Who Let the Dogs Out?

Cry havoc! and let slip the dogs of war,

that this foul deed shall smell above the earth with carrion men, groaning for burial.

William Shakespeare

I have been pondering this matter for days now, since before Christmas. Small details permeated my conscience, building up a picture that I could not bear to look at.

A news item, celebrating the inexorable rise of IVF births, how ‘wonderful’ it was that so many children should be created in a laboratory, by implication far from contact with nasty, smelly, dangerous, men. TV adverts that show smart, capable women leading imbecilic men by the hand to conclusions that would be obvious to any child. A Guardian article reviewing Steve Biddulph’s new book ‘Raising Girls’, which dealt exclusively with the need for girls to have ‘Aunts’, even pretend Aunties, as a ‘second person’ in their lives in whom they could confide – an article which managed to exclude all mention of men; ironic considering that Biddulph is justly famous for his book ‘Raising boys’ which championed the importance of men in their upbringing. A horrified quote from a former head-teacher that ’30 years ago it was considered ‘normal’ to involve parents in school outings, or for a child to see his head teacher alone in a room with a shut door – quelle horreur! Naturally they wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing today…Another newspaper report detailing how aggressively the rape laws are construed today. A newspaper report today, claiming that ‘One in Twenty women have been raped’ – the demonisation of men is almost complete. Surely the publication of the Yewtree report today, one of seven separate ’investigations’ – though I can scarcely credit an official record of ‘allegations’ as an ‘investigation’ – will complete the process.

Let me return to that report of a recent rape case. I have kept it open on my desktop for days waiting to see if any male blogger raised a query about it – not a word! It is not only the post Leveson media which is cowed these days…

I will paraphrase it for you. Two women, chatting on social media, as you do. One confides in the other that she fears her husband is having an affair – would her friend, whom she has never met in real life, be so kind as to pop round to her house and see if she can persuade her husband to have sex with her and thus prove his infidelity? Well of course, says the on-line friend, happy to oblige. And oblige she does. Obviously in some circles nipping round to a total stranger’s house to have sex with him is considered perfectly normal – indeed, enjoyable. She enjoys it so much that she returns several more times to ‘test his fidelity’. She even filmed the encounter and sent the tape to her on-line friend. Her on-line friend offered her money for this service, something she accepted, though the money failed to materialise. Now before you fall into the trap of assuming that I am saying that prostitutes don’t have the right to be protected by rape laws – I’m not. I’m merely making the point that this was a woman for whom sex held so little intrinsic meaning that she was prepared to repeatedly have sex with a total stranger and treat it as a commodity that could be paid for. For the benefit of the sisterhood, naturally.

However, the on-line friend was becoming greedy, and encouraged her to have ever more adventurous sexual encounters with her husband. Who did she turn to in her hour of need, on becoming alarmed by this turn of events? Why the husband of course, so good and amicable was her relationship with him by this time. He said he would ‘kill his ex-wife’ and in due course reported that he had done so. At which point our victim turns to another of the sisterhood. ‘Oh my’, she cries, ‘I’m responsible for the death of a woman…’. ‘Woe is me!’

Did I just say victim? Indeed I did. For the sisterhood carted her off to the local police station, and in due course they transferred her to the cosily lit and comfortable rape interviewing suite. Rape? Ms Raccoon – did you say rape? Oh, I did. For the husband has just been given seven years in jail for rape and placed on the sex offenders list for life.

You see our victim, who was perfectly content to repeatedly sleep with a total stranger; was perfectly content to provide photographic evidence – presumably so the poor sap could be divorced and denuded of his life and children; perfectly content to take money for this service; and perfectly content to turn to him for protection when she felt threatened, was ‘utterly traumatised’ and ‘bravely came forward’ when she discovered that the husband and the ‘on-line wife’ were one and the same person…aye, he’d lied, tricked her even. Possibly verged on blackmail and coercion, but in these days where nothing less than a signed affidavit absolving the male of all consequences of having had sex is sufficient to prove informed consent – he was charged because he lied about himself and tricked her into bed and thus found guilty of rape.

It is not a demonisation of all men. Gay men apparently have nothing to fear – perhaps the sisterhood has decided that they are not real men and so can be tolerated. They are to be encouraged to marry and raise families. Asian men are merely doing what comes naturally to their culture – and thus with 600 complaints of sexual abuse in the Rochdale area, there is not one single prosecution. Curiously the extensive ‘Yewtree trawl’ has not netted widely publicised allegations against prominent Labour supporters, though I know from experience that the solidly Labour voting heartlands of the Rhondda valley are full of paedophiles – I used to visit their victims on a regular and depressing basis. It would seem, from reading the media, that paedophilia is something that only occurs to men who have achieved fame and good fortune whilst being on the right of politics.

The language used is that of the cold war era – paedophiles ‘infiltrate’, they operate in ‘rings’; those, such as I, who pour cold water on some of the more fanciful allegations, are described as ‘dis-information agents’. It is as though the general public have a great need for a bogey man in their midst.  Currently it is white, middle class, Conservative voting, males.

There was one man who wrote extensively on this need for a ‘moral panic’. 30 years ago. He wrote the definitive academic book. “Folk Devils and Moral Panic”. Stanley Cohen. Originally it was about the ‘mods and rockers’ phenomenon, but he had recently updated it for the 30th anniversary reprint – for it is still the standard text book on these matters – to include the moral panics generated around the ‘folk devils’ of today: ecstasy and designer drugs; the death of James Bulger; the ‘name and shame’ campaign against suspected paedophiles; and the vilification of ‘bogus’ asylum seekers. Sadly, when I went to look it up, I discovered that he died last Monday, apparently unmourned by the feministas at the Guardian. If they have printed an obituary, I admit I have failed to find it.

That could be because Stanley strayed from the moral code of social workers, by counselling against the idea of turning all events into a crisis, and creating a nation of dependent victims. Women, who through 30 years of feminism have been taught that they are eternal victims, who can only be protected by the State and more laws, more regulation. Any suggestion that they might have any part to play in the small matter of how they ended up in bed with a nasty man, or giving him a blow job five minutes after they met him, is met with a chorus of ‘victim blaming’.

‘Cry Havoc’ was originally a military rallying call to the victorious troops to collect the spoils of war, to plunder the treasures of the defeated. In a few minutes I expect to start wading through the ‘Yew-tree’ report, which I confidently expect to be a rallying call for the massed armies of lawyers out there to start plundering the tax payers for £13,000 a piece to sooth the ruffled feathers of those whose allegations of how they were ‘groomed’ – in five minutes flat! – to become a victim of a celebrity, 40 years ago.

It really matters not one jot, the ultimate fate of those who have been charged under the ‘Savile investigation ‘others’ tag – they will be forever tarred as associates of ‘the most prolific paedophile’ the media have ever gorged upon. When, hopefully, they are found not guilty, it will receive as little publicity as has the writing of Darren Laverty, or the other ‘non-victim’  who wrote to me the other night to tell me of the numerous attempts she had made to interest the media in the story of how as a child she had known Savile well, and spent many hours alone with him in Leeds – only to be unmolested by him, to this day…no takers. Not one media outlet interested in printing the story. The truth is being sadly suppressed.

Who let the dogs out? The Feminists. They win. If I was the Mother of a white middle class teenage son in Britain today, I would move heaven and earth to see him emigrate - just about anywhere.

Tagged as: #Fairbank, #Yewtree, Child Abuse, Paedophilia, Savile

Ms Raccoon lives in the Monbazillac area of South West France, renowned for its fine wines and gourmet food, so she frequently finds better things to do than sit in front of a computer all morning. She is liable to take off traveling at a moment's notice. Consequently this blog only gets updated these days when it is raining - and it doesn't rain very often round here...