My main professional background is in the earth & life sciences, but I now also explore topics in the broad area of bioethics. That's about equality, fairness, justice, diversity and inclusivity. It's also about people's biases, the associated otherization and everything that this can result in. That includes poverty, homelessness and poor health, shabby looks and shrinking personal bubbles, exposure to chemical and noise pollution and lots more. It's also about law, philosophy, neuroscience, technology, forensic psychology, politics and public policy (governance). Diversity and inclusivity are much bigger challenges than I used to believe. I for example now think that society's lack of genuine acceptance and support for people whose brains work very differently can among other things result in destructive behaviours for which the forensic psychology terminology is sadistic stalking or resentful stalking. My own experiences on the receiving end of something like this caused me to start looking into personality disorders and neurodiversity. That is how I stumbled upon bioethics. Seeing the massive inequality in England had something to do with it too. No, I don't have all the answers. Do you?
About a year ago, something like what this woman describes appears to have happened to me too. All over North End – along Kingston Road between my address and Kingston Crescent and possibly also along London Road – ethnic men started recognizing me. They looked at me with a strange smiley expectation, as if they were expecting some kind of boundary-crossing behavior from me.
I also got a strange amused look from a young white woman who recognized me. I remember a white man who recognized me too and the look he gave me wasn’t pleasant but as if I had done something somewhat repulsive.
At around the same time, I’d received some kind of invitation, if I recall correctly.
It took me a while to realize that deepfake porn being circulated was the only thing that seemed to be able to explain what was going on.
I wrote about it online then. If I recall correctly, this was at the time that sharing deepfake porn became a crime too. So I added this information.
It all stopped then.
I wasn’t haunted by it as I’d never seen any images. This kind of thing, it’s just what Portsmouth is like anyway.
Watch the video. Here we have it again. This need to have control and power over a woman, supposedly a stranger.
The man who told Helen Mort about the deepfakes is likely the one who created them. Occam’s razor. Just like Ann Moulds’ tormentor was the “helpful” “supportive” guy. These guys often want to observe the effect of their handiwork up close.
Here we have it again. Why was it so crucial for this police officer to target 10-to-16-year-old girls so that he could have sadistic power and control over them? Where does this come from? Something to do with the endocrine system?
This power and control motive also often pays a role in stranger-stalking.
Last night, (starting at 6:15 PM EST), I attended an online meeting that discussed clinical/medical bioethics and Islam. It was organized by Columbia University.
Below are a few take-aways.
One of the things that struck me is that the knowledge and experiences contributed by the three panel members are also very useful in for example the dialogue between liberals and democrats on the one hand and republicans on the other. Objections made by republicans are also often faith-based, even though that comes from within a very different setup. It’s too easy to simply reject everything that republicans say and ridicule them.
(I was also reminded of discussions with a Jewish friend who is a rabbi and studies many of the old writings within the Jewish faith.)
Islam is not one fixed set of rules and beliefs, like any other faith. For starters, there is the difference between Sunni and Shia.
Organ donation is generally accepted as permissible in Iran but not in Iraq, as an example. Organ donation can be viewed as an act of aggression against the human body (God’s creation).
Generally speaking, longevity is more important than quality of life for muslims.
That brings me to the following. It is generally assumed that “muslim” equals “Arabic” but Arabs make up only 20% of the muslim population. (I think that Indonesia, a country with strong historic ties to the Netherlands, is the largest muslim nation.)
Muslims make up 24.9% of the global population.
In the US, however, they make up only 1.1% of the population.
The need for dignity (as ill-defined as it may be) is universal, but the need for modesty is not and the need to consult with other family members and with clerics about medical decisions to be made is not universal either. Those latter two needs must be respected and taken into account too, however.
Spiritual wellbeing can also be part of good health. One of the panel members told the story of how she, as a physician in Saudi Arabia, had been confronted with a Nigerian woman who was on the hajj (the holy pilgrimage to Mekka), but had needed orthopedic surgery. She initially experienced her as a loud and angry woman and eventually decided to ignore her. At the end of the day, however, she returned to the woman and said a few prayers in Arabic with her. That – as it turned out – was all that this woman needed. She instantly quieted down and thankfully grabbed the physician’s hands. Her anguish had to do with her inability to continue the hajj.
We’ve just had the 566th or so mass shooting in the US, 40% of the British are in poverty and many destitute (not even able to afford toilet paper), British university students have 50 pence to live on, on average, after they’ve paid the rent, we have so many active wars going on that I’ve lost count – the hate fires are burning far too hot – and the planet is no longer able to sustain us because it is buckling under the destruction we wreak.
But all is well.
Yeah, right.
And I still have a crazy lunatic on my tail, but that’s peanuts compared with the above. Or is it part of the same problem?
That’s what I want you to think about.
(No, not you, lunatic. Every time I sneeze, you think it’s a special message for you, sigh.)
The romantic notions foreigners often have about England, that’s Hollywood nonsense.
People who can’t afford toilet paper, that’s the real England. 40% of the Brits are currently in poverty. A great deal of that is deep poverty.
People who can’t afford toilet paper can very easily be recruited as pawns by psychopathic and narcissistic stalkers, too, by the way. Narcissists and psychopaths seems to have a knack for being flush.
By many, they are considered inferior human beings, England’s poor people. They get signs on the table for how to behave if they go to some of the places that hand outs free warm meals. They get mocked and ridiculed. They are supposed to have defective genes, low IQ and character flaws.
But all their “flaws” are caused by their poverty – such as by prolonged malnutrition – and that poverty is imposed by the government and by society.
(They have no need for anything like scientific services or art reproductions, by the way.)
(It also tells you the story of a predatory real-estate market that is out of control. The high rents, that’s like demanding that people pay 30 or 40 bucks for a loaf of bread.)
The contrast with where I am now is so surreal that I feel I have very little in common with the people here. England is like outer space. That’s been my world for far too long. I’m like a UFO now.
The heating went on here before the end of September. In many English homes, the heating actually never goes on. Many people can’t afford it, but it’s also very un-English to have the heating on before December or January.
It’s nice to be warm, though. Certainly if you’re a little older.
Even already before the pandemic, tens of thousand of Brits died each winter as the result of not being able to heat their homes (properly), far more than in counties with cold climates.
I find the mindless consumerism that comes with prosperity immensely depressing when I look at it from a climate change and broader planetary perspective, but so is the vengeful destruction of poor people’s lives and things in England. The place is becoming one big torture chamber, isn’t it?
The poverty mindset in England is stifling too, though. I hate it. Because people impose it on each other. It’s paralytic. But I understand where it comes from.
Mustn’t have ideas above our station.
Besides, poverty shrinks your world immensely. From the moment you get up to the moment you crawl into bed, all your thoughts are about where you will find food.
Those thoughts include whether you will have enough energy to walk over to St Jude’s or St Agatha’s and back if you haven’t eaten much for too many days. The vile cruelty you get treated to for free at some of these places that hand out meals can be pretty soul-destroying. There are days on which you’ll rather go hungry than get a mouthful of that crap again. That too will go through your mind.
No wonder there is often so much loud drunken agony in England. People often scream like banshees, on the street, day and night. People are hurting very badly there.
If you’re from a famine-stricken or war-torn country, England will still seem pretty sweet though.
I’ve discovered that I really like English supermarkets and English foodstuffs. English supermarkets are no longer the display of sad paucity that they once offered, with just a few turnips, carrots and onions, but on the other hand, do not have the ridiculous fulltime presence of Japanese sushi chefs either.
The acceptability of the relative seediness of the storage-room look, and whether hot chocolate should be placed with coffees and teas or with jams and peanut butters or whether cake and laundry detergent go together, that’s a mere matter of opinion.
If you’re in a minority group, it’s hard to get heard at meetings. The men simply won’t hear you if you’re a woman. It’s not even necessarily deliberate. Here’s what you can do to change that.
Blindly promoting everything that isn’t coal, oil or natural gas – and over-focusing on CO2 – is a form of greenwashing that just shifts the problems. We need to learn to start thinking things through. We didn’t do that in the past. We need to make this obligatory in a way that goes far beyond environmental surveys (often mere windowdressing). It probably means that we need more visionary scientists in politics and fewer career politicians.
If you do fall for it, I won’t remind you that I already told you about this kind of shit now being possible years ago.
Why do these scammers target seniors? Because almost all seniors ar dumb and dense? No. Because they have money. It’s often the generation with the most money. (I saw some work about this by a Dutch university about five or six years ago.) Because they have children, friends and grandchildren.
You also need to keep in mind that systems like Alexa as well as the various video doorbells keep your recordings. So there is staff that has access to them. There’ve been news items in relation to that as well. But as you can see in the video below, that “courier” was caught thanks to the video doorbell.
There are pluses and minuses to everything. Most people still think as if we write with feathers and fountain pens and send paper letters. The obligatory paranoia that should come with using the digital realm – including the IoT – is very hard to adopt, for everyone. We distrust people, not things.
Because it erodes your sense of safety and your general sense of control over your life. (More so than if you, say, were to be diagnosed with cancer. That’s between you and the cancer.)
Because it is repetitive. (A rape is over once it’s over. Stalking can go on for years, sometimes even decades.)
Why is getting stalking by a stranger so stressful?
Because being stalked by a stranger causes a profound cognitive dissonance within you. Because you cannot believe what is happening. Because what is happening cannot possibly be happening. Except, it is. You are trying to reconcile something that shouldn’t be happening with something that is happening and you can’t. You can’t make them overlap. You can’t make this make sense, no matter how hard you try. And try you do and you will. Oh, you will try very hard. You have to. You have no choice. You have to figure this out because unless you do, you cannot tackle it, manage it, deal with it, handle it.
This becomes greatly exacerbated when police officers and others choose to disbelieve you when you tell them what is happening.
Because then you cannot believe that they refuse to believe you. It clashes with your belief about how these others are supposed to respond to a situation like this. So then you will need to ditch that belief, which will likely make you feel abandoned and alone, or you will cling to it only to experience time and time again that it is not a realistic belief.
When police officers largely dismiss you, this also often aggravates the situation. It can put you in danger. First, the stalker may get very angry if he finds out that you went to the police and as he is stalking you, it is likely that he will find out. Many stalkers become furious when someone calls them a stalker. Second, the relative lack of action on the side of the police can greatly boost the feelings of power and control the stalker may be after.
Because it may cause you to lose your job or your business and maybe your home as well.
Because it can cause you to lose friends and because it can cause your relationship to fall apart and your marriage to fail.
Because it can involve threats and may result in injuries to your pets or your children or other relatives.
Because it can come with theft or destruction of property, which can be highly personal items such as underwear or cherished mementoes.
