Who would ever suspect that murderers would win any sort of popularity contest?
Some time ago, in one of my contrarian moods, I wrote a piece with the provocative title of "paedos are people too". This has now been noted and as a result I have recently been criticised for not disowning a mate of twenty years on realising he was convicted of rape, and for not going around beating the crap out of sex offenders in general. The point of that post was to highlight the truth that we are all more than the sum of our charge-sheet.
In my younger days, maybe I did. I know that I saw screws set some cons up to do their dirty work, pointing them towards a sex offender and turning a blind eye. Not unusually, the target was no such thing, only a poor sod who the screw hated.
As the years have passed and my appreciation of my own crime has evolved, the moral relativism between crimes has grown far more uncertain for me. I killed another human being. In what way is that better than raping someone? As a woman once suggested to me, what’s the difference between being stabbed with a knife or a penis?
As I perceive it, I'm not standing on solid enough ground to be pointing the finger at anyone. As a result, I take people as I find them. Some of my best mates committed stomach-churning crimes decades ago but today as they sit around and pass the time with me, they are decent enough blokes. If you met them in the street, you would doubtless find them to be equally pleasant. And as I've told any person who objects to the company I may keep, I talk to who I want to - you feel free not to.
Of course, I have to face the reality of people who have committed repulsive crimes. It is not possible to live with such people and continue to reduce them to stereotypes. I see people, not crimes. Those of you who have not knowingly met such a criminal can retain the ability to see only the crime, to choose to allow that to become a one-dimensional reality that is very easily despised.
This is also a matter of comprehension. I have written before about the incomprehensibility of finding kids to be sexually attractive; to most people, that just can't fit into their head, it is impossible to connect with. This may be why kiddie fiddlers are perceived to be the Other even by most prisoners.
And a note on hypocrisy...All too often I have seen sex offenders attacked. Almost always they are the weaker ones. I've seen big, muscular and capable rapists walk the landings with impunity. If you're going to hate nonces and attack them, I think it's a tiny bit feeble to just pick on the ones who won't fight back.
There was a criticism by an Anonymous to the effect that I should be attacking sex offenders right and left, who boasted that her brothers made tea for the IRA whilst in prison. Urm, in what moral universe is a rapist worse than a person who blows up civilians -including women and children?
There does appear to be a perpetual need to create structures, hierarchies, which conclude with some group being labelled the universal Other. Perhaps it is an innate and ahistorical human trait. But that doesn't make it any clearer in its conception and even less so in its comprehension.
I'11 condemn any person’s crime, quite cheerfully. But each of us is more than that and I will talk to who I damn well please.
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This is an interesting post, I have been thinking about it, and there is something that sits very uncomfortably with me from it.
ReplyDeleteIt is the bit about there being no difference between being stabbed by a knife or a penis.
I have heard about the most degrading and violent crimes where the perpetrator uses both. I know about the most terrible crimes where the motivation is simply hatred of women. Not personal but against women in general.
On this crimes against and violence towards women have to be understood and located in the nature of society, and not in human nature.
In some pre- class societies, like tribal or foraging societies, they do not even have a word for rape because it doesn't exist.
In an unequal society, where a minority of men and women rule over the masses it suits to divide and rule and have one group in slight superiority over another, this is the basis of violence against women. Where a man might feel frustrated with the world, he sees, momentarily or in a build up that the problem lies not with the person who actually makes his life difficult (the ruling minority, as they quite often hide behind desks or in big mansions away from everyone) but instead will take it out on women, being lower in the pecking order than men.
There are other factors which exacerbate the problem of violence against women, such as how all of our sexualities are distorted because of the dominance of market economics which sees the debasing of love and sex become a commodity to be bought and sold, and also stolen ...
There is so much more to say on the subject, but I will leave it there for now.
Ben, i hear what you are saying, but it is not as cut and dried as that. One of my best friends, whom i met in jail is a drug addict (currently in remission). She would sell her body, or a credit card, but never mug an old lady, but plenty addicts would, coz it is an easy option, when they need a fix. (couldn't be friends with the latter).
ReplyDeleteI wasn't in jail to be judge and jury on anyone, there for the grace of god and all that, but it wouldn't say much about my brains if i couldn't work out what sort of person someone was after a ten min conversation.
Being a woman ex con, most were in for drugs or other petty crime, benifit fraud and suchlike. About 10% in for murder. There is a world of difference between someone like say, Peter Sucliff, and some woman, who snapped and killed her husband after years of abuse. I am still in touch with Murderers now.
Never met a rapist, but rape is about power, not sex, after all a man can pay a hooker. So something would tell me i couldn't be friends with a rapist, or paedophile, can't think why i would want to be, we would have nothing in common..... Like Sophie says.... so much to say, but i'll leave it there.
I find it irrational for government funded quangos, to go around schools so as to teach girls to recognise 'rape'.
ReplyDeleteIt's as though Marxist-Feminists need to invent crimes in order to justify their misandry.
It was in Inside Time sometime in 2007 wasn't it? I remember reading it and wondering where your numbers came from. Nearly wrote to you to find the source.
ReplyDeleteDon't suppose you have it now do you?
I couldn't be friends with a rapist either for self preserving reasons!
ReplyDeleteAs for pedophiles, they mostly operate in strict secrecy, circles full of lies, abuse, deceit etc.
They might put on a seemingly flawless air of respectability, so as to keep all suspicions away from their door. Given this way of life, more often membership of the circle happens through blood lines and close proximity rather than free association.
I still believe there should be help given to pedophiles, their victims and families to help break the circles etc, and I don't agree with the pogroms and witch hunting. They are easy scapegoats.
The problem must be located in the society we live in; sexism, inequality, sexual degradation, powerlessness and so on.
Sophie, Ben is talking about Rapists and paedophiles etc he spends time in jail with. In my experience, birds of a feather flock together, and they tend to form their own groups. I choose to spend time with the old school type of con, the younger "jeremy kyle" types have nothing interesting to say. And if it were mixing with that lot, i'd rather sit in my cell on my own and read a book. Just people pair off, or form little groups, it's just the way it is.
ReplyDeleteKilling another human being is indeed worse than raping them. But it doesn’t follow that people who sympathise with Ben will conclude that logically they must therefore also sympathise with a rapist.
ReplyDeleteI think it’s important to remember that a lot of the instinctive sympathy Ben gets through his blog is likely to arise not from people believing that even murderers deserve a second chance but rather from the fact that Ben was only 14 when he committed his crime.
Now, if Ben’s friend was only 14 when he committed rape, people might be less willing to condemn him outright and forever and more willing to consider his upbringing and the shortcomings of society.
But if he was 24, 34 or 44 when he raped a woman, his sentence may be wiped clean when he leaves prison (assuming he was caught and convicted) but he doesn’t then start over again with a clean sheet morally. I’m entirely happy to accept that an adult rapist shouldn’t be executed or castrated or imprisoned for life. That’s a recognition that, whatever his crime, he’s a fellow human being and not a statistic. No man is an island. But there’s a world of difference between accepting that and accepting that he’s a jolly good chap at heart if only we took to trouble to get to know him.
I think that Ben writes too simplistically about this issue of his friend being a rapist. And I hope that that isn’t deliberate in order to make an easy point. Far more interesting than learning whether this caused Ben to disown his friend would be to learn if and how it changed Ben’s opinion of his friend and his attitude to him. If, instead of saying that he refused to disown his friend, Ben had said that he thought no less of him and that it didn’t change his opinion of him, we might not be so sympathetic.
I’m all for the idea that society should understand a little more and condemn a little less. But I also think that one doesn't have to be a member of the Daily Mail's hanging and flogging brigade to believe that that should stop somewhere short of the perpetrators of “stomach churning crimes”.
If someone has committed a “stomach churning crime”, and by that I assume that we’re going beyond the simple act of killing or assault, then the fact that he may be good company in prison, not cheat at cards or steal does not make him a “decent enough bloke”.
Or, if it does, I’d want to ask “decent enough for what?”
Killing another human being is indeed worse than raping them. But it doesn’t follow that people who sympathise with Ben will conclude that logically they must therefore also sympathise with a rapist.
ReplyDeleteI think it’s important to remember that a lot of the instinctive sympathy Ben gets through his blog is likely to arise not from people believing that even murderers deserve a second chance but rather from the fact that Ben was only 14 when he committed his crime.
Now, if Ben’s friend was only 14 when he committed rape, people might be less willing to condemn him outright and forever and more willing to consider his upbringing and the shortcomings of society. But if he was 24, 34 or 44 when he raped a woman, his sentence may be wiped clean when he leaves prison (assuming he was caught and convicted) but he doesn’t then start over again with a clean sheet morally. I’m entirely willing to accept that an adult rapist shouldn’t be executed or castrated or imprisoned for life. That’s a recognition that, whatever his crime, he’s a fellow human being and not a statistic. No man is an island. But there’s a world of difference between accepting that and accepting that he’s a jolly good chap at heart if only we took to trouble to get to know him.
....
(contd.)
ReplyDeleteI think that Ben writes too simplistically about this issue of his friend being a rapist. After all, standing by a friend you discover to be imperfect has the suggestion of bravery and loyalty. Far more interesting than learning whether this caused Ben to disown his friend would be to learn if and how it changed Ben’s opinion of his friend and his attitude to him. If, instead of saying that he refused to disown his friend, Ben had said that he thought no less of him and that it didn’t change his opinion of him, we might not be so sympathetic.
I’m all for the idea that society should understand a little more and condemn a little less but I also think that one doesn’t have to be a member of the the hanging and flogging brigade to believe that that stops somewhere short of the perpetrators of “stomach churning crimes”. The fact that any society’s morality is flawed does not mean than that society cannot have moral boundaries and indeed moral absolutes. If someone commits a “stomach churning crime”, and by that I assume that we’re going beyond the simple act of killing or assault, then the fact that he may be good company, not cheat at cards or steal when he’s in prison does not make him a “decent enough bloke”. Or, if it does, I’d want to ask “decent enough for what?”
Love the sinner, hate the sin, and no - I'm not a Christian. The words of the present Archbishop of Canterbury I think (and probably others) and a cracking philosophy. Ben, you're welcome for dinner and so is your mate.
ReplyDeleteA penis can give you an STI, or worse, a pregnancy. At least a knife can't.
ReplyDeleteYou'd happily invite a rapist for dinner? I think it's safe to conclude that you're a man.
ReplyDeleteHad Ben been a woman, would he have been so laid back at finding that his friend was a rapist? I suppose that "no man is an island" only goes so far for Ben too.