Caribbean

I'm in Trinidad, having an extremely relaxing time and reading absolutely loads. I've been here 3 days and am already onto my third book. Blissful. I've seen monkeys and a hummingbird and been swimming in the sea. Proper updates when I get home, obviously.

I wanted to avoid all this while I'm on holiday, but of course made the mistake of clicking on The Guardian's webpage and this story was the top headline. *sigh* Do these damned judges not see that the conviction rate for rape is so low for a reason? Because of society's prejudices, because of the way victims are treated, because of the attitudes of judges just like them. It's not because the majority of rape vicitms are making false accusations, and I'm fucking sick of hearing about the poor falsely accused men. The rate of wrong convictions for rape is no higher than for any other crime, and we should be embracing any measures that are proposed to help the victims of this horrific crime. You can bet your life that 1. Most or all of theses judges complaining are men, and 2. If this was a crime that affected mainly men, they'd be doing all they could to do something about it, in fact, it would never have got this bad in the first place. It makes me sick. Until women aren't raped every day, we will never be equal. Every time I feel happy about some progress that's being made toward equality, I'm brought back down to earth with the facts about rape. While this still goes on society has a very long way to go.

Back to my holiday now. More ranting when I return.