Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Katherine Goldberg

Katherine Goldberg has been charged with sexual assault and fined £1500 with 80 hours of community service for groping a male air steward.

Where did she touch him?
On the South Africa to London night flight. You can read more about it here

Now these 'usually the other way round' type stories are always popular in the press and generally trigger loads of comments such as:

"She should be jailed. If she'd been a man, she er- he would have been sent down for years etc"

The trouble is, it isn't the same. It might not be PC to say it but it is true. When a man gropes a woman, it must often seem threatening and frightening  to her because of his greater physical strength and the unconscious worry of what he could do to her if she resists his advances. It's right that this should be punished by the law. 

However, a woman groping a man is simply not a physical threat. 

All I can say is that if I'd been the steward I would have been straight under the complimentary flight blanket and sod all the miserable passengers pressing their buzzers to pester me for another cushion or a glass of water for their screaming brat.

Oh and 'Alcohol induced illusion' is definitely an excuse to remember.

4 comments:

pjt said...

How come do you say that when a woman gropes a man it is not a physical threat? And why do other types of threats not count?

Over where I live (Finland), about one half of in-family aggravated assaults are done by women. In regular assaults, men dominate the statistics. This is good reason to believe that violence by women is under-reported, and it is only handled properly when the physical evidence forces the authorities to do so. If a man calls 112 (999) to say that his woman is beating him, the call taker may ridicule him. But medical examiners have to investigate the corpse and then you cannot make the stab wounds disappear.

Dafydd said...

pjt - She didn't attack him - she made a drunken amorous advance . Unwelcome perhaps , but completely different . Neither it seems was she otherwise any impediment to the continued safe conduct of the flight .

I venture that the heavy handed response of the airline was probably compliant with "Policy" . There is a lot of that about these days , Policy . It has become a poor substitute for judgement , initiative , compassion even .

Sad .

Anonymous said...

I'm just going to assume that he might have preferred that a male passenger made sexual advances towards him.

Anonymous said...

"The trouble is, it isn't the same. It might not be PC to say it but it is true. When a man gropes a woman, it must often seem threatening and frightening to her because of his greater physical strength and the unconscious worry of what he could do to her if she resists his advances. It's right that this should be punished by the law.

However, a woman groping a man is simply not a physical threat. "
What about a tall woman and a short man?

Also if a man groped my wife and she punched him she would be safe from
prosecution. I am not sure I would feel
safe to punch a woman who groped me.