Julie Bindel is perhaps the foremost, screeching voice among the UK's progressive, man-indifferent, daily newspaper columnists. Among her smug, ideologically-driven missions is to insist that rape is rampant and that there is no reason to worry about the police getting it wrong and convicting an innocent man.
She's at it again this week with a column that may well discourage some rape victims from reporting. We'll get to that in a minute.
First, let's tell our readers someting about Bindel.
Meet Julie Bindel
Back in 2010, Bindel had a radical feminist conniption (I know, I know, a redundancy) over the very suggestion that men accused of rape should be granted anonymity until conviction. Why? Bindel said that granting men anonymity would hurt the already slim chance women have to nab their rapists, and she cited the case every UK feminist falls back on when anonymity for men is even hinted at: serial rapist John Worboys. (Feminists claim that those concerned about false rape claims always cite Duke lacrosse even though it's not true. This blog, the leading site dedicated to giving voice to persons wrongly accused of rape, almost never focuses on that case. But trust me, UK feminists are obsessed with Worboys.)
Now pay attention, something interesting is coming: Bindel insists it was only when Worboys was arrested that his other victims came forward, thus, the need to insure men accused of rape never get anonymity.
But wouldn't anonymity be helpful for innocent men wrongly accused of rape? Watch Bindel do a 180: Anonymity is not necessary for them, Bindel clucks, because "[m]ost arrests for rape do not get reported in the press unless the accused is famous or the circumstances highly unusual. If such cases do make a brief mention in the local paper it is often no more than the community will already have learned from local gossip."
Stop. Stop. Stop, I'm getting whiplash. Let me get this straight: accused rapists shouldn't be anonymous because we need to publicize rapists; but not having anonymity doesn't hurt the wrongly accused -- because few rape accusations are publicized.
Get it? Neither do I.
Bindel is, of course, full of horseshit. The real reason people like Bindel oppose anonymity for men accused of rape is more sinister. She alludes to it. With anonymity, guilty men would "be able to relax in the knowledge that if, as in the majority of cases, it does not even get to court, no one will be any the wiser."
Hmm. What does that mean? It means that people like Julie Bindel think it's important to punish rapists by publicizing and shaming them in the news media on the basis of nothing more than an accusation. The fact that such publicity also punishes innocent men wrongly accused of rape, often destroying their reputations, their marriages, their social relationships, their businesses, and their chances of ever getting a decent job, is of no concern to Julie Bindel. The accusation becomes it's own conviction, and that's perfectly OK with Bindel and her ilk.
That very attitude, in a nutshell, is the thing this blog is most concerned about.
Julie Bindel May Well Be Discouraging Rape Victims From Coming Forward
This week, Bindel pumps out another screeching rape diatribe. She writes: "Britain has one of the lowest conviction rates of any European country (Only 6.5% of reported rapes end in a conviction on the charge of rape), leading some feminists to consider restorative justice (ie meeting your rapist and hearing him say 'sorry' as an alternative to throwing him in clink) or 'treatment' programmes rather than punishment. Then there is the impression, thanks to the extensive media coverage of such cases, that we are more concerned about women making 'false allegations' of rape than of convicting actual rapists."
Bindel uses the term "conviction rate" when she really means the "attrition rate." For a long time in the UK, the Home Office and politicians allied with anti-rape activists, have talked about the success rate in prosecuting rape by disingenuously citing the attrition rate for alleged rape, which is the number of convictions as a percentage of number of reported crimes. That rate is approximately 6.5%. But, the Home Office, and everyone else, uses the conviction rate, the number of convictions secured against the number of persons brought to trial for that given offence, for all other crimes – murder, assault, robbery, and so on. In fact, the conviction rate for rape is approximately 58%. Stern Review, page 45.
The chasm between 58% and 6.5% represents dishonesty of Biblical proportions. The result of such dishonest advocacy has made it appear that law enforcement is terribly, and uniquely, ineffective when it comes to rape.
Importantly, the Stern Review noted that the wrongful use of the attrition rate instead of the conviction rate "may well have discouraged some victims from reporting." Id.
By repeating this figure, Julie Bindel's fear-mongering well be discouraging some victims from reporting. But what else is new? People like Julie Bindel don't care if their Chicken Little shtick puts off rape victims from reporting because there is a more important issue to them: proving that women are oppressed because rape isn't taken seriously. Individual victims be damned.
It is well to note that the only place rape victims are hearing that they can't get justice and won't be believed is from people like Bindel.
We saw a crass example of this sort of irresponsible fear-mongering after the charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn were dropped last summer and they claimed that rape victims won't come forward because the case proved that women who report rape have to be "perfect" to get justice. One newspaper reported: ". . . for many feminists and victims' advocates, the victory for Strauss-Kahn is a defeat for women who have been sexually assaulted or raped, and who may already have been nervous about coming forward."
Those "feminists and victims' advocates" were being grossly dishonest. They failed to tell the whole story, and by publicly insisting that women can't get justice unless they are "perfect," they, themselves, improperly discouraged rape victims from coming forward. The accuser in the DSK case wasn't just not perfect; according to the very prosecutors who arrested and charged DSK (and forced him to take a humiliating and high profile "perp walk"), she was "persistently" and "inexplicably" untruthful to prosecutors, so unbelievable, in fact, that the prosecutors concluded she had no credibility. See here.
Julie Bindel is just another gender-divisive purveyor of lock-the-doors-and-hide-the-daughters rape hysteria who systematically foment irrational fears and encourage women to see sexual predation oozing from every male zipper. For the past 30 years or more, we have been subjected to this vile, mind-numbing tom-tom that slanders the entire male gender. These people care not a whit about painting innocent men as rapists, and their tawdry operatics in insisting rape victims can't get justice do no favors for women.
That's everything you need to know about Julie Bindel.
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9 comments:
Gender-feminists have defines rape as "All hetero-sex". So in order to discuss her rape is rampant theory, one must ask her what definition of rape is she using???
Since gender-feminism Empowers itself through semantics games, ect, ect, one must also ask her, her definition of "Rampant".
Archivist - ” It is well to note that the only place rape victims are hearing that they can't get justice and won't be believed is from people like Bindel.”
If ever any passage from anything posted on the internet needed to be bolded and in all-caps, this statement was it.
There is no way that this could ever be over-stated. The only one’s telling rape victims (woman, exclusively) that they cannot expect to be treated fairly, believed, nor can they expect that they ill get justice is the very people who claim to the Anti-Rape leaders and advocates for women.
And as Pierce also notes, they are far more interested in the over-arching meme of the systemic oppression of women (by men/the patriarchy, including the imagined deliberate use of systematic rapes to keep women in line) that they have ever been about actually helping individual women who are actually victims of crimes such as rape.
If, and when, they are ever challenged as to this concern, their “fall-back” position will almost certainly always be to call for more (tax-payer) money to be transferred to agencies which claim to advocate for and/or provide aid to women (and, not specifically aid to rape, sexual assault, nor even assaults – but rather aid to a multitude of women for a multitude of reasons).
Posing as advocates for (female) victims means access to (tax-payer) money, so it’s no wonder that there are so many organizations stating that as their purpose, when, in fact, actually helping victims is at the bottom of their list of priorities. Getting more money, promoting anti-male attitudes, actions, and legislation, and then helping real victims is more often than not the real pattern. Oh, and if there’s anything left over, some help for children (although they are not the least bit embarrassed by their repeated hypocrisy of using the “for the children” prop to their collective financial benefit). [/rant]
I suppose these people, and members of the paid sexual grievance industry, think the only way to get our attention is to say something astounding every paragraph. Scarier is possibility that they actually believe it, but my guess is they do. Someone with sense should pull them aside and tell them that they have little credibility. But, then again, politicians pandered to their screeching on the anonymity issue. My guess is that the majority of pols who voted with the women were like the college administrators I know who roll their eyes when they have to accede to the dreaded feminists.
I don't know if you've noticed, SLW, but ever since the British men didn't seem to give a damn about the anonymity issue, I rarely talk about the UK any more. I gave up on India, and I am giving up on the UK because I think it's hopeless in both places.
Archivist – ”ever since the British men didn't seem to give a damn about the anonymity issue, I rarely talk about the UK any more. I gave up on India, and I am giving up on the UK because I think it's hopeless in both places.”
I find it quite odd that the UK seems to have a serious “split-personality” regarding such matters. As you note, the man-on-the-street through the UK seems wholly indifferent to issues regarding the rights of man, and equal legal protections for men. And yet, where else outside of the UK has a law ever been purposed to afford anonymity for men accused of rape.
True, the men of the UK failed (miserably) to get behind the measure, but it at least saw the light of day.
And, of course, the UK stands far ahead of the US in punishing women for making false allegations. There, as we see in numerous articles, they routinely sentence women to prison terms (actual time served) for Perverting the Course of Justice; and a number of judges have actually called the actions of women “wicked” (as I understand it, that word carries significant weight for those who speak the Queen’s English), a word that no judge in the US would ever dare say to a convicted women (as an aside, my wife regularly appears before a judge who routinely apologizes to the convicted criminals he is sentencing, and on the occasions when he has to sentence female offenders, he appears to be beside himself when apologizing for what he must do to them).
So, while I can agree that the men there (as in India) refuse to fight for themselves, there still seems to be a glimmer of hope, if only as a model for the US to emulate in recognizing the felonious nature of false allegations, the need to appropriately punish woman who commit serious crimes, and even in how to actually admonish them for the crimes they commit.
I would agree that there seems to be little purpose in backing any (future) measures aimed at men’s rights over there so long as the men for whom the protections are being sought seem to collectively refuse them. Still, when only (socio-political & cultural) back-water Arkansas has seen fit to provide legal provision for the elevation of charges for the false reporting of felony crimes to also be at the felony level, we could sure take at least some lessons from out of the UK.
SLW, perhaps my frustration lies more in fact that female politicians from all parties banded together to stop this incredibly reasonable proposal. So it's not that the men are weak, but that the women have too much of a sense of victimization and this will thwart any efforts to improve the lot of the wrongly accused. My sense is that American women are more diversified -- most women would not be nearly so committed here. Perhaps American women are more apt to be independent thinkers.
You are correct that there seem to be a lot of old school judges over there who never got the memo from the powers-that-be -- I do love it when they get tough on false rape accusers.
" My sense is that American women are more diversified -- most women would not be nearly so committed here. Perhaps American women are more apt to be independent thinkers. "
As someone from outside the United States, I have a slightly different perspective. I get the impression that America is definitely a more man-hating, chivalrous, women-first culture than most countries. America also seems to suffer from a Puritan heritage and excessive hatred of male sexuality. For example, in most countries prostitution is not criminalized to anywhere near the extent it is in the United States.
In the United States there is still slightly more dissent on these issues than exists in other countries, partly because America is a larger and more diverse country. But also because there is still a significant rights-oriented, libertarian constituency in the US compared with other countries.
I live in Australia. While in this country feminism has much the same stranglehold over the law, public policy and elite opinion that it does throughout the West, I get the impression that the average woman you meet doesn't quite have the same level of entitlement and contempt for men that British and American women seem to have. Although women from the educated, professional classes tend to drink the kool-aid more than most people.
And not surprisingly, My comment which linked to this article was removed. I wonder why?
And comments on that page are now closed. I YE YE!
I don't know how anyone male or female can even stand to read julie bindel's puke that she writes.
I have read her articles before and they are just plain sick.
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