dròm_et_rêve wrote: Good; although it should never have happened. Has anyone actually heeded the protests? It's dangerous that this kind of person is deciding Justice. It's the same over here; a female perpetrator of a crime would be treated as if she were more perverse than a male doing exactly the same thing, because of stupid prejudices and ideals of femininity and maternal instincts entrenched in some people's ways of thinking.
That is a mouthful!
It was an interesting thing - you see, if you know anything about justice, at least over here, you know that judges often say the most appalling and outrageous things. Not sure if your judges are more enlightened? I have heard things coming out of judicial mouths, on and off the bench, that have made my hair curl - about all sorts of things.
The actual judge in this case was not such a bad old stick, generally - the comment caused a huge storm, and DID lead to some sort of educative process for judges in matters of rape and child sexual abuse (I was discussing that subject with a friend's dad once, who happened to be a Supreme Court judge in New South Wales, and I nearly hit the floor when he told me with great seriousness how terribly seductive little girls were in their behaviour, and what sympathy he had for the offenders - his personal life in this regard was, I believe, far from spotless) Aboriginal culture etc etc. I doubt the ones who could have learned something listened, though. Generally, however, our judiciary, raised as they generally are in bastions of wealth and power and privilege are far from thoughtful about such matters - although this is changing slowly - and a lot of judges are really great people.
Your point about less tolerance for women who offend is interesting. Many years ago, when I worked in Corrections, a group of us formed the same hypothesis, after many long hours of sitting in court hearing sentencing going on.
Our thought was that women probably get treated more leniently for "girly" crimes - like first offence shop-lifting (and I have known police to be more lenient - they once let a client of mine off when she got stuck in the window of a house she and her male friends were breaking into, cos she was eight months pregnant - they just threw up their hands and let her go!) - however, our impression was that there was, indeed, a reaction of disgust and "she's a monster" for non-girly crimes, or violent ones.
We looked up research, and found a large study from the USA which found that women did indeed receive harsher punishment for "male" type crimes (assault, break and enter, armed robbery sort of things) than males did, and if they continued with offending beyond "girly" limits.
I have no idea if this might still be true - this was 20 and more years ago. Our women's prison then was like a sort of small, rough, repressed boarding school - when I did a therapy project there for women who had suffered sexual abuse as children (almost all of them, but finding ones settled enough to do any work on it was the problem!) a few years ago, when working for a rape and sexual assault service, it was a much larger, violent hell-hole, full of seriously violent women with HUGE mental health problems. Maybe the system is used to very naughty indeed women now?
For what it is worth, the same punishment has differentially devastating effects for women. Fellas generally have a woman at home to look after the home, the kids, the belongings etc. Women generally lose their home, their stuff, and their kids. This differential impact is not intended by the judiciary - it is an artifact of continuing social realities.
