The Herald Sun reported that 31 year old Shane James Kavanagh was convicted of violently raping a woman with whom he had just begun an intimate relationship, and was sentenced to seven years in jail, with a five year, 3 mont non-parole period.
Or at least, that’s what the journalist tried to do. Whoever wrote the headline seems to be talking about something else. A thing that happens when a “tradie” (a fun-loving bloke who is just working hard to make a living) gets “horny” (is no longer responsible for his choices because a: hormones, or b: a woman’s clothes/behaviour/existence, or c: both a & b) and rapes a “Tinder date” (a dehumanised stereotype who was online asking for trouble and bears no resemblance to an actual woman/real person) learns his “fate” (the terrible thing that ruins his life) and is caged (cruel and unreasonable punishment) for seven years.
The ubiquitous “Tinder Date” dehumanising victim-blaming is the new “but he was such a good bloke” and it’s just another method of erasing men’s violence against women.
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