Our thanks to Alan for this:

Mike,

I’m getting increasingly annoyed by a series of commentators stating that the missing person inquiry by Lancashire police demonstrated misogyny. The worst is perhaps predictably from Charlotte Proudman Barrister says ‘victim blaming’ has plagued Nicola Bulley case – LBC. However its a common theme with a leader from the independent amongst countless other articles claiming it demonstrates misogyny.

Its amazing when you think of the  massive resources that have been devoted to finding a missing person with an alcohol problem when there is absolutely no evidence of foul play or a risk to the public. If she’d been a man there would have been no national attention, a search limited in resources and time and a story in the local press that described him as an alcoholic who was presumed to have fallen in the river. The contrast is stark and not in a direction that can be reasonably characterised as misogynistic.

Ms Proudman as you might expect manages to turn it into a story of everyday male violence and oppression:

The barrister went on to say: “What on earth is wrong with the state of humanity? I don’t think a man would be treated in this way and that’s because we often tend to see, when a woman experiences violence by men or a woman, in this case, has gone missing… is that you tend to find they end up being blamed for the situation that they’re in.”

She’s at least right when she says, “I don’t think a man would be treated in this way”. The search for the man would be abandoned after no more than a week with no national attention at all.

I do think the police were wrong to reveal the HRT details but I strongly suspect that the motive to do so was a misguided attempt to protect the missing women’s reputation excusing and explaining the alcohol problem rather than any desire to traduce her. [J4MB: We understand one of the reasons for the police revealing the alcohol issue was that people who were aware of the issue were trying to sell their stories to the media, so the police pre-empted them.]

It must be infuriating having made such a massive effort to find the woman only to be accused of misogyny.

The major criticism of the police for me is that they’ve spent a wholly disproportionate amount of time and effort on this case, wasting limited resources when there’s very little to be gained.

Alan

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