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Eric Bristow says football abuse victims are not "proper men"

Orang Utan said:
A quick search proves otherwise.
Yoy also like to post gifs of people getting badly injured
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handbags.jpg
 
"Look at me! Look at me!" says someone that no one has heard of.

"That man said a thing!" says the media. "Let's draw attention to it in order to make it EVEN MORE DIFFICULT for those affected to come forward!"
 
^ I'm not so sure about this interpretation Poot. Yes it's a mostly-irrelevant, Twitter-based spat; but it's being made such a meal of, not to discourage those affected from coming forward, but - weirdly enough - to demonstrate that Bristow's a dinosaur and well outside mainstream thought about abuse and about victims. Also describing "the media" as a single entity is, well ....
 
Poot said:
"Look at me! Look at me!" says someone that no one has heard of.

"That man said a thing!" says the media. "Let's draw attention to it in order to make it EVEN MORE DIFFICULT for those affected to come forward!"
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Or; let it go unchallenged and thus reinforce ignorance.
 
Yeah, I guess I don't even want my son to know that this is an opinion that some people (ok, one that we know about) hold. I don't want it to even make the light of day because I don't want to have to explain it. It's an insult to a mind boggling number of people. And it's not like he's some sort of gifted demagogue whose views are a dangerous influence - as far as I can make out he plays darts.
 
Cosmic said:
I guess you should do whatever you feel comfortable with. I've only seen the twitter comments which is not enough for me to do the outraged indignant thing. I'd like to hear him speak on newsnight or summat, look into his eyes and hear his tone of voice etc. A 140 characters or less twitter comment doesn't really do the job.
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Not if one is bending over backwards to excuse it, perhaps. I don't think there is any ambiguity about his message. Nor, it seems, do quite a lot of other people which at least tells me that I'm not falling over myself in my desire to be outraged.
 
Poot said:
Yeah, I guess I don't even want my son to know that this is an opinion that some people (ok, one that we know about) hold. I don't want it to even make the light of day because I don't want to have to explain it. It's an insult to a mind boggling number of people. And it's not like he's some sort of gifted demagogue whose views are a dangerous influence - as far as I can make out he plays darts.
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Lots of people have this sort of opinion about survivors of abuse. Surely you've heard the opinion expressed that they're only doing it for the money, why didn't they say something at the time, they're jumping on the bandwagon, etc. This is another manifestation of that sort of thing.
 
Cosmic said:
He made a ridiculous comment in public
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No. He made a grossly offensive comment in public. He made it clear that he regards male victims of abusers as not proper men (I wonder what his excuse for the female ones is? Are they supposed to man up and deck their abuser too? Or do they get a man to do it for them?).

I take that kind of slight personally. For me, and for a lot of victims of abuse (regardless of gender), it is enough of a struggle to get past the nasty suspicion in our own minds that we somehow invited/deserved/failed to stop it. Bristow is suggesting exactly that - that we have failed in our duty to ourselves to address the abuse.

But what is really awful about this isn't that an unthinking moronic celeb has said these things, but that he is mirroring (and fuelling) the attitudes of other unthinking morons. And thereby making it harder for victims to come to terms with experiences they had no responsibility for, and which often fuck up their lives pretty comprehensively. And victims who don't get past that shame stuff I mentioned earlier are much less likely to disclose their abuse and get their abusers brought to justice.

So Bristow, and his ilk, are getting directly in the way of addressing the problem. He's not offering a solution - he's part of the problem. I hope he disappears back into ignominity and is never heard from again.
 
His previous tweet was: "Trouble is nowadays u cant tell the truth what do u feel out there tweet me", so he's one of those dicks who says something and says that you're not allowed to say it, thus proving his idiocy.
 
Poot said:
Fair enough. I just liked it when we HADN'T heard his views. I agree they should be challenged. I suppose. Harrumph.
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Or simply unreported as there's no good reason to give a shit what he says about anything besides darts. I always look askance at what people say about subjects outside their fields of expertise, and see no reason to care more about bristow's views in this matter than his views on the French wars of religion: both are of negligible worth.
 
Pickman's model said:
Or simply unreported as there's no good reason to give a shit what he says about anything besides darts. I always look askance at what people about subjects outside their fields of expertise, and see no reason to care more about bristow's views in this matter than his views on the French wars of religion: both are of negligible worth.
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He should combine his views about sex offenders and the French war of religion, in a piece entitled 'The Edict of Nonce/Nantes'.
 
two sheds said:
Shit advice, too. Besides having been abused they'll end up on an assault or murder charge.
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Maybe. But, on the other hand, they might find it brings some closure. I don't know, becasue I've never been in that situation, but I could well imagine the appeal of such a course of action. But that's quite different from what Bristow is suggesting i.e. that there's something wrong with men who choose not to respond in that way.
 
Athos said:
Maybe. But, on the other hand, they might find it brings some closure. I don't know, becasue I've never been in that situation, but I could well imagine the appeal of such a course of action. But that's quite different from what Bristow is suggesting i.e. that there's something wrong with men who choose not to respond in that way.
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Most of us are decent people, and that includes those who have been on the receiving end of sexual abuse. Decent people don't usually get to feel good about violently assaulting other people, even when they know that it was unavoidable. So I think a more likely outcome is that someone already dealing with the fallout from being abused is just going to add the guilt/shame/anxiety of having committed an assault on their abuser to the toxic mix of emotions.

The only likely motive for a victim becoming aggressive and "sorting out" their abuser later would be that they had developed that aggression as a compensation for the effect that being abused had on them. Acting out on compensatory stuff rarely addresses or neutralises the underlying problem, so I think Eric Bristow's advice is wrong on pretty much every count, plus, as you point out, being offensive to those who choose not to (or are too afraid to - that fear runs deep) act it out.
 
existentialist said:
Most of us are decent people, and that includes those who have been on the receiving end of sexual abuse. Decent people don't usually get to feel good about violently assaulting other people, even when they know that it was unavoidable. So I think a more likely outcome is that someone already dealing with the fallout from being abused is just going to add the guilt/shame/anxiety of having committed an assault on their abuser to the toxic mix of emotions.

The only likely motive for a victim becoming aggressive and "sorting out" their abuser later would be that they had developed that aggression as a compensation for the effect that being abused had on them. Acting out on compensatory stuff rarely addresses or neutralises the underlying problem, so I think Eric Bristow's advice is wrong on pretty much every count, plus, as you point out, being offensive to those who choose not to (or are too afraid to - that fear runs deep) act it out.
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Maybe I take a less negative view of violence; I think that it can, in some instances, be a useful tool. Not necessarily a "compensation" but merely a means to an end (in this case of revenge, and the peace that can bring).
 
Athos said:
Maybe I take a less negative view of violence; I think that it can, in some instances, be a useful tool. Not necessarily a "compensation" but merely a means to an end (in this case of revenge, and the peace that can bring).
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"Before you set out on revenge, dig two graves"

A trite cliche, true, but it's a cliche for a reason.
 
I am happy that Bristow's words are getting the attention they deserve. This is an attitude which needs exposing and defeating. Hurrah for the internet.
 
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