Gender Politics / Rape Culture: The Unbearable Silencing of Willie Jackson and John Tamihere.

When she told her French friends about [why she would not attend a street protest against the communists], they were amazed. "You mean you don't want to fight the occupation of your country?" She would have liked to tell them that behind Communism, Fascism, behind all occupations and invasions lurks a more basic, pervasive evil and that the image of that evil was a parade of people marching by with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison. But she knew she would never be able to make them understand.

Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

I’ve run the full gamut of gender politics this month, albeit without contradiction. From my blog piece against that brand of radshitzy neo-Marxist feminism suggesting the ludicrous notion that women should not be prosecuted for making false rape complaints, to adding my voice against a rape culture that has been driven painfully, finally, into our consciousness’s by the rapists calling themselves Roast Busters. My position on that is unequivocal:

… sex without consent is rape: it doesn't matter what a woman, or worse, a girl, wears, or if she is intoxicated. In a civilised, free society a woman can expect by right to not fear rape no matter her state. Just as men can expect to be victim of no violence.

But equivocation has beset me with the silencing of Willie Jackson and John Tamihere’s radio show. I don’t listen to Willie and JT’s show; their Left politick is anathema to me. I haven’t listened to their interview with Amy, in which their attitude was apparently supporting rape culture, making me most probably as uninformed in this piece as the Commissioner of Police was when he allowed himself to be interviewed on Campbell Live. But I have this inbuilt freedom loving radar that responds to individualism, and recoils from mob group think.

Nothing surrounding the silencing of these two men breaches Libertarian philosophy in any way. Blogger Giovanni Tiso started a campaign of putting pressure on their show’s advertisers, and those advertisers submitted to it, pulling their paid time. There was no government coercion involved: every action has been voluntary … that’s the correct way to bring about change. Good on Tiso.

My trouble is, as Lindsay Mitchell aptly put it:

But it's still a disturbing example of the repercussions of thinking the 'wrong stuff' out loud.

Yes. That. On the surface, everything is right here. Real strides are being made to turn back the insidious rape culture destroying our society. And yet … and yet, in my mind there ‘lurks a more basic, pervasive evil and that the image of that evil was a parade of people marching by with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison.’ But I know I will never be able to make the radshitzy clique understand. Nor even the centre anymore.

On other hand, no matter how much I disagree with a commentator, it gives me a queasy feeling seeing voices silenced by a mob #justsaying
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) November 11, 2013

Mindful that the mob believes, seriously believes, despite the lessons of history, that it owns my income, that I should not drink so much, I should not smoke, nor ensconce a high sugar-content jam. That I am owned, in other words, by them.

Individuals: we’re complicated. But long live the individual. The silencing of Willie and JT doesn't fit right with me. While there must be admonition, there must also be room for grace, learning, changing, and carrying on. What was ever solved by forcing voices into the void?

Update 1:

Below is simply a comment I’ve put up below in answer to a questioning of my approach. I reprint below simply because it explicates in some important ways, my position above. (Not in any way to ‘get at’ commenter Katie who I am delighted is, for now at least, reading my blog).

Albeit short, my piece had the nuance of Kundera's quotation, yet you've read it in a straight line, Katie.

Nowhere in my post do I admit the ultimate result was wrong, necessarily, just that it did not 'sit right with me': and because I understand the evil of the mob baying for blood, over an individualistic sensibility, it still does not fit right with me.

I vested myself mainly in the last two paragraphs, but some random points that are important to me:

A man I have been following for a long time on Twitter, a very technical, reasoned man, who's opinion I have grown a lot of respect for, has said of the interview - which I no longer have a concern to listen to - quote:

" I did listen to Amy's interview and it could easily be mostly (&properly) playing devil’s advocate to elicit all her views."

I suspect I would take that point of view over a mob that starts out bent on change, then converts to bent on retribution (that ugly thing).

Giovanni Tiso has tweeted of at least one advertiser who is angry with what has happened. That advertiser was quite willing to accept Willie and JT's apology and continue on advertising, and became quite infuriated after saying so, and themselves coming into the mob's anger fuelled frame. That was their right to accept the apology.

Back to my own stance, if I had my livelihood taken from me every time I made a mistake I'd be broke: we all would. I, too, would have been happy - if I listened to their show - with a personal apology, and thus changed behaviour. We learn from our mistakes, change, move on. Giovanni's campaign turned from light to dark, when it became a campaign not to show the presenters' they were necessarily wrong, but to seek retribution by taking their livelihoods from them.

That's my opinion, that's what would have sat right with me. But I said quite plainly that what did happen breached none of the libertarian principles I hold. Good on Tiso.

Regarding my last two paragraphs, don't ever confuse morality or the truth of an issue or fact, with having the numbers: when Galileo's lone voice stated the Earth moved around the Sun, the Catholic Church tried him for heresy: the opinion of the numbers didn't change the truth of Galileo though. So with many moral issues. That Kundera quotation is one of the wisest writings in our modern literature, informed as it is by an underlying humanity born of reasoned observation.

I hate a mob in almost every instance. It's a sensibility that is part of me. I hated being forced to play team sports at school, I keep pretty much my own company, I don’t go on street protests even for issues I care for greatly. Because the mob can so easily turn against you. And especially as this particular mob also thinks they own my income and can tell me how to live my life regardless I harm no one. That is unfortunately the fundamental basis on which our democracy is constructed, a tyranny of the majority, in the ugly face of which my single voice saying no, that is immoral, will always be the truth.

Here's an interesting question for you. Despite my vociferous condemnation of rape culture on my Roast Busters post, last year I wrote a post that defended the ability of a comedian, or person in certain circumstances, to make a rape joke (even if I would never do same). Here’s the post, does it make me guilty of the sins of Willie and JT? Am I to be run out of town by the mob also? Does it make me a misogynist? (An offensive accusation I am seeing tossed so flippantly around against anyone who puts themselves against the radshitzy cliques).