Catfishing and how to avoid it

I’m on the wrong side of 70. This means there are a lot of things about contemporary New Zealand life and manners that I don’t understand.

For one thing, I don’t know what catfishing is. At least, I didn’t until I looked it up online this morning. It turns out that catfishing is what happens when a person assumes someone else’s identity online and uses it to deceive people. It appears to be one of those terms that have crossed over from [anti]social media to mainstream platforms.

NZME – the company that publishes the New Zealand Herald and provides news to a chain of provincial titles – assumes that I, and all its other readers, know what catfishing is, since it used the term in a news story this morning without explaining the meaning. NZME even used it as the key word in the headline: “Teacher’s catfishing ruse”.

Of course there comes a point when every neologism is absorbed into popular usage and no longer needs any explanation, but I don’t think that time has arrived in this case. “Catfishing” is in the Merriam-Webster and Cambridge dictionaries, but that says nothing about the word’s uptake. Prestidigitation and toponymy are in the dictionaries too, but you don’t hear the words in everyday conversation. If I’m derided as a dinosaur because I’m not familiar with catfishing, I’ll wear it.

My guess is that the reporter who wrote the story is of a generation that’s familiar with Twitter-era jargon and didn’t think any clarification was necessary. This is a safe assumption because there seem to be very few working reporters left over the age of 40. Any trained journalist older than that is likely to be working as a strategic communications adviser in a government department.

Something else I don’t understand, notwithstanding that last fact, is why there’s no longer anyone in the newsroom whose job it is to throw badly written, incomplete or factually erroneous stories back at reporters and demand they fix them.

There used to be such people; they were called sub-editors, or “subs”. But subs were pensioned off years ago in the belief that reporters could check their own stories. How that was supposed to work was never clear, because how can anyone be expected to correct a mistake if they don’t realise they’ve made it in the first place?

In any case, there could be no place in 21^st century newsrooms for cantankerous, old-school subs like the one at the Dominion who once bellowed, in a voice loud enough to be heard in Petone, that he would stand me on the subs’ desk and kick my f***ing arse if I hadn’t learned how to spell “accommodation” by the following day.

If a sub tried that today he or she (there were some pretty tough women on subs’ desks) would be fired for bullying and I’d be on leave with post-traumatic stress disorder (I was 18 at the time). But I’ll tell you what: I never again spelled accommodation with only one “m”.

In the case of the catfishing story, it could also have been pointed out to the reporter that AFL stands for Australian Football League, not Australian Federal League. Many of NZME’s readers would know this and spot the error immediately.

Does it matter? Well, yes, because readers seeing that the reporter got this tiny thing wrong are entitled to wonder what else he might have stuffed up. Credibility is everything.

In fact there’s a bigger problem here, because the news media must now come to terms with the awkward reality that “consumers of content” (to use a vile, dehumanising media term for readers, viewers and listeners) are often far more knowledgeable than most journalists, and snort with derision at the obvious errors and solecisms that confront them every day.

But all this is by way of a preamble to my main topic. The NZME story reported that a female teacher had “catfished” two women colleagues by pretending to be a man, striking up relationships with them on dating platforms and persuading them to send her naked or semi-naked pictures of themselves. She used the photograph of an Aussie Rules football star – hence the reference to the AFL.

The big question here (the one I sat down to write about before being diverted by catfishing) is this: why do so many people get themselves into these humiliating and totally avoidable situations? It seems self-evident that sending compromising pictures of yourself to someone you’ve never met, and can’t be sure even exists, is freighted with risk. 

The answer can only be that it fulfils a need in people who are either narcissistic, exhibitionist or desperately in need of approval – possibly even a combination of all three. Sadly, [anti] social media provides fertile ground for predatory men seeking to exploit the vulnerable.

I started out by saying there are things about contemporary New Zealand life and manners that I don’t understand. This is one of them. The astonishing thing is that people continue to share intimate photos despite knowing the downsides (after all, countless cases have been reported), and then seem surprised as well as traumatised by the outcome.

This morning we also read about a woman, identified only as “Hazel”, who allowed her former partner to film them having sex together. After the relationship had broken up, the spiteful ex-partner placed the sex video on a global porn website.

It’s hard to imagine a more despicable or vindictive act – but in this case it has potentially far-reaching public consequences, because a District Court judge has overruled ACC’s decision to reject the woman’s claim for compensation. That could result in a flood of claims from others who have similarly had their trust betrayed. RNZ suggests they could run into the hundreds.

ACC made its decision on strictly legal grounds. It held that the harm the woman suffered wasn’t recognised under the relevant legislation.

The novel aspect of the claim is that Hazel’s lawyers argued in court – and the judge apparently accepted – that her consent to the video was voided when it was put online without her permission. It therefore became a case of sexual abuse.

It’s worth mentioning that she brought a civil case against her ex-partner and was awarded reparation, but it wasn’t paid – at least, not in full. It seems the public, through ACC, is now left carrying the can for her unwise choice of partner.

I can see this case provoking serious anger and resentment from the thousands of people who have struggled in vain, or had to jump through endless hoops, to get ACC cover for what they believed were legitimate claims arising from real physical injuries.

Such people would be justified in taking the view that what happened to Hazel, while deplorable, was not an accident in the customary sense. She agreed to the video and only later retracted her consent in the light of what was subsequently done with it. In other words, she had control – or to use a fashionable term, “agency” – over her actions. To put it another way, and to use a popular euphemism often used to excuse folly, she made a “bad choice”.

I hope ACC appeals the judge’s decision. Compensation for sexual abuse wasn’t on the radar of the scheme’s architects in the 1970s but now accounts for thousands of claims annually, and eligibility will be widened further if the decision stands.

In the meantime, the case should serve as an object lesson to all those women who think it’s a good idea to pander to the voyeurism of dodgy males. But that may be too much to hope for.

Useless information: Since posting this, I've learned that the term "catfish" comes from a reality TV series (so-called) of that name about online dating. The origin of the metaphor is explained on Wikipedia but hardly seems worth repeating here.

Manipulative men and gullible women

(First published in the Manawatu Standard and on Stuff.co.nz, May 13.)

In February this year, a Wellington man named Lewis Scott was convicted of rape and unlawful sexual connection.

It was the second time he had been found guilty of the same offences. After the first trial, in 2017, his convictions were overturned and a new trial was ordered. He was sentenced last month to six years in jail.

The victim alleged the rape happened after she went to Scott’s home in 2007 for what she thought was going to be a business meeting. The court heard that the offence involved considerable force.

Note the year: 2007. She didn’t lay a complaint at the time because she felt ashamed and embarrassed. It wasn’t until 2014, when she read that Scott had been convicted of raping another woman, that she summoned the courage to go to the police.

That’s right: Scott had previous form. His other victim had been raped in a room at the back of his shop. 

I remember that shop and I remember Scott, although I never met him. Lots of people knew about him because from the time he arrived in Wellington in the mid-1970s, he was something of a media darling.

An African-American and a Vietnam War veteran, he cut a flamboyant, exotic figure in grey, Muldoon-era Wellington. He wrote poetry and wore colourful kaftans. His shop, Kwanzaa, sold goods from African countries and became a gathering place for Wellington’s African community. In 2009 Scott organised a big party to celebrate President Barack Obama’s inauguration.

The media loved him. As recently as 2013, Scott was the subject of an admiring - you might almost say fawning - interview on Radio New Zealand.

It was perhaps small wonder that he was welcomed in Wellington’s arty, left-leaning circles. He would have been seen as a refugee from heartless capitalism.

Not only had he personally experienced the racism of the Deep South, where he grew up, but his social cachet would have been reinforced by the fact that young black men like him had been used as cannon fodder in an unpopular war. In the eyes of those who became his friends, he would have been almost as much a victim as the Vietnamese themselves.

But Scott was not the person he seemed. We now know he was a secret rapist. He would hardly have been the first charismatic male to take advantage of women – possibly impressionable women – who came within his orbit. 

Were there other victims too ashamed and embarrassed to accuse him publicly? It can’t be ruled out.

I wonder, too, what Scott’s old friends make of him now. Do they reproach themselves for not seeing through him? Or do they excuse his behaviour by blaming it on a dehumanising upbringing in a harsh, racist society?

It wouldn’t surprise me if that were the case, because history is littered with manipulative men who take advantage of gullible hangers-on. In fact I was reminded of Scott while reading last week about the recent death of Ira Einhorn.

Einhorn was a hippie activist and  leading light in the American counter-culture movement of the 1960s and 70s. He campaigned against the Vietnam War and later jetted around the world commanding enormous fees as a speaker on environmental issues.

He was friendly with other key counter-culture figures, including the poet Allen Ginsberg and the radical activists Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. But Einhorn was also a murderer who killed his girlfriend and stuffed her body into a trunk in his apartment after she tried to leave him because she was fed up with his infidelities and controlling ways. Other former girlfriends later testified that he turned violent when they ended their relationships with him.

Einhorn, in other words, was a deeply unpleasant human being and a gold-plated hypocrite. Like many frauds and phoneys who preach a gospel of liberation, he was a supreme egotist and an exploiter. He managed to elude justice for more than two decades, living in Ireland and France and surrounding himself with admiring acolytes who helped him to stay out of reach of the law.

Sadly, there has never been a shortage of people prepared to be conned by such charlatans, and willing to make excuses for them. As an obituary in The Times noted, the help Einhorn received from influential friends highlighted the moral confusions of the hippie era.

Obviously there’s a vast difference between Ira Einhorn and Lewis Scott. For a start, the latter is not a killer.

But the two cases appear to have certain factors in common. Both show how easily people with guile, audacity and a conscience deficit can deceive those whose shiny-eyed idealism gets in the way of their ability to see beyond the charismatic façade to the person beneath.

One thing can be said with certainty. There will be more Ira Einhorns and Lewis Scotts, and there will be many more victims.

The warped moral values of the literary Left

(First published in the Manawatu Standard, the Nelson Mail and Stuff.co.nz, May 1.)

So, the revered James K Baxter turns out to have been a rapist.

A recently published book reveals that in a letter to a female friend in 1960, the sainted poet admitted forcing sex on his wife. He implied that she enjoyed it, noting that she seemed “10 times happier afterwards”. The tone seemed almost boastful.

That disclosure prompted a woman to divulge, in an article in Stuff’s Your Weekend magazine, that Baxter tried to have sex with her when she was a teenager at his commune at Jerusalem, on the Whanganui River.

He persisted despite her protestations. The only reason he didn’t complete the act was that he couldn’t get an erection.

She was 18. Baxter would have been in his 40s. The woman wrote that she was one of several female followers whom Baxter abused sexually. In his letters, he also casually mentioned impregnating “a girl in Auckland” who subsequently lost the baby. 

There is a parallel here with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, another counter-culture hero whose ashram became a mecca for his many celebrity followers, including the Beatles. A disgusted John Lennon wrote the song Sexy Sadie after the Maharishi made sexual advances toward Mia Farrow. 

I wonder what happens now. Will the New Zealand literary elite, who for decades have idolised and even mythologised Baxter, not only as a poet but as an inspirational cultural figure, quietly file him under D for deplorable?

After all, he doesn’t seem so different from the despised Harvey Weinstein and other celebrity male predators targeted by the Me Too movement. Yet the response to the rape disclosure has been distinctly low-key, which raises an interesting question: does a different standard apply when a sexual abuser is a bearded, barefoot poet as opposed to a Hollywood mogul?

Baxter is an iconic figure in New Zealand literature. He was also a spiritual guru to dozens of disillusioned and impressionable young New Zealanders who were drawn to his commune seeking meaning and direction in life.

He made much of his rejection of capitalism and materialism, his embrace of Catholic spirituality and his empathy with Maori. But I wonder how many vulnerable young women he hit on.

I met Baxter once or twice in the early 70s and can confirm that he had a certain charisma, although it’s hard to imagine women finding him sexually attractive. He had long, lank, dirty hair and wore grubby op-shop clothes.

He didn’t look like a man who showered often, if at all. He possibly dismissed personal hygiene as a hang-up of the neurotic white middle classes. But he would hardly have been the first literary idol to imagine that he possessed some sort of sexual magnetism.

There are two striking things about the Baxter rape scandal. The first is the hypocrisy of it all; a man who paraded his humanitarianism and empathy with the underdog, sexually brutalising his wife and taking advantage of vulnerable young women who came to him seeking guidance.

The other is that although it’s shocking, it’s hardly unusual. There has never been any shortage of lionised males from the arts and literary worlds who combined a massive sense of sexual entitlement with apparent indifference toward the women they inflicted themselves on.

The glaring contradiction between this rampant male chauvinism and their professed embrace of sexual equality is rarely acknowledged, still less explored.

From the 1950s through till the 70s, the belief among the arty, left-wing elites was that all sex was liberating. Men not surprisingly took full advantage of this, often treating the women around them as sexual chattels. Their female acolytes played along, perhaps imagining that by doing so, they were showing their contempt for conventional bourgeois morality. 

This led to some truly grotesque behaviour – none more so than the recently revealed abuse suffered in the 70s by the two daughters of the Sydney novelist Dorothy Hewett. An author much admired by the Australian Left for her politically charged writing, Hewett encouraged her teenage girls to have sex with the men in her fashionable circle – among them the late Bob Ellis, a celebrity left-wing journalist and Labor Party speech writer.

Incredibly, when the two daughters wrote about their experiences many years later, they were savaged by their mother’s male contemporaries for damaging her reputation. Such is the warped values system of the literary Left.

Back here in New Zealand, a recent biography of Maurice Shadbolt by Philip Temple portrayed the acclaimed writer as a man whose treatment of women was so reprehensible that even some of his best friends abandoned him – although, to be fair, a woman of my acquaintance who knew Shadbolt told me that’s not how she remembers him.

In an interview with Kim Hill last year, Temple portrayed the New Zealand arts and literary scene of the 1960s and 70s as incestuous and promiscuous. The men slept around at will and the women, needless to say, humoured them. It all sounded sad rather than liberating, and certainly more seedy than sexy. 

Double standards, much? Yep, but there's nothing new under the sun.

What's the Latin for "too little, too late"?

(First published in The Dominion Post and on Stuff.co.nz, August 23.)

It can’t be easy being Catholic right now. Barely a week passes without fresh revelations of sexually predatory behaviour by priests and squalid attempts by their superiors to cover up their crimes.

Recent examples include the exposure of historic abuse by monks at two leading English Benedictine schools and a grand jury report detailing accusations, some of them truly grotesque, against 300 priests in Pennsylvania.

And the finger of blame points ever higher. An American cardinal, Theodore McCarrick, was recently removed from office following allegations involving boys as young as 11. A sickening photo from 1974 showed a gloating McCarrick, then a priest, in swimming togs with his arm around the bare waist of one of his alleged teenage victims.

Another prince of the church, the Australian cardinal George Pell, has been ordered to stand trial over historical claims of abuse. Pell’s countryman Philip Wilson, the archbishop of Adelaide, resigned after being convicted of protecting a paedophile priest in the 1970s.

In Chile, three bishops quit under a similar cloud. Thirty-one others offered their resignations, indicating some degree of culpability. Only months earlier, Pope Francis had dismissed accusations against one of the offending bishops as slanderous.

The pope has now issued a letter apologising to all Catholics. I wonder what the Latin translation is for “too little, too late”.

Here in New Zealand, the Church continues to shudder at a steady stream of sordid disclosures.

Two recent examples: the late Father Michael Shirres of Auckland, a theologian and authority on Maori spirituality, who admitted abusing a young girl – although it’s suspected there were many others – and was quietly placed on a sex offenders programme; and Fr Magnus Murray of Dunedin, who remained a priest for nearly two decades after his offending against boys was revealed to his bishop. He eventually admitted 10 charges and was jailed in 2003.

Records show that Murray was shifted from parish to parish while his past was kept secret – the so-called geographical solution.

The scale and impunity of offending by priests beggars belief. A 2012 American documentary, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, chronicled in chilling detail the brazen, systematic abuse of vulnerable boys and young men and the ease with which the perpetrators – playing on their standing in communities that were conditioned to revere priests – were able to evade accountability for their monstrous acts.

All Catholics should watch Mea Maxima Culpa, as painful as it might be.

The offenders were typically charismatic and confident – so confident that they would even abuse boys during the rite of confession. The Church hierarchy was principally concerned with protecting itself, quietly paying off complainants and binding them to declarations of confidentiality.

How far up the hierarchy did the cover-up extend? “The higher you go, the more they know,” said a former Benedictine monk who now counsels victims of clerical abuse. 

Courageous whistle-blowers within the Church have been ostracised as troublemakers – even traitors. 

All these themes are explored in the Australian novelist Thomas Keneally’s book Crimes of the Father. It’s a rather plodding novel but Keneally, who once trained for the priesthood, accurately depicts what you might call the “atmospherics” of the Church – the calcified rituals, the obeisance to hierarchical authority and the resistance to outside scrutiny.

It goes without saying that preying on the young and vulnerable, and cynically taking advantage of parents’ reluctance to believe that priests could do anything wrong, is the antithesis of what the Church is supposed to stand for.

I say this as someone who grew up immersed in Catholicism and remains what Keneally calls a “cultural Catholic” – someone who, like him, rejects Catholic dogma but has absorbed Catholic values and can empathise with those who have stayed loyal to the Church.

I feel sorry for the many blameless and dedicated Catholic clergy who must live with the taint of suspicion, and for the many devout and genuinely holy Catholics who have remained staunch despite being repeatedly failed (betrayed might be a more accurate word) by their leaders. Obviously, they see beyond “the cold and largely self-interested corporation” – Kenneally’s term for the Church – to something much nobler.

There seems to be two Churches. One is rotten and diseased while the other remains true to the faith.

The Catholic Church as an institution needs its doors thrown wide open, metaphorically speaking, so that a cleansing wind can blow through. Perhaps it needs another Martin Luther to purge it of its impurities, or a bloodless coup by lay people.

A good start would be to allow priests to marry, which might go some way toward destroying the Church’s appeal to sexually dysfunctional men seeking a shelter in which to safely pursue their warped predilections.

Another would be to give equal status to women, who have a proud history in the Catholic Church of standing up to the vain, controlling males who have made such an ungodly mess of running the show.

Miley Cyrus and the Roast Busters

An editorial in the current issue of The Listener says the Roast Busters scandal suggests a need for society to undertake a deep and searching self-appraisal if we’re to understand how we have reached a point where young men take pleasure in the humiliation of vulnerable girls.

There’s ample evidence that this is exactly what is now happening. Not a day passes without the Roast Busters affair being earnestly discussed on talkback radio (which is not, contrary to conventional wisdom, the exclusive domain of the bigoted and ignorant). Several thoughtful and heartfelt newspaper columns have appeared, including three in the Dominion Post by Chris Trotter, Sean Plunket and Jane Bowron*. If there’s a common factor, it’s a sense of shock that we have come to this.

But there have also been kneejerk reactions, the aim of which seems to be to contain the discussion within parameters that certain people are comfortable with. I refer to the orchestrated condemnation of RadioLive hosts Willie Jackson and John Tamihere, who have now been taken off the air for the rest of the year to reflect on their wickedness.

I don’t listen to the Willie and JT Show and suspect I wouldn’t much like it if I did. Mouthy blokes don’t do it for me. Yet I have found myself forced to defend Jackson and Tamihere for asking questions that many people think shouldn’t be asked, even if I think they could have done it rather more sensitively.

Before I go any further, I should make a couple of points as emphatically as I can, since the reaction to my earlier post on this subject suggests some people have trouble getting the message. These are (a) that I detest sexual abuse in any shape or form, and (b) that nothing excuses the behaviour of the contemptible young shits who call themselves the Roast Busters. Everyone got that?

I need to restate this since some of my attackers effectively accuse me of "victim blaming", because I suggested that it’s valid to ask questions about whether the behaviour of the Roast Busters’ victims might have contributed in any way to their abuse.

Here’s my point: it’s simplistic to conclude that this is simply a matter of over-testosteroned young men behaving reprehensibly. Of course that’s the core problem, and nothing excuses or condones their behaviour. But we need to acknowledge that the social context in which this abuse occurred is more complex than that.

For a start, there’s evidence that some of the Roast Busters’ female friends saw nothing wrong in what they did and even admired them for it. That alone suggests society – or perhaps a subset of society – has taken a wrong turning somewhere.

If we step back and try to look at the big picture, it’s almost impossible to avoid the conclusion that a key reason for aberrant behaviour like that of the Roast Busters is that we live in a society that’s drenched with sex. That makes me sound like a 1950s prude, but what the hell.

The sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s may have liberated us, but it has also left us with some perverse outcomes. One is that many girls grow up thinking one of their key functions is to be sexually alluring and available. And the attitude of some of their male peers, as demonstrated by the Roast Busters, is one of entitlement. After all, if there’s all that sex out there (and they know there is, because they see it all the time on music videos, on TV, in the movies and in video games like Grand Theft Auto), why shouldn’t they grab some?

I’m not just talking about pornography being instantly and universally available, though that’s certainly part of the problem. I’m also talking about girls being sexualised from an inexcusably early age and bombarded with sexual imagery and sexually-laden marketing everywhere they look.

I believe children are entitled to enjoy their innocence for as long as they can.  God knows they encounter the real world soon enough. But society and popular culture seems determined to rob them of that innocence long before they have the maturity to deal with the emotional complications that come with sex.

Who’s to blame? Phwoar. Where to start? Perhaps with pop stars like Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga, whom popular culture holds up as role models for girls. In the MTV Video Awards, seen by millions of sub-teens, Cyrus – a former Disney Channel child star – comes on to Robin Thicke, submissively rubbing her buttocks against his groin and doing that crotch-towelling thing that dancers in seedy strip clubs do; in the video for her song Wrecking Ball, surely one of the most watched songs on YouTube, she strips naked and mock-fellates the head of a sledgehammer. Swallows and Amazons this isn’t. And only this morning I read about the sexually explicit content on Lady Gaga’s latest album, supposedly inspired by her own sex experiences.   

But the blame goes much further than that. How about the Family Planning Association, which for years has been running a determined campaign to promote sexual precocity in kids? (Now that will definitely get me labelled as some sort of Mother Grundy, but it’s true.)

Ultimately, though, responsibility lies with all of us for sitting back passively while our children’s right to the innocent, uncomplicated pleasures of childhood was gradually stripped away.

Now, to get more specific, I’ve been asked to defend myself by explaining how the behaviour of the Roast Busters’ victims could have been a contributory factor in their abuse. (Please note that I didn’t say their behaviour was a contributory factor; merely that it’s legitimate to ask whether it was a contributory factor – a distinction lost on the ideologues who prefer explanations for bad behaviour to be bumper-slogan simple.)

Here are a few of the things I was thinking about. How do 13-year-old girls get into situations where they are at risk of being sexually exploited by older boys? How did they end up at parties where they were plied with alcohol? Did their parents know where they were? Did they care?

Do young girls dress provocatively because they see people like Miley Cyrus wearing only a bra and knickers, or nothing at all, and think that’s the cool thing to do – a sure way to attract male attention? Do they then suddenly find themselves out of their depth and in a situation that they can’t control?

Suggesting these might be factors doesn’t excuse bad behaviour; but it may go some way toward explaining it. And if we’re genuinely interested in understanding how society produces aberrant young males like the Roast Busters, then we shouldn’t exclude anything from the conversation.   

I know the argument goes that women and girls should be entitled to dress however they want without risking harassment or assault, but that strikes me as naively idealistic. I could argue that I should be able to go to bed at night leaving the doors unlocked and the windows open, but I don’t because I know what the consequences could be.

A 77-year-old Papatoetoe woman forgot to lock her door on Sunday and was sexually assaulted by an intruder. Does her forgetfulness justify or excuse the crime against her? Of course not, but it was inarguably a contributory factor. The point is, we have to deal with the world as it is, not as we would like it to be.

I have long believed it’s unfair that a woman can’t go into a bar for a drink on her own without risking being hit on, but most women aren’t prepared to take the chance. It’s not right that things should be that way, but it’s the way the world is. And until we change the world – which I believe we’re doing, slowly – then we have to accept that some actions may have unpleasant consequences, so prudent people try to avoid them.

In the case of young teenage girls, those traumatic consequences are almost inevitably unintended, simply because they don’t have the maturity or experience to anticipate or perhaps even understand them. In other words, what happens to them ISN’T THEIR FAULT. (I need to put this in capital letters because some readers of this blog have limited skills of comprehension.) But that shouldn’t stop us stepping back and considering whether sexual abuse might not be quite so one-dimensional as the ideologues – the people who clamour for radio hosts to be taken off air – would like us to believe.

* Sorry, but I couldn't find Jane's column online.

The tyranny of the mob - again

Sigh. Here we go again: the tyranny of the mob. Emboldened by numbers and anonymity, the finger-waggers swarm on to Twitter and Facebook, demanding the heads of RadioLive broadcasters Willie Jackson and John Tamihere for asking supposedly inappropriate questions of the friend of an alleged Roast Busters victim. Moral righteousness is never so easy as when there are thousands of you and opinion is never cheaper than when you can join the shrill chorus of condemnation without having to identify yourself.

We have been here before. We saw it with the furore over the late Paul Holmes' throwaway remark - which I suspect was meant ironically, although that point was lost in the moralistic clamour that ensued - about Kofi Annan being a "cheeky darkie". We saw it again when Alasdair Thompson was hounded from his job because he made a perfectly legitimate remark that was deemed offensive to women.

Once again we see timid corporate advertisers being panicked and bullied into boycotting the programme involved, just as happened to Holmes. And once again we see the contrite hosts making the now-ritual apology - and inevitably, then being condemned because it wasn't considered sincere enough. You can't win.

The initiator of the boycott, reportedly, was left-wing blogger Giovanni Tiso, who is understandably bathing in a self-congratulatory glow. Funny how it's almost invariably the Left that wants to shut down opinions it doesn't like, and even odder that capitalist companies should meekly fall into line.

Before I'm accused of indulging in victim-blaming, which is one of those accusations (like "racist", "sexist" and "beneficiary basher") that activists use to intimidate opponents into silence, I should state that there are few things I detest more than  sexual abuse. I abhor the misogynist culture that exists within parts of New Zealand society and, like most people, I'm aghast at the reported activities of the so-called Roast Busters - and perhaps even more so at the lackadaisical reaction, at least until this week, of the police.

But the outrage over the Roast Busters has triggered a potentially valuable national conversation about how such attitudes could exist in a supposedly enlightened, civilised society, and everything should be on the table. If we genuinely want to understand what's been going on in West Auckland, a few awkward questions need to be asked. One of those questions is whether the behaviour of the victims may have been a contributory factor, consciously or otherwise. Asking that question doesn't excuse the contemptible behaviour of the perpetrators. Neither does it mean blaming the victim.

If we don't ask those uncomfortable questions, an opportunity will have been lost. And the enemies of free speech and open debate will have triumphed again.