After Manchester: the cowardice of feminists

Article here. Excerpt:

'The argument that the bombing was ‘a massive act of gender-based violence’ has continued. The headline of one article, ‘The bombing at a Manchester Ariana Grande show was an attack on girls and women’, is as simplistic as it is inaccurate. Most obviously, it overlooks the fact that men died in the attack too – fathers, brothers and boyfriends attending the concert or waiting to take people home. The author goes on to explain how ‘Grande has advanced a renegade, self-reflexive sexuality that’s threatening to the established heteropatriarchal order’. Rubbish. Grande’s Nickelodeon cuteness combines bunny ears with pink balloons. She’s loved by teen girls because her sexuality is safe and fun and threatens no one.

The idea that the Manchester attack was driven by misogyny shifts the blame on to all men: ‘It’s not Muslims or people with mental-health problems who are most likely to kill you in a terrorist attack – it’s men’, claims another headline. This not only absolves the individual perpetrator but prevents a more specific analysis. In blaming all men, discussion of gender roles in Islam, and criticism of the way some interpretations of Islam view women and girls, is closed down. In the aftermath of the Cologne attacks of 2015 and the child-abuse cases in Rotherham, Oxford and Rochdale, feminist commentators were quick to criticise any focus on the ethnicity, rather than the gender of the perpetrators.'