The infamous Cambridge Rapist? I surely was - many of us totally avoided Midsummer Common...although Peter Cook's MO mostly consisted of crawling through open windows rather than lurking in dark open places.
As a rule, I don't walk fearfully about fearing assault and molestation...but nonetheless, I have been grimly aware that the culture of contempt and derision for women has not really gone away. It is difficult to be cool and objective about this because in many ways, ribald comments and an overt sexual openness is common - very hard to disentangle who is doing what and why.
I have spent many years travelling in N.Africa and India and Turkey and curiously, walking down an Arabic street is exactly the same as walking down a British street - no-one is grabbing, mauling and poking...and in arab family homes, I failed to detect a sniff of rancid anti-female oppression. For sure, cultural norms vary but I swear, the behaviour demonstrated by the men on NYE would have been as loathed and condemned in Turkey as it is in Germany. However, somewhere, there has been a failure to examine the possible repercussions of dealing with an enormous and almost overnight influx of people - many young men who, in every culture, even amongst primates, tend to be a source of anxiety and aggression. Moreover, it is simply disingenuous and evasive to fail to grasp the implications for women when they are being systematically singled out for punishment by an oppressive religious system - not unlike Christian fundamentalists, debased Imams, the hateful Hindu caste system - women - especially their wombs - are both hated and revered in a deeply objectifying and demoralising system. We can...and must continue to speak about about this and should not be shy to name and shame those differences which keep us chained. Honour killings for example - no need to be mealy mouthed - the whole sorry system involves the usual separation of categories and persecution of weaker entities. It is neither racist nor right wing to point out these oppressions...and organise to maintain a legal consensus of what is right and not right and ensure justice is seen to be done.
Not exactly OT but relevant, I think, in a wider sense - I have been sickened by the recent expose of violence in the young offender system but 2 things were immediately apparent. How violence and hate propagates itself in a fertile environment - a culture if you like...and the total disconnect between the underpaid, undertrained staff and the management - none of whom will ever have set foot in one of these places, who are totally unaccountable and who are confident that they, personally, will never suffer the disgusting brutality being meted out to youngsters who's only worth (under capitalism) is as a means to generate funding and employment. Not unlike the political system. There will never be any emphasis on help or rehabilitation because it is in the interests of G4S to maintain the status quo. Whilst there are always some sick fucks who are attracted by the possibilities of violence, many others will have been gradually inducted in a slyly complicit culture of denigration - a true them and us.
