Author: Brian Carnell

Driving While Male and Minority

The Boston Globe published an extensive look at speeding tickets written in Massachusetts and came to a rather unsurprising conclusion — if you want to speed in that state (and likely most other states) it pays to be a young white woman.

Examining 166,000 tickets and warnings from every police department in Massachusetts over a two month period, the Globe found that tickets were biased against men and minorities.

For example, considering drivers pulled over for going 45 mph in a 30 mph zone. According to the Globe’s analysis, the odds of getting a ticket in such a situation are,

  • 28 percent for white women
  • 34 percent for white men
  • 44 percent for minority women
  • 52 percent for minority men

The Globe did note one important exception to this — Massachusetts State Police. In the Globe’s analysis, there was almost no disparity involved in race, sex, or age in the issuing of tickets.

The advantage that women had, not surprisingly, declined with age. For elderly women, for example, the percentage who received tickets was roughly the same as the percentage of elderly men who received tickets for speeding.

Source:

Race, sex, and age drive ticketing. Bill Dedman, Boston Globe, July 20, 2003.

UK’s The Spectator Sells Pyramid Schemes as Female Empowerment

A couple years ago this web site wrote about the pyramid schemes popular in Great Britain that target women using feminist jargon. But leave it to the idiots at UK newsmagazine The Spectator to run a cover story by Rachel Royce extolling the virtues of the so-called “Hearts” schemes.

It’s interesting to see how these cons change over time. Eighty years ago Charles Ponzi used people’s vanity and desire for money to separate them from their money. This being the 21st century, Royce falls instead for sisterhood rhetoric,

The scheme I’ve invested in is known as Hearts, and it’s for women only. It calls itself a ‘gifting scheme that benefits all women.’ Men aren’t allowed in because they’d ruin it with their incessant cynicism and greed. They aren’t supposed to know about it. That, in a way, is the point.

Of course. Why didn’t anyone ever see this before — the only reason pyramid schemes don’t typically work is because of all of those greedy males who are participating. Make it an all-feminine thing, and the laws of mathematics simply disappear.

This is particularly ironic given how Royce vacillates between calling her participation in this pyramid scheme an “investment” at times and a “gamble” at others. She is correct in calling it a gamble, but it is an odd sort of gamble. The way to make money in a pyramid scheme is to be one of the initial people involved. Those folks end up making money, but only by leaving those who enter later high and dry (since the pyramid scheme requires exponentially more gamblers as time goes by until it falls apart under its own weight).

So while Royce is complaining about male avarice, the reality is that if she sees any return on her gamble, it will be at the expense of dozens of women who themselves will not stand a snowball’s chance in hell of recouping their initial outlay. Sisterhood is powerful . . . and exploitative.

But Royce has the temerity to defend ripping off her friends as some sort of test of commitment to feminism,

Of course, I wonder about the morality of introducing my friends — and their friends — to something which might lose them money. The worry is that the original, upper-middle-class women will soon run out of rich friends and, under great pressure to bring in cash, start to recruit their cleaners. At this point, of course, investing becomes a much more dangerous proposition. But to disapprove of the scheme on these grounds is to suggest that women are incapable of understanding the risk and that, the poorer a woman is, the less choice she should have.

Rich or poor, however, these women are responsible for their own actions. That in a way is what this little scam is all about: allowing women the responsibility to make financial decisions and giving them the rather glorious feeling of naughty financial independence.

Why not just take the money into a corner, light it with a match, and watch it burn? You’d get the same effect.

Source:

Girls just want to have funds. Rachel Royce, The Spectator (UK), July 12, 2003.

Bizarre False Rape Claim

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on a bizarre false rape claim lodged by a woman apparently in an attempt to prevent a divorce that might have caused her to lose some of the family’s assets.

The Sydney Morning Herald can’t publish the woman’s name thanks to Australian law, but describes her as a “university lecturer” whose marriage to her classical musician husband was in trouble.

So the woman decided to concoct a heinous story,

The woman told police at the Caulfield station that her husband entered the house through a living room window on January 13, threw her to the ground and raped her in front of the children. She said he then pointed at their daughter and told her: “Next time it will be you.”

Except, as the man pointed out, the daughter was out shopping with friends at the time the alleged incident occurred. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, “police listening devices captured the woman rehearsing the rape story with her children, including mock court scenes where she cross-examined them.”

The woman plead guilty to attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Source:

Children coached in rape lie. Dan Silkstone, Sydney Morning Herald, July 11, 2003.

BBC to Women: Don’t Shoot at Drunk, High Men Who Break Into Your Homes

Nothing better illustrates the differing attitudes between the United States and the United Kingdom over home self-defense than an article by a BBC correspondent who took shooting classes in the United States.

Vanessa Collingridge’s resulting article, Women who ‘shoot to kill’, tries to make women the hook for a story about a Phoenix, Arizona,-based handgun training course. Collingridge writes of her fellow students in the class,

Most of the course participants are here to improve their gun skills — not for sport but their own protection.

Mosa Laren, a primary school teacher, raved to me how “empowered” she now felt.

Collingridge puts empowered in quotes, there, I suspect, because the BBC’s point here is to demonstrate that people who carry handguns for self-protection are not really empowered at all. But she chooses an odd case to get that message across — the justifiable homicide of 16-year-old Anthony Choate.

Collingridge writes,

There is widespread incredulity that someone has been jailed in Britain for defending themselves and their property – even if the end result was the death of an unarmed 16-year-old.

Recently, however, that mood was tempered in Salem, Oregon, where 16-year-old Anthony Choate was shot and killed after drunkenly wandering into a stranger’s garage.

Once inside, he lit a fire – something he often did in a stove at home.

Homeowner Linn Stordahl heard a noise and went to investigate. On opening the garage door, he found smoke and flames and shouted a warning to the shadowy figure beyond them.

Many Americans feel it is their right to defend their property
But when the figure came towards him, Stordahl pulled the trigger and fatally wounded him in the neck.

A Grand Jury later cleared Linn Stordahl of all charges, though Stordahl now faces intimidation from local teenagers – and perhaps the depths of his own conscience.

It’s a sobering tale to those who call for American-style gun laws in the UK.

It is bizarre enough that Collingridge describes the fire as if this was something to be expected and not out of the ordinary. Hey, this kid lit fires in the stove at home, why wouldn’t he light them in your garage? But, predictably for the BBC, Collingridge also leaves out a few details of this shooting.

For example, Collingridge forgets to tell her readers that when Stordahl entered the garage and saw the fire, he asked Choate what the young man was doing in the garage. Choate then began to walk toward Stordahl. Stordahl told Choate to stop, but Choate ignored the warning. Stordahl again warned Choate to stop and informed the young man that he had a gun, but Choate kept walking toward Stordahl. Only after these warnings went unheeded did Stordahl discharge his weapon, ultimately killing the 16-year-old.

For some reason Collingridge also forgets to mention that Choate’s autopsy found that the young man had a blood alcohol level of .31 and that he also tested positive for both marijuana and cocaine.

So what is the message that Collingridge has for American women? Well, if you happen to find a man high on drugs and alcohol setting fires in your garage, and if that man advances toward you while ignoring your warnings to stop, whatever you do, don’t use a handgun! Think of that poor young unarmed man! You wouldn’t really want to hurt him, would you? Just sit back and hope the police arrive in time. Maybe say a few prayers that the man won’t rape you before police show up.

This is the standard that the UK has arrived at in the persecution of Tony Martin. Martin’s home had been broken into eight times. Not receiving satisfaction from police, Martin bought a gun and when intruders broke in again, he shot them, killing a 16-year-old. For doing what the police could or would not do — protect his home — Martin received more time in jail than those who tried to burglar his residence.

Just sit around and wait to be a victim — that’s the BBC’s version of empowerment.

Sources:

Women who ‘shoot to kill’. The BBC, July 21, 2003.

BBC finds Salem case similar to shooting in UK. Albany Herald-Democrat, July 5, 2003.

Homeowner cleared in shooting of intruder. Associated Press, April 29, 2003.

Human Rights Watch Report on Nigerian Riots

Nigeria erupted into riots in November 2002 after a reporter opined that Mohammed would likely not only have approved of the Miss World beauty pageant, but would likely have taken one of the contestants for his wife. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and others castigated the woman who made that remark, causing her to flee the country for her own safety.

Now a Human Rights Watch report on the incident claims that the Nigerian police and military, among others, fanned the flames of the riots and used the outbreak of violence as cover for extrajudicial killings of political and ethnic opponents.

According to the Human Rights Watch report, Nigerian police did nothing to restrain Muslim protesters who reacted with violence to the newspaper article,

<blockquote.A group of protesters composed primarily of young Muslim men, believed to include students from Kaduna Polytechnic, arrived at the Kaduna office of ThisDay in three buses; others used motorcycles. They attacked and burned the newspaper?s regional office on Attahiru Road Malali, ransacked the newspaper depot and distribution centre and made bonfires out of piles of newspapers. There were no casualties, as the newspaper staff were not on the premises at the time. At no point did the police intervene to stop the violence by the protesters or make any arrests, despite the fact that the office of ThisDay was attacked in broad daylight and in full view of many residents and passers-by.

As to the extra-judicial killings by police and military, the Human Rights Watch report alleges,

Human Rights Watch uncovered detailed information on extrajudicial killings of civilians by both the police and the military during the three days of rioting in Kaduna. Instead of restoring law and order, in several instances members of the security forces turned against the very people they were supposed to protect. In some cases, the victims were boys or young men who were shot because they were caught breaking the curfew; in other cases, people were killed or injured when the police or military fired to deter rioting; other people were hit by stray bullets. In a number of instances, the police or military, taking advantage of the general chaos, targeted particular individuals with the specific intention of killing them. Overall, however, it was difficult to ascertain the exact reasons why members of the security forces shot particular individuals or groups of individuals. Despite several efforts, Human Rights Watch was not able to confirm the level at which orders were given for the police and the military to use lethal force. However, these cases form part of a well-documented pattern of extrajudicial killings by the security forces in the context of attempts to restore law and order in Nigeria.

Despite promises by Obsanjano that the perpetrators of the violence would be brought to justice and compensation paid to the victims of the violence, Human Rights Watch reports that neither promise has come close to being fulfilled. Not a single person, for example, was ever arrested in connection with the attack on ThisDay.

Source:

Nigerian police ‘fanned riots’. Alistair Leithead, The BBC, July 21, 2003.

The ?Miss World Riots?: Continued Impunity for Killings in Kaduna. Human Rights Watch, July 3, 2003.

British Gov’t Workers Required to Report Inter-Office Sexual Liasions

UK newspaper The Observer reports that fears of sexual harassment lawsuits have prompted many government agencies in Great Britain to require employees to report any sexual relationships they are having with their colleagues to their respective human resources department.

And such fears appear to be well-founded. According to The Observer,

Research by academics at the University of Sydney suggests that almost a quarter of failed office relationships end in sexual harassment cases, and a survey in America by the Society for Human Resource Management found that 52 per cent of companies believe they suffer in some way because of romance in the workplace. Nearly a third of employees quizzed said they feared office affairs would end in claims of sexual harassment. Small wonder then that 95 per cent of personnel managers said they believed office romances should not be allowed or, at least, should be discouraged.

Which, of course, takes further along the road to where Daphne Patai predicted the sexual harassment industry was eventually headed — to stigmatizing heterosexual relationships as inherently suspect.

Are two of your coworkers sleeping together? Well, clearly, somebody should be watching that situation to make certain it doesn’t get out of hand. As Patai put it, “Two fundamentally opposing world views are currently in collision. One of them sees sex (especially male sexuality) as a perpetual danger. The other sees sex as primarily a source of pleasure for both women and men.”

Clearly the former are in charge in the UK.

Source:

Personnel affair. The Observer, July 20, 2003.