrive this route would kill the gangs, so it's not a problem for the tiny number of women who make it to be granted leave to apply for asylum. Hopefully their claim would be processed fast given the massive reduction in workload deporting all the men would achieve. However those who are economic migrants/ aren't legitimate refugees do then need to be removed. To make room for genuine refugees coming via legal routes.

The small boat route will -even in the best case scenario of someone who isn't a criminal or grifter (not a genuine asylum seeker) in the first place - cause even more trauma and create even more unstable individuals who will by definition be unlikely to contribute to the UK economy, because of the fact they're so traumatised and / or beholden to the gangs. It's honestly a scandal this has gone on for so long and absolutely terrible for women and girls.

Allowing this route is basically allowing the worst kinds of criminal activity. It's as simple as that.

Isn't this a reason the boats are mostly men, and they leave the women behind in the hope they'll be able to follow safely later?

I don't think she mean on the boats, or even by their fellow refugees, but by the people smuggling gangs?

Given women in Afghanistan can't leave the house without a male chaperone, when their male relative is travelling across Europe to get to the UK they'll quickly either be dead or a slave to another man before the time they arrive, let alone have their asylum claim processed. There is no 'following safely later' without a man they can't leave the house let alone Afghanistan.

These men are abandoning their female relatives, because they think women are lower than animals. This is why SM's planned scheme is so important.

Isn't this a reason the boats are mostly men, and they leave the women behind in the hope they'll be able to follow safely later?

That’s a myth.

Even if they're fleeing a war zone, not a regime like Afghanistan where women have no rights, what kind of man leaves women and children behind in a war zone and flees on a route he knows will take minimum a year to get approval to remain and expects them to stay safe for that year until he can get them to 'follow'? Realistically, what are the chances his female relatives will be safe for that year? Not high and in almost all conceivable cases (if he's genuinely a refugee) much less than if he stayed.

There's a reason that during the Ukraine war the refugees were women and children, predominantly, the men stayed to fight.

It's an insane argument, I can't believe anyone thinks it's reasonable!

I don't think she mean on the boats, or even by their fellow refugees, but by the people smuggling gangs?

Honestly, stop kidding yourself. The men on the boats will have the same propensity to violence and sexual depravity as ALL other men. In addition to that many of them will have been socialised from a young age to treat women as less than human.

It would appear some people have never heard of the Ottoman Empire.

I have to say most of the obvious illegal migrants I see in my city are young men - not older, married men.

So because you don’t agree with them on everything they are not worth listening to? I haven’t seen anything that they have said that suggests they don’t think women should have equal rights and that’s not how they have ever come across on the podcast.
Regardless of Rory or Alistair’s views surely listening to a long form interview with our current Home Secretary is worth listening to? Particularly on a subject that you have interest in and she is directly responsible for the policy direction the current government is taking. I find it very odd to discount it simply based on a dislike of the interviewers.

I think people often project western values on people or try to explain away behaviour from a western lens.

Feeling sorry for afghan dads selling 6yr olds, well there seems to be plenty of money to buy them and often they are sold to family members or friends, perhaps maybe just perhaps in cultures that place a high value on virginity and control of women the young ones fetch a better price. Or exchanging your daughter for a sack of flour is because she’s a burden and all she is worth to you is a sack of flour.

People assume because they could never conceive of treating their own daughter like that, that it must be because of dire circumstances. This is often bullshit, child marriage is often for the parents a way to rid themselves of a cost centre.

Theres currently an on-line effort by arab women to be rid of the niqab, just look at the response of so many men to allowing women to simply breathe. I’m from an ethnic minority and the level of delusion I see from the kumbaya lot about the treatment of women is extraordinary. They will happily believe white men can be raping misogynists but really struggle to identify it in other men. If men truly thought the way their countries treated women were awful they would change, but they don’t. Honour killings, child brides, dowry murders, domestic abuse, do we really think it happens without men?

Women across the world are screaming about the appalling conditions enforced on them by their societies laws and norms and we have the spectacle of colonial/anti imperialist narcissism that wants to take the blame for every foul cultural phenomenon and it absolves itself of the guilt by helping the oppressors. These things happen regardless of colonialism not because of it. Theres an ongoing discussion in India about whether raping your wife should be legal, the “I want to be able to rape my wife legally” caucus are actually arguing that laws that would discourage them from doing so are colonialist in nature. Rape within marriage isn’t even recognised in much of the world.

I would happily take every single girl and woman in Afghanistan, I would budge up and do with less to do it, work for longer, it would be worth it, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to absolve Afghan men from responsibility.

Alister and the honest and truthful Rory completely failed on the trans issue - the errrrr, look at both sides of the story, problems taking one side blah blah blah blah blah bullshit.
But now it's as if none of this bullshit was ever spouted by them and almost every other male in the media. And the whole of the BBC (such honest reporting). Infuriating.