Showing posts with label sexual assault. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sexual assault. Show all posts

Bears, Women and Men : internalisation of cultural values, development of affective state self-regulation.

A Bear in the Woods.....
Image by Erik Mandre via Shutterstock




Historically, for the major part of the existence of Homo sapiens, the people who lived in forests and woodlands were largely formed of egalitarian cultures.

The peoples that lived in forests knew and understood bears because they had lived together for many tens of thousands of years. The bears knew them. They knew each other well.

In egalitarian cultures rapes are rarer than bear attacks. And bear attacks are exceedingly rare. When they do happen, it is usually due to an accident rather than a deliberate intentional common action, a standard behavioural pattern.

So the issue raised by the bear question is a cultural issue.

No baby is born with a bigotry already in place.

There are no misogyny genes, there are no warrior genes, there are no racism genes, there are no xenophobia genes.

Our behaviour, is this regard, is learned within a cultural context. Hierarchically violent cultures curate bigotries.

We learn to walk, we learn to talk. We are taught to speak. Language is learned. Take an infant born to a mother in one language, and place that infant within another language group, and the child will learn the language of the secondary language group. There is no gene for any specific language.

Our learning of behaviour as we grow up occurs in and is influenced by the culture within which we live.

We internalise the values of the culture in such manner as to feel them as part of our core sense of self, our very identity. 

The invisible brain?

I have posted a link to an interesting (quite dense) lecture by Allan Schore on the neurobiology and neuroendocrinology of the development of emotional or affective state self regulation, with regards to the potential impacts of living conditions, environment, cultural practice upon these processes.

What goes one in our brains has been invisible, and is now being revealed as technology improves in examining brain development with empirical science tool kits.

There is the matter too of sex brain development, much of which occurs early in gestation, which is highly vulnerable to environmental influences, coming from and through the mother. we now know that brain sex dimorphism is much more complex with a greater range of variables and outcomes which indicate that the trans experience - of sensing oneself as being of the other biological sex - is indeed a natural part of human variability. For now, though, we are addressing the meaning and implications of The Bear Question.

The Bear Question.

The issue then, with regards the Bear Question, for women, is that within the dominant cultural setting on Earth is it stands today 'our lived experience is that many, many men are dangerous to us, and we cannot reliably predict when meeting men which ones are dangerous and which ones are not, in that the majority of men do seem to operate with a sense of entitlement to our bodies as sexual objects to be used, owned, possessed, exploited and discarded as a medium of the Mens Power in this culture and that there is no way to tell in advance as to which adult males are safe and which are not, and the tension of living with that is intolerable, not to mention the actual harms caused....."

And the only people who can change that are the men who call themselves allies of women.

Specifically the genuinely safe men MUST take a stance of confronting the unsafe attitudes that unsafe men hold, within this culture, and that means confronting them directly, robustly and without equivocation. All the time. Until the problem is no longer a problem. It also means confronting every structure of social power that extolls the values of the hierarchy of power, wealth and phenotype.

It is a problem with and of Men who internalise the patriarchal hierarchy cultural values in ways that are a life threatening and life altering problem for Women. Women are correct to point it out.

As a man, I understand the problem is a cultural problem, and I am part of that culture, to the extent that I have and carry any internalisation of the dominant cultural values and then express them in my thinking and my behaviour.

I have a responsibility to confront that culture. To myself, to all women, to all children. Just by being alive and aware of the problem.

It is not about 'me' and I cannot take it personally, even if my confrontation with other men on this is personal, as in one to one. 

It is about us, all of us. 

Men, women and children.

I was sexually assaulted, brutalised, psychologically abused and mistreated as a child, on a daily basis, and that abuse was mostly perpetrated by adult men. That is my lived experience.

Nuance required.

All our sons: The neurobiology and neuroendocrinology of boys at risk.



Allan Schore gives a detailed lecture on what was known in 2017 about the neurobiology and neuroendocrinology of boys at risk. 

His work on the development of emotional self regulation, on the development of the systems within the brain that handle emotional state self directed management helps us understand that there are dynamics that start in utero, and that continue throughout life, that mediate the ways in which we process and handle our emotional states healthfully or otherwise. The developing brain is extremely sensitive to the environmental condition of the mother.

The nuance here is that each child grows up within a cultural setting, a socio-economic condition, a familial environment where many variables come in to play in the formation of formerly invisible neurobiological processes that underpin our behaviour. When we are looking at behaviour, it is important to take this new information into consideration. This helps avoid stereotyping, categorisation and other dehumanising attitudes so often embedded in discussions of adverse behaviour patterns. We are all human, we were all innocent babies. 

In this lecture Allan Schore explores what happens for boys at risk, that is to say boys who for reasons outside their control or responsibility are exposed to trauma, neglect, maternal distress, familial distress in regards the maturation of biological systems undermining emotional development and learned behaviour.

This does not form a basis for absolving adults of accountability for harm causation, and it does offer a way to respond that is more concerned with prevention, health and safety than punishment. 

For my purposes I have included this here as an indicator of preventative measures that can be taken, informed by current and developing knowledge of neurobiology and neuroendocrinology, to reduce the incidence of male distress, male psychopathology and male violence as part of the overall work to meet the challenges of the bear question.

A friend responds.

I asked a friend of mine to read over this, and she made these comments, which I publish here with her permission.

“some excellent points and thoughts there.

Reading it reminded me of my other experience yesterday in a charity shop…..found a beautiful Italian leather evening style handbag in a stunning shade of turquoise…


was checking out its suitability for my needs in terms of pockets etc. it looked like it had never been used….I felt something in a pocket and thought it might be a lighter but couldn’t find which pocket it was in and the shape was a bit different so I excitedly thought it might be a small roll of cash

NOPE it was a penknife


I then took it up to the ladies at the till who were shocked and apologetic, I made a comment along the lines of whoever previously owned the bag was like me because that’s the sort of thing I’d feel the need to carry on a night out - the shop assistants and other shoppers then had a open conversation about women having such items in their bags for protection…..age range was about 20-75 years old - we all admitted to having done this, we all also agreed knife crime and carrying knives was bad.”

This anecdote, as I wrote previously was provided by a good friend of mine, a woman I respect and admire every much as a friend and fellow humane being, who describes herself as a “handbag granny :  as I am a fine example of how strong and determined women become after a life time of having to be tough….yeah it would be lovely to have become old and still be floating around without a care in the world having experienced no trauma or hardship but reality isn’t like that and life makes women tough”.


She also wrote this : “I’d say between the ages of 18 and about 45 I’d regularly carry something in my bag that could easily double up as a weapon if needed when I was going somewhere that I didn’t know was 100% safe, so 99% of the time I had a weapon in my bag and at times that would be in my hand if I was walking somewhere dark etc even if that was just a rolled up umbrella or a large set of keys. For women I think this is just instincts now, it’s not even something we think about - we just do it. Even a heavy overloaded handbag swung in the right way can knock a man off his feet, I think a granny recently took out a jewellery store thief in this way… 


She posted this link... https://youtu.be/ySBxMMidbEg?si=6czEfjh5Xd9A4FM_


Culture


Have you ever looked back on a moment and wondered if you made the right choice? Professor Robert Sapolsky has, but he believes that there was no actual choice at that moment. 


Professor Sapolsky has staked out an extreme stance in the field: we are nothing more than the sum of our biology, over which we had no control, and its interactions with the environment, over which we also had no control. Explore what it looks like to reject the notion of free will and how doing so can be liberating rather than paralyzing and despairing.


However , he points out that the kind of culture into which we are born, and the kind of culture our mothers were born into, which sets the conditions of their lived experience, has profound impacts upon us in utero, impacts that remain largely invisible yet present as behavioural patterns and dynamics. Because culture is the setting that is created by human interaction, there is room for the possibility of change. And that is exactly what this blog is all about.








Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

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Boris Johnson : Is Misogyny a Hate Crime?

Johnson is largely correct in that Misogyny, harbouring thoughts of hatred of Women, in and of itself, is not a Hate Crime - Misogyny is a psychologically dysfunctional mental health issue. Hatred generally is.

Do we need a definition, in Law, of Misogynistic Crimes? We do.


Misogyny only becomes a crime when a crime is committed against a women because she is woman, or a crime is inspired or justified by misogyny.

Harbouring misogynistic thoughts is a disease state, and as long as it's just thoughts, it's a private matter. 

A misogynist can sit in his or her underwear, stew in the privacy of his or her domicile, and rage about his or her hatred of women, to his or her hearts content. It affects no one else. The affliction is contained. Obviously that person needs and deserves mental health support, irrespective of his or her awareness levels.

However, as soon as those thoughts inform behaviour and action in the social material domain, the physical real world, the shared commons and they start to have an impact on women, men or children, then the misogyny becomes a problem.

Misogynistic Bullying is Hate Crime.

Misogynistic threats made in anger are a Hate Crime.

Mistreating a woman just because she is a woman and the antagonist is a misogynist is a Hate crime.

Spreading misogynistic hate content, verbally or in any other form or medium, in order to incite more misogynistic hatred is a Hate Crime.

Insulting Priti Patel because she is a woman is a Hate Crime.

Noting that she is a bully is a statement of fact, and has nothing to do with her gender.

Sexual Harassment is a Hate Crime.

Boris Johnson's lies that prop up adverse policy that causes harm to vulnerable people are criminal, clearly. 

Yet he retains the power to utter those lies, Parliament refuses to hold him to account due to arcane and irrational rules. Johnson can cause immense social, economic and political harms, and get away with it.

Interestingly I am not aware of any single word that describes hatred of vulnerability, no technical term for that.

Vulneraphobic? MisVulnerable? A Bully?

Johnson can troll about with utter impunity, to the extent that he can troll the Earths political leaders at the UN General Assembly with inane references to Kermit the Frog and accuse them all of being adolescents, rather than mature adults, and infer that he, Boris De Peffel Alexander Johnson, will be the one to help them all mature at COP26, in Glasgow, in November 2021. 'Time to grow up!' indeed.

I am working on a song "It's not easy being Green, when you're a Bully, Liar, Troll, Thug, Groomer etc etc...!"

Meanwhile, COVID is spreading across all Primary, Secondary Schools and Universities in England, and the news mefia, parliament and the ruling class are silent: there is a taboo about talking about mass child abuse.

That deliberate silence is criminal.  I hate that silence. Is that a crime?

#SchoolStrike2021
#Misogyny
#JohnsonVariant
#JohnsonOut
#enoughusenough


Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

https://patreon.com/corneilius - donations gratefully received

https://www.reverbnation.com/corneilius - .mp3 songs

https://www.soundcloud.com/coreluminous - .wav Songs

https://www.corneilius.net - Archive

#corneilius
#folkmusic
#singersongwriter

Sexual Abuse, Power and Men - young girls, women, grandmothers: generations of affliction and endurance, the time for change is always in the present, already.

Sexual Abuse, Power and Men - young girls, women, grandmothers: generations of affliction and endurance, the time for change is always in the present, already.


I have been writing about abuse behaviour dynamics for two decades, from the perspective of a Survivor, a child, a young boy and a teen routinely abused by adults in boarding schools, as an adult suffering from and enduring cPTSD, understanding that my story is one of millions upon millions of cases, and looking carefully and honestly at the culture within which all that happened. Let me start by making it really clear where I am coming from. I am appalled to my core that there is so much abuse, violence, corruption on-going in within this culture. That so much of it is for profit and to maintain Power over others makes matters ever worse - it is deliberate abuse, choices to cause harm. Honesty is the only way to work through all of this. A violent culture.

As a man, a male, as a person and as a parent I am appalled at the willingness of governments, corporations and others to extract power and profit at the expense of so many others. War, Air Pollution, Environmental Degradations, Externalised Costs, Imposed Poverty and concentration of wealth as Power, competing to dominate all others, are all costs we all are forced to bear - and they are all wholly avoidable. There is nothing inevitable about these problems. Together they speak to a culture that is a problem in and of itself, and to me that calls for the need for an holistic and honest analysis that addresses the problems at their very root. I have written about that elsewhere in a number of postings. I make it very clear that whilst the culture is abusive, our human nature is not. Most of us are decent people, doing our best with what this culture throws in our way. For now let's talk about Misogyny. When it comes to sexuality and power, I am horrified by the status quo. I am an adult human being with an acute sense of healthy, happy, sharing sexuality - to introduce or inject power into such an intimate space, to taint shared pleasure and vulnerability with power in any way is to my mind an abomination.

Any abuse of power to sexually harass another - irrespective of gender- is both a dehumanised and dehumanising behaviour.
Power and sex as a commodity has a long history. Misogyny is a historical thread woven into every known hierarchy of power system.
So it is more, so much more than a matter of personal flawed bad attitude.
Establishment 'Feminism': if you are willing operate power as we do, then join in, be our equal. This is the meaning of 'equality'. Bullying is a protected species.
Genuine Feminists : we will dismantle the Hierarchies of Violence and Power, together. This is the meaning of Equity. Liberation. 
Two opposing movements. 
Anyone who says that there's no problem at the cultural level regarding sexual abuse is in denial. Every woman I know has multiple stories to tell of personal experience of sexual harassment, misogyny. There are more survivors dealing with the aftermath of sexual abuse than there are abusers facing the consequences in terms of confronting them with their behaviour, justice and incarceration and, by a vast margin.

The majority of abusers walk free. Society is failing the survivors, and is failing in prevention. The abusers thrive as a result.

The Guardian headline and report is inadequate. 'Finally'? School girls and young women have been voicing their concerns for decades and decades. When one submits "sexual harassment in schools" as a google scholar search term, it brings up 204,000 plus articles and papers in half a second. It's not like the subject is an unknown area. It is remarkably well studied. From a 1994 paper 'Walking Through Walls' J Larkin - Gender and Education, 1994 - Taylor & Francis "For most females, crude language and other forms of sexually harassing behaviour are part of the fabric of our daily lives. To date, however, our focus on sexual harassment has been limited primarily to the experiences of adult women in academic and work place settings. What has not been explored is the prevalence of sexual harassment in schools and the way it interferes with young women's education.

Equal opportunity programmes are of limited use if, for example, we urge female students into traditional male courses but we neglect to consider the hostile climate they encounter there. In this study I explored young women's experiences of sexual harassment in the setting lauded as their gateway to opportunity: school. 

Based on their testimonies I make recommendations for educators who are committed to making high school a more equitable place for female students." 

A search on JSTOR using the term ""sexual harassment" brings up 29,085 results. Papers on this subject date from the 1970s. Women and their advocates have been speaking out for many decades. A lot of study has been carried out on this. 

The first American Rape Crisis Centers were formed in several states throughout the USA in the early 1970s, largely by women associated with the 
second-wave feminist movement. Central to second-wave feminism was the practice of consciousness raising, which allowed groups of women to speak openly about their experiences with sexual violence and the shortcomings of law enforcement, health care providers, and the criminal justice system to effectively and constructively respond to survivors.

In every country that has efficient data gathering and statistics, we see many, many sexual crimes perpetrated against women, men and children. The majority of the perpetrators are men. The majority of those victimised are women and children, and we know too that some women also abuse men and children, that there are some women who participate in the abuse with men, and on their own. This is a culture wide issue.  A culture that harbours so much abuse.

#metoo

The phrase "Me Too" was initially used in this context on social media in 2006, on Myspace, by sexual harassment survivor and activist Tarana Burke. Since then there have been successive waves of #metoo attention. The waves pass, the behaviour does not change. The systems of Education, health, policing and justice do not change substantively. Why? Here's the thing - I know that the culture I was born into is rooted, historically, psychologically and materially in hierarchies of violence and power, patriarchy and property. Women as property.  I did not create this culture, and I do not wish to perpetuate it. At all. The idea of perpetuating this pre-existing culture of hierarchy, power and violence appals me to my very core.

The '
stronger' prey upon the vulnerable. 

I use the parentheses because as I see things, to leverage power over another human being for personal gain is not a marker of strength of character - to abuse leveraged power of any kind is in fact a weakness of character. It is a dehumanised thing to dehumanise another.

It is also a matter of self regulating one's behaviour, or not. There is interesting research that indicates that stressy cultures undermine healthy self regulation at the earliest ages - the terrible twos is not a biological episode, it is a chronic stress or trauma episode.

If in any given culture the situation of motherhood is subjected to multiple external stressors, then what flows from that is disruption and distortion of key experiential and learning dynamics. Across a population that can lead to a variation in self regulation capabilities.

The kind of people who engage in leveraging power over others clearly lack that ability - healthy self regulation of affective states -  or it may be that they choose to neglect it. Either way they are damaged, dysfunctional, distorted. Men who claim the 'urge' overtook them are saying they lack self regulation skills. They are damaged. They need help. Where any person, many or woman, has caused harm, he or she has chosen to act and for that, and the outcome, must be held accountable. At the same time, we now that patterns of reaction, of trigger and reaction operate faster than the mind can think. Some people are out of control.

Out of Control controlling behavioural characterist
ics.

Those who dominate and operate institutional power systems for personal gain lack the moral strength of mature healthy adults. To exploit others is both immature and inhumane. To rationalise abuse of power as if it were a 'natural' evolutionary alpha male behaviour is projection. It's an example of non-thinking. 
This society, this culture, this power system and its institutions are clearly not listening. The News Media is reporting, but it is not really listening. Survivors voices and insights are rarely given the space they deserve. Governments and Education Authorities are not listening carefully enough. Religions are not mute, they are not listening for or hearing the cries of women.

Men (I am a man) are not listening, are we? We are not hearing and we are not understanding the fullness of this story. We are downplaying the pain all around us by allowing 'not all men' to gain traction in ways that distract from the hearing that is necessary. My response to 'not all men' is "we know this! So shhssssh, listen, try to hear and understand what the women are trying to communicate!" Distraction Some people will point at women whose behaviour plays into or enables misogynistic behaviour and say 'it's not only men' - look at those women!' They will also point out that women are abusers too. Which is deliberately missing the point. The point is that no girl or woman should ever need to learn that set of behaviours as a way of coping with or surviving life long misogyny and sexism. At least not within a healthy culture. This is not a healthy culture, is it?

The point is that no boy or man should ever need to learn that set of behaviours as a way of being, or of coping with or surviving within a healthy culture. For these reasons, this is a problem of men, and the behaviour that we (I write as a man) allow our peers to get away with inevitably becomes a problem for women, children and all vulnerable people. Misogyny is political. Men as activists I get that this is challenging, and I am not seeking to scapegoat or blame. It is confronting to confront anyone who is bullying another person. It is confronting to challenge 'alpha male behaviour' that men are led to adopt and internalise as 'normal red blooded', competitive, hierarchic archetypes. It's scary.
It is a different kind of scary to that of a woman who feels she must be on guard amongst most men. Throughout her life. The 'democracy of fear'. Men, healthy, decent, morally clear men need to become the drivers of confronting sexual assault of women. Men, healthy, decent, morally clear men need to become the drivers of confronting alpha male violence in general. Speaking truthfully. In June 2020, Soma Sara the founder of Everyone's Invited, began sharing her personal experience of rape culture via Instagram. She wanted to speak the truth, and to create a space for truth to be spoken. Immediately, she received a number of messages from not only those who felt that her experiences strongly resonated with their own, but also those who detailed their own stories of misogyny, harassment, abuse and assault. Within a week she received and shared over 300 anonymous responses, reaching over 10,000 people. She was intent on creating a space where women felt safe enough to speak, where they were assured they would be heard and understood - they shared the same experience, after all. 2021

The disappearance, abduction and murder of Sarah Everard, in early March 2021 in London followed by the discovery that her murderer was a serving police officer who had committed a sexual offence just days before he assaulted and kill Sarah Everard, became a major news story. It led to a surge of expressions of grief, rage and anger shared by many, many women. It led to a public campaign to hold Vigils for Sarah, organised by women's group, Reclaim These Streets, as a collective mark of respect and a dedication to confronting the issue of women's safety. Since then Everyone's Invited has received thousands of testimonies from women and young girls.

It was as if yet another flood gate was opened. By the time this too became a news story, (see the image at the top of this article) more than 11,000 people had submitted testimonies to EI. No individuals were identified, and some schools were. Some News media reports focused on a few fee paying schools identified in these testimonies, although EI says that totality of testimonies received covers all kinds of schools and universities, private and state funded. This behaviour - sexual harassment, assault and a culture of misogyny - is happening in every setting where boys and girls, men and women share a common space. Soma Sara points out that some of the testimonies are from women writing as grand parents who themselves were subjected to such behaviour, who saw their daughters and then their grand daughters endure it too. The problem is multi-generational. My position is this is a cultural problem larger than a subculture called 'rape culture': it is a problem of the larger culture and it is for the larger culture to confront, honestly. EI is seeking to encourage a non-judgemental open and honest discussion and bring to public awareness the scope and nature of misogynistic sexual harassment in order to generate positive moves across the main culture - their approach is not about crime and punishment, naming and shaming as much as it is about achieving behavioural change. Prevention is key here. Punishment is always too late for those who have been harmed punishment of offenders does not undo that harm caused.

Can we get to a place where no more women are being harassed and sexually assaulted? - That is the question they are posing. Meaningful and lasting change can only be achieved through honesty, through recognising the problem of sexual violence, through understanding the many ways in which misogyny manifests, through understanding it's roots in wider culture and through direct action amongst men and women of all ages, in schools and universities, at home and elsewhere to confront, challenge, reduce and in due course eliminate this behavioural dynamic of sexualised abuse of power from all our lives. It is not healthy, it is not 'natural' and it must cease. Education EI believes this is a matter for education, education, education. A good education opens both mind and heart, and develops the focused mind informed by a strengthened heart. A good education is a process of discovery and learning. A good education is not indoctrination.
Education through conversation between young boys as peers and young men as peers talking to each other. Education by parents, by schools, by universities, news media and all other relevant layers of society participating in shifting the cultural behavioural values away from leveraging power and control towards participation and co-operation.

The children of the 21st Century cry out for a humanising ethic, for real social material change to end this dynamic behaviour of abuse.

It is not a pleasant state to be an abusive person. Everyone involved in the sexual abuse dynamic suffers. Everyone is dehumanised by this behaviour. To be the kind of person that sexually harasses another is a dehumanised state of being. It's not good. This is not being judgemental. It is being factual.

There is a profound compassion in the ethical stance of Everyone's Invited.
Here Soma Sara speaks on the issue with a reporter from the London Standard.



Power

In order to understand the role of power in sexual harassment, we do need to consider the level of power, the sources of power, the context of the harassing situation, and the reactions of those subjected to sexual harassment and to what extent their relative power position in society determines what outcomes are deemed possible, what actions are deemed viable, what outcomes are delivered.

Does lack of power influence a persons choices to report and prosecute cases of bullying, sexual harassment or rape?

When some media claimed that the Rotherham Grooming Gang was able to escape investigation due to fears that such an investigation might appear racist, was that the case? Or was it that in general, the witness testimony of the groomed and the vulnerable, the distressed and the broken is treated with less respect and consideration than it should be, across under resourced, under trained, under staffed police forces nationally?  

The victimised young girls are way down the power ladder, at the very bottom. Those young girls were, and are, in practical terms totally powerless. It was not concerns about Race that dismissed their their need. They were deemed not important enough to warrant the kind of attention they needed. They were considered unworthy. 

Narrative, Optics, Stories

Who turned what should have been a story about criminal organised child abuse as a cultural problem of England, into a story about Race, Immigration and Nativism?

Who did not immediately rebut that false narrative of distraction with available evidence that shows the the vast majority of 'grooming gangs' exploiting minors for sexual abuse are Caucasian, that indeed the prevalence of such abuse reflects the demographic realities?  How could such an obvious misrepresentation have stood in the news media for so long, unchallenged?

What did that do for the girls who were victimised? Who was thinking of those young people in all of this? How much more powerless were these young women rendered by this misrepresentation? Media was talking about Race and not about the lives of these young girls. 

The truth is that criminal grooming is common, far too common, across this society. It other words it is a cultural or societal behavioural problem at every level of this culture, such that it is almost characteristic. we cannot afford to look away from this.

Who has the power to exercise such systemic reluctance to address this problem honestly, and why would they do that? 

Power, Protest and Abuse

Power and the right to protest were yet again highlighted in the statements, directions and interactions of Priti Patel, Cressida Dick, The London Metropolitan Police and the Reclaim These Streets women's group who wanted to host a vigil on Clapham Common for Sarah Everard - as I already mentioned - a young woman abducted and murdered by a serving police officer in March, in London.  

In truth the fact that the man was a police officer is besides the point - sexual predators and murderers abide in every profession. That said, the tragic and catastrophic irony of a women's safety put at risk by a man paid to 'protect the peace' is inescapable. It certainly led to more concern and focus among women aware already that the justice system is not very good at delivering justice in regards to sexual harassment and rape cases.

Therefore a public vigil, an act of mourning, grief and respect, made a lot of sense and that is what RTS called for, as representatives of women's voice, as a public ritual and a demand for justice.

This includes the voice of men too, all those men who are listening to and hearing the women, who understand the cultural dynamic, who also demand we approach this matter with justice and prevention in mind.

Official Stance is defensive

"Reclaim These Streets is organised by a group of women who wanted to channel the collective grief, outrage and sadness in our community over the events of the past week. Our plan was to hold a short gathering on Clapham Common, centred around a minute of silence to remember Sarah Everard and all women lost to violence. In light of the lack of constructive engagement from the Metropolitan Police, we were forced to cancel this event."

That the official police response to the desire of the RTS women to hold a vigil was oppositional is a measure of an institutional inability to hear, and an unwillingness to listen to and empathise with women's sense of this that speaks to their insecurity as being understandable. The police have done nothing to secure women's concerns. Quite the opposite.

The High Court Judges asserted that COVID19 legislation could not be used to ban protest, even as the Police tried to misuse the legislation. The police withdrew from the court case to avoid a ruling forcing them to accept the right of RTS to protest thus legally placing the Police in a position where they had to facilitate the vigil. 

Following on from the court case, the Police denied support for the vigil, because they could not ban it. 

They chose to not facilitate a covid secure vigil, out of spite, and following the orders of the Home Secretary.

The Police asked RTS to use all their publicity channels to call off the vigil. RTS did so.

RTS informed the police that they could not prevent people from gathering informally. The police clearly understood this. 

Priti Patel as Home Secretary,  a coward and a bully.

Priti Patel ordered the Police to break up the informal vigil, partly on the basis that she promised the Police she would deliver a public briefing instructing the public not to attend an informal vigil, to give the police the cover to take action to break-up the vigil. She did not do that, and left the order in place. People gathered, in much larger numbers than would have had the police worked with RTS.

I call Priti Patel a coward because she did not follow through with her promise, and because  she refused to acknowledge her own bad behaviour,  an act of personal cowardice which led to a £340,000 out of court settlement. She used tax payers funds to save face, in a very dehumanised manner. Not being able to put your hand up, when you have done wrong, is moral cowardice, it is the triumph of a damaged, abusive ego. It is a sign of weakness, not of strength.

A Respectful Vigil

The vigil was very well self organised, respectful, disciplined. The women gathered expresses their grief, their anger and sorrow, their outrage. The women spoke of the need for justice, the need for change. Candles, flowers, prayers, songs, silences. Women holding space for public emotion, public feeling, public solidarity when in the middle of an epidemic we are all more isolated, de-publicised than ever. A precious moment in time.

The Police waited until darkness had fallen, and then removed some of the vigil holders from the bandstand where some women were speaking from - using 'reasonable force' and thus providing a media story that did them no favours at all.

The response of the women at the vigil was disciplined. A riot did not break out. Police violence was not meet with escalation. The women maintained their dignity as indignity was laid upon them. The women showed true strength. They stood their ground, and stood as witnesses to the women who were being forcibly removed.

All of this, when one of their own, a serving officer, had abducted and murdered an innocent woman, having previously flashed at a female employee in late February. 

The insensitivity is breath taking.

Power and the right to protest were also at the heart of the Bristol sit-down protests against the Crime and Policing Bill that is going through Parliament, a proposed legislation that criminalises protests of single individuals, that uses vague noise and nuisance clauses to give police the discretion to arrest and charge protesters on whim, a piece of legislation that criminalises sleeping in a vehicle over night which is aimed at Traveller folk,  a bill that is acknowledged to be a direct attempt to pre-empt protest against the policies of a Climate and Environmentally reckless Government, and pushing this through in the midst of an epidemic that the same government is deliberately mismanaging with lethal consequences.

Power and honesty (the lack of it) were also highlighted by the release this week of the Sewel Report on Racism in England which claimed there is no evidence of institutional Racism in England, and that where there is Racism prevalent in the population. The report claimed that other factors, such as economic deprivation, family breakdown and geography were more important factors in discrimination as it occurs in England. This is gaslighting - this is trying to convince us that the evidence of our own experience, what we have seen with our own eyes, is not real.

Rape Culture is a dynamic within a larger culture of abuse of power, gross dishonesty, imposed hierarchy, state violence, patriarchy, misogyny, maintained through political grooming and manipulative persuasion. I think it is not possible to separate the two themes.

Power, Honesty, Justice

Everyone's Invited and #metoo, and the thousands of organisations of women globally are asking us all to do the right thing. The women who are speaking out, who are speaking truth to power, are asking us to be honest about this, to do the right thing. The school girls who are 'finally finding their voices' are asking us all to do the right thing. Stop it. It's not complicated. You do have the power to stop this behaviour. Just do it.

Honesty is speaking truth to power, justice is power changing as a result.

I think that unless the two meet, and are reconciled, then we will be caught in the crossfire of what I can only describe as a toxic cult. 

Just do it

I think that social change can be achieved when the majority of the population are united in understanding, action and solidarity to confront, challenge and dismantle these behavioural structures and dynamics, the systems and methods of maintaining power and control. Sexual harassment and abuse is all about power and control. It is not about sexuality.

I think that means we must understand those structures accurately.

I think that means we must understand what we have internalised as values given to us by those structures.

I think that means we must understand how the structures influence so many people and thus enable the behavioural dynamic of control to mitigate and ultimately ignore the voices of women who speak out.

I think that  means we must find ways to build bridges of human understanding across our different groups, identities, beliefs and positions so that  those internalised values no longer impede us. 

I think that at the very least just being consistently honest, decent, kind, loving humane beings is enough of a challenge under the current circumstances, and worthy in its own right. That's where we start with this.

From there, activism can flow.

That is what Everyone's Invited presents. An end to the war, a start to and continuation of the conversation that heals the behaviour. That is what #metoo really means.

That is what Soma Sara and many others represent.

We have had enough, already.

I think.








Kindest regards 
 
Corneilius 

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

Women Only Carriages, Sexual Harassment, You and I and Us/Them.

1. The MP, Chris Williamson, who brought up the subject of women only carriages,  as a potential response to an alarming increase in sexual assaults and harassment of women on public transport, made it perfectly clear that it was merely a discussion point.

He did not indicate any suggestions of enforcement, he did not say talk about regulations, he did not produce a white paper in preparation of legislation.

All he wanted was a public discussion on the issue.

Because it had been brought up two years ago, and the idea was dropped, and yet the behaviour has increased, the situation has worsened and that cannot happen. It is happening, and it cannot be allowed to continue.

The issue is not separate carriages for women.

The issue is safety from harassment for women. And not just on Public Transport.

Every where.

I see his effort as an institutional cry for help.

An attempt, a tactic, to bring the subject to light.

Let us talk about this, honestly.

Deal with it.

Fair enough.

The subject is sexual assault and harassment. Not Carriages.

2. The first I heard of it Mr Williamson's cry for help was when Majiid Nawaz on LBC during his sit-in for the lovely and logical, evidence based yet (sometimes infuriatingly in denial) James O' Brien, a seat 
he does not fill well, on the mid morning show.

Nawaz used this topic to attack the Labour Party and lefties in general.

Two women challenged him on this and he dismissed those challenges by asking them what would it be like if a woman did not use the carriage and was harassed, she'd be asked why she did not use the carriage set aside - with the implication that is was in some way as if it were her own fault, and a defence could be made on that grounds, and he said that would be crazy if separate carriages led to that. 

He implied that separate carriages would lead down that path. Gaslighting. On public air waves. How 
arrogant, how repugnant.

He also likened the idea to Saudi Arabian segregation of women.

He did not address the harassment of women in any detail, or with much sensitivity to the subject, or for the women who disagreed with his tactic of using this subject to attack the Labour Party. 

Those who agreed with him were praised.

He used this issue to score political points, and the media have been doing that all day.

You have no idea how angry I am at this. I have no idea how angry I am with all this.

What he was doing was gaslighting. Bullying.

He was deliberately missing the point and he was using women's distress (and many men's distress at this) to score political points.

3. In the past 8 months I have intervened on public transport to stop men harassing women, groping them, sneering at them, in obviously sexualised harassment. Thrice. Twice on the Bus, once on a late night tube. Going north..

On the last occasion, I got into a busy late night train, full of people emptying out fo the pubs, and I witnessed three drunken men, one sitting beside a woman, the other across from her, and the third in the aisle. The man in the aisle was groping the women, pawing at her, jeering at her in an obvioulsy lewd manner; the others were laughing, egging him on. She was clearly distressed.

It looked like it hand been going on for a few minutes.

I stepped up and stood up to him and told him to back off, that what he was doing was sexual harassment. Which is an offence.

He backed off, and then started to insult me.

I checked in with the lady, nd looked around behind me and saw everyone was watching, witnessing.

Fine. I did not rise to his bait, and I continued saying that what he was doing was an offence.

"The way you were behaving was the issue."

His friends got just a little bit angrier. I stood my ground. I kept repeating that, hold their gazes... looking at each one in turn

I stared and he stared and then I turned to look back down the carriage, and everyone was still watching.
One or Two stops later she got off the train, muttering thank you to me; she had to walk past all three, including the harasser whom she had to pass really close by. She was intimidated. Scared. She moved rapidly. I watched the drunk trio.

They then started to have a go at me, and the harasser called me a faggot, and then, out of nowhere one of them said.

"Well maybe your daughter was raped..."  he smirked, his friends laughed. Their little joke.

These three guys were Asian. But more importantly, they were men.

It was a trolling  dig, a trigger statement, a deliberate  knock me off guard,  and it probably had some connection to the coverage around the Rotherham case, and he was implying my opposition to his action was racist.

It was not.

I made it clear that his skin tone, his ethnicity were not the issue, and not an issue here.

** Note : In my view, the ethnicity of people who harass and assault women or children, their background, their justifications or rationalisations, their explanations is all irrelevant. All the is relevant is the behaviour. That's the issue. If the behaviour was not there, there'd be no issue. In cases like this, ethnicity is a distraction, a side issue. It always is.

"The way you were behaving was the issue. The behaviour, That's it."

Then he stepped towards me, in an intimidating drunken way... muttered another insult. I do not recall what he said.


I was about to respond to that, when some men behind me motioned to me, and asked me to  'move back here, m8!" Nobody said anything, they just slowly filled the  space between me and the three harassers,

For me,  skin tone, ethnicity, language, belief system, religion, club memberships, favourite egg dish, bath or shower? It is all wholly irrelevant.

It was the behaviour that I was addressing. I made no negative comments about them at any stage of this interaction. I did not use insult at any time. I remained polite. We can do it.

- moral of the story - if we healthy men see such harassment in public, then we all need to say it - ZERO TOLERANCE - TOGETHER and then act to impede the abuser. And if needs be, if a serious offence occurs, then it's a police matter, and then a court and sentencing matter.

We need to film the harassment as we move in. We need to stand together.

Because it is a problem of some men, that becomes a problem for many, many women. Too many women endure this behaviour.

As men we cannot stand by simply because we would never behave in that manner. And we cannot rest on the laurels of  "It's not all men!"

It is, as it happens, a problem all men need to confront.

Sexual abuse and bullying does happen either way, that is true. The bulk of sexual abuse is perpetrated by men, against women and children and other men. There is also a wider cultural context of bullying. 

Sexual harassment is not banter, it is is bullying. 

It  is unacceptable anywhere, on this Earth. really.  

Nonetheless that cannot be used as a way to deflect from the issue of men harassing women in a lewd and intimidating manner.

4. Often many of us men are scared of getting involved, for lots of different reasons, personal and social, we can become timid, feel deeply un-nerved when threatened by intimidation, aware of an inability to fight, and that is a genuine fear, a real risk and I get that.

But it is not good enough. We got to get together, stop the harassment and talk the harassers down. It can be done if we work together. It did this time, and other times.

We have to acknowledge we do not have this issue where it needs to be, now!

5. Zero Tolerance. Every time. It is an offence, and offensive, and not in the way of ‘taking offence’ which is another matter altogether.

This quote is pure wisdom, based on common sense and available scientific evidence. It has something to say on this issue.

"Because of the physiological unity of mind/body, because of the physiological unity of the brain's emotional centers, the immune system, the hormonal and nervous systems, when you suppress something in one area you are risking suppressing it in another area, so when you suppress your anger and boundaries emotionally, you are also suppressing your immune responses. And therefore your body is not as able to fight back against malignancy or, just as anger can turn against the self, so can the immune system

Anger is a necessary boundary protection. If something or somebody transgresses your boundaries, you express anger, not necessarily to hurt them, but simply to keep them out of your space. That's a healthy response. More generally, the role of emotion is to keep out that which is dangerous or threatening, and to permit that which is nurturing and helpful. So we have anger, we have love, we have attraction, we have revulsion, the whole thing. But that's exactly the role of the immune system. It's to keep out that which is noxious and unhealthy, and to attack it if necessary, and to allow in that which is nurturing and supportive.”

-Dr Gabor Maté

That means, to me, that sentencing is focussed on the community's health and safety, rather than punishment.

Health and Safety of the community, and ultimately the Society, rather than punishment, where everyone loses out.

Health and Safety says a person who cannot be trusted, cannot be trusted. 

Keep them safe. Not in Society. And. Importantly, education and honesty, as in listening to the people who have been hurt, harmed, on all sides of this issue. This is abut childhood and men and women.

This is about looking at how people learn to be bullies.... looking at the neuroscience, psychology, biology and environment to see that is happening at the physiology. How all these elements orchestrate in to influencing behaviour, Good or bad. The research understanding at present has much to offer by way of insight, Survivors have even more wisdom to offer, if anyone was to really listen to hear it No more assumptions about people in distress.

Why some bullies choose racism, another will choose misogyny, others attempt objectification of some 'othered' group, yet others strut as neo-nazi's, or parade and throw bricks as antifa... who cares? I think that is part of what happens when lots of people who want to be offensive, and I mean genuinely offensive, harmful find each other and bond. Football Hooligans.  A culture of violence.

Their justification's or rationale are invalid. Reason is a nothing. An empty space, with a narrative wrapped around it that is meaningless. The behaviour and the outcomes, that is the issue.

6. We healthy men have to be the immune system that ejects the virus of sexual harassment. Of both men and women, by whomever.

Leaving it to Government, or guards, is neglect of our shared response ability.

7. When media personalities use this story to undermine Labour's standing, they are avoiding the first point, and using the trauma of women as a political device, to make a secondary point. Labour bad!

8. There is a need for an education led approach to prevention - not talking at children, not a curriculum to be tested on, but talking with children, parents and anyone else, and most of all, children in schools listening to the survivors. They were there. First hand accounts of what it feels like.
you know that joke :

"How many Vietnam Vets does it take to change a light bulb?"

- I don't know, man

"You don't know, maaan! 'Cuz you weren't there, maaan, you were not THERE!"

9. Another point regarding placing more officials on the trains and stations - the profit lost, or the extra labour cost, which ever way you look at it, is not worth more than the feeling for women of the harassment that women are subjected to, the risk they feel, the lack of ease...

That said, someone passed me this comment from facebook:

"One gentleman said if we were all train guards and made sure people didn't feel vulnerable and step up when needed we would not need these carriages/ seats.”

Absolutely spot on, and so few words, not one wasted, makes me sound like a verbose ranter. But I know that of myself, anyways. I am a writer of polemics.

There's a lot more to be said on this... it ties in bullying and abusive behaviour in general.

10. So here’s another way of putting it.

An issue is raised. For discussion.

Sexual Harassment of Women on Public transport.

Are separate women only carriages a solution?

The media set the narrative.

Pundits  scream "going back to segregation!"

Gaslighting and deflection.

Then they use it to attack the Labour Party and J. Corbyn. They use it to attack 'woke'. They use it to attack Feminists. They use it to attack.

“Labour are utterly bonkers!”

Utterly repugnant, manipulative and puerile/immature. Bullying.

11. Healthy people must declare as a collective that there is no tolerance, for this kind of behaviour, none, and we must make it so.

Both the sexual harassment, and the punditry gaslighting. And quite a lot other obviously dysfunctional behaviour, such as the DWP Work Capability Assessment regime, which kills vulnerable people via unyielding bureaucracy.

That’s another posting.

And remember, sexual harassment of women : it is a problem of some men, that becomes a problem for way too many women. To the extent that it is a cultural problem.

Let us end it, together.

Kindest regards
Corneilius
Thank you for reading this blog. 

Women reject the use of gender to silence legitimate political opposition: an open letter



An open letter by some active women folk looking at the basis of the accusations of misogynistic behaviours emerging from the Media, directed at Jeremy Corbyn and Momentum activists...

Women reject the use of gender to silence legitimate political opposition

"We, the undersigned, women Labour members or supporters from different backgrounds, ethnicities and regions, condemn attempts by some women MPs to blame the Leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn and shadow chancellor John McDonnell for alleged intimidation. The accusations are baseless and are part of an escalating witch-hunt against Corbyn and his supporters.

The tragic murder of Jo Cox MP, for which a right-wing racist with mental health problems has been charged, has been invoked as if it was connected with anti-racist, pro-refugee Corbyn. A brick through the side window of a building used by many groups, including the local MP, has been attributed to Corbyn followers without any proof. And we are warned against holding peaceful demonstrations outside MPs offices or calling for them to be deselected."

The full text of the letter is truly worth reading.

The core point is that to use such slurs demeans the entire political process, and does nothing to help confront and resolve the issues around power, sexualised violence, abuse and harm; if anything it undermines our efforts in this area.

It is clear, accurate, compassionate and written with utter integrity, by women activists engaged in intensive daily work to support women (and by extension, men and children).

It feeds back into my many blog postings about bullying in politics, violence in society, hierarchies of power, trauma related behaviour patterns, and much else besides...

Media Trolling


Media - Read and react, or read, analyse, check and respond.

We have a choice.

Our choices dictate outcomes, especially with regards to bringing about a healthy, sane, nurturant society.

The reactive mode is easily manipulated.

The responsive much less so, to the degree that any individual has worked through his or her own issues around power and sense of self - whether it is truly emergent or laced with internalized system values (shame, guilt, blame, praise, reward, punishment ... are all clues to where we still hold onto internalized system values).

Many people are making this choice, consciously, deliberately, and bringing that to the table of politics and governance.

And this choice gets far less attention and examination in the media than the justifications for war or for Corbyn's so-called 'unelectability'.

Established Power's self protection.

It would appear the established power does want to enable such choices by acknowledging the multitude of stories of those who do. The mainstream power establishment media is peppered with justifications of violence, with sexism, fantasy, ideology and sales pitches.

The Inquiry into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse underway in the UK has lost yet another chair-person. We do not yet know why. It is very sad and very, very worrying.

The Australian Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse is revealing just how endemic cover-ups, mitigations, institutional desire to protect itself are in this area....

Ireland and the United States have had multiple Inquiries.

The evidence is immense and mounting all the time.

The response of Power is way behind what the evidence suggest would be appropriate.

"Houston, we have a problem."

The Astronauts fixed the problem with assistance from Ground Control.

They worked together.

The Government (and The Vatican) needs to work with and for Survivors, not try to get around them.

The Labour party MPs who are opposing Corbyn need to work with the grass roots of the party, not try to get around them.

It is the same pattern.

Violence.


Tribal is an odd word to use to describe violent systems.

Here's why.

This is a chart of social behavioural characteristics of different societies (tribes, sic) from a meta-analysis by James Prescott in the 1970s,  which looks at whether or not they are truly nurturant or controlling, and indicates the sets of behaviours associated with each.


Societies with very different child relating modalities, and very different outcomes...

And the common link between the emergence of violence or nurturance appears to revolve around the way a given society relates to and treats the children.

If we want to resolve these problems, we start with parenting at the very base of society, as the very base of society.... which means the work women do for women is absolutely critical.
Here is an article I wrote expanding on the chart by James Prescott.


The website www.violence.de is very useful in exploring this issue.




The Neurobiology of Trauma.

Here is an example of one aspect of that work, related to the neurobiology of trauma, and trauma informed responses to sexual abuse which counter the 'traditional' responses which are the subject of numerous national inquiries. Informative, direct, clear and deeply compassionate, it also hints at the problems with inherited traditional approaches to sexual abuse allegations, which are indicators on the nature of our Society and it's power structures.



In another recent blog I posted a basic outline for anyone interested in this area of human exploration, knowledge and healing, with some links to key writers and researchers in this area..

These insights into the neurobiology of trauma indicate that in utero trauma can occur, if the mother is subjected to trauma events or chronic stress beyond her ability to control. They also feed into child development issues....

Everyone of us carries some of the bully psychology within us to one degree or another until we resolve it within ourselves. Social conditions and socialised conditioning tend to make it so.

That's why we become bystanders.


Resolve it with insight, evidence and self reflection.








Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe"

*If you like this post, if you found the themes resonant, if you agree in part, would you be kind enough to let others know about it? I would really appreciate that. You could drop a comment too, if you felt the urge. Or not. I will moderate contributions, and block any that are abusive. For obvious reasons. Thank you for reading.