"despite the previous (claimed and actual) achievements of feminists and lawyers, the scandal has not gone away" - you are implying that feminists and lawyers (Andrew Norfolk is neither of these so unsure where his extensive work fits your thesis) failed if they didn't end sexual exploitation in totality? Or do you only mean sexual exploitation by Pakistani men? Why would the scandal "go away"? Wherever power structures enable it, and authorities condone it, predatory men will commit sexual abuse..
"Musk did bring more publicity to the matter" - Musk has pushed inflammatory misinformation about every aspect of these cases, and there is no reason to be delicate about that unless you somehow think his misinformation is benign.
It's great that you know people on the right and left committed to free speech. Me too. But can I suggest that anyone who identifies themselves as primarily "anti-woke" (rather than, idk, "pro-civil society" or whatever) is by definition unhealthily committed to tribalism.
Also I just read your post and you think "wokism" BEGAN in 2020? M8 some of us were cancelled six years before that. Maya Forstater got sacked in 2019! Why on earth would a phenomenon you think was inaugurated by a flashpoint in US racial politics be ended by a UK review into child transition? This is incoherent. What you mean is that you NOTICED it in 2020 and haven't bothered to look into it beyond that.
What do you mean by a “significant proportion”? A significant proportion of what - all sexual offending? Trafficking? Grooming? Afaik there is no data on the demographic characteristics of victim and perpetrator, though I'd be very grateful if you could point me to it.
Your framing creates a racial hierarchy of victims and perpetrator, in which Asian perpetrators against white victims would be more aggressively prosecuted. That is not just self-evidently racist, it's stupid: one of the huge missed opportunities in the grooming scandal is that the abusers assaults on Asian women and girls (often their own family members) did not receive criminal justice attention. Potentially, many if these crimes could have been prevented had Asian victims been attended to.
It's important to remember as well that the victims were not only targeted on the basis of race but also on the basis of class — on the basis of being the kind of girl authorities would find it easy to dismiss. They were white working class girls. If you only want to talk about race, you are doing very little to protect similarly vulnerable girls from being exploited in future.
Yes you called JK Rowling's tweet an "early" salvo in the terf wars. Tell that to someone like Julie Bindel, who got blacklisted in 2003. Or the women of Vancouver Rape Relief. Or Mitchfest.
Nothing in my reply to you suggests I would ignore the intersections (because yes, you are talking about an intersectional approach here) of race, class and sex in sexual abuse.
What I absolutely reject is the idea that sexual abuse can be successfully dealt with by treating it as the sole preserve of one ethnic or religious group. All that does is instrumentalise rape for racism.
I am familiar, and it is not relevant at all to what I'm saying here. You cannot fix sexual abuse by approaching it through an exclusively racial/cultural frame. Obviously. Because it is a sexual crime.
Fantastic innit.✨ I unsubscribed from The Free Press yesterday because of their grooming gangs “cover-up” piece — and another recent story about safe access zones outside abortion clinics in Scotland which was reported from someone who seemed to have never been there. Their coverage of the UK is, well, stunningly off and would never get published there.
Also, I love how you went from alllll that, and cut to the feeling to go straight into Carly Rae Jepsen.
In Selling The City (honestly, it’s really odd, like it’s made with AI), one character utters this immortal line: “I was born with one kidney… and two uteri.” Incredible!
Two points:
"despite the previous (claimed and actual) achievements of feminists and lawyers, the scandal has not gone away" - you are implying that feminists and lawyers (Andrew Norfolk is neither of these so unsure where his extensive work fits your thesis) failed if they didn't end sexual exploitation in totality? Or do you only mean sexual exploitation by Pakistani men? Why would the scandal "go away"? Wherever power structures enable it, and authorities condone it, predatory men will commit sexual abuse..
"Musk did bring more publicity to the matter" - Musk has pushed inflammatory misinformation about every aspect of these cases, and there is no reason to be delicate about that unless you somehow think his misinformation is benign.
It's great that you know people on the right and left committed to free speech. Me too. But can I suggest that anyone who identifies themselves as primarily "anti-woke" (rather than, idk, "pro-civil society" or whatever) is by definition unhealthily committed to tribalism.
Also I just read your post and you think "wokism" BEGAN in 2020? M8 some of us were cancelled six years before that. Maya Forstater got sacked in 2019! Why on earth would a phenomenon you think was inaugurated by a flashpoint in US racial politics be ended by a UK review into child transition? This is incoherent. What you mean is that you NOTICED it in 2020 and haven't bothered to look into it beyond that.
What do you mean by a “significant proportion”? A significant proportion of what - all sexual offending? Trafficking? Grooming? Afaik there is no data on the demographic characteristics of victim and perpetrator, though I'd be very grateful if you could point me to it.
Your framing creates a racial hierarchy of victims and perpetrator, in which Asian perpetrators against white victims would be more aggressively prosecuted. That is not just self-evidently racist, it's stupid: one of the huge missed opportunities in the grooming scandal is that the abusers assaults on Asian women and girls (often their own family members) did not receive criminal justice attention. Potentially, many if these crimes could have been prevented had Asian victims been attended to.
It's important to remember as well that the victims were not only targeted on the basis of race but also on the basis of class — on the basis of being the kind of girl authorities would find it easy to dismiss. They were white working class girls. If you only want to talk about race, you are doing very little to protect similarly vulnerable girls from being exploited in future.
Yes you called JK Rowling's tweet an "early" salvo in the terf wars. Tell that to someone like Julie Bindel, who got blacklisted in 2003. Or the women of Vancouver Rape Relief. Or Mitchfest.
Nothing in my reply to you suggests I would ignore the intersections (because yes, you are talking about an intersectional approach here) of race, class and sex in sexual abuse.
What I absolutely reject is the idea that sexual abuse can be successfully dealt with by treating it as the sole preserve of one ethnic or religious group. All that does is instrumentalise rape for racism.
I am familiar, and it is not relevant at all to what I'm saying here. You cannot fix sexual abuse by approaching it through an exclusively racial/cultural frame. Obviously. Because it is a sexual crime.
Fantastic innit.✨ I unsubscribed from The Free Press yesterday because of their grooming gangs “cover-up” piece — and another recent story about safe access zones outside abortion clinics in Scotland which was reported from someone who seemed to have never been there. Their coverage of the UK is, well, stunningly off and would never get published there.
Also, I love how you went from alllll that, and cut to the feeling to go straight into Carly Rae Jepsen.
Can you do Selling The City next, pls. Thanks!
That Free Press article made me feel, incredibly, grateful for the NYT's coverage of the UK. I will investigate Selling the City!
In Selling The City (honestly, it’s really odd, like it’s made with AI), one character utters this immortal line: “I was born with one kidney… and two uteri.” Incredible!
Goddamnit I'm IN