Jacqui Smith pulls in another TV psych in violence probe Jacqui Smith has beefed up the government's roster of TV psychologists advising politicians on society (or Paps) with the recruitment of Dr Linda Papadopoulos, a longtime provider of academic heft to the likes of GMTV and BBC 3. Papadopoulos has been drafted into a Home Office Consultation entitled "Together We Can End …
I'm sorry but wtf?!? That woman is nothing more than a standard politician who has forgotten who they worked for, but with a (sexist) Napoleon complex larger than Rimmer's!!
Why don't these politicians/police/etc work on *enforcing* the laws already in place properly - that might work, hmm? Oh that's right, because so many of them would be guilty of one crime or another the state would grind to a halt leaving no-one in power..... That isn't such a bad idea - trial run without the shepards running this flock - how many econemies would collapse if the workforce running the businesses had contol?
Famous psychologists are BETTER psychologists. Otherwise they wouldn't be famous, right?
That's how it works, right? Famous people are better people? Guys? Anyone?
More importantly if everyone knows it's the parents fault, why won't anyone say it? The government will tell parents to do everything except raise their children not to be crazy. Why is that?
Once again, women and girls are victims or potential victims, while men and boys are the perpetrators or potential perpetrators. This despite the fact that there's a lot of domestic violence perpetrated by women, and a lot of violence perpetrated against men and boys.
I suspect this old-fashioned, sexist attitude that Jacqui Smith and the government seem to have is very much a part of the problem. I wouldn't be surprised if it fosters old-fashioned, sexist views of the sexes, which, in turn, would sustain the very culture in which such violence continues.
Such sexism also encourages some people to take advantage of such prejudice. For example, violent women can use such prejudice to paint themselves as victims forced to fend off their abusers. The government's prejudiced approach to domestic abuse may well fuel abuse.
And then there's also the problem that men who are abusive towards women can also point to such sexist prejudice, and claim that they themselves are the victims of "political correctness" and "feminazism" when accused. This means the government's sexist efforts are self-undermining anyway.
The government could do a much better job, simply by ditching its old-fashioned sexism, and taking a genuinely nondiscriminatory approach to dealing with the serious problem of domestic violence.
As for the "sexualisation of teenage girls", I think the government must have forgotten what adolescence is like, for both girls and boys. Are they really going to end up legislating against puberty? Perhaps they should just sex up the Junior Anti-Sex League, just as Orwell told them to in his instruction manual.
Holland had liberalized p0rn for decades and dutch people are some of the nicest people I've ever met. I suspect, yet again, Jacqui has started with an outcome and then tried to fit a problem to it.
Presumably she caught one of her teenage boys on the net looking at stuff she just made a criminal offence to look at, and now is conflicted?
So she's trying to link it back to violence? And since TV shrinks are people with known views (their views are broadcast on TV) it makes it easier to choose someone to tout your message during election times.
Why not ask her if her sons have ever seen p0rn on the net and if they have, does she consider their behaviour normal?
"We also need to understand whether there is a link between exposure to these images and boys’ expectations about acceptable sexual behaviour, and to violence."
I wonder how she will handle the Brown beating Rihanna case. Since it seems she will not testify against him and is back with him. There were a couple of reports of polls in high schools that showed Teenage girls thought Rehanna got what she deserved. Although I am sure that somehow violent porn on the web and the media in general will be blamed.
Paris, because supposedly it was her text message that started it all.
...You know, I think she really _could_ change the way things have been for the last several hundred thousand years with credentials like that - GMTV and all. Sigh - still at least the intention seems good, if not horribly, exasperatingly futile. Like most legislation.
On the other hand if you criminalise and then lock virtually every male, and a lot of females up using one form of legislation or another, you will find a tangible drop in `crime` of all types! Bingo!
While I applaud any serious effort to reduce domestic violence, even by this government, I do not like this type of effort.
Screaming “Protect the poor women and girls” immediately places an impression of guilt on all males. It also portrays females as inherent victims, needing constant and vigilant protection from the vicious male. In some, small number of, cases this may be true. However it also hides another side of the problem, domestic violence against men.
Yes; snigger, snigger, fnarr fnarr. This is fine until it is you who ends up in casualty explaining to the doc that ‘the little woman’ kicked you so hard she broke your kneecap. Now let’s all join in the laughter. The embarrassment caused by this type of violence, coupled with the feeling that I would not be believed, kept me silent about the abuse for years. The constant destruction of my self esteem and confidence, together with the physical abuse led me to seriously consider suicide. And who would have believed any complaint I made? I am 6’ 1”, she 5’ 5”, I outweighed her by 3st. Anyone would have believed her had she made such a complaint against me, after all violence against women happens all the time. It must do, it happens so often that the government needs to have action programmes against it. So could I keep out of the house and her clutches for a while. Where? No allotment etc. How about the pub? Worst place possible. Now I am a drinker (read drunkard) and we ALL know that drunkards beat their women don’t we? So I and uncounted others continued to suffer, and some killed themselves. Are we laughing now?
Action does need to be taken on domestic violence. But it needs to be taken with the realisation that domestic violence is a two way affair and that men also suffer from this blight. Simply protecting females will exacerbate the female to male violence with the impression that “nobody believe that it happens, so no-one will believe you if you tell them that I poured boiling water over you. WILL THEY!” Bin there. Done that, pulled the boiling hot tee-shirt off.
Domestic violence is wrong! Any domestic violence is wrong! We, as a society, need to start being a little more protective of the victim and a little more disapproving of the perpetrator, which ever gender they happen to be.
PS
I put up with this for 5 years before I left my former wife. My choice was simple; leave or take the pills. She couldn’t understand why I left her. I found a woman who had also been physically abused and we have just celebrated our 28th wedding anniversary.
Now look what's happened.. my ears and eyes have been coated in bullshit. *Sigh* It'll take more than a TV psychologist to get that off.
Perhaps they could stop violence against ALL PEOPLE by actually making punitive sentences mean something. Build prisons, lock the fuckers up, make them do hard labour for free. It's just like the outside world *only no women to beat up* (er.. for them I mean, not like we all have women to beat.. shit now I'm in a hole spouting my own bullshit nad drowning in it!)
1) You can't end violence - it is part of human nature.
2) I am annoyed by the implication of the project's name that violence against men and boys is OK.
Actually, three things
3) This is just another trawling expedition by Wacky Jacqui to find more reasons to invade our privacy and control our lives. "Will no one thing of the women and girls" she shall bleat, before drafting in further totalitarian measures.
While I wholeheartedly agree with any course of action which highlights awareness of violence to ANYONE (including women and children) I can't help feeling that the approach is treating the symptom and not the cause.
What we need is a law which makes it illegal to physically or mentally abuse anybody, regardless of age, gender, creed, race, social standing, sexuality, etc.
What's that? We DO have such a law?? Y'know - you really wouldn't think so. We're so effing soft in this country that the perpetrators of the crimes get better legal protection than the victims. and it's FREE!
Mine's the one with the piss taken out of it!
Its not about terrorism it about stopping domestic violence. I have hard facts to back me up, my friend who is a doctor AND a woman AND has been on the GMTV says so.
Well at least until she stops toeing the party line then we will completely disregard her expert advice and carry on with the introduction of the police surveillance state.
The fact that all the specialist police units set up to deal with these problems spend their time eating donuts and playing poker is part of the problem and is non of our business.
Walk along 'Sir' there is nothing to see here unless taking passing interest in the people around you is suspicious behaviour and should be reported to the police as terrorist activity.
Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean I'm wrong.
More of the same old same old from Ms Smith and her cohorts.
Expect the "2 women a week" are killed "statistic" to rear its ugly head again even though its made up!
If the home secretary wants support for these initiatives from men then she needs to start prosecuting the women who make false allegations of rape and DV. Obviously that wouldnt please the likes of wimmins aid who get all shirty about that.
She could also start making court orders in the family courts enforced properly although again this would mainly effect the women that breach them, and we cant have that can we.
How about "Together We Can End Violence Against Men" as well?
According to National Statistics, men are around twice as likely as women to be victims of violent crime, but women are about twice as likely as men to be worried about violent crime.
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=1661
I will write a paper called: Together We Can Solve All The Worlds Ills. Here it is::
Together we can stop the environment being fucked
(Tell people to stop doing it)
Together we can stop wars
(Tell everybody to be nice to one another)
Together we can stope people being hungry
(Give everybody enough to eat)
Together we can stop the economic meltdown forever
(Tell the banks to sod off and die we'll go back to making things and selling them to make the money go round)
Together we can stop people dying
(Ask Dog to make us all immortal)
Together we can part the Red Sea
(This one might be difficult but we could try to get Moses back on the job)
There, that's a good mornings work...I think I can go home now.
Worthy but a waste of space...
"Papadopoulos has been drafted into a Home Office Consultation entitled "Together We Can End Violence Against Women And Girls"."
surly it should just be "Together We Can End Violence" ? or is violence against men and boys acceptable or at least more acceptable?
mine is the one with blood splatted all over it
It all sounds so... reasonable.
OK, now I'm confused and/or fightened. Jackie's actually taking sensible, well reasoned advice from experts that actually know what their talking about?
Oh wait, I forgot the second stage of the operation is to chop that advice into misinterpreted sound bites that fit their own agenda...
Good to know that the Gummint is reaching out for the real experts in this field. Maybe raising the question about why men are violent to women, as opposed to guessing it's because women are encouraged to turn themselves into sexual objects (this isn't automatically a reason for attacks) would expose some of the causes. Violence is not about sex but about power. One view is that men attack what is 'lesser' than them to relieve the pressure and tension that they suffer being lower than other men on the pecking order. It's the big boy hits smaller boy, smaller boy hits little boy, little boy kicks the cat. For 'cat' substitute woman' and you pretty much have it. That's only one explanation -- there are others. But a TV pundit is not going to go for the hard isues and big problems around violence in osciety, of which violence towrds women is a sub-set; she or he is going to go for the touchy-feely quick-fix stuff.
Glad to hear that they have found the most appropriate person to review of the sexualisation of teenage girls - the host of "My Big Breasts and I".
I remember she also had a gig as one of the resident psychologists on the popular Channel 4 freak show "Big Brother", which also did not exploit the participants in any way.
Sounds like Wacky Jacqui has been speaking to Harriet Harmen at length about equal rights for women. Jobs for the girls!
I think I got out of bed the wrong side this morning and have ended up in a parallel universe where morons are running the country. Wake me up after the General Election in May 2010.
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""Together We Can End Violence Against Women And Girls"."
Men and boys can be (and are) on the receiving end of domestic violence. Jacqui only seems to talk about women and girls, however.
Men are actually in a more weakened position in this respect. A man that defends himself against a violent woman is seen by society as "hitting a woman" - it's even possible for her to then go to the police an be taken seriously while the man is automatically suspected.
If he doesn't defend himself, he's "not a man" because he's "letting a girl beat him up"!
There's very few statistics about the levels of domestic violence with a male victim, probably partly because men just don't often get taken seriously when it happens to them - by the authorities or by society. Chances are reasonable there aren't as many male victims as female, but does that mean they should be ignored?
It doesn't matter who the victim or the abuser is - domestic violence is simply wrong.
Sigh.
I wouldn't ever suggest that Jacqui Smith is anything other than a vile and idiotic human being. Nor would I suggest that women beating up men doesn't exist or isn't a serious problem.
But women are still more often on the receiving end of domestic violence and more likely to be seriously hurt, as far as I know (I'd look up some figures if I didn't have to spend the day moderating your thoughts on the matter). Why all the screams of 'sexism'? It's a problem, isn't it? Or isn't it? Nothing wrong with addressing it, even if in this instance it's being poorly addressed. But you can't put the same resources into something that doesn't occur as often, even if it's a deserving cause. Tackling female violence against men is a whole other campaign (which I'd wholeheartedly support). It may be just as important (as is clear by that AC post earlier - glad to hear that had a happy ending), but it is smaller, and no amount of hollering about Labour bigotry is going to change that.
Not that Jacqui knows what the hell she's doing with this embarrassing piffle but sheesh, there's nothing wrong with acknowledging something is an issue, you know. (And I know many of you have but I fear the indignation is tipping a bit far the other way.)
Her next method to end violence to women will be seperation. All women to the east and men to the west.
Perhaps we could build a wall down the center of the country just to make sure?
And all that extra wall space for cameras! Perfect!
Population might take a bit of a hit, but im sure allowing imigrants in will solve that.
Oh if only I were joking :(
this government don't do science, they rule by headline and public opinion, and damn the evidence and effects.
We _will_ start burning witches at the stake again. Because althought the scientists tell us they don't exists, the "court of public opinion" will demand it.
If you join the dots, from a government which has discovered there is no political downside to ignoring experts, to an MP who feels confident enough to want to criminlise peoples thoughts, then the UK is starting to look like a place you really wouldn't want to live.
As a general rule of thumb, violence against people is wrong (self-defence and organised combat sports are about the only exceptions I can think of).
AIUI men and women are about equal on the receiving end of violence, but women report it more because it is "weak" for a man to admit he has been beaten by a woman and "accepted" that boys-will-be-boys. So that is one reason for the calls of "sexism".
The other reason is because this is a Labour politician and they ram "equality" down our throats with frothing zeal, yet they chose to ignore it when it suits them. In this glorious new world of Labour equality, they should be treating violence against mean and women equally. The fact they are not is grossly hypocritical.
Thinking about in this murky mind of mine, the problem probably isn't really violence against woman, it's the notion that violence is a solution to problems. Problems tending to be control of a situation or venting frustrations. Much like why I used to fight with my brother before I grew up.
Many of the people who are violent against woman are violent towards men, and if they arn't it is becouse they are scared of the other men or scared of being seen to be violent in public.
They are violent towards woman becouse they are, for the most part, weaker and, in a relationship you can do it away from of prying eyes.
It's becouse it's easy, it's a release.
I don't think it has anything to do with any kind of image or sexualisation, it has to do with control, frustration, general moral melayse, misery, indirect anger, anger, and an inability to deal with problems. Also opportunity.
I came from a home that had domestic violance, your opinion of the world changes when you have your old man dragging your mother around to keep the fight infront of you, watching your mother yanking your old mans nob so he stops strangling her. Phoning the police on your own father, strange times indeed.
Why did it happen? Well not becouse my old man was sexist. More becouse he was desperate, rubbish at expressing emotion, miserable, lost, drunk, angry, and soon to be unemployed, a broken shell of a man. Hell he didn't even have any porn, didn't like violent films, he liked b-movies though, and classical science fiction, used to play the violin, and read two or three books a day when he didn't have work.
The problem is far more complicated then a bunch of tv wackos, a bunch of interest groups and it just pisses me off when I hear about these things on TV self rightious s--- heads looking for funding, tv wackos looking for ratings and ----ing politicos looking to look tough.
1. Domestic violence against women is bad.
2. The majority of domestic violence (let's say vast majority) results in women getting hit and not men.
3. Domestic violence against women probably has far different reasons to domestic violence against men because of cultural beliefs.
So why is this a bad thing? If anything petition for a similar survey to be done about the other way round, however don't knock them for doing something like this. Knock Waqi for being a tit instead.
Can I ask all of those who posted a sensible comment here- and there are many, though many were AC- to actually do someone about this and write/email/fax their bloody MPs and if possible Jacqui Smith?
This is too important to ignore. Wholesale criminalisation of men, victimisation of women.
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