rape – Page 8 – Another angry woman

Ched Evans fans are not a problem with Twitter, but a problem with rape culture

The story of Ched Evans, the rapist footballer, continues to find its way into the news as yet more foul behaviour is unearthed. The survivor of this rape was named by rape apologists and bombarded with vitriol and death threats, all because there continues to be a culture which supports rapists.

The survivor has been forced to leave the country due to the shit she has been getting, which is, ultimately, the endgame for rape apologists. They want rapists to continue to go on raping, and part of this entails making it as awful as possible for survivors to come forward. Meanwhile, a prominent rape apologist remains unrepentant, refusing to acknowledge that naming and smearing a survivor of rape was wrong, and that paying compensation was the “last thing” she wanted to do, putting it behind such horrors as genocide, war, poverty, and, you know, being raped, to name but a few things that paying compensation to a rape survivor you smeared and hounded out of the country is worse than.

This is a grotesque picture of what rape apologism does and the sort of people who engage in this to a stronger-than-average degree.

And of course Twitter and Facebook are being blamed for this, particularly by the Star and Telegraph, but this is missing the point entirely. That was just the medium through which this viciousness occurred. We don’t see people queuing up to ban conversations when a death threat occurs verbally, nor do we see vociferous calls for regulation of the postal service if someone receives a vicious letter.

The fact is, this shit was always there, and unless the root problem–rape culture–is tackled, it will continue to be there. One can close down Twitter, and they’ll continue to perpetuate their beliefs in words, and in deeds, and they’ll keep on writing shit that contributes to it in newspaper columns and the powerful will use the legal system to keep survivors silent.

Because that is the problem. There’s a culture that defends rapists, and it’s not going anywhere unless it’s challenged.

What we need to talk about is not “how should Twitter be regulated, and how shall we punish people?” but, rather, “why do some people defend rapists? Why do some people defend rapists so vociferously that they hound survivors out of the country? What can we do to overturn this culture of violence?”

I continue to be alarmed and disgusted by some of the shit that I see, some of the things people believe and the lengths they’ll go to keep rapists raping. This is why I want to attack the cause rather than the symptoms.

Dear FHM

Dear FHM,

I get it. I really get it. You’re useless fart-huffing dicknozzles. I know this. You really don’t need to prove this by normalising violence against women.

In your “What Not To Wear” feature, you decided to be very funny by advising your readership not to wear women’s socks. Might I just point out that you’re really missing out here, as women’s socks tend to be a little softer than men’s socks, and if you buy the over-the-knee ones, your legs will be toasty all winter?

Sorry, I wandered off the point, there. Where was I? Oh yes, you are shitmunching chancres.

See, at the end of the little slot, you advise your readers not to wear their “girlfriend/mother/victim’s socks”. You might think this is a light-hearted little joke, a friendly bit of fun. Banter, if you will.

If that’s the case, you’re wrong in the way only the true arsenugget can be wrong. Have you thought at all about what a “victim” is, other than the butt of your edgy humour? Did you know that one in twenty of your readers might have raped–maybe more than once–and shared a wry smile upon reading your little joke, while resolving not to steal the socks off of anyone he rapes in the future? Or that one in five of your readers are likely to think it’s all right to hit a woman, and you’ve just made that a little bit more acceptable?

Or maybe you think your little joke is much funnier because all this happens. Perhaps you’re trying to market yourselves to that all-important “perpetrator” demographic by laughing with them?

If so, please catch on fire. I am asking you as politely as possible. Please catch on fire.

Furiously,

Stavvers (no hugs, kisses, and I’m not letting you near my socks)

Picture courtesy of @Seja75

I believe Steven Messham: examining the lies and smears in the Mail

The Daily Mail have written a vile piece smearing an abuse survivor. It is a classic example of victim smearing and is thoroughly disgusting. Let us go through each agonising point they make and examine how they are utterly fictitious yet using rape apologistic beliefs as a heuristic to allow their vile claims to sit comfortably and unquestioned in the minds of their audience.

“Newsnight failed to say that Messham triggered a 1994 libel trial by falsely claiming to have been abused by a senior police officer. His story was shown to be riddled with contradictions, costing the publications which reported his claims a total of £375,000 in damages and £1 million costs.”

When police officers rape, they have a cavalcade of their porcine comrades to cover for them. That the official investigation into the case failed is hardly a surprise: the police were the ones investigating it. It has been shown time and time again that they cover for one another: see Hillsborough, see the police coverups of their own active forging of rape investigations. This is likely to be no different and cannot be taken in any way as proof that Steven Messham has a track record of lying about abuse. Instead, he has a track record for being disregarded by virtue of having been abused by those with power.

“Messham physically attacked a lawyer at the Waterhouse public inquiry into sexual abuse in North Wales. He screamed obscenities at the barrister who was questioning him, leapt out of the witness box, and threw punches at him.”

An abuse survivor is angry! This is hardly surprising considering the emotionally traumatic event of having been systematically abused and raped by people with power, in conjunction with a public inquiry failing to fully investigate what happened to him. He was denied justice. That is a reason to be angry.

“Documents proved some of Messham’s evidence to the inquiry to be false. Although Sir Ronald Waterhouse concluded that Messham had experienced abuse, he described him as ‘an unreliable witness’ who was unlikely to be trusted by any jury – a conclusion also reached by the Crown Prosecution Service.”

Again, a powerful man has dismissed a survivor of abuse. Survivors of abuse are often taken to be unreliable witnesses due to their vulnerability and young age, and the fact they have experienced busloads of fucking abuse, repeatedly. Several people in a position of power, who, for some reason or another failed to investigate claims and dismissed a key witness. Why is the survivor being blamed here?

“Even Messham’s lawyer concedes he may be ‘disturbed’ and that he may have made up some of his claim.”

Messham needs a better lawyer. Incidentally, the lawyer actually said this: ‘People who are vulnerable . . . a good part of them is so disturbed that they’re not going to be wholly consistent and reliable.” That is somewhat different from the Mail’s claim that the lawyer said he made it up, isn’t it?

“In 2004, Angus Stickler, the reporter behind this month’s Newsnight story, was publicly criticised for interviewing Messham on Radio 4 without mentioning he was facing charges of defrauding a charity he ran for alleged abuse victims. Messham was later acquitted.”

So Messham didn’t defraud a charity? How is that in any way related to his credibility as a witness for child sex abuse?

“In 2005, Messham was also cleared of a £33,000 benefits fraud. He admitted concealing savings of £40,000 – a result of compensation for the alleged abuse – when he made claims for income support and housing benefit, but insisted he had not intended to be dishonest.”

Again, what on fucking earth has this got to do with sexual abuse?

“Newsnight’s key claim that Messham was prevented from naming Lord McAlpine and other supposed paedophiles at the Waterhouse inquiry was clearly untrue. Transcripts show Messham could say whatever he liked about anyone he chose – and that he did so with abandon over his two weeks of testimony, during which time he did allege that a man referred to only as ‘McAlpine’ had abused him.”

This is (A) a criticism of a TV show, not what he said, and (B) completely ignoring the fact that Messham spent years thinking it was McAlpine due to a police officer showing him a photograph of the perpetrator and telling Messham it was McAlpine. Again, it’s got literally nothing to do with his credibility as a witness.

In all, then, the Mail have smeared an abuse survivor as a cheap attempt to get linkbait and profit from what happened to him, all the while continuing to create a climate where survivors are not believed. The only people who profit from this are abusers and perpetrators of rape. I have not linked to this article, because I don’t want to encourage the Mail’s cosy relationship with rapists, but the quotes are verbatim.

It is crucial that we believe Messham. He was raped and abused, and what happened to him must be investigated. The excuses the Mail have provided for him being denied justice are a vile, transparent attempt at a smear and an attempt to reinforce the culture which allows these horrific things to happen.

Addendum: the “journalist” who wrote this has a track record of trying to discredit witnesses in child abuse cases where the establishment are implicated. I can’t say I’m surprised, though I am utterly disgusted.

How the mainstream media derailed addressing child abuse

The two recent child abuse scandals have both found themselves derailed by exactly the same method: a protracted session of the mainstream media navel-gazing and taking pops at one another. The Jimmy Savile case turned into a study of why Newsnight didn’t report on the story. Meanwhile, the re-examination of the North Wales abuse scandal turned into a study of why Newsnight did report on the story.

In the noise of the quarrelling over who should resign and why, and squabbles about the quality of journalism, the real story got lost.

Children were raped and abused. There were cover-ups and failures to fully investigate the systemic instances of abuse which occurred. People were denied justice for the horrific things that happened to them.

On 10th November, the Guardian ran nine separate stories and a liveblog about the crisis at the BBC; on the 11th eight stories on the front page alone. It’s a similar state of affairs in the other major news sources, except for the BBC, who are running with a third arrest in the Savile piece. Where mentioned within the BBC stories, the child abuse is thrown in as an afterthought.

There are many important questions remaining regarding the child abuse that happened, yet these questions are lost in the media circlejerk; the problem of which is perhaps exemplified by this Observer editorial which manages to make the issue about everything from journalistic standards to austerity, tacking child abuse on as an afterthought. These are questions which ought to form the crux of the issue, yet they are drowned out in favour of discussion of the internal politics at the BBC and who is reporting what best.

1) Who did abuse children? It seems certain now, that Lord McAlpine was not one of the men who raped Stephen Messham, the man who told his story on Newsnight. By focusing on who did not rape Messham–to the point where Messham himself, a survivor of rape and sexual abuse, was forced to apologise–the media have lost sight of the fact that these rapes happened and were perpetrated by some people. Who were they, and will they be brought to justice?

In a way, it’s not really the names of the abusers that matter. The answer may be neither high-profile nor particularly newsworthy, considering sexual abuse and rape are frighteningly common. However, as a matter of urgency, we should turn our focus on this: in the interest of justice, it matters not who did not abuse these people, but who did.

2) Why are there so many systematic failures to investigate abuse allegations? While there was some emphasis on the BBC’s failure to investigate–and perhaps cover up–the allegations against Jimmy Savile, little has been made of failures in other areas, particularly that of the police. The police failed to investigate allegations against Savile, yet are not facing a public investigation in the same vein as that for the BBC. Likewise, Lord McAlpine was misidentified due to a police officer erroneously telling a survivor that the man in a photograph he had positively identified as his abuser was McAlpine. How did this happen and will the police officer involved be held to account?

Likewise, criticisms of the Waterhouse inquiry into the North Wales abuse scandal still stand. That Lord McAlpine was not involved changes absolutely nothing about the fact that the inquiry failed to investigate the abuse that happened outside the homes. Why are we not talking about how these survivors of abuse have their hands tied in seeking justice due to a systematic failure to investigate what happened to them?

3) How can we create a climate where it is safer for survivors of abuse to come forward? In both the North Wales and Savile cases, the picture of what happened only came to light years later. We do not live in a world where it is safe for survivors to come forward. When a person in a position of power rapes and abuses, there will be an army of people willing to cover it up and cast an aura of disbelief on the survivor. Take a look at Stephen Messham being dragged through the mud for what happened to him.

Rape and abuse happen, and too often they happen in silence. These are not things which happened in the past, but continue to happen today.

There was a narrow window of opportunity for survivors of abuse in the past to come forward and tell their stories, which has been effectively closed by derailing what could be a discussion of the ugly realities of a culture which facilitates abuse into talk about the BBC. It makes it harder still for current survivors to come forward when they are effectively told this is secondary to a debate about journalistic standards.

Please let us not lose sight of the real issues, the crux of the matter. Let us not contribute further to the culture of silencing survivors. Let us keep what happened to these people at the front of our minds and challenge ourselves to ensure that this can never happen again rather than allowing ourselves the easy route of the well-rehearsed examination of media practice.

Rape and abuse happens. It happens a lot. How can we stop that?

Being anti-rape must not involve being anti sex-work

Glasgow’s upcoming Reclaim The Night march has a slightly baffling message this year. Rather than being simply a march against rape, it also appears to be a march against sex work.

It starts at the very title of the march: “WOMEN ARE NOT FOR SALE”. While this could be construed as, perhaps, a critique of capitalism or an anti slavery message, its intent becomes clear as one delves into their press release:

“…in our call for the elimination of all forms of violence against women – violence that includes rape, sexual assault, prostitution and pornography, trafficking, domestic abuse, female genital mutilation…

This year the theme of the Glasgow event will be “WOMEN ARE NOT FOR SALE IN SCOTLAND”. We want to speak out in support of the importance of promoting equality in Scotland for all women, using a challenging demand approach to prostitution and highlighting potential legislation to support this.”

The emphasis, of course, is mine. One of these things is not like the other. One of these things, is, in fact, a diverse set of roles which fall under the umbrella term of “sex work”. The blanket assertion that sex work is violence against women reflects a somewhat dated mode of thinking in the present.

While not every sex worker is the stereotypical “happy hooker”, it is true that a lot of women choose to do this job. In a capitalist system, it may in fact be rather a good option for work, as one has more free time than under a 9-5 job, but for similar if not better reimbursement for labour. Due to the intersecting oppressions of capitalism and patriarchy, this is of course not a truly free choice, but, likewise, it can hardly be termed “violence against women”.

In fact, what Reclaim the Night are trying to do could also be classed as “violence against women”. They are seeking to bring in legislation which would make it harder for sex workers to work. While they are careful not to target the women themselves with demands for criminalisation, criminalising punters will have effects on sex workers. Let us remember that this is a job for these people, in a climate where there aren’t many jobs. The immiseration of poverty is already apparent in millions of people. People are starving, homeless, dying. Why on earth would Reclaim The Night want to consign more women to this fate?

Ultimately, the view put forward by Reclaim the Night displays a devastating lack of intersectional thinking. They are not showing solidarity with their sisters in the face of oppressions other than patriarchy. And sex workers need solidarity: their occupational hazards are violence against women. It is not what they are doing that is violence against women, but what they experience.

Reclaim the Night don’t seem to be giving any sex workers platform to speak about how we can ally with them to best give the support that they need in ending this oppression. Instead, Reclaim the Night are focusing their work against sex workers. It’s entirely possible to be anti-rape and not be anti sex work, if you are willing to think intersectionally, have your preconceptions challenged and ally with those who experience intersectional oppression.

I hope Reclaim the Night listen to this criticism and, at the very least, actively seek to engage with sex workers. Sadly, given the history of the movement, I don’t think they will.

Note: I’m going to moderate comments very hard from this point onwards as I’ve had some complaints from sex workers about my laxness in allowing some upsetting opinions to get through.

Thoughts on Newsnight and the aversion of naming an abuser

Trigger warning: this post discusses rape and rape apologism

I watched Newsnight tonight. Word on Twitter was that it would be about a senior political figure who had raped children.

When I heard this, I admit I was frantically wracking my brains to work out who it was. I thought of several people who I most suspected. I thought of all the politicians I could who had engaged in rape apologism to my knowledge: they were the ones I suspected most, with their passionate defences of rape culture. (I’m really going to try hard not to libel anyone in this post, but I’m quite drunk). I’d heard whispers of names–was it going to be them? Who could it be?

Then I watched the segment. They were clearly going out of their way to avoid naming the abuser. All we learned was that it was a senior Tory politician. As I watched, though, I realised how largely irrelevant it was for me, an uninvolved member of the public, to know this rapist’s name.

We heard about what happened. We heard of abuse of vulnerable young people. We heard of how the police were uninterested in investigating what happened, even as the survivors tried to seek out justice through the channels that society is taught is proper. We heard how the rapist is a powerful man, surrounded by other powerful men to keep it quiet. We saw evidence of the fear of libel, how even as a survivor talked about what had happened to him, Newsnight would not name the rapist for fear of legal threat.

They didn’t have enough to name names, they said, even as a survivor talked openly about how as a culture we needed to move towards believing survivors. He was begging us to be believed. I believed him.

Yet in our culture, this is apparently not enough. Newsnight knew of the threat of libel, and thus opted not to name a man who had abused and raped young people, because the only evidence available was their word.

The word of a survivor is enough. It should be enough. It must be enough.

We live in a society where this word is not enough. It’s not valued. We have a legal system which protects perpetrators of rape and abuse by operating on this principle. It silences survivors by telling them their experience is not enough, by pretending that being accused of rape is the worst thing that can happen to a person, that it’s worse than being raped.

In a way, it doesn’t matter that we, as the uninvolved public, don’t know the name of the man who did these things, although it would be better if we did. It does matter, though, that survivors were brave enough to speak out, and if they wanted their rapist named, they should have been able to do this without the culture of silence surrounding them.

Our response to this must not be a game of “guess the paedo”, making it more about the perpetrator. We should–and must–criticise the system that would not allow a survivor’s wishes to be respected, repeatedly. But in this case, ultimately, what we as the public needed to know was the story presented to us, and to look between the lines at the continuing cultural cover-up which became slightly more visible. And what we need to do with that knowledge is fight to ensure that this cannot continue to happen.

I’m in the Indy, writing about Savile

I wrote a thing about Savile for the Indy, and how there’s nothing particularly remarkable about the case. Unfortunately, the mainstream media are a bit jumpy about putting certain things in, so there’s a paragraph missing. It provides some examples of rape apologism, and goes above the one about how silencing doesn’t come from speaking ill of the dead:

It’s hardly surprising, then, that information about Savile only came to light after his death: experience of rape is something that society trains people out of talking about. Take, for example, senior BBC executives explaining why they spiked the Newsnight episode detailing allegations against Savile saying “it was not the worst kind of sexual offences” or it was based on evidence from “just the women”. The former falls into a similar vein as Congressman Todd Akin’s comments about “legitimate rape”or Ken Clarke’s controversial “serious rape” comments. It suggests that some cases of sexual violence are less important, less pressing, and less important to be dealt with. The latter suggests that the word of the survivor is not to be believed, and contributes strongly to a culture which silences people from speaking up.

Also taken out was a reference to police officer Ryan Coleman-Farrow, who was imprisoned for actively foiling rape investigations.

There’s something horribly medieval about seeping chancres on a chode

Noted rape apologist and all-round weeping syphilitic chode Brendan O’Neill has weighed in on the Jimmy Savile story. It’s taken him a while to alight upon an opinion which is in equal parts offensive, silly and outright anti-reality, but as always, he’s delivered.

This time, he thinks it’s like something medieval involving the Church, but at the same time also exactly like a 17th century witch hunt. Yeah, he’s kind of confused. Anyway, it’s exactly as awful and objectionable as you’d expect from a weeping syphilitic chode like O’Neill, and there’s very little novel content; it’s mostly him fighting with imaginary people, which isn’t worth comment as I’ve covered it all in previous posts on O’Neill.

However, as with O’Neill’s general ouevre, there’s always at least one novel awful statement per article, like the fact Brendan O’Neill reckons everyone’s being a little unfair to Jimmy Savile for saying he’s a paedophile when most of what he did wasn’t raping underage people, and in fact anyone concerned about this is the real pervert:

It seems everything from saying ‘nice tits’ to a female DJ to hugging a 14-year-old girl too tightly on Top of the Pops to having sex with someone under 16 can now all be packaged up as evildoing, as child abuse.

The Savile story is really a vessel for the cultural elite’s perverted obsession with child abuse, and more importantly its belief that everyone is at it – that in every institution, ‘town, village and hamlet’, there are perverts and innocence despoilers, casually warping the next generation. In modern Britain, the figure of The Paedophile has become the means through which the misanthropes who rule over us express their profound fear and suspicion of adults in general, and also of communities and institutions – even of the institutions they hold dear, such is the self-destructive dynamic triggered by the unleashing of the Salem ethos.

Whatevs, you weeping syphilitic chode.

Likewise, O’Neill engages in a really sickening attack on the survivors.

Some people have said it is brave of the women who claim to have been assaulted by Savile to come forward and tell their stories. I’m sorry, but it isn’t. Making serious accusations against a dead person who is in no position to fight back or plead or prove his innocence, 30 or 40 years after the alleged incidents occurred, is the very opposite of brave – it’s cowardly.

Yes, thank you, you weeping syphilitic chode. Apparently rape survivors should never come forward unless it’s unsafe for them to do so and Brendan can find other ways of smearing them.

Really, I find this man’s passionate and repeated defences and denials of rape culture rather frightening. It makes me wonder what his vested interests are, what stake he has in it. It’s going beyond being a contrarian fucknugget–or even a weeping syphilitic chode.

The Met make a rudimentary effort to tackle rape culture. Poorly.

The Met have finally noticed they have a terrible problem with rape, spotting it as figures for people reporting rape to the police have taken a dive recently. So they appointed a shiny new head of their Sapphire unit, and in an interview with the Guardian he has announced the changes he will make.

He has plans for environmental interventions to tackle rape, notably using licencing laws to get pubs and bars where rape and sexual assault are prevalent shut down, and increase surveillance of men who have never been charged with rape, but intelligence suggests they are perpetrators.

Neither of these measures strike me as particularly effective in dealing with rape culture. Are there pubs and clubs which are “rape-hotspots”, or is it more that the heterosexual “pulling” scene enables rape and sexual assault rather easily. Meanwhile, the covert policing tactics are creepy, immoral, and will increase a perception of perpetrators as “the real victims” of rape. Furthermore, how exactly will they be getting this information? What makes some men pre-predators in the Met’s book?

Basically, these are rather authoritarian and punitive measures for dealing with a problem which is societal.

The good news is, this probably won’t really be the focus of the Met’s new approach to rape, because the new chief is also going to focus on women, raising awareness about how they can “reduce vulnerability”. Yeah, so they’ve not changed at all in their stance towards victim blaming.

To sum up his approach, then, women should be a bit more careful, alcohol is definitely to blame, so maybe avoid going to pubs the Met don’t close down. Also, there’s some men who are predators, but the rest of them are probably all right.

Ineffectual, and fairly offensive.

What the Met should be doing (if they don’t go and live in the sewers and bother us no more) is looking at the shit in their own backyard. They contribute wholesale to rape culture. They’ve been implicated in huge failures to investigating rape, in ways which are criminally negligent. They have been implicated in rapes. When they actually bother investigating, it is half-arsed or downright invasive for the women.

And they just don’t understand rape and rape culture.

They have a lot of work to do themselves, but rather than focus on their own failings, they’re pointing to the nearest ghastly nightclub with a sticky floor and screaming “SHUT DOWN EVERYTHING.”

Society as a whole is fairly weak on its understanding of rape culture, and the police don’t help at all.

The age of consent: a woefully inadequate concept (and why Peter Tatchell is wrong)

The case of the missing schoolgirl, Megan Stammers, who disappeared with her teacher, has been resolved, with the young woman having been found safely. Unfortunately, some people have used this story to promote their own causes. Last night, Peter Tatchell tweeted this, deciding apropos of nothing that the whole thing must have been consensual on Ms Stammers’s part:

Now, one of Tatchell’s pet causes is to lower the age of consent to 14. He has written volumes on the matter. While he might disclaim the living fuck out of everything he has said, there is still something that sits awkwardly with me with his vocal advocation of this. A man Peter Tatchell’s age should have no interest whatsoever in what 14 year olds are doing (or not doing) in their bedrooms.

The thing is, while he claims the people he wants to see protected are the young people- a 16 year old should not be prosecuted for having sex with a 15 year old- he conveniently forgets to mention that this very seldom happens, and usually only when other abusive shit is going on. Put simply, the law is there to protect young people (usually girls) from older men. When two underage people have consensual sex, there might be a few checks on their welfare, but it’s phenomenally unlikely that anyone will be prosecuted. The prosecutions come when one person is significantly older than the other.

The age of consent is a complicated business, and I find it woefully nonsensical that there’s a magic number of years that happen and then suddenly you’re capable of consenting to sex with anyone of any age older than this figure. Whether it’s 14, 16 or 25, there’s always going to be some people who are more vulnerable to abuse than others. People mature at different rates.

What’s more helpful to examine is the interplay of power differences. Where there is a significant age gap–where one partner is 40 and the other 15 or 16–the extra arbitrary year probably isn’t going to make a blind bit of difference. The problem here is that one person is more than twice the age of the other, with far greater social and legal power. When the older partner is a man, further kyriarchal power differences creep in. If the older partner has a social role which puts them in a greater position of power–such as a teacher–then it becomes even more problematic.

It is these power differences that lead to abuse, not the age. Relationships of this sort will not always be abusive, but there’s so much of a problem with power here that they’re definitely causes for concern.

In fact, the notion of an arbitrary age of consent can lead to problems in and of itself. When girls hit whatever the age of consent is, there’s a certain patriarchal assumption that they’re now “fair game” (TV Tropes calls this the “Jail Bait Wait“; click at your peril): here, there is very real protection for young women, as it seems the only thing protecting them from the creeps banging down their door is the fact the creeps don’t want to be labelled paedophiles. Youth and innocence are fetishised under patriarchy, and therefore the legal boundaries currently do serve as a form of protection, albeit fairly inadequate. Shifting the age of consent down would serve to open up more young women to these predatory creeps who subscribe to patriarchal beliefs.

Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita provides an excellent exposition of some of the attitudes which allow abuse to happen. We find ourselves liking Humbert Humbert, and rooting for him. At times, we might find ourselves tutting at how difficult and unpleasant Lolita is being, before catching ourselves and remembering that SHE’S A YOUNG GIRL BEING ABUSED BY HER STEPFATHER. It’s a book everyone should read and experience, because it shows you just how easily you can fall into rape culture thinking (also, it is absolutely beautifully written).

Legal protections on the whole are not very good, and what we really need is a vast shift in culture away from retributive justice and towards community accountability. This allows us to respect the agency of young people while still keeping an eye out for causes for concern. And of course, the set of attitudes that allow abuse to happen must disappear.

And that’s a long way off, so what we’re currently lumbered with is an arbitrary number. Maybe it should change; maybe it shouldn’t. The people who should decide this are the ones who are affected by this legal situation: those under the age of consent, and those close to it. At the moment, all I’m hearing is rumblings from Tatchell, when it’s none of his fucking business. He is completely unaffected by this law, unless he intends on having sex with some 14 year olds, in which case he’s completely on the wrong end of the power difference to get a lick of support from anyone. And for him to use a high-profile case to promote his cause is unpleasant. Maybe Megan Stammers went freely. Maybe she was abducted. It is not for us, or Peter Tatchell to decide.