Just because...

Rashida Manjoo has visited our country to look at our approach to violence against women.  She was here for 16 days.  She saw some of the things she wanted to see but claims she was denied access to the Yarls Wood Immigration Centre.

She discovered she believed sexism was worse in the UK than in other places, and warned that the government's austerity measures were having a "disproportionate impact" on women's risk of violence.

I saw a report on Channel 4 News and started to look at the story on the internet.

Then I started to look at the comments left beneath these stories.

There seemed to be people in three camps.  

The first, small, group agreed with Ms Manjoo.

The second, significant group were outraged.  Surely the UK wasn't as bad as other countries?  What about Saudia Arabia?  What about Pakistan? What about, what about, what about…?  The point was that there were other countries that were worse than us so the criticism was unfair.

Really?  So if we have a sexist culture then that's OK providing there's somewhere else that's worse?  Isn't that like condoning torture in the UK providing there are some other countries that have "worse" torture?  Saying it's OK to kill people but that our "kill rate" is lower than some other countries. I could go on but you get the idea.

And then there was the third, reasonably-sized, group who just thought she was wrong.  Maybe she is, maybe she isn't.