Wake up to the 21st century
If you listen to, watch or read the UK news, you cannot fail to have heard the report that has surfaced recently about the murders that have taken place in Yorkshire of three women.
It makes my blood boil every time a news item appears on this case because the media cannot help themselves from referring to the victims as prostitutes. Not women, just prostitutes. Here’s an example, taken from the May 31st edition of The Times Online:
Knives and hacksaws have been found in a river where police divers recovered the severed body parts of a prostitute allegedly murdered by a serial killer.
She is first and foremost a woman; someone’s daughter, sister, mother or wife. What is the obsession with the fact that she worked as a prostitute? It’s an insidious judgment, an unvoiced yet blaring insinuation that walking the streets for a living somehow made her a lesser being, perhaps even diminishes the crime a notch or two.
I feel for the families of these poor women. The media should hang their heads in shame.
Are You Receiving Me? 
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couldn’t agree more.
shame on them.
well said.
Nuff said. Thanks, Mothership.
..Absolutely! Back in the UK..It is a bizarre, and continuing habit of certain newspapers..persistently `The Daily Mail` to pre-judge, judge some more, and then encourage, or chide the bigoted vigilantism that follows! Rant over.x.
Nice to see you back again, Dame. Glad you agree. In fact, I expect most of the populace is in agreement but the wretched media are rammed so tightly up their own jacksies that they haven’t even noticed they’re doing it. Can you imagine “A man from Yorkshire was arrested yesterday on suspicion of the murders of three oral hygienists. The body parts of one oral hygienist were found hacked to pieces and dumped in a river, whilst further pieces of tissue discovered in the water were found to belong to the second oral hygienist. No trace of the third oral hygienist has yet been found. It is believed that the man killed the first oral hygienist by shooting her through the head with a crossbow…” etc etc Just wouldn’t happen, would it? Even the perpetrator of the evil deeds is referred to as a man, a person, rather than a murderer.
This is why I don’t read The Times/Telegraph/Mail and must take refuge in The Guardian, where the tone is often more human.
All the victims had this in common, which may or may not make it relevant information; it shouldn’t be used to justify or trivialise the horror of the crimes against them.