The Belfast rape trial ended last week. On social media, which revealed its resemblance to a digital cesspit in the aftermath of the verdict, there were calls for lessons in consent, statements issued, gloating, retractions, deletions . The culture of contempt and entitlement, correctly identified by Rouse, is sustained by the absence of condemnation; this is a case when an embarrassed silence doesn’t cut it. These developments are likely to keep the case in the public eye, something which will discomfit some people — specifically those to whom Rouse’s “culture of contempt and entitlement” is everyday life. Said uncle was in a particular, highly-specified, line of work in the seventies and eighties that we needn’t go into here.

Source: Irish Examiner April 01, 2018 23:48 UTC