Thank you for so many fascinating emails about the earlier post relating to the laws on sexual offences.
A lot of you were struck by Jean Hatchet's description of those who were "often acne-ridden", and who had "cheesy grins", as "identikit". No identity, just identikit. No individuality. No personality. No humanity.
Fit to be blown to pieces for absolutely nothing in whatever comes after the faux-feminist (and, in those terms, utterly unsuccessful) war in Afghanistan, and after the actively anti-feminist war in Iraq, which replaced a regime that had won United Nations awards for girls' education with a regime that was and is most unlikely ever to do so.
Yes, they do look a bit silly when "scrubbed, hair product well-applied". We all did.
But their acne, their grinning faces and their over-styled hair look a lot worse when their bodies that feminists presume to define and control are beaten up for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and no one cares, or are blown to smithereens on a battlefield for no good reason whatever, or freeze on the streets because they are not permitted to join their mothers in the few women's refuges that this wicked Government has left open, or are therefore beaten or killed by the violent men whom those mothers were fleeing, or are driven to suicide by the discriminatory enforcement of the age of consent laws (a story for which many thanks to an old friend whom I have to say that I had never taken for a Daily Mail reader).
Across the board, the owners, the only owners, of those bodies are far more likely than their sisters to be arrested for, charged with, prosecuted for or convicted of the same offences, and to receive vastly more severe sentences upon conviction.
If a boy, even if he were well under 16, engaged in anything approaching the behaviour for which a 16-year-old girl has despicably been accused of "grooming" her teacher, then he would get himself at least a Police caution for stalking, and he would thus find it difficult to secure employment for the rest of his life.
One might add that either the age of consent is 16 or it is not, and that if it is, then teacher-pupil activity above that age is the height of unprofessionalism, but it is not properly a matter for the criminal law.
That is one of the many very good reasons why the age of consent ought, with the caveats set out here, to be raised to 18, even granted that many of us were born in September, and indeed that very many people indeed are born such that their legal majority is attained in the first term of what will soon be the compulsory Upper Sixth.
None of this is about how well these boys are doing at school, or how much money their families have. Those are immensely important issues. But they are not these issues. These problems apply across the board.
Nor is there any suggestion that any of this negates or belittles feminist grievances. Do, for example, racial injustices negate or belittle those against women?
Football, for which I have no love, but the young male support for which now transcends all class distinctions, so that one wonders what a lot of posh fathers and grandfathers must think; video games, which I have honestly never understood; and Internet pornography and the drink-fuelled sexual culture exemplified by Ched Evans, both of which I profoundly despise: these are rapidly becoming the only places where young males run at least relatively little risk of being arrested or assaulted for existing at all, if they are so much as let in.
Fit to be blown to pieces for absolutely nothing in whatever comes after the faux-feminist (and, in those terms, utterly unsuccessful) war in Afghanistan, and after the actively anti-feminist war in Iraq, which replaced a regime that had won United Nations awards for girls' education with a regime that was and is most unlikely ever to do so.
Yes, they do look a bit silly when "scrubbed, hair product well-applied". We all did.
But their acne, their grinning faces and their over-styled hair look a lot worse when their bodies that feminists presume to define and control are beaten up for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and no one cares, or are blown to smithereens on a battlefield for no good reason whatever, or freeze on the streets because they are not permitted to join their mothers in the few women's refuges that this wicked Government has left open, or are therefore beaten or killed by the violent men whom those mothers were fleeing, or are driven to suicide by the discriminatory enforcement of the age of consent laws (a story for which many thanks to an old friend whom I have to say that I had never taken for a Daily Mail reader).
Across the board, the owners, the only owners, of those bodies are far more likely than their sisters to be arrested for, charged with, prosecuted for or convicted of the same offences, and to receive vastly more severe sentences upon conviction.
If a boy, even if he were well under 16, engaged in anything approaching the behaviour for which a 16-year-old girl has despicably been accused of "grooming" her teacher, then he would get himself at least a Police caution for stalking, and he would thus find it difficult to secure employment for the rest of his life.
One might add that either the age of consent is 16 or it is not, and that if it is, then teacher-pupil activity above that age is the height of unprofessionalism, but it is not properly a matter for the criminal law.
That is one of the many very good reasons why the age of consent ought, with the caveats set out here, to be raised to 18, even granted that many of us were born in September, and indeed that very many people indeed are born such that their legal majority is attained in the first term of what will soon be the compulsory Upper Sixth.
None of this is about how well these boys are doing at school, or how much money their families have. Those are immensely important issues. But they are not these issues. These problems apply across the board.
Nor is there any suggestion that any of this negates or belittles feminist grievances. Do, for example, racial injustices negate or belittle those against women?
Football, for which I have no love, but the young male support for which now transcends all class distinctions, so that one wonders what a lot of posh fathers and grandfathers must think; video games, which I have honestly never understood; and Internet pornography and the drink-fuelled sexual culture exemplified by Ched Evans, both of which I profoundly despise: these are rapidly becoming the only places where young males run at least relatively little risk of being arrested or assaulted for existing at all, if they are so much as let in.
But how pro-male is Internet pornography, anyway? I admit that my knowledge of it derives from its feminist and Christian critics, although I make no apology for that.
I am 37, with the Golden Britpop Summer of 1995 right in the middle of my Sixth Form days, so I am of the generation that doubtless dodged a bullet in being slightly too old for Internet pornography to have been our introduction to the female form.
I am 37, with the Golden Britpop Summer of 1995 right in the middle of my Sixth Form days, so I am of the generation that doubtless dodged a bullet in being slightly too old for Internet pornography to have been our introduction to the female form.
But at least according to those critics, this material often does not depict the faces of the male participants, who, moreover, are paid less than the female ones. They are just penises, in the way that they are just trigger fingers, just cannon fodder, just "acne-ridden cheesy grins", just "identikit".
Likewise, a lot of video games seem to revolve around killing as many other "identikit" men as possible. Strippers and prostitutes, too. But mostly other men.
The most vicious misogyny is often produced by, and very successfully marketed to, women. Something similar seems to apply to these two popular cultural phenomena of our age.
The most vicious misogyny is often produced by, and very successfully marketed to, women. Something similar seems to apply to these two popular cultural phenomena of our age.
By coming after the "drunken sex at weekends" culture while also appearing to come after football, the Ched Evans case has actually or apparently come after fully half of the things from which perhaps the male half of an entire generation still experiences any kind of welcome.
They are beaten up for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and no one cares. They are blown to smithereens on battlefields, for no good reason whatever. They freeze on the streets because they are not permitted to join their mothers in the few women's refuges that this wicked Government has left open, or they are therefore beaten or killed by the violent men whom those mothers were fleeing.
They are driven to suicide by the discriminatory enforcement of the age of consent laws. They are far more likely than their sisters to be arrested for, charged with, prosecuted for or convicted of the same offences, and to receive vastly more severe sentences upon conviction.
They need only have a row with a girlfriend, or follow a girl home, or ask a girl out, in order to be given at least a Police caution for stalking, and thus find it difficult to secure employment for the rest of their lives.
They need only have a row with a girlfriend, or follow a girl home, or ask a girl out, in order to be given at least a Police caution for stalking, and thus find it difficult to secure employment for the rest of their lives.
Their genitals have been mutilated in infancy on an industrial scale, often at public expense, which is to say, as an act of the State; the BBC Three programme Free Speech, which on another occasion made James Delingpole cry like a baby on Facebook and Twitter until he blocked me on both for pointing out that sorry yet happy fact, recently refused to permit any discussion of this subject when its youthful audience voted heavily for such on the website provided.
From a very early age, they are harangued about how their bodies are supposed to work by people who do not have male bodies and who have often had barely any contact with male bodies, although they have undeniably had extremely negative experiences of such contact when they have had it.
They are financially liable for pregnancies that result when they have been sexually abused, as people have been emailing me very specifically today.
It is widely assumed that they cannot be sexually assaulted by women or girls. Well, a decade or so ago, when I was on supply in far from the worst school to which I was ever posted, I directly witnessed a group of girls aged about 13 or 14 sexually assaulting a male classmate with whose girlfriend they had had an altercation. Their punishment of her was to do that to him.
He was extremely distressed, although there is very little that a supply can do, even if, on reflection, I ought to have called the Police and let the heavens fall.
No one in authority cared, and the Head of Year did not even recognise the boy's name. There seemed to be no suggestion that this event was particularly noteworthy. But if anything, I suspect that it would be more common now than it was then.
Set in this context, the campaign against Ched Evans has been the last straw, even if some of the tweets to Hatchet about kitchens and ironing were probably not intended to be taken with pedantic literalness. The reaction has been inexcusably understandable, in the way that a particular reaction to an obscene cartoon of Muhammad may be inexcusable, but is never incomprehensible.
Evans was released on license after having served half his time, despite the fact that his supporters maintained a website, registered to him, which did not merely protest his innocence, but offered a £10,000 reward for evidence against his accuser.
Immediately upon his release, not only did the Criminal Cases Review Commission fast-track his case, but it publicly announced that it had done so.
That football clubs have considered signing him can only mean that the Probation Service regards him as posing as near as it is permitted to say to no risk whatever.
The powers that be pay more attention than that to some people who have been acquitted, to a certain number who have never been charged, and even to a few who have never been arrested.
Unless we are seriously expected to believe that a Probation Officer might ever have been deputed to follow Evans and his teammates around the country as a kind of valet, a footballers' footman, not so much Falstaff's page as Prince Hal's, undoubtedly fetching the drinks, quite conceivably cleaning the boots, and not unimaginably arranging the "birds"? Are we seriously expected to believe that? There you are, then.
All in all, the criminal justice system itself seems to have very little confidence in Evans's conviction, which it clearly regards as a noisy embarrassment that it wishes would go away. It seems most unlikely to offer anything more than the most nominal defence of itself before the Court of Appeal.
As much as Jean Hatchett, if perhaps for slightly different reasons, I wish that it were otherwise.
From a very early age, they are harangued about how their bodies are supposed to work by people who do not have male bodies and who have often had barely any contact with male bodies, although they have undeniably had extremely negative experiences of such contact when they have had it.
They are financially liable for pregnancies that result when they have been sexually abused, as people have been emailing me very specifically today.
It is widely assumed that they cannot be sexually assaulted by women or girls. Well, a decade or so ago, when I was on supply in far from the worst school to which I was ever posted, I directly witnessed a group of girls aged about 13 or 14 sexually assaulting a male classmate with whose girlfriend they had had an altercation. Their punishment of her was to do that to him.
He was extremely distressed, although there is very little that a supply can do, even if, on reflection, I ought to have called the Police and let the heavens fall.
No one in authority cared, and the Head of Year did not even recognise the boy's name. There seemed to be no suggestion that this event was particularly noteworthy. But if anything, I suspect that it would be more common now than it was then.
Set in this context, the campaign against Ched Evans has been the last straw, even if some of the tweets to Hatchet about kitchens and ironing were probably not intended to be taken with pedantic literalness. The reaction has been inexcusably understandable, in the way that a particular reaction to an obscene cartoon of Muhammad may be inexcusable, but is never incomprehensible.
Evans was released on license after having served half his time, despite the fact that his supporters maintained a website, registered to him, which did not merely protest his innocence, but offered a £10,000 reward for evidence against his accuser.
Immediately upon his release, not only did the Criminal Cases Review Commission fast-track his case, but it publicly announced that it had done so.
That football clubs have considered signing him can only mean that the Probation Service regards him as posing as near as it is permitted to say to no risk whatever.
The powers that be pay more attention than that to some people who have been acquitted, to a certain number who have never been charged, and even to a few who have never been arrested.
Unless we are seriously expected to believe that a Probation Officer might ever have been deputed to follow Evans and his teammates around the country as a kind of valet, a footballers' footman, not so much Falstaff's page as Prince Hal's, undoubtedly fetching the drinks, quite conceivably cleaning the boots, and not unimaginably arranging the "birds"? Are we seriously expected to believe that? There you are, then.
All in all, the criminal justice system itself seems to have very little confidence in Evans's conviction, which it clearly regards as a noisy embarrassment that it wishes would go away. It seems most unlikely to offer anything more than the most nominal defence of itself before the Court of Appeal.
As much as Jean Hatchett, if perhaps for slightly different reasons, I wish that it were otherwise.
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