The Groan is supposed to be a liberal paper – except that in our new, Orwellian world, words now mean the opposite to what they used to. This egregious pile of horseshit from Jill Saward – writing in the Groan’s comment is Free explains why she is standing against David Davis (it also explains why she is an idiot):
Not all men are rapists or sexual predators. But with sexual violence affecting one in three women, the chances are that every man will know victims of sex attacks – even though they may not know it. Many victims feel so dehumanised by their experiences they are unable to tell even their closest friends or family.
Well, I’m so pleased that we are not all rapists or sexual predators. I’d like to see Jill’s evidence to substantiate her assertion, though. Don’t get me wrong, I am not trivialising sex crimes – although in her attempts to create a nation of suspects (well, half of the nation, anyway), Saward is doing exactly that. Her solution? Oh, yes, that tired old palliative so beloved of the hard of thinking illiberal fuckwits; a universal DNA database.
Those opposed to the DNA database argue that these records, together with the records of those convicted of non-sexual or non-violent crimes, should be removed from the system. It sounds a reasonable argument. Until you consider that there are rapists and murderers in prison today who have been convicted specifically because they were on the database.
That’s because it is a reasonable argument. People who have not been convicted of crimes are innocent. Something Saward has difficulty comprehending. Innocent people should not be catalogued on the database. Saward’s solution is that the rest of us should go on it, too.
The way to right that wrong isn’t to remove them from the database, but to ensure that everybody else is included.
You stupid, stupid woman. Have you any idea just how unwieldy a database of 60 million people will be to manage – not least given that the people managing such data have so far proved an unprecedented level of incompetence. When you are looking for a needle in a haystack, what you do not do, is put more hay on the haystack, you ignorant, stupid, illiberal fuckwit.
The national DNA database has been attacked as an abuse of our liberty. If it were expanded to include everybody in the country the only “liberty” at risk would be the liberty of those responsible for countless unsolved rapes and murders, who could find themselves behind bars.
Not to mention those innocent of crimes who are wrongly convicted because “DNA proved it, so they must be guilty…”
I do hope you lose your deposit in the forthcoming by election. Jesus! But I’m beginning to hate this country and the hard of thinking illiberal fuckwits who use George Orwell’s work as an instruction manual more each day. Jill Saward, you stupid woman; if you think the state is getting a sample of my DNA, let me make this absolutely clear – I’ll keep it simple so that you can follow it. Over. My. Dead. Body.
Now fuck off, you and the horse you rode into town on.
Not all men are rapists or sexual predators.
I suppose it’s a slight improvement on “all men are rapists”. Maybe one day she’ll admit that is only a teensy weensy number of men who are rapists. One in a thousand? One in a hundred thousand?
I do, in fact, know several victims of sexual assault. My fiance has been raped twice and my stepdaughter from a previous relationship has also been raped, as has a close friend of mine.
This is why I agree with the DNA of convicted sex offenders being kept on a database. In that case, it’s justified and might do some good.
I completely fail to see though why mine should be held in case a hair from my head falls onto the pavement, is caught in someone’s shoe tread, somehow ends up at a murder scene in Skipton, and I suddenly effectively have to prove my innocence, rather than the police and the CPS making a proper case against me and proving my guilt.
Makes the police’s job easier? Yes, if they just want easier convictions. Unfortunately, I don’t automatically trust someone these days just because they’re wearing a uniform.
I don’t have a problem with convicted felons being listed on the database – it’s innocent people being on it to which I object. Not to mention the unstated, but underlying sentiment of “nothing to hide…”
This is just the latest manifestation of the “victim as expert” fallacy. I admire Jill Saward for her gutsy response to her ordeal. She refused to play the victim and was punished for it by the judge in the case who gave the rapists less for the rape than the burglary because she appeared not to have been so affected by the crime. However, this doesn’t make her an expert on preventing crime although it gives her an insight into the feelings of the rapee. That Cindy Sheehan’s son was killed in Iraq doesn’t make her an expert on the war; that Victoria Climbie was murdered does not make her mother an expert on foster care; the seemingly endless procession of relatives of knife crime victims appearing at endless press conferences does not make them experts on knife crime or its causes; and so on.
Mind you, the “experts” tend to be useless also. For instance, you only have to look at most of our senior policemen as well as the members of the educational and medical bureaucracies to know that expertise without common sense is more dangerous than common sense without expertise.
Umbongo, I agree – and no one can possibly understand the emotional turmoil that the victim must feel. That, however, does not make them an expert as you quite rightly say, and it does not excuse what is a blatant piece of misandric totalitariansim dressed up as crime fighting.
Longrider, I’m sorry if I might have worded my comment in such a way to suggest that I might be disagreeing with you and protesting that rapists should be put on a register, while thinking that you don’t.
Umbongo, you’re totally right – it’s one of those ‘oh, shit!’ moments when a victim stands up to give their solution, and while you totally understand and sympathise with them and know why 99% of people feel the same way, just have to go against the tide. It can make you feel like a total bastard sometimes just for daring to suggest that banning bottled water or samurai swords sold on ebay won’t fix everything and make the unicorns come out to play with the fairies again.
Rob, that’s okay – I was underlining your point and emphasising the difference between the convicted, guilty being on the database and the suggestion being posited in the linked article that we all are suspects, that’s all.
While I have sympathy with Saward for her experience, I cannot go along with her solution. Indeed, she is a prime example of why victims proposing solutions is bad for justice. Justice should be impartial, dispassionate, fair and, above all, just.
Treating all men like criminals may appease the man-hating feminist militants, but is is not impartial, dispassionate, fair nor is it just.
If a man went on a public platform and suggested treating all women in a similar manner, he would be vilified as a misogynist.
To be fair, Saward doesn’t advocate that only men be compulsorily registered on the DNA database. She wants everyone on it: man, woman, child. I think that the best way of dealing with such idiots is to ask them how they would actually do this. The forced registration of 60 million people is not an easy task. I am senior systems architect so the *practical* implementation of systems and policies is of some interest to me. What I notice about *all* the pro-ID and pro-DNA ideologues I debate with, is a complete uninterest on the practicalities of implementing hat they want to do. They don’t know what they want ID Cards to do. They don’t understand the issues of false positives on the DNA database, and how their number would increase if the database were expanded to 15 times its present size and how this could significantly degrade its value as an evidential tool. They are morons.
“That Cindy Sheehan’s son was killed in Iraq doesn’t make her an expert on the war; that Victoria Climbie was murdered does not make her mother an expert on foster care”
When they recently suggested that there should be victim family statements (verbal) in court cases, to mitigate the defence statements and impress upon the jury how crime had affected the victim’s families, I can’t recall the usual suspects in the ‘Guardian’ and on magistrate’s blogs being too keen on it, to say the least.
Why now this desire to give a platform for a victim to run on a crime-specific issue, and cheer her on…?
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Stephen, fair points. You never do hear about the practicalities – and I noticed that one of the commenters dismissed mistakes and database errors as if it will be no more damaging than spelling your name wrongly in the telephone directory.
I did mention the 60 million figure although Saward’s piece is a bit vague – she talks of everyone – therefore it would be 60 million, but her piece is directed firmly at men. It’s men who commit rape, therefore it is men who need to be systematically criminalised.
As others have pointed out, her article is vague, lacking in substantive evidence to back her claims, misuses statistics and is somewhat misdirected. She is clearly not suited to be an MP – but, then, neither are many of the present incumbents.
I am sorry for what happened to her, but I will not go easy on this attempt to treat me like a criminal because of it.
Even stopped clocks get to be right twice per day…
“..her piece is directed firmly at men. It’s men who commit rape, therefore it is men who need to be systematically criminalised.”
Oh, Seward is a bit of an amateur there by CiF standards. For real misandry, dubious use of statistics and general frothing insanity, look no further than today’s posts by Cath Elliot and Julie Bindel…
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OMFG! Deranged frothing at the mouth horsehit, both. Could you try to refrain from doing that in future – I’m not sure my delicate sensibilities could cope… 😉
I read ‘Comment is Free’ [classic misnomer for this heavily PC-censored site!] as little as possible these days, as it usually puts me in a bad temper for the day.
It’s nice to hear from Jill Saward that “not all men are rapists or sexual predators”. How did her brilliant mind discover that, I wonder? She belongs, of course, to the generation which grew up amidst feminist slogans such as “the rapist IS the boy next door” coined by hardened cases like Cath Elliot and co. These inanities lead to statements like this one on the Saward blog: “Lots of blokes on here are squeaking about liberties. What they mean is men have the right to do what they want and no one should try to stop them.”
The best solution to stopping male crime, which surely ought to be the preferred one of these misogynistic Amazons, is to abort all male foetuses and only bear to term female ones derived from artificial insemination via sperm banks. This would have the incidental advantage of sparing man-hating women from the indignities of sexual intercourse.
There’s material for a “Brave New World” type novel here….
What would they do when they run out of sperm? Cloning, I suppose…
Frankly, victims are probably about the last people who should be designing remedies or laws. I’d accept that they should have their views heard, but laws should be drawn up by those who are disinterested and dispassionate.
Chuck, absolutely.