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Transnational Thursday for June 20, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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In Australian news, 9 years jail-time (5.5 non-parole) for a guy who posted pictures of women superimposed onto pornography.

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/man-jailed-for-sharing-fake-images-of-women-he-knew-on-porn-site/ca1myxahk

Andrew Thomas Hayler has been sentenced to nine years in jail for posting images of women on a pornographic site.

He posted photos of friends, colleagues and housemates and superimposed their faces onto sexually explicit images.

Judge Jane Culver said Hayler's actions had caused "profound harm" to the victims.

He pleaded guilty to 28 counts of using a carriage service to menace, harass and offend, telling a court his offending was an "outlet for a part of his psyche he didn't want".

Along with posting the images, Hayler also made comments such as "she is a future rape victim", "I am closing in on this sl--", "I now know where she lives" and "let's claim her as ours".

Pleading guilty is supposed to get you 25% off in our system. He'll almost certainly appeal and get the sentence greatly reduced, which the judge should really have been aware of in theory-of-mind terms. She's known to be a harsh sentencer. For context, the maximum penalty for trafficking commercial quantities of drugs is 10 years (large commercial quantities is higher). Grievous bodily harm? Max 10 years.

At the same time we have an ongoing debate about restructuring rape/sexual assault trials to ensure the victim can't be cross-examined so intensely. Presumably as women get more and more influence in the legal system this trend of favouring female interests will continue.

I wonder what that "profound harm" actually was, according to the judge's argument.

Interesting that the word "slut" is now considered sufficiently offensive to censor in state media.

It's not the the direction I'd have predicted that word would go, especially considering the efforts to reclaim it back in the 2010s.

Actually, it's odd that "rape" isn't censored in the quote, but "slut" is. Seems possible that it was spelled "sl--" by Hayler himself there.

the efforts to reclaim it back in the 2010s

It seems somewhat odd that the whole phenomenon basically fizzled out everywhere after a year or so, or was captured by different interests, as it appears according to this part:

In 2017 the chairpersons of Chicago SlutWalk wrote, "We still stand behind Dyke March Chicago's decision to remove the Zionist contingent from their event, & we won't allow Zionist displays at ours", referring to a then-upcoming demonstration of the Chicago SlutWalk. The Chicago SlutWalk declared of the Star of David, "its connections to the oppression enacted by Israel is too strong for it to be neutral & IN CONTEXT [at the Dyke March Chicago event] it was used as a Zionist symbol."[43]

In 2017 Slutwalk Detroit was held in Palmer Park by Metro-Detroit Political Action Network (MDPAN). The event was also named "The March for Consent" the event was held in Detroit's "Gayboorhood" due to the high violence rate against transgender women in the area. Key speakers included Transgender Chair for MDPAN Brianna Kingsley and Jennifer Kurland who ran for Michigan Governor 2018 as the Green Party candidate.

Actually, it's odd that "rape" isn't censored in the quote, but "slut" is. Seems possible that it was spelled "sl--" by Hayler himself there.

I'm Australian; my impression is that that kind of self-censorship (where you say the word but blank out some letters) is basically unheard-of here. Certainly, I'm nonplussed when Americans do it. Media does it when quoting people, but people don't do it to themselves.

There is a third option, actually, now that you draw my attention to it, which is that the pornography site where he posted his comment may have an automatic censor on the word "slut". (Note that putting an auto-censor on the word "rape" is cancel-bait because it hits "he raped me".)

The stated purpose of SBS is "to provide multilingual and multicultural radio and television services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians and, in doing so, reflect Australia's multicultural society"

They're generally pretty accurate though, it's mostly in story selection and presentation that their slant appears.

I'm Australian myself; that's how I knew SBS was state media. I'm merely noting that "slut" wouldn't have been censored 20 or even probably 10 years ago.