Thursday, July 2, 2015

common sense asserting of your fair place socially could get you criminalised

www.change.org/p/uk-government-house-of-parliament-uk-prime-minister-reform-of-protection-from-harassment-1997-act-stop-the-wrongful-criminalisation-of-individuals-with-conditions-that-affect-social-understanding?recruiter=69061609&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=share_facebook_responsive&utm_term=des-lg-no_src-no_msg&fb_ref=Default A petition by ASSGO on the law on harrassment passed in 1997 after a media panic about stalking.

We need to be careful that able autistics have a normal citizen's capacity and hence not to lump all autistics together with learning disability and mental health in arguments about lack of insight into an action's social effects. Some actions are totally fair and logical and fall foul of PC. So I'm not wholly happy with the petition's wording. But have signed because it is an important civil liberty point for all autistics to prevent logical fair sensible actions of assertion of fair place in society, from getting classed as harrassment because a malicious person unfairly has a stronger social influence and power base.

For we already live in a time when it has become logically impossible for straight men to take any step at all towards acquiring a partner because absolutely any such action can count as an offence of sexual harrassment and get us into trouble. This at the same time as music and TV still peer pressurise for partnering. A total mixed message in the culture, saying to all straight men: we assume you have failed or are suffering unless you do something which we might charge you with harrassment if you do.

As I wrote in my submission to parliament's enquiry on loneliness: "The correct awareness of safety for women and ending a sex object view of them has led to the opposite swing of a PC presumption against men in every boundary colliding situation. Men now perceive, that in any dispute over accidental social or physical collisions, whoever actually caused them, we are the ones who are more politically convenient to blame. This has gender unequal impacts on safety of acceptance to be in social spaces, hence to feel secure in them, hence on exclusion and loneliness."

This is a strong reason why the petition is right.

Maurice Frank

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