Throughout the 2000s, a collection of kid intercourse exploitation instances affected British cities, together with Telford, Rochdale, Oxford and Rotherham, scarring the lives of a whole bunch of youngsters. In 2011, Instances journalist Andrew Norfolk reported that networks – so-called “grooming gangs” – of largely British Asian males of Pakistani heritage had trafficked and raped a whole bunch of primarily ladies and younger girls.
These are info which might be extensively recognized within the UK and have been the topic of a number of investigations. The 2014 Jay report discovered that authorities had been gradual to behave, typically for concern of being accused of racism.
Police had in some instances blamed victims, criminalising youngsters as prostitutes. Alexis Jay, who additionally led the 2022 unbiased inquiry into baby sexual abuse, has famous the “appalling and lifelong results” of abuse on victims.
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Elon Musk – the billionaire proprietor of social media platform X and incoming lead on US authorities effectivity – has, it appears, simply came upon about this devastating nationwide scandal.
In a collection of posts on X, Musk politicised these crimes to denounce Prime Minister Keir Starmer as “evil”, and to name for a brand new normal election within the UK. He additionally reposted the anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson, calling for his launch from jail the place he’s serving 18 months for contempt of courtroom.
Musk portrayed Robinson as campaigning to reveal the “fact” about grooming, as if the story had not been topic to widespread investigation, media protection and public debate.
After all, girls’s rights inside our prison justice and political programs desperately must be improved. However, Musk is not any cheerleader for girls and there’s no proof that he’s “genuinely incensed” by baby sexual exploitation.
Musk has not proven an curiosity in girls’s rights or sexual abuse earlier than. If he had, he may not have accepted a job within the administration of Donald Trump, a person discovered chargeable for sexual abuse.
Musk’s newfound curiosity evidently isn’t in all intercourse offences – apparently simply these perpetrated by “Muslim males” towards white girls. He has not proven any apparent curiosity in instances the place Muslim girls have been additionally abused, nor does he have a lot if something to say about abuse perpetrated by white males.
He seems to help girls’s protections when they’re politically helpful to him in fanning division – a standard far-right tactic.
Musk has supported far-right actors, reinstating Tommy Robinson to X in November 2023, simply in time for him to organise a mass rally on the Cenotaph in London, stoking division and, as I famous on the time, threatening democracy. He has additionally not too long ago written in help of Germany’s anti-Islam get together the Different für Deutschland (AfD), and hosted its chief Alice Weidel in dwell dialogue on X.
By publicising the UK’s “grooming gangs” scandal, Musk has aligned himself with a gendered narrative: it’s males’s obligation to guard girls – even when it means breaking guidelines or utilizing drive. This gender binary – robust males should be prepared to make use of drive to guard weak girls, particularly from hostile alien males – is the core narrative of patriarchal, nationalist, extremely nationalist and in addition Nazi teams.
It’s extremely racialised – solely weak white girls matter – and it pertains to class, in that it regards white, liberal girls as betraying working-class ladies. Musk has singled out Labour safeguarding minister Jess Phillips as a “rape genocide apologist” and “depraved witch”, thereby placing her in danger.
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Assaults on Jess Phillips present how on-line abuse of girls is meant to maintain them out of the general public sq.
Exploiting girls victims, defending patriarchy
The current assault on Phillips reveals Musk’s name to guard girls for what it truly is: a way to guard highly effective males. Feminist girls are understood as truthful targets, as a result of they problem a gender order through which males have pure dominance.
Patriarchy protects (some) males by positioning males’s position as leaders and fighters, protectors and suppliers, for nation and household, wives and youngsters. That is safety with out care, which is gendered as female, and weak. It’s safety as a way of management.
Alamy/Man Corbishley
Musk just isn’t able of ethical authority relating to both safety or care. Earlier than his takeover, social media platform Twitter appeared to take care of employees, prioritising well being and wellbeing.
The ethos of X is the other: Musk has gutted employees numbers, and remodeled office practices aimed toward safeguarding each workers and customers. He now guarantees to do the identical throughout the US authorities as head of effectivity within the Trump administration.
Social media has at all times been an area through which girls are prone to each private and structural misogyny; these harms are amplified by means of Musk’s strategy to X. Musk has sought to amplify the voices of influencers who decry girls’s rights.
Musk has reposted Andrew Tate, who police within the UK have linked to an epidemic of misogyny and violence towards girls, and who has confronted fees of rape and intercourse trafficking. He has allowed white supremacist Nick Fuentes to make use of X to advertise the phrase “your physique, my alternative”. There isn’t a actual safety right here, no care – solely white males’s management of girls.
Race to the underside
The place Musk leads, others observe. Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg has not too long ago ceded fact-checking to the “neighborhood”, and famous the necessity for a extra “masculine” and “aggressive” company tradition. Zuckerberg additionally ended the corporate’s range fairness and inclusion coverage, which minorities depend on for some extent of office safety.
As Silicon Valley is dominated by males, Zuckerberg’s remarks are primarily a name to these males to push again on liberal tradition. His feedback drew reward from Tate.
In an age of strong-man politics, the place younger males are selecting position fashions from a market of competing masculinities, hypermasculinity wins. Younger males aged 18-29 voted overwhelmingly for Trump within the US elections, supported by males’s rights activists within the on-line “manosphere”. Musk is aware of this.
Musk has cash and social media energy, however he’s a “tech bro” – a “nerd”. Exploiting the horror of British baby sexual exploitation scandals has enabled him to try to claim himself as a protector of girls – a hero of the forgotten.
He has amplified a far-right political place, and the voices of far-right actors he believes embody this, like Robinson. However Musk has no ethical authority to talk on the safety of girls, or on care extra usually.
These British politicians cynically lauding Musk’s apparently protecting stance on girls to assault the federal government – and the UK’s parliamentary democracy – ought to recognise that is nothing however hypocrisy. And, from that perspective, Musk has no authority to dictate the political agenda on ladies’ and girls’s rights in Britain, or anyplace else.
