Are the lesbians crying wolf?

Here is a story that somehow has a faintly familiar whiff about it. Two lesbian actors, innocently walking a Southampton street, were (so they tell us) subject to a “cowardly homophobic attack”. People in a passing car shouted homophobic abuse (no details given other than the voice was a young male) and they were “pelted with stones”. In one report the victim says she was struck between the eye and the temple by what may have been a pebble and fell to the ground. The couple were appearing in Rotterdam, an award-winning LGBTQ play currently on tour. The last two (of three) performances were cancelled, with large poster boards proclaiming loudly and proudly the reason why.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/10/europe/uk-homophobic-assault-scli-intl-gbr/index.html

https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/17694475.rotterdam-cancelled-in-southampton-after-stones-thrown-at-two-actors-in-homophobic-attack/

If all the details of this story are true, I feel bad for the victims, and I am appalled, but not surprised, by the behaviour of their assailants. The lack of surprise is not because England is full of roaming gangs of homophobes, it simply isn’t, but because boorish, ignorant and threatening behaviour is not uncommon among the disregarded white working-class youth. I’ve witnessed, and been subject to, a number of incidents of neds driving past and shouting things at passers-by, usually incomprehensible. 

There is something about the story as we are being told it by the MSM that doesn’t quite ring true. We are asked to believe that these trashy thugs were cruising the streets of Southampton, carrying an ammo cache of suitable stones, on the off chance of seeing lesbians or gay men exercising their gayness in public. While I’m more than ready to believe in the verbal abuse from a moving car, the image of a ne’er do well David felling a lesbian Goliath with an exceedingly well aimed stone strains credulity.

For the sake of argument let’s assume it was a lucky shot, or maybe the lad is an avid fan of ancient warfare and trains as a peltast down the local park day in day out, there is something else about the story as we’ve been given it that smells, well, a bit Smolletty. I’ve looked up a lot of online reports on this, and we have photos of the two women in question, but they are publicity style shots, not the sympathy rousing pictures of the victim sporting their wounds, as is traditional in these cases. Now, if she was hit between the eye and temple by a stone thrown from a moving car there would be an impressive bruise at the very least. I may have missed it, but I’ve yet to find a lachrymose post pelting picture. Nor is there any mention of any hospital treatment, which surely there should have been. I’m as medicophobic as the next chap, but even I would go and get checked out if I’d been hit in the head by such a missile.

I’m not accusing them of making the whole thing up, they’ve not gone full Smollett, hired some local Somalis with Union Flags and Nigel Farage masks, but it does feel very much like this story may have accrued details after the fact.

As Cicero taught us, let us ask cui bono? Who benefits? Well, the play Rotterdam and the actors in it have had more publicity than they could ever have dreamed of or paid for. It has moved on from the southern wastes of Southampton to the self consciously gay friendly metropolis of Manchester. I checked how the bookings were going for tonight’s performance. Even after all the publicity, there were still between a quarter and fifth of the seats available. Perhaps the shows in the rather less woke Southampton weren’t selling too well, award winning is not a synonym for commercially successful. Or maybe I’m just a cynic.

There is also the opportunity to push the false narrative that “Brexit Britain” is a hate filled homophobic, racist, etc. etc. etc. hell hole and we’d better take action quickly.

“We need to campaign for more LGBT-inclusive lessons in education.” Said Lucy Jane Parkinson, one of the two victims. “Incidents” like this are always used to push the narrative, just as “moderate” Moslems always use the aftermath of terrorist attacks to play the good cop.

Please don’t assume I take assaults on the person lightly, they are a serious matter, whatever the motivation. The only hospital treatment I’ve ever had was after being kicked unconscious by a gang of gay hating thugs while coming out of a well-known gay club in Brighton late one night back in the early 90s. They made their motivation very clear. I spent the night on a hospital gurney, had three stiches in my lip, a black eye that kept my right eye closed for two days and lost a tooth. A curiously liberating experience in a way, but not one I’d recommend.

There is a concerted push to make the maximum use of any incident that can, in any way, be painted as part of a “backlash” from the knuckle draggin’ Brexit votin’, white working class. There are few enough to work with, but boy they get the full treatment, crying wolf doesn’t even begin to cover it. The sight of people using such experiences in this way is sickening. As is the fact that under UK law, any sentence for a crime deemed to be a hate crime is automatically double what it would be for the same actions motivated by common or garden badness or covetousness. As for the totally uncritical way this story is simply regurgitated and its inherent unlikeliness not examined in any way. I don’t know which explanation is more disturbing, that the MSM is consciously engaged in using “news” to further their agenda, or they really are too dim to think for themselves.