Hundreds of women assaulted in German NYE celebrations

[Diamond]

Are you claiming that 'islamic culture' is the only place that these guys got their misogyny and their tactics and techniques for expressing it from?

If so what evidence besides 'it looks kinda like Tahir square and they might have had beards' do you propose to back that up with?

It's a question of the culture that currently exists in predominantly Muslim countries.

This is not controversial stuff.

 

[Pickman's model]

It's a question of the culture that currently exists in predominantly Muslim countries.

This is not controversial stuff.

do you really want to go down this path and see where it leads, when you've been down it so often before and it never ends well?

 

[Diamond]

Diamond, this is the one I was thinking of.

Interesting - had not heard of that before but I am not sure how that has any direct relevance to what happened in Cologne

 

[Diamond]

do you really want to go down this path and see where it leads, when you've been down it so often before and it never ends well?

You are such a pompous prick.

Are you so underemployed that you keep some self-perceived urban75 ledger of record for which you are the sole snide judge?

 

[Pickman's model]

You are such a pompous prick.

Are you so underemployed that you keep some self-perceived urban75 ledger of record for which you are the sole snide judge?

no, i was simply trying - foolishly, it seem - to prevent a recurrence of the humiliation you've had on so many previous threads, not the least of which concerned the suleimaniyeh mosque on kingsland road, and of course the famous 'i'm reading alone in berlin while my flatmate's having group sex' one.

 

[Diamond]

no, i was simply trying - foolishly, it seem - to prevent a recurrence of the humiliation you've had on so many previous threads, not the least of which concerned the suleimaniyeh mosque on kingsland road, and of course the famous 'i'm reading alone in berlin while my flatmate's having group sex' one.

Stop being so transparently disingenuous - the answer to my question is clearly yes.

God knows how much of a loser you are IRL.

 

[bimble]

 

[Pickman's model]

Stop being so transparently disingenuous - the answer to my question is clearly yes.

God knows how much of a loser you are IRL.

no it isn't. but have it your own way, and don't say you weren't warned when - once again - you're hung out to dry.

 

[Diamond]

no it isn't. but have it your own way, and don't say you weren't warned when - once again - you're hung out to dry.

"Weren't warned"?

"Hung out to dry"?

This is your "battleground", isn't it?

Where you can puff out your chest and tilt at your windmills...

Where you can pretend that you are courageous and just...

Where you can be the "big man" by pursuing petty personal vendettas from afar, anonymously...

Absolutely pathetic

 

[Bernie Gunther]

excellent. especially relevant is the bit under the heading 'is there a “new” violence against women?', where she ties cologne in with a few other examples of attacks by groups of strangers in public places, like the horrific Delhi story that i kept bringing up a few hundred pages ago.
She's not pushing any one size fits all explanation but points out how 'neither the invocation of universal misogyny nor the stigmatisation of particular groups is likely to be helpful without a context-specific grounding of events and reactions to them. '

Yeah, I thought it was pretty good too based on a quick read. She's taking a lot of the examples that people have been citing here and differentiating them based on a detailed reading of the particular political, economic and social context in which they arise. Which is kind of what I want to do with the Cologne thing, hence the vaguely Marxist political economy stuff a few pages back. I know perfectly well that isn't the whole story, but it's absolutely part of the context in which this stuff has to be understood if you're going to say anything useful about it (as opposed to reproducing a propaganda agenda based on fantasies of cultural/national/racial purity)

Here's the bit I think you're talking about above.

We are clearly not dealing with private pathologies here, but instances where violence can almost become part of a “sport” practiced by subcultures of local gangs, as was also the case in the multiple rape cases in Soweto. The targets are often independent women who, like the young workers in Mexico or the student in Delhi, find themselves in un-monitored public spaces. I have argued elsewhere that abuses against women can take more virulent forms when the male role is no longer secure, and where profound crises of masculinity lead to more violent and coercive assertions of male prerogatives. I tentatively called this phenomenon masculinist restoration to highlight some of its distinctive features. Both the manifestations of violence, and more significantly societal reactions to them, break the mould of the silence and dissimulation that were the hallmarks of patriarchy-as-usual. Violence against women is firmly in the public domain eliciting storms of protest, demonstrations, petitions, blogs, advocacy and solidarity campaigns. Reactions to gender-based violence are shaping the contours of a political divide that crosses gender lines, and pits those who believe that women should “know their place” against others who defend the safety and freedom of women at all times and in all circumstances as a fundamental human right.

The fateful marriage: political violence and violence against women

She's talking there about the same thing I'm trying to get at by bringing PUA / Gamergate types and things like Oktoberfest, the New York parade Idris referenced and similar stuff into the discussion and also perhaps what you were on about with that horrible Delhi case. Part of the relevance of the stuff about global capital and the social pressures it generates is, at least in my head, also to offer a potential account of the drives behind that 'masculinist restoration' she mentions. Her notion there seems very close to what I was calling 'masculine identify formation' in the PUA thread.

 

[Pickman's model]

"Weren't warned"?

"Hung out to dry"?

This is your "battleground", isn't it?

Where you can puff out your chest and tilt at your windmills...

Where you can pretend that you are courageous and just...

Where you can be the "big man" by pursuing petty personal vendettas from afar, anonymously...

Absolutely pathetic

i'm not pursuing a vendetta with you on this thread. this is my last reply to you before you dander down that path you've trodden so often before. you're going to humiliate yourself on this thread, to which you've arrived so late, if you act as you've done so frequently before. it's not from reading the tea leaves or casting your horoscope, it's what always happens when you come along and think you know better than everyone else: like insurancegate.

e2a: i see Lucy Fur made the same point to you, with the same sort of response:

What the fuck are you talking about?

You just want to have a go, don't you?

 

[Diamond]

i'm not pursuing a vendetta with you on this thread. this is my last reply to you before you dander down that path you've trodden so often before. you're going to humiliate yourself on this thread, to which you've arrived so late, if you act as you've done so frequently before. it's not from reading the tea leaves or casting your horoscope, it's what always happens when you come along and think you know better than everyone else: like insurancegate.

You can't help yourself, can you?

Glad to hear that you won't respond to me any longer on this thread as our "dialogue" many, many pages back was typically productive as well.

 

[Diamond]

Now - back to the matter at hand.

Are we demonising an ill defined group of men from widely disparate backgrounds by noting that there might, just might, be a fundamental culture clash going on here?

 

[bimble]

Now - back to the matter at hand.

Are we demonising an ill defined group of men from widely disparate backgrounds by noting that there might, just might, be a fundamental culture clash going on here?

Have you read this thread at all ?

 

[Diamond]

Have you read this thread at all ?

Yes, I have but that remains the crux of the matter.

 

[bimble]

It feels a bit like we were sort of getting somewhere with a detailed line drawing and you've just blundered in holding a giant roller, to help.

 

[Pickman's model]

It feels a bit like we were sort of getting somewhere with a detailed line drawing and you've just blundered in holding a giant roller, to help.

be kind. the thread was doing a great big lichtenstein pop art thing and here he is trying to paint the sistine chapel ceiling. on a wall.

 

[bimble]

be kind. the thread was doing a great big picasso and here he is trying to paint the sistine chapel ceiling. on a wall.

in potato prints

 

[Spymaster]

It's a question of the culture that currently exists in predominantly Muslim countries.

This is not controversial stuff.

There's been some really thoughtful stuff posted on this thread. You'd do well to read it before posting, tbh.

 

[andysays]

Now - back to the matter at hand.

Are we demonising an ill defined group of men from widely disparate backgrounds by noting that there might, just might, be a fundamental culture clash going on here?

Whenever I see people effectively dismissing or ignoring the possible complexities of a situation and reaching for simplistic knee-jerk pseudo-explanations like "fundamental culture clash", I generally come to the conclusion that whoever's doing it is either a pig ignorant cunt or has some sort of (not terribly well) hidden reactionary agenda they're pushing.

In your case, I'm prepared to consider the possibility that it's a bit of both.

 

[Pickman's model]

Now - back to the matter at hand.

Are we demonising an ill defined group of men from widely disparate backgrounds by noting that there might, just might, be a fundamental culture clash going on here?

fair enough, you've a lot of nasty shit on your plate atm, so i'll cut you a bit of slack on the personal stuff. you're not the onlyone tho, so don't push it. but there is no excuse for this sort of bollocks especially if, as you claim, you've read the thread. either you're lying or you've just been looking at the words. tell you what, have another quick read then come back with something you've thought about.

 

[trabuquera]

Now - back to the matter at hand.

Are we demonising an ill defined group of men from widely disparate backgrounds by noting that there might, just might, be a fundamental culture clash going on here?

No, WE are not, because we're not saying that - but you pretty obviously are saying that, and yes, yes you are indeed demonising an ill-defined group of men from disparate backgrounds.

btw Diamond it is - as I imagine you must know - pretty annoying for others on the thread when you aggressively badger them for "any example ever of this sort of thing happening committed by non-Muslim perpetrators" … and then instantly dismiss any such example proffered (cf the Puerto Rican Day parade debacle) as 'not relevant'. It just comes across as you dictating all terms of debate and, as such, just talking to /bigging up yourself rather than doing any thinking.

Just to annoy you: acts of targeted, group sexual abuse/assault of women have also been reported in more recent years from the Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans and from several music festivals in the US - no Muslims involved. I also suggest you have a look at the current controversy embroiling Tim Kee, Mayor of Port of Spain (Trinidad & Tobago) who has come in for some serious fire recently after his reaction to a Japanese female tourist, who came to play mas in its Carnival, being found dead after a serious assault; rather than begging forgiveness from Japan, getting the police working on the case and going all-out to solve the crime, Mr Kee's response was to suggest that the victim was 'looking for it' (that's DEATH, not just groping) because she may have been wearing a "vulgar costume". again, no Muslims involved.

 

[ViolentPanda]

"The tribe that hides from man".

For good reason.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Now - back to the matter at hand.

Are we demonising an ill defined group of men from widely disparate backgrounds by noting that there might, just might, be a fundamental culture clash going on here?

What, in this instance, do you mean by "culture"?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Whenever I see people effectively dismissing or ignoring the possible complexities of a situation and reaching for simplistic knee-jerk pseudo-explanations like "fundamental culture clash", I generally come to the conclusion that whoever's doing it is either a pig ignorant cunt or has some sort of (not terribly well) hidden reactionary agenda they're pushing.

In your case, I'm prepared to consider the possibility that it's a bit of both.

My issue with the idea of cultures clashing is that invariably those who voice the concept ignore the fundamental nature of culture and cultures - that they're evolutionary: fluid and forever hybridising due to new influences. The "culture clash" concept pretends that cultures are static, and that stasis is a good thing.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

My issue with the idea of cultures clashing is that invariably those who voice the concept ignore the fundamental nature of culture and cultures - that they're evolutionary: fluid and forever hybridising due to new influences. The "culture clash" concept pretends that cultures are static, and that stasis is a good thing.

In a wired world, subject to the pressures of unconstrained capitalism, it makes very little sense to talk about 'culture' like it was pure and homogeneous, but the fantasy of a pure and homogenous culture or nation or whatever can cause all kinds of shit.

... just ask the Tutsi

Genocide, is after all, an exercise in community building

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Here's something a bit better than the moron-simple 'Islam = misogyny' stuff being pushed by the islamophobia industry. It's not directly relevant to Cologne, but it makes a good deal of sense when trying to understand some of the events elsewhere that keep getting brought up to support those simplistic positions and is potentially quite illuminating.

It's the same SOAS Prof quoted above with some interesting stuff in an older article that's exploring the recent upsurge of public violence against women in the MENA area (and elsewhere) as an expression of a crisis of patriarchy induced by globalisation.

The fact is that the provisions that underwrite the positional superiority of men over women in Islam are, sociologically speaking, in tatters. The male provider image jars with the multitudes of unemployed male youth who are unable to provide for themselves, much less protect women from bread-winning roles and the rigours of exposure to public spaces. We are witnessing a profound crisis of masculinity leading to more violent and coercive assertions of male prerogatives where the abuse of women can become a blood sport - whether it takes place in the slums of Soweto, outside the factories of Ciudad Juarez, in the streets of Delhi or the alleyways of Cairo. Whether these acts of violence are presented as deviant criminal acts or sanctified under the banner of religio-political movements, states are inevitably implicated. We have every right, and indeed a duty, to turn our attention to the holders of political power and ask how, when and why they choose to become accessories to misogynistic atrocities and/or collude with individuals, groups or movements that perpetrate them. That is why people are on the streets. Their target is no longer just women and their bodies but the body politic itself.

Fear and fury: women and post-revolutionary violence

 

[butchersapron]

Rostock here we come.

 

[irf520]

Cologne attacks: Most suspects 'may never be caught' - BBC News

 

[Diamond]

Here's something a bit better than the moron-simple 'Islam = misogyny' stuff being pushed by the islamophobia industry. It's not directly relevant to Cologne, but it makes a good deal of sense when trying to understand some of the events elsewhere that keep getting brought up to support those simplistic positions and is potentially quite illuminating.

It's the same SOAS Prof quoted above with some interesting stuff in an older article that's exploring the recent upsurge of public violence against women in the MENA area (and elsewhere) as an expression of a crisis of patriarchy induced by globalisation. Fear and fury: women and post-revolutionary violence

Sorry, that is clearly bollocks. Whether it is Islam or Christianity or Judaism, all the Abrahamic faiths (along with a few others too most likely) are misogynistic.

We are lucky that we happen to live in a society that, despite the protestations of those who are convinced otherwise, is shedding its patriarchal misogyny at a rapid pace.

However, misogyny is hardwired into Islamic culture. It is almost uniquely misogynistic precisely because its central textual authorities are so completely consistent, unlike the other Abrahamic faiths.

Does saying that make me an Islamophobe and, if so, why?