Some Common Sense

From Janet Street Porter.

Following a murder such as has happened to Sarah Everard, emotions run high. I recall a similar moral panic a decade ago where Joanna Yeates was killed and her landlord was tried by the media. However, added to this the local MP Kerry McCarthy wanted all men in Bristol DNA tested. Reason, logic, and a calm assessment of the evidence is thrown to the four winds in search of witches to burn and in this case as with others the usual tropes get wheeled out. Men are evil. Men make women unsafe. Men kill women.

Yes, sure, some men do. Just as some women do. Some people are criminally inclined. This does not equate to the majority – not even close. Yet here we have the major news outlets giving airspace to this insane vilification of half the population.

The violent death of anyone – no matter what their sex or who killed them, is dreadful, but women are less likely than men to be murdered.

One third of murder victims are female, and three quarters of them are killed at home, usually by a close relative. Only one-in-ten female murder victims end their lives on the street.

Quite so. A man is statistically more likely to suffer violent death at the hands of a criminal. Men kill more men than they kill women. Yes, I do understand that women walking the streets of London after dark might feel unsafe. It’s been a decade since I last did that and I recall that I felt a bit twitchy, so it’s not just women who feel unsafe in our capital.

What can be done? One member of the House of Lords, Green Party Peer Jenny Jones, wants a 6pm curfew to keep men indoors.

This daft idea would do nothing to protect women (especially those with violent partners). And, bearing in mind the extremist views of some in the trans-lobby, what would stop men self-identifying as women and going out anyway?

Again, JSP nails it. Try telling the extreme trans activist that they are male and therefore subject to the curfew. Although, I don’t regard the idea as daft, I regard it as what it is: extremely evil.

But a cursory investigation into street crime does NOT indicate that women are more at risk.

Knife crime and gang warfare impact on young people, particularly teenage boys, although teenage girls are increasingly involved.

Again, spot on. I am beginning to wonder how long before she gets cancelled for bringing evidence into the debate given that truth these days is all about feelz and if you dare to contradict it with evidence and facts, you are committing violence.

But the reality is that most men are NOT rapists or murderers or kidnappers and pretending that they are demeans both sexes and will only make women even more terrified.

Quite so. However, divide and conquer is what is going on here and has been for some time.