Earlier today I caught the first episode in the second series of The Grand Tour, on Amazon Prime, where you can watch The Red Pill at no additional cost.

You may recall that the BBC sacked Jeremy Clarkson on flimsy grounds, after which he moved to Amazon along with his sidekicks James May and Richard Hammond, the programme being titled The Grand Tour. In the first episode of the second series, the storyline is that Hammond has booked the three of them into a Swiss “health hotel”, in which they cannot order alcoholic beverages. Cue dinner at a table outside the hotel, the three of them facing plates of only salad leaves. After some moaning, Clarkson delivers this:

You know who eats this stuff, don’t you? Women!

Somehow I can’t see that having made it past the BBC feminazi censors…

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Our thanks to Frank for this piece in The Guardian. An extract:

Zeinab Ali, head of education in Malak’s home state of El Gezira, said clubs aim to empower girls “to have strong opinions in front of their mothers and grandmothers”, who usually make the decisions to have their daughters and granddaughters cut.

This is a departure from the usual Guardian line that men are responsible for FGM.

Three years ago we posted a link to a video by 5hadowfax, WHO/UNAIDS are mutilating the genitals of 20 million Sub-Saharan males (video, 11:24). There are links to four pieces on MGM by William Collins in the video description box.

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We’ve just published this (audio, 14:55).

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An insightful new piece by Jules Gomes, “The Rebel Priest”. His speech at ICMI18 was well received, and it’s here (video, 47:47). Ewan Jones’s interview of him during the conference is here (video, 28:44). He interviewed him at length last month, here (video, 1:47:32).

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Just received from Bettina:

Help the Australian government stand firm against the fake rape crisis activists.

Campus activists are grinding their teeth because my campus tour seems to have derailed a ludicrous taskforce aimed at bullying universities into further action on the manufactured rape crisis. The ultimate goal of this taskforce will be to persuade universities to get involved in adjudicating date rape cases – as has happened in the US with disastrous consequences for many young men and for the universities. See the campus tour page of my website for articles where I explain all this.

Please help me persuade Education Minister Tehan to permanently shelve this idea. His email is dan.tehan@aph.gov.au. Or lobby your own MP to make sure the government understands the risks for the universities of heading further down this path. And circulate this post as widely as possible.

See the report from the Sydney Morning Herald below.

Education Minister shelves sexual assault taskforce for universities

By Michael Koziol

22 November 2018

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/we-were-so-close-education-minister-shelves-sexual-assault-taskforce-for-universities-20181122-p50hke.html?fbclid=IwAR1Cxnq9WP-rRQ0jRp8cinftadphJ75qJqehtR-ByBGfDeELhtqCNCQFBXc

Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan has shelved a planned taskforce that would scrutinise university responses to sexual assault and harassment on campus.

Correspondence seen by Fairfax Media reveals the previous minister, Simon Birmingham, was “so close” to announcing the taskforce before the coup against Malcolm Turnbull and the subsequent cabinet reshuffle.

Education Minister Dan Tehan says he will wait for a review before deciding whether to proceed with the taskforce.

Activists had pushed for the new body as a way to hold universities accountable following reports of ongoing sexual assault, harassment and humiliating hazing rituals at residential colleges.

Mr Tehan has not dumped the idea entirely but says he will wait for a report from the regulator – the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency – before deciding whether to proceed.

Sharna Bremner, founding director of End Rape on Campus, said she had been “discussing dates” with the government to announce the taskforce before the leadership change in August.

“It’s really disappointing that it feels like the federal government has effectively walked away from this issue,” she said.

“We’re incredibly concerned for the new intake of students who will be stuck in the same position that students have been stuck in for the last 50 years.”

Email shown to Fairfax Media show Senator Birmingham had prepared a terms of reference and selected members for the taskforce.

In an email titled “Plus ca change…” sent on September 14, Senator Birmingham’s then higher education adviser Darren Brown told advocates: “We were so close …  I have briefed the office, including Minister Tehan’s [chief of staff], on where things were up to before recent developments and have passed on relevant documentation including the [terms of reference] and proposed composition of the taskforce.”

Advocates met with Mr Tehan’s advisers a few days later but were left disappointed, and said the minister has not responded to their subsequent inquiries.

Mr Tehan has instead prioritised an inquiry into freedom of speech at universities, tasking former High Court chief justice Robert French to conduct a review of policies to uphold free expression.

The inquiry was largely triggered by an incident at the University of Sydney in September when author Bettina Arndt – a vocal critic of what she calls the “myth” of a rape crisis on campus – clashed with left-wing activists protesting her appearance at a student-run event.

Mr Tehan rang Arndt after the incident and expressed sympathy with her plight. Ms Bremner said it was “incredibly disappointing that the minister would act so quickly on something like freedom of speech on campus but would walk away from students who are being raped on campus.”

Mr Tehan did not respond to individual questions but told Fairfax Media: “TEQSA are reviewing higher education provider responses to incidents of sexual assault and sexual harassment. I will make a decision about a taskforce once I have received TEQSA’s review.”

TEQSA is expected to hand the report to Mr Tehan by the end of the year or early next year, but it will be up to the minister whether it is released.

Other government sources suggested advocates had undermined their own cause by failing to agree on issues such as the composition of the taskforce during negotiations with the previous minister.

Senator Birmingham declined to comment.

Universities have pursued their own responses to sexual assault and harassment within their walls, but have also distanced themselves from colleges, which are run semi-independently.

St Paul’s College at the University of Sydney, for example, is governed by its own act of parliament. Earlier this year its new head Don Markwell apologised for past misconduct and declared a “new era” of equality and respect for women. The NSW government also passed new governance measures for the college this month.

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Our thanks to Sean for this (audio, 1:44:46).

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Our thanks to Barbara, an American supporter, for this.

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A remarkable development.

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Feminism is many things – and intrasexual competition is one of them. “Women’s rights groups” filed a lawsuit against the OTRAS sex workers union and the Madrid court found that “recognition of the group amounted to making the exploitation of prostitutes legal”.

Original article in The New York Times.

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Our thanks to Nick for this piece in The Spectator by Matthew Scott, a criminal barrister:

Juries, and the right to a fair trial, are under threat from the left. The latest attack came from Ann Coffey, the Labour MP for Stockport, who believes that we should consider abolishing juries in rape cases. A few months ago, the tax barrister Jolyon Maugham QC – no friend of the current Labour leadership, but something of a weather vane for more moderate left-wing thinking – floated the same idea. [J4MB: A tax barrister, eh? That must give him insights into sexual offences. We hope he’ll be the subject of a false rape allegation one day, then we’ll see what he thinks of juries in rape cases.]

Coffey’s argument is that ‘juries view evidence through the lens of prevailing stereotypes shared with the wider community.’ As a result, she says, ‘the most common cause of unsuccessful prosecutions in rape prosecutions is jury acquittal’. Her suggestions to resolve this include the idea that jurors in rape cases should be ‘vetted for preconceived bias.’ Another is that they should be abolished altogether in rape cases.

It is now almost an article of faith among some that whenever anyone is acquitted of a sexual offence, is is these prevailing stereotypes and ‘rape myths’ which are to blame. Coffey, dutifully trotted some of them out:

• A woman who has drunk a lot cannot complain if she is raped,
• It is rape only if someone has injuries,
• Real rapes are done by strangers in alleyways,
• Rape is a crime of passion
• Women invite rape by what they wear.

‘Defence lawyers,’ says Coffey ‘play up (such) myths in an attempt to rubbish the character of the witness.’

Yet if there was a ‘rape myth’ it is that these stereotypes are routinely employed in a court of law. Defence lawyers are not allowed to simply ‘rubbish the character of the witness.’ Specific and relevant instances of ‘reprehensible behaviour’ can sometimes – with the permission of the judge – be put to witnesses, but if advocates attempt to ‘rubbish’ anyone’s character, then one of at least three things will almost certainly happen:

1. They will be stopped from doing so – probably very sharply – by the judge.
2. Their own client’s bad character will become fair game for the prosecution.
3. The jury will turn against them: jurors tend to hate bullying advocates, a fact drummed into young barristers throughout their training.

Another criticism Coffey has is that ‘it is challenging for juries to judge whether the defendant had a reasonable belief that consent was given, especially when drink was involved. That is where myths and stereotypes kick in.’

Of course this is a challenging question to ask. But enquiring about what a complainant was drinking immediately before an alleged rape is often entirely proper. Someone who is insensible cannot lawfully consent; but someone who is simply drunk may be less inhibited and thus more willing to consent to sex than they would be if they were sober. Where consent (or, for that matter, memory) is in issue, asking questions about a complainant’s intoxication is not exploiting a rape myth, it may well be an essential professional duty. Curiously enough, no-one ever objects when the prosecutor puts it to a defendant that he might have acted out of character because of his intoxication.

Some other ‘rape myths’ are straw men: surely only a very few people believe that the absence of injuries necessarily indicates consent, or that ‘real rapes’ only happen in dark alleys?

Of course, any jury is likely to contain a mixture of those inclined to believe complainants and those more inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to defendants. Jury vetting intended to weed out the latter in order to leave the former – that is people with prejudices like Coffey’s – would no doubt increase conviction rates, although it would do so by the conscious creation of biased juries. That is something that even the currently supine guardians of human rights in Strasbourg might consider rather unfair.

And though Coffey may not like to admit it, I am afraid she does have prejudices. She claims – indeed it is a pretty important part of her argument – that ‘the CPS asserted in 2012 that only three per cent of the 1,149 cases heard may have been malicious.’ The implication of her argument seems to be that 97 per cent of rape ‘cases heard’ are genuine. But in fact the research to which she refers (which was conducted in 2008 and 2009) did not relate to 1,149 rape cases heard in court; it was a far more general study about attrition in the criminal justice system. Only 299 of the cases in the survey were rapes, and 558 were non-sexual allegations (GBH). The study looked at the many different reasons why allegations (both sexual and non-sexual) do not result in either an arrest, a charge or a conviction. The ‘three per cent malicious’ estimate is simply the lowest among many estimates of a figure that is itself unknowable, and which the research was not investigating anyway. Even as an attempt at cherry-picking Coffey’s use of it is pretty abysmal.

Misleading statistics, often based on misunderstood or misquoted surveys are the stock in trade of those who want to undermine the jury system. Unless robustly called out – a tiring and time-consuming business – they become rape myths at least as pernicious as any other. Once you swallow the prejudice that there is a only a three per cent chance that a rape defendant is innocent, you have already reversed the burden of proof. The purpose of a rape trial then becomes not to decide guilt or innocence, but simply to process the guilty 97 per cent, with perhaps a rare exception when a defendant is able to prove his innocence beyond the reasonable doubt of a deliberately biased tribunal.

A future Labour government may be very receptive to the abolition of juries in rape cases. It would be taken up by many on the left as a progressive measure to help rape victims. What’s more, because jury trials are more expensive than judge-only trials, it would be enthusiastically implemented by a civil service long inclined to seeing juries (and even legal representation itself) as a dispensable luxury. Once rape juries have gone, juries in all other cases will not be far behind.

You can subscribe to The Spectator here.

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