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May 17, 2019 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
07:41
#Plymouth Sexual Assault Survivor Speaks Out
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Time Text
Can I shake off the paper?
I can, of course you can.
You've got to hold it just a little bit closer.
I um it's kind of hard for me to talk about, but uh this is about the Jess Phillips tweets and I'm sure you're absolutely sick and tired of hearing about it now.
I'm used to it by now.
I'm hoping that I can give a bit of context from someone that has been sexually assaulted, someone that has been raped and really quite brutally raped when I was about 15.
I'm sorry to hear that.
So, you know, I have that as my background for this.
I made a male friend about two years afterwards and the biggest thing, because he didn't know for years, the biggest thing was that he made a lot of offensive jokes.
Rape, religion, basically nothing was sacred.
We would joke about everything.
And that really, really helped me.
So in my opinion, free speech and this whole, oh, you've got to be offended.
Oh, my God, it's so offensive.
That is dangerous.
That is really bad.
And for someone that actually lived through that, the thing that actually helped me not normalize it, but come to terms with it was making those jokes, was actually coming to terms with it and actually going, well, yeah, it was horrible.
It was horrific.
You know, I ended up with a broken jaw.
I ended up with two of my teeth knocked out.
Split eye.
I ended up with a punctured lung from where he punched me in the ribs.
And so it was really, really horrific.
And now, well, I went through the I'm a feminist stage.
I went through the, I hate men because all men are like this stage.
And now I'm engaged.
Congratulations.
Congratulations.
So when I heard you make that joke, it humanized you to me.
Oh, thank you.
You know, you weren't just a face on the internet.
You were someone that I sort of looked at and I'd been watching for about a year and a half at that point.
Yeah.
And I was like, actually, these are the kinds of jokes that we were making that helped me get through.
This was the kind of thing that helped me get through.
See, the way I look at it is it sounds like the sort of feminist types want to make it so that that experience controls your life from that point onwards.
That was very much what I got from, because all of my friends were feminists at that time.
And that was very much what I got.
Oh, all men are horrible.
All men are going to do that to you.
You should be scared of men.
You should be scared to walk down the street because that man across the road, yeah, he's going to do it.
And I had that a lot from my friends.
Yeah, and it sounds like a cult, doesn't it?
It's like, oh, you've got to stay with us or otherwise you're not.
He is a cult.
And it was actually my psychology teacher that got me out of the cult.
Fabulous.
He was awesome, and I said some of the most horrific things to him.
And he stuck with me and really, really helped me.
What's his name?
He's called Dr. Booth.
Well, thank you to Dr. Booth.
Can we get a round of applause to Dr. Booth for doing his duty?
Yeah, I put part of my current happiness down to him getting me out of that mindset.
That's fabulous.
Honestly, I'm so glad to hear it.
And I'm really glad that you're living proof of what I'm saying.
Sorry, I'm not sure.
No, it's absolutely fine.
Don't worry.
Okay, Buzzfeed, listen, right?
No, no, but you are right, though.
I am living proof that what you're saying with the, you know, let's not be offended, let's actually have free speech.
You know, let's not go, oh, it's hate speech.
Fuck hate speech.
Yeah.
You know?
I'm sorry.
You can be offended as much as you like.
Hate speech is not ever going to hurt you.
Yes.
Completely agree.
And what I love about the most as well is it's taking the power back to you, isn't it?
It's you saying, you know what?
No, I'm in control of how I feel about this.
And if I want to make a joke about this horrible thing, I'm going to do it because I'm the one who's in charge here, not you.
Yeah.
That's the way I look at it.
Yeah.
And it is absolutely like that.
It really is like that.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for coming up and sharing that with us, honestly.
Yeah.
Honestly, it was a real pleasure.
I did want to speak to you about UKIP policy as well I just wanted to I think it's worth distinguishing that this was not about UKIP policy I'm so sorry UKIP for the fact that this keeps coming up Yeah, no, no.
Like I said, I know you're probably sick and tired of hearing about that.
But I did want to put my experience in there.
What was the policy?
We have a lot of homeless people around here, and recently we've had Windsor House close down, which has put 60 plus more people on the streets.
Now, what would UKIP actually do to help in that situation, to help get people off the streets and to help them set themselves up to be able to succeed in life?
So I don't know about that individual situation, but I know that in the manifesto they do have policies in order to specifically help homeless who are disproportionately veterans because this is something that, well, frankly, is going wrong.
It's going the complete opposite way of the way it should.
And it's, I mean, most of it, I think, is due to the Tory austerity cuts.
I really think that that's.
I think so, too.
And UKIP are obviously completely in the opposite direction of supporting that.
They think that that's wrong and would do the complete opposite.
So I've got no doubt that if UKIP were in charge in this area, they would keep the homeless shelters open.
I've no doubt whatsoever.
But I'm really not that kind of policy guy on that.
Yeah, no, I just want to say that.
There are going to be people who have any information on it.
Oh, sorry.
I wonder when you get it.
Right.
Everyone, this is Lawrence Webb.
This is also a candidate for the MEP constituency in the Southwest.
Lawrence, would you like to answer this lady's question?
It's very simple.
The problem we have with housing in this country is supply and demand.
There is simply a greater demand than there is supply.
And I know across the southwest, you've seen houses going up everywhere.
But it's never going to meet the demand whilst we have uncontrolled immigration.
So anyone in the EU, whilst we remain in the EU, has the automatic right to come, live, work, and claim benefits in this country.
And that's one of the core principles of UKIP is ending the free movement of people so we can start addressing the problems of the problem of the homeless people that we have here.
The other fact is that there is currently a statutory obligation to house the homeless.
Every council has that obligation.
But of course, they prioritise on need.
So people with certain issues, so young families and things will always get priority.
So if you're single, you're going to be pushed constantly to the back of the queue.
And that's one of the things we've got to want to address.
But before we can do that, we have to control the numbers of people coming in so we can start housing those homeless we already have.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Carl, you're up again.
Thank you so much.
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