The worst thing I’ve read today

Content note: this post discusses child sexual abuse and rape apologism, quoting examples

It’s early in the day, I know, but it will be a difficult task to find something worse than this. In fact, it had managed to be the worst thing I’d read today at 12.15am. It really is that bad.

The BBC have decided to rather innocuously title what followed with “Age of consent should be 13, says barrister“. Well, I thought, stupidly clicking. They’re probably wrong for the usual reasons that adults calling for the age of consent to be lowered are wrong, but surely this can’t be too bad?

How wrong I was. Barrister Barbara Hewson, who writes in weeping syphilitic chode publication Spiked, has written something which follows the standard Spiked line–vicious, nasty, rape apologistic, wrong, and thinking it’s oh-so-clever. Brendan O’Neill himself, king of the chodes, would be proud. Being so desperately attention-seeking, I’m not actually going to link to the Spiked article, because fuck them and all the horses they rode in on.

Let’s take a look at Hewson’s opening gambit:

I do not support the persecution of old men. The manipulation of the rule of law by the Savile Inquisition – otherwise known as Operation Yewtree – and its attendant zealots poses a far graver threat to society than anything Jimmy Savile ever did.

Yes, that’s right. Someone who is ostensibly a barrister believes that the function of Yewtree was not to finally–decades too late–investigate institutional abuse of children. Rather, it was to persecute those poor old men.

The thing is, if the numerous institutions who knew about this–and, at best, did nothing–had fucking done something at the time, nobody would be arresting old men. The reason the men being investigated are old is because decades passed before anyone survivors were able to make their voices heard.

Next up, Hewson goes for the standard Spiked editorial line of arguing with imaginary Victorians who have teleported into the 21st century, pausing to give us a history lesson that some actual Victorians raised the age of consent to 16 based on the fact that puberty back then happened at 15, and that this was basically just the result of some sort of “moral panic”. Yes. Hewson actually thinks it was a little bit excessive to criminalise having sex with girls who had not yet hit puberty.

Following a long-winded whine about how much she hates the NSPCC, Hewson explicitly states that she doesn’t think survivors should use the courts to speak out:

The acute problems of proof which stale allegations entail also generates a demand that criminal courts should afford accusers therapy, by giving them ‘a voice’. This function is far removed from the courts’ traditional role, in which the state must prove defendants guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

I am not exactly sure how one can do this without letting survivors speak, but whatever. This lady is a barrister and in its own way, this point lays bare how woefully inadequate this sham of a justice system is in dealing with sexual violence.

In amid dismissing historic instances of sexual violence as merely “misdemeanours”, Hewson also decides to declare that only some sexual violence is worthy. And guess what? It’s pretty much that faulty folk notion where a man leaps out of a bush and rapes a virgin.

Touching a 17-year-old’s breast, kissing a 13-year-old, or putting one’s hand up a 16-year-old’s skirt, are not remotely comparable to the horrors of the Ealing Vicarage assaults and gang rape, or the Fordingbridge gang rape and murders, both dating from 1986. Anyone suggesting otherwise has lost touch with reality.

Apparently putting your hands on a young person who does not want to be touched are not the same as gang rape and are therefore, according to Hewson, OK. I am not letting this person anywhere near children.

So what are Hewson’s recommendations? Oh dear, they’re awful.

As for law reform, now regrettably necessary, my recommendations are: remove complainant anonymity; introduce a strict statute of limitations for criminal prosecutions and civil actions; and reduce the age of consent to 13.

In short, Barbara Hewson wants to make it as difficult as possible for survivors to come forward, and make it as easy as possible for powerful men to rape young people. It is absolutely clear that her justification for lowering the age of consent is simply to make it slightly less illegal for men like Jimmy Savile to rape them. To Hewson, age is the only matter here: if one is over the age of consent and not being attacked and raped by a stranger, it isn’t rape.

Which actually makes her a pretty shitty lawyer on top of writing something so hideously unpleasant.

As for the statute of limitations, this reduces the possibility of survivors coming forward, decades later, when it is safe, because apparently Hewson wants a legal system where it is as unsafe as possible to come forward. This is exacerbated by her call to remove anonymity for complainants, a point which appeared nowhere else in her argument. It is not a non-sequitur, though: it is clear that her purpose is to protect men who perpetrate sexual violence.

It always shocks me when I see something so awful as Hewson’s piece. I sometimes catch myself feeling somewhat optimistic, as though the battle against rape culture, while gory, will be one we can win. These fragile hopes are dashed where I see a person arguing from a position of power that the law should find new ways to silence survivors and keep them vulnerable. Make no mistake: our enemy is huge, and there is a whole army of those, like Hewson, who are complicit.

And so the fight goes on, bigger than ever. Yet I will not rest. I do not want to see these bastards win.

Update: Looks like Hewson’s chambers are running as quickly as possible in the opposite direction from her.

There’s something horribly medieval about seeping chancres on a chode

Noted rape apologist and all-round weeping syphilitic chode Brendan O’Neill has weighed in on the Jimmy Savile story. It’s taken him a while to alight upon an opinion which is in equal parts offensive, silly and outright anti-reality, but as always, he’s delivered.

This time, he thinks it’s like something medieval involving the Church, but at the same time also exactly like a 17th century witch hunt. Yeah, he’s kind of confused. Anyway, it’s exactly as awful and objectionable as you’d expect from a weeping syphilitic chode like O’Neill, and there’s very little novel content; it’s mostly him fighting with imaginary people, which isn’t worth comment as I’ve covered it all in previous posts on O’Neill.

However, as with O’Neill’s general ouevre, there’s always at least one novel awful statement per article, like the fact Brendan O’Neill reckons everyone’s being a little unfair to Jimmy Savile for saying he’s a paedophile when most of what he did wasn’t raping underage people, and in fact anyone concerned about this is the real pervert:

It seems everything from saying ‘nice tits’ to a female DJ to hugging a 14-year-old girl too tightly on Top of the Pops to having sex with someone under 16 can now all be packaged up as evildoing, as child abuse.

The Savile story is really a vessel for the cultural elite’s perverted obsession with child abuse, and more importantly its belief that everyone is at it – that in every institution, ‘town, village and hamlet’, there are perverts and innocence despoilers, casually warping the next generation. In modern Britain, the figure of The Paedophile has become the means through which the misanthropes who rule over us express their profound fear and suspicion of adults in general, and also of communities and institutions – even of the institutions they hold dear, such is the self-destructive dynamic triggered by the unleashing of the Salem ethos.

Whatevs, you weeping syphilitic chode.

Likewise, O’Neill engages in a really sickening attack on the survivors.

Some people have said it is brave of the women who claim to have been assaulted by Savile to come forward and tell their stories. I’m sorry, but it isn’t. Making serious accusations against a dead person who is in no position to fight back or plead or prove his innocence, 30 or 40 years after the alleged incidents occurred, is the very opposite of brave – it’s cowardly.

Yes, thank you, you weeping syphilitic chode. Apparently rape survivors should never come forward unless it’s unsafe for them to do so and Brendan can find other ways of smearing them.

Really, I find this man’s passionate and repeated defences and denials of rape culture rather frightening. It makes me wonder what his vested interests are, what stake he has in it. It’s going beyond being a contrarian fucknugget–or even a weeping syphilitic chode.

Guess who’s a weeping syphilitic chode? That’s right, it’s still Brendan O’Neill

Trigger warning for rape apologism

I confess to having experienced moments of levity in the last few days. This was, I now understand, because I’d forgotten that Brendan O’Neill exists and is still a weeping syphilitic chode.

It’s taken him a while to articulate an opinion on the George Galloway/Julian Assange shit of the last few weeks, and that’s probably because he is so much of an oozing poxy micropenis that he’s had trouble working out what he thinks, because both figures are popular with the stereotypical left-wing person, and there’s nothing Chode of Chode Hall likes more than to shout about how much he hates left-wing people.

I’m surprised it took him so concoct who the real enemy is here. It’s the feminists, of course. Not real feminists, but the imaginary ones that hide in Brendan’s cupboard and eat his favourite crisps in the night but Brendan’s mummy won’t believe they’re real and she thinks he’s eating the crisps and she won’t let him sleep in her bed and that makes Brendan sad.

His line is thoroughly, tediously unoriginal and anyone with a passing familiarity with rape culture tropes will recognise it. Apparently the feminists are trying to redefine rape.

He argues this by, erm, redefining rape.

So it is quite wrong to say “sex without consent is rape”. It is more accurate to say that “sex pursued in defiance of a lack of consent is rape”.

According to the nasty little weeping syphilitic chode, pointing out that not establishing consent during sex can be rape is hard on the poor little men who can’t be arsed to establish consent and we’re lumping them in with criminals, because what really matters is the intention to do it.

And that’s just plain wrong. If you’re going to fuck someone, you have a responsibility to check everyone’s consenting. It’s what makes you a good shag (nobody’s as unsurprised as me that Brendan O’Neill has outed himself as a terrible lover). It’s pretty fucking easy to not rape someone if you make a modicum of effort.

In this particular offering, Brendan O’Neill displays an obsession with the justice system which is prevalent in thinking about rape, and thoroughly unhelpful for the most part. Rape is, after all, far more than just a legal situation: after all, the majority of rape survivors do not ever engage with the legal system as it’s not really set up to deal with rape particularly effectively. When talking about rape, we need to separate the act from the crime, as it is so much more than an abstract legal concept.

A lot of people get this. Many others don’t, and, of course, some of them will purposely miss the point like this weeping syphilitic chode. Sex without consent is rape. And that’s not a radical redefinition of anything.

 

 

Chodes, weeping, syphilis, &c., &c.: in which Brendan O’Neill attempts faux-feminism.

Trigger warning: This post discusses rape apologism. It also quotes Brendan O’Neill.

We all know by now that Brendan O’Neill is a weeping syphilitic chode. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that his latest chancre-ooze pertains to the Ched Evans case and he is wrong wrong and wrong again. 

Now, there’s a pleasant surprise in the article–if, by pleasant surprise you were expecting someone to shit into your mouth when they merely piss in your eyes–Brendan O’Neill doesn’t just come out and say “I HATE WOMEN I HATE WOMEN I HATE WOMEN” (or some variant thereof; the chode is a known rape apologist). Instead, he chooses to focus largely on anonymity of survivors in rape cases. Naturally, he’s against that, comparing it to being exactly the same as people tweeting about the Ryan Giggs superinjunction.

Anyone who is above penes-wider-than-they-are-long-so-infected-with-the-Great-Pox-they-drip-pus-everywhere in the evolutionary scale will recognise that a footballer trying to cover up the fact he put his dick somewhere he shouldn’t is rather different from throwing the survivor of a traumatic crime into a torrent of the abuse inherent in rape apologism. Brendan O’Neill, of course, isn’t.

His first two arguments for abolishing anonymity in rape cases are the standard ones which system justifiers will trot out to appear reasonable, and are essentially cramming the tongue deep into the ringpiece of archaic statutes. They are therefore too tedious to repeat. What is more interesting is chode-face’s final argument:

And thirdly, and worst of all, having anonymity for rape complainants contributes to the idea that women who have been raped have something to be ashamed of. It actually adds to the stigma attached to being a rape victim.

[irrelevant example snipped]

But women who have been raped have nothing whatsoever to be ashamed of. They are simply victims of a terrible crime, not stigmatised individuals whose names must never be spoken in polite conversation. The women’s rights activists who defend anonymity for rape complainants are giving credence to the idea that rape victims must be treated as uniquely damaged individuals who must remain hidden behind a permanent veil of anonymity.

Brendan O’Neill is concern-trolling, pretending to have the interests of women firmly at heart. Nadine Dorries often utilises a similar approach when she claims to be “pro-woman” rather than “pro-life”.

And it is entirely false. Anonymity in rape cases is an option, and, given the reaction towards women who have the misfortune of being raped by someone well-liked, it is an option many choose to hold on to. It enables survivors to report their rapes without the fear of abuse and humiliation. There is a stigma surrounding rape, but that is absolutely nothing to do with anonymity for the proportionally microscopic number of cases that make it to court; it is everything to do with rape apologism and rape culture.

Couching the position in false concern is at best completely misguided, and, being familiar with O’Neill’s drippings, more likely highly disingenuous. To remove this protection for survivors would serve only rapists, who can sleep a little safer in the knowledge that people will be less likely to report and their cheerleaders will tear any who do to shreds.

 

Some people are weeping syphilitic chodes. Don’t get over it.

In the wake of fuckwittery surrounding the Christian ‘gay cure’ bus ads, it is hardly surprising that the story caught the single, chancred, dripping eye of chode Brendan O’Neill.

Brendan has taken this opportunity to remind us that actually the Christians are more progressive than gays, because they think being gay isn’t a genetic trait.

It is, as always, an abominable torture of reality, and it is no different from O’Neill’s typical contrarian wordspunk.

As usual, it makes no goddamn sense whatsoever. The weeping syphilitic chode rather unsurprisingly fails to understand the meaning of the word ‘progressive’, thinking that seeking to ungay people in a homophobic environment is somehow A Good Thing and laudable.

It goes without saying that this is a profoundly stupid point, whether being queer is genetic, a choice, or somewhere in between. Maintaining the status quo by conforming to the hegemonic ideal is inherently, at best, conservative.

O’Neill isn’t even trying any more. He forgot to scream about political correctness or blame a shadowy cabal of queers and hummus munchers.

I think I need a worthier nemesis.

In which I bite: Brendan O’Neill can’t read (and is a weeping syphilitic chode)

It took me a while to bite, but eventually curiosity got the better of me. I had been sent something which appeared so thoroughly awful, I’d thought I might duck it. @TheNatFantastic had alerted me to the existence of a piece by weeping syphilitic chode Brendan O’Neill entitled “A Marxist defence of Page 3 girls“.

And it was so thoroughly stupid, and worse than expected I ended up biting.

I had imagined that perhaps O’Neill’s “Marxist” defence of Page 3 would pertain to liberating the proletarian Page 3 models by providing them with a platform to articulate their views

O’Neill lacks even the basic intellect to pursue this reasoning, and instead falls back on the truly wearisome weeping syphilitic chode line: crying about imaginary Victorian women and vehemently defending his perceived right to look at tits. Marx barely gets a look-in, save for a bit of selective quoting:

“You cannot enjoy the advantages of a free press without putting up with its inconveniences,” he said. He went on: “You cannot pluck the rose without its thorns!” – meaning that even when you pick a beautiful flower you’ll frequently end up with a little prick. It’s the same with the press – there’s some good stuff out there, well worth reading, and there are a lot of pricks, too. That is in the nature of having a free, open press.

Ultimately, the analysis is as Marxist as O’Neill’s online rag “Spiked” and its predecessor “Living Marxism”, that is, about as Marxist as the distended anus of the bourgeoisie unrelentingly shitting into the screaming mouths of the proletariat.  Marx’s name is used, and that is about all. In fact, what Marx said was:

For the time being, leaving aside the moral consequences, bear in mind that you cannot enjoy the advantages of a free press without putting up with its inconveniences. You cannot pluck the rose without its thorns!

While Marx’s argument is indeed in favour of the free press, it is hardly surprising that O’Neill left out the mention of moral consequences while quoting Marx, given that O’Neill’s entire article is about how Unutterably Evil those who point out the possibility of the moral consequences of Page 3.

It is also questionable as to whether the Sun and is Page 3 genuinely represent the idea of a free press, particularly the free press to which Marx was referring in the article. Marx himself said:

The primary freedom of the press lies in not being a trade. The writer who degrades the press into being a material means deserves as punishment for this internal unfreedom the external unfreedom of censorship, or rather his very existence is his punishment.

The Sun, the Murdoch press and mainstream commercial media on the whole are a capitalist endeavour. They exist for two reasons: to make money, and to push a political agenda which will allow those who control the means of production to make even more money. The tiny opinion pieces on Page 3 strictly adhere to the editorial line, its contributors unable to write freely: this is congruous with Marx’s views on a censored press:

Inseparable from it is the most powerful vice, hypocrisy, and from this, its basic vice, come all its other defects, which lack even the rudiments of virtue, and its vice of passivity, loathsome even from the aesthetic point of view. The government hears only its own voice, it knows that it hears only its own voice, yet it harbours the illusion that it hears the voice of the people, and it demands that the people, too, should itself harbour this illusion. For its part, therefore, the people sinks partly into political superstition, partly into political disbelief, or, completely turning away from political life, becomes a rabble of private individuals.

Marx’s arguments about a free press may have been pertinent to a specific dispute in 1840s Prussia, but the climate has changed substantially since then. For O’Neill to argue otherwise is sheer intellectual laziness. I will be charitable and suggest that Brendan O’Neill did not read the whole Marx article, which is forgivable as Marx writes in an unremittingly dense fashion and it must be difficult for poor Brendan to read out of his one pus-crusted urethral eye.

Either way, it seems relevant to end on a quote falsely attributed to Marx, yet actually pronounced by Sweary Wollstonecraft:

Brendan O’Neill is a weeping syphilitic chode.

People I won’t have sex with, ever.

The stereotype of the sex-hating feminist fails to hold up to a cursory glance, let alone any degree of scrutiny. There are, however, some people I will never have sex with, ever…

Askmen.com

The festering frothing anuses at askmen have been at it again. Last spotted providing pick-up lines to demonstrate dickhead status, this time they think they have happened upon some feminist demands women secretly want to be ignored.

Askmen rather like the feminist struggle, they claim, because it means that there is finally the prospect of the holy grail of relationships: “the non-clingy girlfriend”. I’m assuming these dripping bellends would be lucky to have any girlfriend, clingy or otherwise, given that their attitude towards spending time with women is a grating display of tedious benevolent sexism.

Apparently, women secretly want men to carry their bags for them, pay for meals out, make decisions for them and get married, no matter how feminist they proclaim to be. Also, Askmen reckon that we women love to be objectified. Thank you for speaking for we little fragile women, Askmen.

Now, Askmen seem to have a little bit of a hang-up about what they call “chivalry”, but is more accurately termed benevolent sexism, with a plethora of articles with tips for demonstrating “gentlemanliness” and defending chivalry against those big nasty feminists. They seem to believe it’s the way into a woman’s knickers. It isn’t.

I have been on dates with “chivalrous” men, and it has rarely ended up in the bedroom, as it is irksome to be treated like a cross between a sickly pensioner and a small child. I have a cunt. That isn’t a disability. I am also, unsurprisingly, hugely turned off by people propping up oppressive systems. When called out on their behaviour, the chivalrous types invariably mansplain (they are always men) to me why it is all right, and mansplaining is about as sexy as mankinis.

I have, a few times, had sex with the bag-carrying, door-opening dinner buyers. Every time, the sex has been rubbish, as I’m not entirely sure they view women as people, but rather projects with a strict protocol.

So, for this outstanding contribution to furthering the cause of infuriating behaviour, Askmen, I am never going to have sex with you.

Unilad

Anyone clicking this next link requires a trigger warning. This little shitbag advocates rape. The writer  seems to believe he has written a humourous piece on “sexual mathematics“. He “mathematically” suggests that it is worth trying it on with a woman after a date, as 75% of women are likely to put out on the first date. He concludes with what will inevitably be defended as a “joke”, pointing out that 85% of rapes go unreported, implying that these are worthwhile odds to take.

This is yet another tired example of rape culture, albeit even closer to an outright suggestion of rape than usual. As an aside, it is also terribly written and thoroughly unreferenced, which leads me to question how this seeping bellend managed to get to university in the first place.

Remember that rapists are more likely to subscribe to rape myths, and the contribution to rape culture is a dangerous, dangerous thing. Having sex with those who trivialise and laugh at rape is ultimately never a good idea: to such individuals, consent is optional. For Unilad and his ilk, the chances of sex should be no more than zero.

The Activists

Touched upon in yesterday’s post on consensual power, BDSM and anarchism, tedious fuckwits The Activists think that sex is a waste of time.

Fuck that shit.

Brendan O’Neill

I think I may have mentioned this before, but Brendan O’Neill is a weeping syphilitic chode, a misogynist and all-round awful human being. He is the tiny infected penile avatar of rape culture, reeking of stale beer and a longing for the 90s. He hasn’t even done anything to specifically piss me off today, but it bears repeating and reminding every day.

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

Brendan O’Neill is a weeping syphilitic chode.

A brief round-up of some regular wankers

Regular readers of this blog will be aware that certain individuals find themselves in my sights from time to time, to the point where I consider some of them to have been made up specifically to piss me off. Today, they’re still being vastly irksome to me.

Nadine Dorries is still fascinated with women’s bodies

Nadine Dorries is better known for her obsession with uteruses, which resulted in me and others writing to her about their wombs last September. Her fixation on women’s bodies does not end at the uterus, though, and her other interests include what young women are doing with their cunts, her desire for control manifesting in a crusade to teach young women to Never Have Sex.

While the attack on choice was mercifully aborted, Dorries’s attempts to drag in mandatory abstinence education for only young women rumbles on. Fortunately, there is resistance to this. On 20th January, people will be gathering to protest this bill. If you can make this, please do.

Brendan O’Neill is still a weeping syphilitic chode

Brendan O’Neill, weeping syphilitic chode and alleged journalist has branched out from repeated, nasty sexism with a sideline in wishing abuse victims would shut the fuck up into declaring racism to be fine and dandy.  He reckons that yelling out racist words during a football match is “undiluted passion” and that political correctness is ruining football.  His conclusion? “I suggest we set about the urgent task of kicking these ‘anti-racists’ out of football,” he seeps.

I am getting quite a good insight into that chode’s psyche, and basically he seems terrified of two things: 1) that we live in a society where being a vile little shitbag is becoming increasingly less tolerated and 2) Victorian women. Seriously. His posts always include Victorian women running around suggesting he stops being such an unpleasant bellend.

While not strictly Victorian, I should very much like to set an irate Mary Wollstonecraft on him.

Stephen Moffat thinks anyone calling him out on sexism is a criminal

Now, I quite like Stephen Moffat’s work, despite the fact that he is rather sexist. The Moff himself, on the other hand, has added himself to my menagerie of nemeses by giving the following reaction to criticisms of sexism in his work.

“I think it’s one thing to criticise a programme and another thing to invent motives out of amateur psychology for the writer and then accuse him of having those feelings,” he said.

“I think that was beyond the pale and strayed from criticism to a defamation act.

“I’m certainly not a sexist, a misogynist and it was wrong.

“It’s not true and in terms of the character Sherlock Holmes, it is interesting. He has been referred to as being a bit misogynist.

“He’s not; the fact is one of the lovely threads of the original Sherlock Holmes is whatever he says, he cannot abide anyone being cruel to women – he actually becomes incensed and full of rage.”

Yes. Expressing concerns that Moffat might be a little bit sexist due to his creation of inherently problematic characters and saying some rather sexist things about a woman actor in Doctor Who is apparently defamation. It hardly helps his case that his conception of anti-sexism is a manifestation of benevolent sexism: getting angry because a fragile little woman has been attacked is hardly progressive, instead it merely reinforces the binary.

Like Brendan O’Neill, Moffat appears to consider calling someone out on sexism worse than actually being sexist, and this is just a dick move pulled by tossers.

Moffat, I think you’re a sexist. If you want to do me for defamation, bring it on.

Brendan O’Neill is a dangerous weeping syphilitic chode.

I am beginning to think that I need my very own tag dedicated to professional troll and weeping syphilitic chode Brendan O’Neill, whose previous adventures have included declaring that domestic violence is funny, that sexual abuse victims should keep their mouths shut, and that women are anti-social if they don’t like being harassed in the street.

Seeping from the chancres of O’Neill today comes the not-so-fresh revelation that women are delicate little flowers for wanting to experience the internet without being threatened with rape and other torrents of misogynistic abuse.

O’Neill is reacting here to women bloggers and journalists courageously speaking out about abuse they have received. O’Neill apparently believes we’re overreacting, and we’re stifling poor little chode-face’s freedom of speech:

The crashing together of threats of violence with ridicule is striking, because it exposes a fairly Orwellian streak to modern feminist campaigns to “stamp out” bad things. There is an attempt here to treat words and violence as the same thing. Indeed, the Guardian report discusses “violent online invective” and quotes a novelist complaining about “violent hate-speech”. Anyone who cares about freedom of speech should sit up and take notice when campaigners start talking about words and violence in the same breath, because to accept the idea that words are as damaging as violent actions is implicitly to invite the policing and curbing of speech by the powers that be. After all, if speech itself is a kind of violence, if ridicule is on a par with threatening behaviour, then why shouldn’t internet trolls and foul-mouthed loners be treated as seriously as the bloke who commits GBH? Muddying the historic philosophical distinction between words and actions, which has informed enlightened thinking for hundreds of years, is too high a price to pay just so some feminist bloggers can surf the web without having their delicate sensibilities riled.

O’Neill trots to the last resort of the desperate as it’s abundantly clear he has no actual argument: FREEDOM OF SPEECH STOP SHUTTING DOWN DEBATE STOP CENSORING ME YOU BIG MEANIE. Somehow, suggesting that hate speech is bad and maybe we should work on stopping it makes us into big nasty Stalinhitlers who are fucking with Brendan O’Neill’s fundamental human right to hurl misogynistic abuse around.

O’Neill is also railing against a point which was not made, demonstrating staggeringly poor reading comprehension. I suppose it’s not his fault: chodes only have one eye and his is perpetually weeping sore syphilitic discharge. O’Neill seems to have misread the whole bulk of articles as feminists being offended by a little bit of bad language.

That isn’t the problem. The problem is that women expressing opinions online find themselves under attack. Not their arguments, but themselves. There is no ‘you’re wrong about this point, you bitch’, only the second clause. If you’re lucky. Far too often, it’s threats of rape with kitchen implements or personal details posted.

Even here, while calling O’Neill a weeping syphilitic chode, I’ve attacked his argument. And that’s the difference between colourful language and plain abuse.

O’Neill cannot understand this distinction. Or perhaps, more worrryingly, he does not want to. Having read selected excerpts of his ‘writing’, I have noticed that O’Neill really desperately wants to protect the ability of men to abuse. He wants women to suck it up when under attack online and offline. He wants to wear T-shirts making fun of rape without women getting pissed off about it–in fact, much of the current article is a rehashing of his defence of rape-shirts. He even wants victims of rape by paedophile priests to shut up about it.

At every turn, he seems to want to preserve a culture of violence. It is so pervasive that I wonder if perhaps he has a vested interest in this. Could Brendan O’Neill be one of those leery pricks who believes all women to be stuck-up bitches for rejecting his beery, gropey advances? Could Brendan O’Neill be that vile troll who incites fear to silence? Could Brendan O’Neill possibly be a rapist, an abuser? Perhaps not, yet his impassioned defences of violence make all of this possible; rapists are more likely to believe in cultural myths about rape.

Brendan O’Neill is a weeping syphilitic chode. He is also thoroughly dangerous.

While a chode syphilitically weeps

Brendan O’Neill is a weeping syphilitic chode, and it’s getting to the point where I wonder if he was invented specifically to piss me off.

This time, O’Neill has decided that Topman should be selling misogynistic T-shirts, and that feminists have no sense of humour. To answer the second charge first, here is a joke:

What’s the difference between Brendan O’Neill and a weeping syphilitic chode?

Nothing.

It might need some work, but it’s a damn sight funnier than the T-shirts in question, and that’s already one joke more than O’Neill’s opinion piece had.

Of the Topman T-shirts in question, one uses dehumanising language, and the other refers to male-on-female intimate partner violence. O’Neill doesn’t even bother talking about the dehumanising T-shirt, despite the fact that use of dehumanising language is pretty fucking dangerous, with real-world implications, and is literally just hate speech. To defend the other T-shirt, O’Neill attempts to wiggle about with semantics:

A young man could just as easily say the words “I’m sorry but I was drunk” to another young man, after an argument or a fight or something.

That could happen. But the whole “joke” of the T-shirt is that it refers to beating women. Without the stereotype it primes, it is no longer a controversial joke, and it simply becomes a checklist. Which is a fairly pointless T-shirt, all things considered. Consider, for example, a T-shirt that is laid out similarly that says “I hate you because… [] You run fast [] You eat a lot of fried chicken [] You always die first in movies”. Would this T-shirt be considered racist? I’d say so, but according to Brendan O’Neill, that T-shirt is fine and dandy.

O’Neill’s article also demonstrates that while a weeping syphilitic chode can write–presumably, with infected pus dripping from chancre to keyboard–a weeping syphilitic chode cannot read. O’Neill denies that there can possibly be any cultural explanation for violence. Now, while the extent to which the media influences violence is equivocal, what is clear is that there is some link. Discussion should focus on what action is acceptable to take, rather than whether the link exists at all. That’s where O’Neill really falls flat. He is so interested in flatly denying any link  he does not discuss this at all. And it’s an issue that warrants discussion–should Topman have pulled those T-shirts?

There are a number of issues which could have been discussed were O’Neill up for talking about Topman T-shirts, rather than working out his issues with feminists in a public domain (in general, he’s not keen on feminists, because they think he’s a prick). O’Neill touches on class, completely wrongly:

That’s because they are driven by the elitist belief that there are some people out there (whisper it: working-class lads) who cannot distinguish right from wrong and therefore must have their eyes and ears protected from poisonous words.

Now, here, O’Neill is wrong on several counts–and he can’t help it, seeing as he is a penis that is wider than it is long, infected with The Great Pox to the extent that he oozes unpleasant fluids. Topman is not a shop for working class people: its goods are far too expensive for that. Furthermore, those T-shirts are indicative of hipster irony, a subculture which once again is not associated with working class people. This analysis is completely off.

Capitalism could legitimately be brought into this discussion: ultimately, these T-shirts were pulled not because of feminist censorship, but because of good old-fashioned brand damage. Topman didn’t want to lose customers, so they decided to pull the T-shirts, as they realised the products were somewhat controversial in the sort of way that could lose them a lot of money. Essentially, it was not the feminists who censored free speech. It was Topman making a decision in their corporate interests.

For what it’s worth, I want people to be free to wear this sort of T-shirt. It is a nice little at-a-glance indicator that the person wearing the T-shirt is an interminable cuntspanner. I would like them to do, as O’Neill suggests, a “blokestrut” wearing such T-shirts. One thing I would change? The name.

I think a “chodeweep” is much more fitting.