View Full Version : press insensitivity
*lisa simpson*
03-06-2004, 19:00
hmm maybe i'm being a bit *too* sensitive here but...
there was a story in today's papers about a guy being banned from all nhs places under anti soc behavious act, for having a fetish for masks and lying his way into op theatres to get at them.
now don't get me wrong i think someone abusing the nhs like that does deserve punishment BUT the sun had a headline and article calling him a freak, weirdo, nutter etc... now i know that a lot of people do think that, hell i thought he was just a bit weird, but - and this is my question - is it right for the press to call people things like this in papers, when it's read by everyone? i'm not a big one for political correctness, but i thought that was a bit harsh...
read a bit more into the story, he violently assaulted doctors and nurses at many institutions. the steps taken by the bmc were the last to be taken. maybe the sun is trying to show the ridiculous nature of the sun by humilating him. who reads comics anywya? they tend to have huddersfield town covers round here, theres a joke fer ya :P
wheresmejumper
03-06-2004, 19:10
hmm maybe i'm being a bit *too* sensitive here but...
there was a story in today's papers about a guy being banned from all nhs places under anti soc behavious act, for having a fetish for masks and lying his way into op theatres to get at them.
now don't get me wrong i think someone abusing the nhs like that does deserve punishment BUT the sun had a headline and article calling him a freak, weirdo, nutter etc... now i know that a lot of people do think that, hell i thought he was just a bit weird, but - and this is my question - is it right for the press to call people things like this in papers, when it's read by everyone? i'm not a big one for political correctness, but i thought that was a bit harsh...
Yeah I agree he may have been all these things but I hate the way the press try and sensationalise these stories to whip up hatred and bad feeling.
Have they never heard of forgiveness or turning the other cheek?? :rolleyes:
*lisa simpson*
03-06-2004, 19:14
read a bit more into the story, he violently assaulted doctors and nurses at many institutions. the steps taken by the bmc were the last to be taken. maybe the sun is trying to show the ridiculous nature of the sun by humilating him. who reads comics anywya? they tend to have huddersfield town covers round here, theres a joke fer ya :P
like i said, i realise he IS a freak, i agree he needs to be punished, i just DON'T agree with the press taking the liberty of calling him what are effectively names, it's playground stuff. i mean i was a fucking nutter when i was in hosp last year and i realise now that it was for the best, it doesn't mean people have the right to publicly call me a freak
like i said, i realise he IS a freak, i agree he needs to be punished, i just DON'T agree with the press taking the liberty of calling him what are effectively names, it's playground stuff. i mean i was a fucking nutter when i was in hosp last year and i realise now that it was for the best, it doesn't mean people have the right to publicly call me a freak
it's a tabloid take it with a pinch of salt, they have been derogtary about the public for years. as i said , comics. Just because you read it doesnt make it real :P
*lisa simpson*
04-06-2004, 21:53
it's a tabloid take it with a pinch of salt, they have been derogtary about the public for years. as i said , comics. Just because you read it doesnt make it real :P
i know, and i do realise that BUT (being serious for 5 seconds): i do think a lot of people do take it as real, minus the salt, and that spreads very very bad attitudes...
no one takes the sun seriously surely? if they do they are muppets!
Crikey out of all the things to get offended about from the tabloids, this strikes me as an odd one... I mean yes it's another borderline insensitive headline, but you can pick something like that out any day.
I *do*, for political reasons, object to the labelling of sexual offenders as 'monsters' and so forth. NOT because I give a shit about them, but because it ignores the fact that all sexual offenders ARE normal people. Sexual offenders, like the rest of us, have jobs, a good level of mental health, families, a circle of friends, and so on. On the whole they aren't very different to the rest of us.
If we don't accept this basic fact - that the people who sexually offend are (other than those monstrous actions) ordinary, normal products of our ordinary, normal society - we never get to the point of facing up to what is wrong with this society. By saying they are aberrant, monsters, screwed-up, etc, we create a black-and-white definition of what is a sexual offence and do not acknowledge that sex harassment occurs on a sliding scale whose slimmest end lies in our culture of objectification and its accompanying dismissal of women's rights over their bodies.
It also means we don't address what it is about our society and that individual's choices, that made the offence happen. I don't attempt to take the blame away from the individual, because I think saying he (and it is usually he) is 'screwed-up' or 'monstrous' is too much like an insanity defence - if anything I lay the blame on his ordinary individuality rather than construction of fucked-upness. But I do mean to implicate a society that has an enormously strong culture of the consumption of women's bodies.
Calling him a 'monster' is, in short, the Sun's way of distancing its own constant regime of sexism and objectification from the milieu of sexual criminality. Because we all know the Sun is the bastion of happy family values, don't we?
*lisa simpson*
05-06-2004, 14:01
i agree with that pretty much. did you see capturing the friedmans? i didn't (damn!) but a lot of people said that if they did do the crimes, it showed just how average they were and hard to spot. it's good to have films that do that, because the tabloids (press in general i suppose) do make people out as freaks who have 'rapist' tattooed on their head or something so we can spot them easily. unfortunately a lot of people DO take them seriously. far too many people.
what i disagree with though is the liberal types who say that they need medical stuff/treatment rather than punishment - obviously there are some people who do that kind of thing due to mental blockages, there are people who are genuinely ill etc, but as P said, most of them are normal people and punishment has to be the answer - people have to stop being able to get away with murder (rape/whatever) by claiming insanity when they are blatantly fine, because some types insist on medically labelling every little quirk of humanity.
No but I think capturing the Friedmans sounds like a very good film for that reason. For such a moralistic person I have a real thing for films which upset or question the ordinary moral balance of a story! but that's something else...
I'm massively suspicious of medicalisation just because of its implication in power over bodies (women in 19th C for example...). I DO think that a lot of abusers don't have it 'in' them, you know, not like there's a gene for abusiveness - that factors in their lives on all scales, create their actions.
But I tend to agree with you just in that rehabilitation of sexual offenders is so damn impossible. Years and years. And even if you do manage to rehabilitate an offender, you go and plonk them back into our culture, where we trade enormously on the consumption and surveillance of women's bodies, with and without the individual woman's permission. It's like taking a fish out of a dirty tank, cleaning it up, and then putting it into a sewage tank and saying 'don't be dirty now'. Ok that's an exaggeration but you get the analogy. I think we can only rehabilitate sexual offenders when our own society is blameless.
*lisa simpson*
05-06-2004, 14:58
I'm massively suspicious of medicalisation just because of its implication in power over bodies (women in 19th C for example...).
out of interest, have you read Caroline Merchant 'dominion over nature'? she goes on about how the scientfic revolution was basically a tool to stamp down feminism/women's rights because nature was to be controlled by science and was referred to as feminine whereas most scientists were male. her main culprit is Francis Bacon (the 17th cent guy, not the artist...). it's interesting but a bit too feminist for me i'm afraid.... ooh look i really did take some of my course in :)
if you do manage to rehabilitate an offender, you go and plonk them back into our culture, where we trade enormously on the consumption and surveillance of women's bodies, with and without the individual woman's permission. .
not to mention that most kids' clothes these days look like something from More! magazine. when we were little we hung round in dungarees, baggy t shirts and stuff, i see kids of like 8 going round in cropped tops and miniskirts. no wonder people get off on it. (and no i don't condone it just state that it's no real surprise if we dress our lamb like mutton)
not to mention that most kids' clothes these days look like something from More! magazine. when we were little we hung round in dungarees, baggy t shirts and stuff, i see kids of like 8 going round in cropped tops and miniskirts. no wonder people get off on it. (and no i don't condone it just state that it's no real surprise if we dress our lamb like mutton)
In my day we didn't have clothes...
*lisa simpson*
07-06-2004, 10:13
^^^
let me guess, in your yoof you were a subsistence peasant living on a holding owned by a vicious feudal landowner, who took much of your produce for his own gain, thereby giving you only just enough subsistence produce to live, and he took your by-products such as wool to sell at inflated prices, thereby forcing you into nakedness, and then he had the nerve to tax you for it - am i right?
:p
Actually no. I just liked running around in the nuddie.
Anyway when I were a lad it were before them days o' feudalism. I used to 'ave me own shoes an' ev'rything. AND a cloak. With a silver fastening.
And my landlord used to drink my by-products. Aye, he were a strange one...
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