Content note: this post discusses child sexual abuse and rape apologism, quoting examples

It’s early in the day, I know, but it will be a difficult task to find something worse than this. In fact, it had managed to be the worst thing I’d read today at 12.15am. It really is that bad.

The BBC have decided to rather innocuously title what followed with “Age of consent should be 13, says barrister“. Well, I thought, stupidly clicking. They’re probably wrong for the usual reasons that adults calling for the age of consent to be lowered are wrong, but surely this can’t be too bad?

How wrong I was. Barrister Barbara Hewson, who writes in weeping syphilitic chode publication Spiked, has written something which follows the standard Spiked line–vicious, nasty, rape apologistic, wrong, and thinking it’s oh-so-clever. Brendan O’Neill himself, king of the chodes, would be proud. Being so desperately attention-seeking, I’m not actually going to link to the Spiked article, because fuck them and all the horses they rode in on.

Let’s take a look at Hewson’s opening gambit:

I do not support the persecution of old men. The manipulation of the rule of law by the Savile Inquisition – otherwise known as Operation Yewtree – and its attendant zealots poses a far graver threat to society than anything Jimmy Savile ever did.

Yes, that’s right. Someone who is ostensibly a barrister believes that the function of Yewtree was not to finally–decades too late–investigate institutional abuse of children. Rather, it was to persecute those poor old men.

The thing is, if the numerous institutions who knew about this–and, at best, did nothing–had fucking done something at the time, nobody would be arresting old men. The reason the men being investigated are old is because decades passed before anyone survivors were able to make their voices heard.

Next up, Hewson goes for the standard Spiked editorial line of arguing with imaginary Victorians who have teleported into the 21st century, pausing to give us a history lesson that some actual Victorians raised the age of consent to 16 based on the fact that puberty back then happened at 15, and that this was basically just the result of some sort of “moral panic”. Yes. Hewson actually thinks it was a little bit excessive to criminalise having sex with girls who had not yet hit puberty.

Following a long-winded whine about how much she hates the NSPCC, Hewson explicitly states that she doesn’t think survivors should use the courts to speak out:

The acute problems of proof which stale allegations entail also generates a demand that criminal courts should afford accusers therapy, by giving them ‘a voice’. This function is far removed from the courts’ traditional role, in which the state must prove defendants guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

I am not exactly sure how one can do this without letting survivors speak, but whatever. This lady is a barrister and in its own way, this point lays bare how woefully inadequate this sham of a justice system is in dealing with sexual violence.

In amid dismissing historic instances of sexual violence as merely “misdemeanours”, Hewson also decides to declare that only some sexual violence is worthy. And guess what? It’s pretty much that faulty folk notion where a man leaps out of a bush and rapes a virgin.

Touching a 17-year-old’s breast, kissing a 13-year-old, or putting one’s hand up a 16-year-old’s skirt, are not remotely comparable to the horrors of the Ealing Vicarage assaults and gang rape, or the Fordingbridge gang rape and murders, both dating from 1986. Anyone suggesting otherwise has lost touch with reality.

Apparently putting your hands on a young person who does not want to be touched are not the same as gang rape and are therefore, according to Hewson, OK. I am not letting this person anywhere near children.

So what are Hewson’s recommendations? Oh dear, they’re awful.

As for law reform, now regrettably necessary, my recommendations are: remove complainant anonymity; introduce a strict statute of limitations for criminal prosecutions and civil actions; and reduce the age of consent to 13.

In short, Barbara Hewson wants to make it as difficult as possible for survivors to come forward, and make it as easy as possible for powerful men to rape young people. It is absolutely clear that her justification for lowering the age of consent is simply to make it slightly less illegal for men like Jimmy Savile to rape them. To Hewson, age is the only matter here: if one is over the age of consent and not being attacked and raped by a stranger, it isn’t rape.

Which actually makes her a pretty shitty lawyer on top of writing something so hideously unpleasant.

As for the statute of limitations, this reduces the possibility of survivors coming forward, decades later, when it is safe, because apparently Hewson wants a legal system where it is as unsafe as possible to come forward. This is exacerbated by her call to remove anonymity for complainants, a point which appeared nowhere else in her argument. It is not a non-sequitur, though: it is clear that her purpose is to protect men who perpetrate sexual violence.

It always shocks me when I see something so awful as Hewson’s piece. I sometimes catch myself feeling somewhat optimistic, as though the battle against rape culture, while gory, will be one we can win. These fragile hopes are dashed where I see a person arguing from a position of power that the law should find new ways to silence survivors and keep them vulnerable. Make no mistake: our enemy is huge, and there is a whole army of those, like Hewson, who are complicit.

And so the fight goes on, bigger than ever. Yet I will not rest. I do not want to see these bastards win.

Update: Looks like Hewson’s chambers are running as quickly as possible in the opposite direction from her.

Noted rape apologist and all-round weeping syphilitic chode Brendan O’Neill has weighed in on the Jimmy Savile story. It’s taken him a while to alight upon an opinion which is in equal parts offensive, silly and outright anti-reality, but as always, he’s delivered.

This time, he thinks it’s like something medieval involving the Church, but at the same time also exactly like a 17th century witch hunt. Yeah, he’s kind of confused. Anyway, it’s exactly as awful and objectionable as you’d expect from a weeping syphilitic chode like O’Neill, and there’s very little novel content; it’s mostly him fighting with imaginary people, which isn’t worth comment as I’ve covered it all in previous posts on O’Neill.

However, as with O’Neill’s general ouevre, there’s always at least one novel awful statement per article, like the fact Brendan O’Neill reckons everyone’s being a little unfair to Jimmy Savile for saying he’s a paedophile when most of what he did wasn’t raping underage people, and in fact anyone concerned about this is the real pervert:

It seems everything from saying ‘nice tits’ to a female DJ to hugging a 14-year-old girl too tightly on Top of the Pops to having sex with someone under 16 can now all be packaged up as evildoing, as child abuse.

The Savile story is really a vessel for the cultural elite’s perverted obsession with child abuse, and more importantly its belief that everyone is at it – that in every institution, ‘town, village and hamlet’, there are perverts and innocence despoilers, casually warping the next generation. In modern Britain, the figure of The Paedophile has become the means through which the misanthropes who rule over us express their profound fear and suspicion of adults in general, and also of communities and institutions – even of the institutions they hold dear, such is the self-destructive dynamic triggered by the unleashing of the Salem ethos.

Whatevs, you weeping syphilitic chode.

Likewise, O’Neill engages in a really sickening attack on the survivors.

Some people have said it is brave of the women who claim to have been assaulted by Savile to come forward and tell their stories. I’m sorry, but it isn’t. Making serious accusations against a dead person who is in no position to fight back or plead or prove his innocence, 30 or 40 years after the alleged incidents occurred, is the very opposite of brave – it’s cowardly.

Yes, thank you, you weeping syphilitic chode. Apparently rape survivors should never come forward unless it’s unsafe for them to do so and Brendan can find other ways of smearing them.

Really, I find this man’s passionate and repeated defences and denials of rape culture rather frightening. It makes me wonder what his vested interests are, what stake he has in it. It’s going beyond being a contrarian fucknugget–or even a weeping syphilitic chode.

Trigger warning for rape apologism

I confess to having experienced moments of levity in the last few days. This was, I now understand, because I’d forgotten that Brendan O’Neill exists and is still a weeping syphilitic chode.

It’s taken him a while to articulate an opinion on the George Galloway/Julian Assange shit of the last few weeks, and that’s probably because he is so much of an oozing poxy micropenis that he’s had trouble working out what he thinks, because both figures are popular with the stereotypical left-wing person, and there’s nothing Chode of Chode Hall likes more than to shout about how much he hates left-wing people.

I’m surprised it took him so concoct who the real enemy is here. It’s the feminists, of course. Not real feminists, but the imaginary ones that hide in Brendan’s cupboard and eat his favourite crisps in the night but Brendan’s mummy won’t believe they’re real and she thinks he’s eating the crisps and she won’t let him sleep in her bed and that makes Brendan sad.

His line is thoroughly, tediously unoriginal and anyone with a passing familiarity with rape culture tropes will recognise it. Apparently the feminists are trying to redefine rape.

He argues this by, erm, redefining rape.

So it is quite wrong to say “sex without consent is rape”. It is more accurate to say that “sex pursued in defiance of a lack of consent is rape”.

According to the nasty little weeping syphilitic chode, pointing out that not establishing consent during sex can be rape is hard on the poor little men who can’t be arsed to establish consent and we’re lumping them in with criminals, because what really matters is the intention to do it.

And that’s just plain wrong. If you’re going to fuck someone, you have a responsibility to check everyone’s consenting. It’s what makes you a good shag (nobody’s as unsurprised as me that Brendan O’Neill has outed himself as a terrible lover). It’s pretty fucking easy to not rape someone if you make a modicum of effort.

In this particular offering, Brendan O’Neill displays an obsession with the justice system which is prevalent in thinking about rape, and thoroughly unhelpful for the most part. Rape is, after all, far more than just a legal situation: after all, the majority of rape survivors do not ever engage with the legal system as it’s not really set up to deal with rape particularly effectively. When talking about rape, we need to separate the act from the crime, as it is so much more than an abstract legal concept.

A lot of people get this. Many others don’t, and, of course, some of them will purposely miss the point like this weeping syphilitic chode. Sex without consent is rape. And that’s not a radical redefinition of anything.

Trigger warning: This post discusses rape apologism. It also quotes Brendan O’Neill.

We all know by now that Brendan O’Neill is a weeping syphilitic chode. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that his latest chancre-ooze pertains to the Ched Evans case and he is wrong wrong and wrong again. 

Now, there’s a pleasant surprise in the article–if, by pleasant surprise you were expecting someone to shit into your mouth when they merely piss in your eyes–Brendan O’Neill doesn’t just come out and say “I HATE WOMEN I HATE WOMEN I HATE WOMEN” (or some variant thereof; the chode is a known rape apologist). Instead, he chooses to focus largely on anonymity of survivors in rape cases. Naturally, he’s against that, comparing it to being exactly the same as people tweeting about the Ryan Giggs superinjunction.

Anyone who is above penes-wider-than-they-are-long-so-infected-with-the-Great-Pox-they-drip-pus-everywhere in the evolutionary scale will recognise that a footballer trying to cover up the fact he put his dick somewhere he shouldn’t is rather different from throwing the survivor of a traumatic crime into a torrent of the abuse inherent in rape apologism. Brendan O’Neill, of course, isn’t.

His first two arguments for abolishing anonymity in rape cases are the standard ones which system justifiers will trot out to appear reasonable, and are essentially cramming the tongue deep into the ringpiece of archaic statutes. They are therefore too tedious to repeat. What is more interesting is chode-face’s final argument:

And thirdly, and worst of all, having anonymity for rape complainants contributes to the idea that women who have been raped have something to be ashamed of. It actually adds to the stigma attached to being a rape victim.

[irrelevant example snipped]

But women who have been raped have nothing whatsoever to be ashamed of. They are simply victims of a terrible crime, not stigmatised individuals whose names must never be spoken in polite conversation. The women’s rights activists who defend anonymity for rape complainants are giving credence to the idea that rape victims must be treated as uniquely damaged individuals who must remain hidden behind a permanent veil of anonymity.

Brendan O’Neill is concern-trolling, pretending to have the interests of women firmly at heart. Nadine Dorries often utilises a similar approach when she claims to be “pro-woman” rather than “pro-life”.

And it is entirely false. Anonymity in rape cases is an option, and, given the reaction towards women who have the misfortune of being raped by someone well-liked, it is an option many choose to hold on to. It enables survivors to report their rapes without the fear of abuse and humiliation. There is a stigma surrounding rape, but that is absolutely nothing to do with anonymity for the proportionally microscopic number of cases that make it to court; it is everything to do with rape apologism and rape culture.

Couching the position in false concern is at best completely misguided, and, being familiar with O’Neill’s drippings, more likely highly disingenuous. To remove this protection for survivors would serve only rapists, who can sleep a little safer in the knowledge that people will be less likely to report and their cheerleaders will tear any who do to shreds.