goncharov-fan

[goncharov-fan]

Pierce-Arrow Model 54 Convertible Sedan by LeBaron 1932. - source Amazing Classic Cars.

[goncharov-fan]

Triumph Gloria Six Tourer 1935. - source Amazing Classic Cars.

[goncharov-fan]

Your rights and freedom end where another person's rights and freedom begins. This is why sex can never be a human right. Sex is an activity shared between people. You cannot give one person the legal right to demand sex without taking away another person's agency to say no.

[goncharov-fan]

-from “Racial Violence (among enslaved women) [PDF]

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Attic red figure dinoid volute krater, Greece, circa 390-380 BC

from The J. Paul Getty Museum

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The Wreckers by Ethel Smyth

It’s just so depressing how many operas there are by women and how few of them are ever staged, let alone part of the operatic canon

[goncharov-fan]

You absolutely love to see it:

[goncharov-fan]

This is so important, stories like this need to be told.  The cultural insistence we have that parenthood is some kind of magical bonding that happens every time without exception does real harm to both parents and children, as you can see from some of these stories:

My father recently told me he never wanted kids, but my mother wanted them. She thought he would love us when we were born.

and

I didn’t realize that a maternal instinct is not universal. You know how you see parents in the delivery room and they are crying tears of joy? I felt nothing. […] My boys are well cared for and I am always here for them, but it feels very unnatural and fake and unenjoyable. It is a bit like a retail job you don’t like where you put on a fake persona and slog through it the best you can. I don’t get to leave this job, though. 

and

I also thought I wouldn’t mind missing out on all the partying and holidays because I would have the ultimate gift, a child.

and

I always said I would never have children. I hate kids..I do. I am just not that type of nurturing person. I was always very careful to make sure protection was in use (condoms, birth control) but I am that .1% and apparently very fertile.  I do not have that natural motherly instinct that all women seem to have, you know..that one that kicks in the moment they know they’re pregnant. I have to work really hard at it and it’s exhausting. I miss my solitude and being able to “check out” of reality from time to time.

and

Because kids aren’t the life completer we believe they are.

Are there people for whom having children completes their lives?  No doubt.  Are there parents for whom the downsides like sleeplessness and loss of personal time are outweighed by the love and joy they feel?  Of course.  Are there people who change their minds about wanting kids once they have them?  Sure.  But that’s not true for everyone.  It doesn’t happen every time, it’s never guaranteed, and the consequences are grievous when people who don’t want children have them anyway trusting that they will love the child and be happy.

We need to dispel the starry-eyed myths around pregnancy, childbirth, and marriage and create more realistic expectations.  Parenthood is too important a choice for people not to go into it with their eyes open.

[goncharov-fan]

1970 Lamborghini Espada - the good life.

Classic Driver.

[goncharov-fan]

~ Tweezer-Razor.

Period: New Kingdom; 18th Dynasty

Date: ca. 1560–1479 B.C.

Place of origin: Egypt

Medium: Gold

[goncharov-fan]

another pregnant woman died in poland because the doctors waited for the fetus to die on its own while ignoring her sepsis symptoms (there was NO CHANCE of the fetus surviving, but they didn’t want to get charged with performing an illegal abortion). but yeah women around here don’t have many kids cause they just… uuuh *checks notes* party all the time 

[goncharov-fan]

When someone says that “men need sex” or “prostitution prevents rape” or advocate for disabled men to have state sponsored visits from sex workers, they’re also saying something disturbing about their conception of sex.

They see sex as a resource that has to be extracted from the female body, through force, manipulation, or payment. It’s something that can be redistributed, bought or stolen just like a tv or a laptop. We don’t talk about men needing to attend dinner parties or needing to belong to a bowling team because we recognize those as social activities that need the participation of everyone involved. You can’t mandate friendship, it requires the intent of more than one person.

We need to start thinking of sex this way. When you say that men need sex, remember that sex is an activity you do WITH SOMEONE ELSE.  It can never be neutrally given. Sex should be done because two people want to have sex, not because a man needs to be given it.

[goncharov-fan]

I read 'rich and powerful women like celebrities and athletes are forced to parade around nearly naked to remind all women that no amount of money or status could protect them from objectification. they must remain sexually accessible to the poorest man' and my life hasn't been the same since.

[goncharov-fan]

I gave over a hundred young women at Loyola University Chicago the following instruction:

Many researchers have studied what the ideal woman looks like according to our society’s standards. Take a moment to think about what this cultures ideal woman looks like and describe her. Now pleas take a moment to imagine that you look like just the woman you just described. Think about the ways in which you believe your life would be different if you looked like this woman. How would things change for you?

The responses were so upsetting that I considered stopping the study early. One young woman told us that if she could just be beautiful, she would finally ‘be able to focus on her inner abilities and talent’. Another said that she might ‘genuinely feel happy most of the time instead of just faking it.’ A different young woman explained that if she could just look the way our culture wants women to look, she ‘would never have had an eating disorder, causing stress in everyone arounf (her) that (she) loved but still hurt.’ Over 70 percent of the women in this study said they’d be treated better by others if they looked like the beauty ideal.

Renee Engeln (2018): Beauty Sick. How cultural obsession this Appearance hurts girsl and women, p. 16

[goncharov-fan]

3 minute read

A teenager has been sentenced to three years in prison for raping a girl when she was just 12.

Myles Harris was 18 when he assaulted the girl at Gala Policies park in Galashiels, in the Scottish Borders, last year, the High Court in Edinburgh was told.

Judge Lord Scott said Harris could have expected to receive a longer term in prison had he not been so young at the time of the offence.

He said because Harris pleaded guilty, his sentence would be reduced by a year and a half.

And, Lord Scott said, the starting point for the sentence was “less than it would have been” had the Guidelines for the Sentencing of Young People not applied.

The court heard Harris, who has since turned 19, had “no memory” of the offence as he was heavily intoxicated at the time.

Defence counsel Lili Prais explained Harris had started misusing substances aged 12 and this escalated as he grew older.

She said he then fell in with a bad crowd and went on make some “extremely poor” life choices, leading to the rape on January 16 last year.

She told the court: “He is devastated by the actions of that night. He accepts full responsibility.

“He has no memory of the incident. He had consumed substances.

“He no longer misuses drugs or alcohol. He is no longer associating with negative peer groups.”

Ms Prais said Harris has moved to Canterbury, Kent, to stay with his grandparents and is willing to participate in any programme the court feels could help his rehabilitation.

“There is no better example of capacity to show change,” she said.

Judge Scott said a custodial sentence was justified considering the seriousness of the offence.

“You raped a child when you were 18 and she was only 12,” he said. “You knew her age.”

The judge went on to refer to a victim impact assessment which said the child Harris raped continues to suffer “serious” and “ongoing” effects from her experience on a “daily” basis.

He also told Harris that being under the influence of drink or drugs at the time of the offence made no difference to his deliberations.

“I must make clear the usage of alcohol or drugs provides you with no excuse or mitigation at all,” he said.

Harris, who admitted the offence and appeared in the court by video-link from custody, was told his three-year sentence would be backdated to the day he was taken into custody last month.

He was also placed on the sex offenders register indefinitely.

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5 minute read

From the kitchen table of the house she shares with her partner and (at times) their eight children, Lauren, 38, has been working with Claire to put pressure on the government to prevent sex offenders from changing their names after release. They have also had to fight to have their sister’s murderer placed on the sex offender register.

In April, they travelled to London to meet Damian Hinds, minister for prisons, parole and probation, to explain their concerns that weaknesses in the law make women and children more vulnerable when sex offenders are released from prison.

Lauren Holmes was 11 when she discovered how her sister, Collette, had died. There were woods near the family home in Corby in Northamptonshire, and Lauren had ignored her mother’s warning that they were unsafe.

“We knew we weren’t allowed to go there,” Lauren remembers, “but we did, and we got chased by a local lad. Two of my friends ended up in hospital getting thorns removed because they’d tried to escape through the brambles. That evening, everyone’s parents gave us a real rollicking, but my mum was just silent. I couldn’t understand why she wasn’t shouting. I was sent to my room and she came in and threw a load of newspapers on my bed, and she said: ‘This is why you’re not allowed to go into the woods!’ I felt shocked and guilty. It was a hard way to find out.”

The newspapers explained that a local man named Adam Stein had abducted six-year-old Collette Gallacher in February 1986 as she waited for a bus to take her to school, the same school where her mother worked as a playground assistant and dinner lady. Corby in the 1980s was a much smaller place than it is today. Struggling with the fallout of the closure of the British Steel plant, which had been Europe’s largest steelworks, there was high unemployment – but there was also a sense of community in the streets around the Gallachers’ home. “Everyone knew each other,” Lauren says. It was not unusual for a six-year-old to be sent off to school alone.

On the day of the abduction, “someone asked my mum where Collette was, and that’s when they realised something wasn’t right,” Lauren says. The search for Collette lasted five days, and Stein was one of the many locals who volunteered to look for her, before her body was found in the attic of the house that he shared with his wife and young son. Stein admitted rape as well as murder, but the sexual assault charge lay on file – a decision sometimes taken if a defendant has also pleaded guilty to more serious charges. Lauren and her younger half-sister Claire believe this was in order to spare the family from sitting through details of the attack in court. Stein was jailed for life and told he would serve a minimum of 20 years. Thirty-seven years later, Collette’s sisters are still fighting to make sure he does not escape justice.

Claire Holmes was not yet born and Lauren was only 15 months old when Collette was killed, but her murder still dominates their lives. Their mother, Karen, did her best to shield them from what had happened but when Claire, now 32, was nine or 10, she stumbled across a box of newspaper cuttings. “I was in my mum’s room having a nosy around, as I shouldn’t have done. We always knew we had a big sister, that a bad man had taken her, but it was a taboo subject. My mum still struggles to say Collette’s name. My grandad had to explain it all.”

From the kitchen table of the house she shares with her partner and (at times) their eight children, Lauren, 38, has been working with Claire to put pressure on the government to prevent sex offenders from changing their names after release. They have also had to fight to have their sister’s murderer placed on the sex offender register.

In April, they travelled to London to meet Damian Hinds, minister for prisons, parole and probation, to explain their concerns that weaknesses in the law make women and children more vulnerable when sex offenders are released from prison.

Lauren, who works as a carer at a home for adults with a rare genetic condition, feels she has become a part-time detective, working with the local Corby journalist Kate Cronin to investigate why her sister’s murderer was sent back to prison after his release in 2016. It appears this was connected to driving offences, and she discovered he had changed his name and begun a relationship with a vulnerable teenager during the short period he was free. Claire has begun a degree in criminology, spurred on by her concerns about flaws in the justice system.

The sisters want to make it clear that their activism does not stem from vindictiveness. “This is not a witch-hunt. We hoped he would be rehabilitated in prison, but everything we now know suggests that hasn’t happened,” Claire says. “The latest parole statement that we have says that he is still having bad thoughts about children, and not understanding the consequences of his actions. From all the information we have, he does not seem to be a man who has changed.”

They are cautiously optimistic that their campaign may be getting somewhere. In March, the Labour MP for Rotherham, Sarah Champion, organised a debate on sex offenders’ name changes, while Bolsover’s Conservative MP, Mark Fletcher, had a 10-minute-rule bill on the same subject; both argue that it is too easy for sex offenders to conceal their identities.

“A sex offender can change their name and with little difficulty receive a passport or a driving licence with their new name,” Fletcher told MPs. “At no point are you asked if you have a criminal background. In some cases this can lead to a DBS check under their new identity.” A DBS, or Disclosure and Barring Service, check is required for some jobs or voluntary roles, particularly in healthcare or in positions that involve working with children.

Collette’s sisters did not intend to devote so much of their lives to campaigning, but the target of their concern has evolved over the years. Stein was refused parole several times before being released in 2016 and returned to prison in 2017. He was released again in 2021 and sent back in July 2022. After his first release, they were dismayed to discover that he had not been placed automatically on the sex offender register. Their campaigning resulted in his name being added, but they are still uncertain about whether the initial failure was because he did not have a conviction for rape or because the offence predated the launch of the register.

A newspaper article by Cronin prompted a woman to get in touch to say that while he had been out of prison in 2016, Stein, then 58, had changed his name and struck up a relationship with her, when she was 18. He admitted that he had been in prison after killing a child, but told her it had been an accident.

The sisters were concerned that Stein’s ability to change his name made it easier to conceal his past. “You shouldn’t be able to hide when you’ve committed crimes of this nature. That should be something that you carry for the rest of your life,” Claire says.

The Safeguarding Alliance warns that the child sexual offenders’ disclosure scheme (also known as Sarah’s law, named after eight-year-old Sarah Payne, who was murdered by a paedophile in 2000), which allows parents to check if a person has a record for child sexual offences, becomes useless if the offender has changed their name.

Asked why this weakness has not already been fixed, Fletcher said this was “a bit of a head-scratcher”. There is the possibility that post-prison rehabilitation would be undermined for those who have reformed and want a new start, but the government is not making this case, just arguing that sex offenders are already required to notify the authorities if they change their names and face an extra five years’ imprisonment if they fail to do this within three days of the change.

Campaigners point out that many fail to do so. Freedom of information requests from the Safeguarding Alliance show that about 900 sex offenders went missing between 2017 and 2020, while 16,000 had in some way breached their notification requirements in the past five years. As Fletcher told MPs: “It doesn’t take a genius to realise that sex offenders are not the most trustworthy group.”

Champion, meanwhile, has pointed out that some perpetrators change their name before being formally charged with an offence, “meaning their birth name remains unmaligned”. 

Collette’s sisters are hopeful that reform may be included in the victims and prisoners bill currently going through parliament. In the meantime, they have been working with Cronin to try to get more information about whether Stein still poses a threat to the public ahead of his next possible release in 2024. Cronin’s attempts to obtain more information about him have been complicated by the name changes. “It’s not about pitchforks. It’s about keeping women and girls safe,” she says.

The family are dismayed that they are still fighting to ensure Stein is properly monitored after his release. “His name is constantly in our mouths,” says Claire. “It would have been lovely to know that he had been released and quietly got on with his life. It does happen. People do change their lives – but that’s not been the case. We feel like we can never have peace.”

[goncharov-fan]

Ferrari 250 GT Boano 1956. - source Amazing Classic Cars.