‘When one of my teenage sons said of Epstein, “it’s like a conspiracy theory, but it’s true”, I couldn’t help thinking that’s what feminism has always been up against. Until the madness ends, we’ll be the ones who look mad.’
Sarah: ... I couldn’t help thinking that’s what feminism has always been up against.
"The Patriarchy!!11!!" -- hatching regressive feminine stereotypes in their inner sanctums for the sole purpose of oppressing women, right from time immemorial ... 😉🙂
Feminism has it's good points, one of its more credible claims to fame and fortune being the distinction between sex and gender -- even if many feminists have made a mess out of the concept and thereby opened the door to the "transcult".
But Feminism is also riven by great steaming piles of ideological and quite unscientific claptrap. Why Kathleen Stock argues, quite reasonably, that Feminism is in serious need of a "reboot":
And, ICYMI, in the same vein, something from a review of "Professing Feminism":
Feminist Critics: The authors [Patai & Koertge], however, demonstrate that these problems have existed since their ideology’s inception, and were particularly common within Women Studies programs. The authors wrote of the isolationist attitude that dominates many of the programs, along with a virulent anti-science, anti-intellectual sentiment driving many of the professors, staff and students.
I'm reminded of the quip that says that success has a thousand fathers, failure nary a one ... 😉🙂
So kind of moot on the provenance of the distinction, although, as I indicated above, I think there's quite a bit of justification for it. But here's a bit of Wikipedia arguing feminists started the ball rolling in about 1945:
Wikipedia: In 1945, Madison Bentley defined gender as the “socialized obverse of sex”. Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 book The Second Sex has been interpreted as the beginning of the distinction between sex and gender in feminist theory ...
Probably some 20 years before Mooney & company picked up the thread.
However, I've also argued that there's some evidence of that distinction going back some three hundred to six hundred years, although one might need to be a linguist -- which I'm not -- to tease out the differences in usages:
QUOTE; OED: 1632: Here’s a woman: The soule of Hercules has got into her. She has a spirit, is more masculine, Then [than] the first gender [female?].
1656: Strength ... was a vertue attributed to the masculine gender. UNQUOTE
We've had a number of cases come to light in just the past decade or so that reveal that across entertainment, government, religion, industry, NGOs men curry favor with each other by supplying them with consequence-free access to sexual assault of women and children, and everyone knew but no one talked about it. #MeToo, Cosby, Epstein, Weinstein, Diddy, "rescue organizations" in Haiti, etc. Now that it's so much more out in the open, after the "It's not happening," and the shock phase, the inundation of evidence paradoxically moves us on to the next stage, "This is just too big to do anything about." Not unlike the refusal to have femicide listed as a hate crime in most places (except, if memory serves, Italy).
Yes. The whole thing will be put onto a small number and if they are dealt with then others can claim the whole thing has been dealt with. Meanwhile misogyny grows, especially where it's also profitable.
Respectfully...and I promise I'm not trolling, but 100%. That's the percentage of feminists and female leaders who told me porn was liberating when I was young. And no point did anyone other than one old priest tell me porn wasn't, liberating, or, at worst, vaguely disrespectful the way it was made.
At 10-17, when I was a minor, it was specifically the women who assured me it was empowering. I think women need to contend with how egar they were in my generation to play "cool" by approving. I was exposed to stuff at 10 that has ruined my life. And it was justified by the adult women and men in my culture as the cost of freedom of something. I am all out of allegiance to pledge.
Reminds me of the attorney I talked to right after my divorce came through who said. "Oh, I've heard those gun threats before from the ex-husbands so many times. It's so common. Don't worry."
This is a sidebar to your greater point, but I feel much less inclined to give the benefit of the doubt over Cleveland. Inducing false memories in children - coaching them to recite pornographic narratives - is in itself abusive, as is the "reflex anal dilation" test used in the Cleveland cases. As much as the discrediting of these cases gave cover to real abusers, it's also the case that the professionals who led these fabrications did not take abuse seriously themselves. The everyday cruelty of adult to child is bad enough without inventing more of it. Anyway, as I said, a sidebar.
I met a solicitor who acted in the Cleveland case. Like many, after the Sunday Times (or was it the Observer) expose of the two paediatricians I thought oh yes they were mad, it couldn't be true. But he said that many of the children were abused.
I'd suggest you read Bea Campbell's book, Secrets and Silence. She also talks about the element of government denial at a time when Thatcher wanted to run down public services.
I've been curious about it since it was press released to me, so there's a good chance I will. But as a quid pro quo, would you listen to this (produced by the inestimable Hannah Barnes)? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05vx63j
Balance. That's what's needed. Yes, we must guard against the Crucible effect whilst not disregarding anyone before proper investigation. An example has been the rush to affirm trans identity rather than fully explore what's going on.
I've worried for a while that a black or white way of thinking rather than critical analysis has crept too far throughout our sound bite culture.
Thanks for this article, Victoria. I'll disagree on one point: "marginalised settings aren’t the ones influencing policies".
Certainly, your local gang of pimps is not attending Davos or speaking at the United Nations, but at street level, intimidation and the the threat of violent retribution will influence the implementation of local government policies such as 'safeguarding' in social work.
If you know that organised crime is taking place in your district, you also understand that the gangs can find out your home address and harm your children, or attack you in the course of your work. Your employer may also be controlled by a political faction with ties to gang members.
The reason why pimping gangs were able to operate as a criminal franchise across British towns and cities for decades is that they successfully neutralised the authorities which were meant to be regulating them. Some police officers appear to have been complicit in protecting these gangs because they were invited to participate in the abuse, but that doesn't explain why the largely female-led social work profession also turned a blind eye.
I would challenge the idea that 'marginalised' groups lack agency, which depends on a particular theoretical lens projecting a lack of power on to minority communities.
In fact, the theoretically marginalised Foucault was a member of a white intellectual and academic elite, despite his sadomasochism and pederasty. His huge influence on social work theory via liberal higher education and lobbying of institutions enabled the people who were paid to protect children to sidestep the obvious exploitation that was taking place right in front of them.
The idea that children have 'agency' is ironic, given that some perpetrators of abuse are cast as passive victims of systematic racism, Islamophobia, homophobia or other injustice which means they cannot be held fully accountable.
So, these are three potential reasons why abuse continues:
1. Direct involvement of individuals with power
2. The fear of power by some or most of those individuals meant to take remedial action
3. The application of Theory crafted to imply that abuse is subjective and contingent, rather than a straightforward moral transgression.
In this context, pointing out that "most abuse takes place within the home" or "most abusers are straight white men", while statistically inevitable, is a distraction technique designed to take focus away from certain perpetrators, who may be disproportionately abusive or especially prolific. Skilled manipulators are not adverse to promoting theoretical arguments which further their interests.
Marginalisation exists for good reasons, and as a phrase shouldn't be used pejoratively in my opinion. Pimps are not considered legitimate recruitment agency businessmen, for example. Drug dealers who sell to children at the school gates are not considered to be pharmacists.
If we have learned anything from repeated incidents, from Jimmy Saville to the Pride in Surrey debacle, it's that hypothetically marginalised abusers can be extremely well-connected, precisely because they are power-seeking.
I cannot recommend the book _The Witch-hunt Narrative_ enough, about how this was done about the so-called “Satanic Panic” of the 80s. It has become a catchphrase about credulous Americans seeing the devil under every bed, where when you look at the forensic evidence actually a lot of child abuse was taking place
Second
Michael Tracey’s argument that he cannot believe anyone is listening to washed up dumb sluts relies quite straightforwardly on the premise that underclass girls and women exist to be abused, doy, and anyone paying attention to them after they are discarded is perverse, obsessive, and generally a real weirdo. He presents it with breathless indignation and real puzzlement, he can’t even believe we are talking about them at all let alone STILL!!!!!!
I've been saying for the last few years especially, that if you try to tell people who've not been following the various, supposedly "progressive" movements that are in reality bad for women and girls you are going to sound like the crazy one!
I think a great part of the current pessimism, for want of a better word, regarding Epstein & Maxwell's paedophile ring is the necessary albeit frustrating opaqueness of the police and government. We have no idea if our governments and police services are currently fairly investigating the information gleaned from the Epstein files or simply working to protect the same old boy network it has protected far too often. We won't know until a long time from now whether those in power have finally decided to exercise that power fairly or sweep it all under the rug (yet again).
Shirley Oaks comes to mind, where safeguarding was quickly invoked and used to snatch children from their homes, but safeguarding is ignored when the children complained about abuse from the care staff!
I think the backlash against the grooming gangs was that there was conspicuously little panic at all. And that as a scandal it remains strangely taboo to raise in polite company. On the other hand, #metoo did the opposite in zealously devouring due process and important social mores around romance to the degree that adult workplace relationships have become minefields and ‘chatting up’ offline virtually a thing of the past. Men were so thoroughly demonised that a generation were deemed unworthy of professional success (see Jacob Savage Compact article). The Epstein files to avoid this regrettable dichotomy should be approached with appropriate caution and nuance. Starting with, if your name appears in it, as Jk Rowling and many journalists and academics do, you are innocent until proven otherwise. This is the liberal position that to the cost of our cultural production, workplace equality and society broadly #metoo rode roughshod over.
This is an illiberal argument that attacks presumption of innocence. It’s a conspiratorial take on men as guilty by default. Why bother with courts, let’s throw all of them in prison! It’s so annoying, this type of indirect argument that refuses to say clearly what is means so it can pretend it didn’t say it.
‘When one of my teenage sons said of Epstein, “it’s like a conspiracy theory, but it’s true”, I couldn’t help thinking that’s what feminism has always been up against. Until the madness ends, we’ll be the ones who look mad.’
Sarah: ... I couldn’t help thinking that’s what feminism has always been up against.
"The Patriarchy!!11!!" -- hatching regressive feminine stereotypes in their inner sanctums for the sole purpose of oppressing women, right from time immemorial ... 😉🙂
Feminism has it's good points, one of its more credible claims to fame and fortune being the distinction between sex and gender -- even if many feminists have made a mess out of the concept and thereby opened the door to the "transcult".
But Feminism is also riven by great steaming piles of ideological and quite unscientific claptrap. Why Kathleen Stock argues, quite reasonably, that Feminism is in serious need of a "reboot":
https://kathleenstock.substack.com/p/feminist-reboot-camp?utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true
And, ICYMI, in the same vein, something from a review of "Professing Feminism":
Feminist Critics: The authors [Patai & Koertge], however, demonstrate that these problems have existed since their ideology’s inception, and were particularly common within Women Studies programs. The authors wrote of the isolationist attitude that dominates many of the programs, along with a virulent anti-science, anti-intellectual sentiment driving many of the professors, staff and students.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090807234859/http://www.feministcritics.org/blog/2009/07/27/professing-feminism-noh/
I'm reminded of the quip that says that success has a thousand fathers, failure nary a one ... 😉🙂
So kind of moot on the provenance of the distinction, although, as I indicated above, I think there's quite a bit of justification for it. But here's a bit of Wikipedia arguing feminists started the ball rolling in about 1945:
Wikipedia: In 1945, Madison Bentley defined gender as the “socialized obverse of sex”. Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 book The Second Sex has been interpreted as the beginning of the distinction between sex and gender in feminist theory ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender#As_distinct_from_sex
Probably some 20 years before Mooney & company picked up the thread.
However, I've also argued that there's some evidence of that distinction going back some three hundred to six hundred years, although one might need to be a linguist -- which I'm not -- to tease out the differences in usages:
QUOTE; OED: 1632: Here’s a woman: The soule of Hercules has got into her. She has a spirit, is more masculine, Then [than] the first gender [female?].
1656: Strength ... was a vertue attributed to the masculine gender. UNQUOTE
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/genspect-feminism-and-the-transcult
https://www.oed.com/dictionary/gender_n?tl=true#3045191
We've had a number of cases come to light in just the past decade or so that reveal that across entertainment, government, religion, industry, NGOs men curry favor with each other by supplying them with consequence-free access to sexual assault of women and children, and everyone knew but no one talked about it. #MeToo, Cosby, Epstein, Weinstein, Diddy, "rescue organizations" in Haiti, etc. Now that it's so much more out in the open, after the "It's not happening," and the shock phase, the inundation of evidence paradoxically moves us on to the next stage, "This is just too big to do anything about." Not unlike the refusal to have femicide listed as a hate crime in most places (except, if memory serves, Italy).
Yes. The whole thing will be put onto a small number and if they are dealt with then others can claim the whole thing has been dealt with. Meanwhile misogyny grows, especially where it's also profitable.
Respectfully...and I promise I'm not trolling, but 100%. That's the percentage of feminists and female leaders who told me porn was liberating when I was young. And no point did anyone other than one old priest tell me porn wasn't, liberating, or, at worst, vaguely disrespectful the way it was made.
At 10-17, when I was a minor, it was specifically the women who assured me it was empowering. I think women need to contend with how egar they were in my generation to play "cool" by approving. I was exposed to stuff at 10 that has ruined my life. And it was justified by the adult women and men in my culture as the cost of freedom of something. I am all out of allegiance to pledge.
"It can't be that common"
Reminds me of the attorney I talked to right after my divorce came through who said. "Oh, I've heard those gun threats before from the ex-husbands so many times. It's so common. Don't worry."
The attorney didn't bother the check up on the number of dead women who received gun threats??
I doubt it. He dismissed the reality because he would not believe the threats were common.
This is a sidebar to your greater point, but I feel much less inclined to give the benefit of the doubt over Cleveland. Inducing false memories in children - coaching them to recite pornographic narratives - is in itself abusive, as is the "reflex anal dilation" test used in the Cleveland cases. As much as the discrediting of these cases gave cover to real abusers, it's also the case that the professionals who led these fabrications did not take abuse seriously themselves. The everyday cruelty of adult to child is bad enough without inventing more of it. Anyway, as I said, a sidebar.
I met a solicitor who acted in the Cleveland case. Like many, after the Sunday Times (or was it the Observer) expose of the two paediatricians I thought oh yes they were mad, it couldn't be true. But he said that many of the children were abused.
I'd suggest you read Bea Campbell's book, Secrets and Silence. She also talks about the element of government denial at a time when Thatcher wanted to run down public services.
I've been curious about it since it was press released to me, so there's a good chance I will. But as a quid pro quo, would you listen to this (produced by the inestimable Hannah Barnes)? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05vx63j
Balance. That's what's needed. Yes, we must guard against the Crucible effect whilst not disregarding anyone before proper investigation. An example has been the rush to affirm trans identity rather than fully explore what's going on.
I've worried for a while that a black or white way of thinking rather than critical analysis has crept too far throughout our sound bite culture.
Cut backs in funding haven't helped.
Thanks for this article, Victoria. I'll disagree on one point: "marginalised settings aren’t the ones influencing policies".
Certainly, your local gang of pimps is not attending Davos or speaking at the United Nations, but at street level, intimidation and the the threat of violent retribution will influence the implementation of local government policies such as 'safeguarding' in social work.
If you know that organised crime is taking place in your district, you also understand that the gangs can find out your home address and harm your children, or attack you in the course of your work. Your employer may also be controlled by a political faction with ties to gang members.
The reason why pimping gangs were able to operate as a criminal franchise across British towns and cities for decades is that they successfully neutralised the authorities which were meant to be regulating them. Some police officers appear to have been complicit in protecting these gangs because they were invited to participate in the abuse, but that doesn't explain why the largely female-led social work profession also turned a blind eye.
I would challenge the idea that 'marginalised' groups lack agency, which depends on a particular theoretical lens projecting a lack of power on to minority communities.
In fact, the theoretically marginalised Foucault was a member of a white intellectual and academic elite, despite his sadomasochism and pederasty. His huge influence on social work theory via liberal higher education and lobbying of institutions enabled the people who were paid to protect children to sidestep the obvious exploitation that was taking place right in front of them.
The idea that children have 'agency' is ironic, given that some perpetrators of abuse are cast as passive victims of systematic racism, Islamophobia, homophobia or other injustice which means they cannot be held fully accountable.
So, these are three potential reasons why abuse continues:
1. Direct involvement of individuals with power
2. The fear of power by some or most of those individuals meant to take remedial action
3. The application of Theory crafted to imply that abuse is subjective and contingent, rather than a straightforward moral transgression.
In this context, pointing out that "most abuse takes place within the home" or "most abusers are straight white men", while statistically inevitable, is a distraction technique designed to take focus away from certain perpetrators, who may be disproportionately abusive or especially prolific. Skilled manipulators are not adverse to promoting theoretical arguments which further their interests.
Marginalisation exists for good reasons, and as a phrase shouldn't be used pejoratively in my opinion. Pimps are not considered legitimate recruitment agency businessmen, for example. Drug dealers who sell to children at the school gates are not considered to be pharmacists.
If we have learned anything from repeated incidents, from Jimmy Saville to the Pride in Surrey debacle, it's that hypothetically marginalised abusers can be extremely well-connected, precisely because they are power-seeking.
Tell the porn-positive feminists please.
We can thank the media for doing their part to turn our whole society into Epstein Island.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/07/dont-panic-about-pornography/489881/
First
I cannot recommend the book _The Witch-hunt Narrative_ enough, about how this was done about the so-called “Satanic Panic” of the 80s. It has become a catchphrase about credulous Americans seeing the devil under every bed, where when you look at the forensic evidence actually a lot of child abuse was taking place
Second
Michael Tracey’s argument that he cannot believe anyone is listening to washed up dumb sluts relies quite straightforwardly on the premise that underclass girls and women exist to be abused, doy, and anyone paying attention to them after they are discarded is perverse, obsessive, and generally a real weirdo. He presents it with breathless indignation and real puzzlement, he can’t even believe we are talking about them at all let alone STILL!!!!!!
🫤
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30145961/
I've been saying for the last few years especially, that if you try to tell people who've not been following the various, supposedly "progressive" movements that are in reality bad for women and girls you are going to sound like the crazy one!
I’ve noticed that many true conspiracies are among men who wish to sexually abuse women and children.
I think a great part of the current pessimism, for want of a better word, regarding Epstein & Maxwell's paedophile ring is the necessary albeit frustrating opaqueness of the police and government. We have no idea if our governments and police services are currently fairly investigating the information gleaned from the Epstein files or simply working to protect the same old boy network it has protected far too often. We won't know until a long time from now whether those in power have finally decided to exercise that power fairly or sweep it all under the rug (yet again).
Shirley Oaks comes to mind, where safeguarding was quickly invoked and used to snatch children from their homes, but safeguarding is ignored when the children complained about abuse from the care staff!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-53221981
The London Borough of Satan is on track to overtake Lambeth in that spot.
I think the backlash against the grooming gangs was that there was conspicuously little panic at all. And that as a scandal it remains strangely taboo to raise in polite company. On the other hand, #metoo did the opposite in zealously devouring due process and important social mores around romance to the degree that adult workplace relationships have become minefields and ‘chatting up’ offline virtually a thing of the past. Men were so thoroughly demonised that a generation were deemed unworthy of professional success (see Jacob Savage Compact article). The Epstein files to avoid this regrettable dichotomy should be approached with appropriate caution and nuance. Starting with, if your name appears in it, as Jk Rowling and many journalists and academics do, you are innocent until proven otherwise. This is the liberal position that to the cost of our cultural production, workplace equality and society broadly #metoo rode roughshod over.
This is an illiberal argument that attacks presumption of innocence. It’s a conspiratorial take on men as guilty by default. Why bother with courts, let’s throw all of them in prison! It’s so annoying, this type of indirect argument that refuses to say clearly what is means so it can pretend it didn’t say it.
“I was going to write “at the risk of sounding like”, but what’s the point?”…LOL…brilliant piece 🙏