WW, I always agree with most of what you say, and I do believe that education (in a brainwashing type of way) from an early age is almost required now to rid society of many undesirables. You can understand why some people want to ban pornography and prostitution as it allows men to think that they can have/take a sexual experience whenever they chose. But there is no quick fix, it will take a generation to see the results - so then adequate policing of the problem is perhaps the only immediate answer?
I would agree with that. If kids are growing up to abuse women in the way some of them do, cat-calling, overbearing chat-up lines in pubs, name-calling, online abuse, social media abuse, general intimidation, that needs dealing with. And yes, even if measures were brought in now it would take 10yrs before that 7yr old grew up to be a 17yr old who respected girls.
I think the social reasons are many and varied, and porn will play a part in that. Unfortunately you can't uninvent porn though, and it'd be very difficult to stop kids getting access to it as they seem to now. So education, at school and hopefully at home, will be key.
And yes, if as a young man you go out for a night with your mates now, if you hear one of them slagging off a girl for not responding to his advances, then don't simply stand by. Stick up for the girl. Sadly, most of these are already lost causes
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In all of this though, I would very much make the distinction between what happened to this poor girl on her way home, and the general, 'everyday abuse' which most women seem prey to. I do not think they are linked. To actually abduct, murder and dismember a random girl is thankfully a very rare thing, and I don't think any amount of social engineering will stop that. In the same way that you'd never stop murder generally by say, having the death penalty. You can perhaps modify young boy behaviours from an early age with policy and legislation, but you can't legislate away something like murder.
FWIW, although I wouldn't in any way wish to downplay this recent horrific murder of an innocent young woman, the fact of the perpetrator exposing himself three days before in McDonalds would suggest to me some kind of mental meltdown, which sadly went unchecked, leading to the murder three days later. Certainly the Met are coming under strong scrutiny for not suspending him from duty immediately, but of course he was off-duty when he committed the murder (I guess he may have used his warrant card to assist him, and I guess all this will become clear).
But if you or I exposed ourselves in McDonalds, would we be immediately incarcerated? I don't think so? There would be due process.
It will be interesting (if not totally unpleasant) to hear submissions to the court when the trial takes place this Autumn. Was this titally out of character for this copper? When the indecent exposure was reported, was there total incredulity at his local station because he had a previously unblemished record? Or was he known as having a genunely bad attitude to women?
