Internet Outrage

So, today I am extra ranty. Well, not at maximum, but still...

I made the mistake of commenting on a Comment Is Free piece in The Guardian.

Now, usually I steer away from this as it is guaranteed to get my dander up. I was weak. I succumbed.

It really is becoming the Daily Mail of the left. Or just idiots, I just can't decide. It doesn't really matter what the piece was about, but for the sake of completeness it was about Sarah Catt. She's the lady who ordered drugs off t'internet to induce labour at 39 weeks gestation. The baby hasn't been found. She was convicted this week of Administering a Noxious Substance with Intent to Endanger life (s23 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861) or Administering Drugs to Obtain an Abortion (s58 OAPA 1861) depending on which paper you read. She was given 8 years.

I think it's up to 650 comments so far. Mostly speculation and faux outrage. It seemed to suit most people to ignore basic facts: she wasn't convicted of murder; she would have received Legal Aid; she did get credit for a guilty plea; she did have a psychiatric report and she was legally sane.

Whilst I may not agree with a lot of the comments, I do appreciate that this type of case attracts many differing opinions and reactions.

What boils my piss is people who do not understand the basic facts and choose to ignore them because it suits their argument. Any comments left stating bald facts with citations to back them up are pretty much ignored.

I guess people like believing what they like to believe. Facts are an annoyance to be skimmed over. Or they like a spurious argument because something else irked them today and they fancy being ranty and cross. ( and yes, I am aware that I fancy being ranty and cross in this, but I'm not subjecting anyone else to it or expecting agreement to an opinion post)

It is the internet after all, but still, never let facts get in the way of a good argument eh?

What's worse? A joke about rape, or a comment that's meant?

****POSSIBLE TRIGGER WARNING****

 

 



Loath as I am to post even more about 'rape jokes', I have decided it's probably OK on here as no-one reads it anyway.

Please note that the following is my own personal opinion, not research based and is more anecdotal musing than anything else. I say this just in case I get picked apart, which is not the reason why I'm posting this.

A few days ago, I was pointed towards a blog about rape jokes. I'm not going to name the blogger, as I don't really want to give him any more of the publicity which he appears to crave.

The general gist of the blog was that the blogger had been to see some comedians at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and had been offended by the 'rape jokes' told by several comedians there. Although he does make it clear that he doesn't mean offence, he means that they are dangerous per se.

His theory appears to be that comedians should self censor and stop telling jokes about rape, as they upset rape victims hugely, and may cause rape, as part of promoting rape myths.

The first tranche of comments on the blog were supportive of this.

I then came on, and said I was female and had been the subject of sexual assault and attempted rape, and that I didn't support his stance - that I found rape jokes funny sometimes, and sometimes not. It was my own choice what I found funny. I didn't speak for rape victims, it was my personal opinion. I don't believe in censorship on the whole. Education, yes. Censorship, no.

I didn't intend to say much if I'm honest, I just felt that he was lumping 'rape victims' into one amorphous mass, and that not everyone thought as he thought we should. Just 'Hi, I'm an attempted rape victim, and I find some of the jokes funny'

Another comedian, RM, agreed with me, and gave much fuller answers and far more of them.

Another woman also posted a fabulous post – that she had been raped, and that she didn't agree with him either on the whole. She was pretty much ignored by the blogger.

At one point RM posted saying I was being slagged off on Twitter by the blogger. These were the tweets:

 .....and.....

 

 

 

It upset me far more than I thought it should, and I obsessed about why. Finally it dawned on me - it read like I hadn't been raped properly, therefore my opinion didn't count. And also, that a rape joke is precisely that, but those tweets were intended to discredit, undermine and belittle my comments and opinions because they conflicted with his.

The tweets went on as RM tried valiantly to defend me - saying that what did he mean? Had I not been raped enough or something? The replies came back with definitions of rape, and that there was no 'half rape'.

I never claimed to have been penetrated. My experience, which I don't intend to go into, partly because it is not salacious gossip to be drooled over by some pervert who finds this blog, and partly because it is not relevant. My experience was prolonged and frightening. I don't consider it to be any less of an 'experience' just because I managed to get free.

Obsessing over all this, I find that I have re-visited the event for the first time in a long long time. For many years, I justified what had happened by excusing the behaviour as done whilst he was mentally ill, and that I didn't want to ruin his life by reporting it. I excused it as 'not that bad - so many others have had far worse experiences and I should just get over it then'. Minimised it to the point where I buried it. Standard stuff I guess.

Turns out my 'trigger' isn't rape jokes. It's some patriarchal alpha male who I have never met, minimising what happened to me, dismissing my opinion and telling all his followers that I'm not a 'real' victim. That's what it feels like to me anyway. I'm blogging about this, trying to make sense of why a tweet from someone I've never met, and whose opinion I don't really care about, has caused me to feel so angry, upset and sad at the same time. But it's because he has dismissed what happened to me. It wasn't bad enough. I don't count. In tweeting the above, it felt like 'Come look at this idiot - she thinks she's been raped - tell her how wrong she is and how worthless her voice is'.

If he wants comedians to take responsibility for the jokes that they tell, and to self-censor, then he ought to do exactly the same in his writing. No-one knows what individual triggers are. Indeed, I didn't know what mine was until this.

I understood his premis for comedians taking responsibility for their actions in the jokes that they tell - that they understand possible reactions and consequences to their performance.

I didn't understand why he sought to be all patriarchal on my ass - to pretty much pat me on the head and tell me sssshhhhh the grown ups were talking. I felt belittled by his male patronage.

 

In the end, the result of all this, is that I have spent the last week uncomfortably revisiting an experience that I thought I had dealt with and left behind me. I am furious that something as small as this guy belittling my experience has done that. No rape joke has ever done that. My job has entailed over the years dealing with both perpetrators and victims of sexual assaults and rape. That never triggered anything.

 

One insignificant guy on the internet did.

 

Just goes to show eh?

 

 

Sunday courts - Just Say No

Well, it's been a while!

Since I last talked to myself, there has been many a tale in the criminal defence world that I can't be arsed to remember.

The latest is the Sunday court pilot. The latest Blue Sky thinking from government is that it would be a jolly jape to open courts on a Sunday. Marvellous.

This all stems from the riots last year. The courts worked 24 hours to process alleged offenders, and according to government, this worked terribly well. Apart from all the appeals.

It was such an apparent success that someone decided that we should all be working more antisocial hours. Because it was For The Public Good.

The plan (formally anyway) is that courts should open on a Sunday for remands only, just as they do on a Saturday.
Remand courts can't do much. All they can do is determine bail and take pleas. If pre sentence reports are needed, they can't be done. In all likelihood, they can't set a trial (it's unlikely that the CPS will have a witness calendar on a Sunday) They really only exist to stop people being held in a police cell for longer than they have to be.

Our worry is that if we allow this pilot to happen, then it's a slippery slope. Next on the agenda is Saturday trials, evening courts till 8pm..... Would YOU want to give evidence at a trial at 8pm, on a Sunday? My guess is no. People see it as something to be done during the week, a job to be done. Not to interfere with family time, free time.

Criminal defence solicitors already do a 5 day week interspersed with police station work during the night, and Saturday remand courts. We are NOT happy that the one day we aren't at work, and if we're not already on call, that now we have to trip trap to court again. We have families and friends we'd like to see. Personally, Sundays are the only full day I have with my boys - Saturdays are dad days. I will not work and miss that day. It's important to my whole family.


We all work hard. The court staff work hard. So do the CPS, the Probation Service, and the security staff. No-one wants to work until 8-9pm or at the weekends. The defence solicitors predominantly come from small firms of 1-4 duty solicitors. Trying to juggle 24 hour working is hard enough without adding this.

15 years ago, when I first started this job, the courts were far far busier. A day on court duty meant seeing between 10 and 15 clients. Today? On a good day, 3. On a bad day, I get to read a lot. Out of court disposals have meant a huge decline in people having to attend court. Then, i could have understood a need to open courts in the evenings and at weekends. Now? Simply not the need.

We have half the courts we had 15 years ago - the rural ones have been shut. The courts that are still open are at half capacity, but with half the staff. We. Just. Don't. Need. Weekend. Courts.

So far, firms have had to make expressions of interest to be on the duty solicitor rota for Sundays.
So far, in my area, NO-ONE has made an expression of interest. (officially anyway - i'm quite sure some are rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of being the only firm participating)
So far.

At some point, irrespective of our views or participation, the pilot will be declared A SUCCESS, and rolled out countrywide and extended. It will happen regardless of anyone's views because this is a political decision that has already been made. It's not a decision borne of necessity. It's Efficiency, Convenience, and For The People.

Say No To Sundays.

Before I have to revert to religion and claim religious discrimination. And I really don't want to have to do that.