A 16-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage in connection with the felling of the 300-year-old Sycamore Gap tree in the north of England.
Officers arrested the teenager amid an outpouring of sadness over the destruction of the landmark, which has been a feature of the site at Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland for hundreds of years. The boy is in custody and assisting officers with their inquiries, Northumbria police said on Thursday.
Locals and national park authorities said they were “struggling to see the logic” in the destruction of a sycamore which had long become “part of this area’s DNA” and had gone through thousands of changes of seasons.
The tree, believed to have been about 300 years old, was made famous when it appeared in the 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, starring Kevin Costner.
I dislike you 16-year old boy, Sycamore Gap Feller.
I dislike you as I dislike Brock Turner, Convicted Rapist.
What a bizarre and completely unnecessary comparison to make…
(to be clear - cutting down a tree, however pointless and destructive, is in absolutely no way shape or form comparable to raping women)
You can still dislike someone for doing something heinous, even though the crime isn’t comparable.
Wanton destruction of a living being of historical and cultural significance isn’t any more or less acceptable than violating someone’s agency and personhood, marring them for life.
Hey, so, lots of rape survivors have asked people to stop framing rape as something that mars a person for life, because it’s basically a rephrasing of the outdated idea of a “ruined woman”. You can’t ruin a person. A lot of people really struggle with the idea that they’re dirty forever, and hearing that said by allies constantly doesn’t help their recovery. You can still recognize the harm that rape does without reinforcing outdated concepts of purity, where before they were pure and unmarked and after they’re “marred for life” with no recovery.
More. The answer is that killing a tree is more acceptable than rape. What’s wrong with you?
Both crimes involve permanent harm that cannot be repaired.
Just because you can’t connect the two crimes in your head, doesn’t mean someone else can’t. Get out of your own head.
Sure, but he’s not wrong. It’s still bizarre and unnecessary. There’s no need to generalize every freaking situation. It eventually waters down language IMO.
But in one case the victim is a person with feelings and in the other case it’s a tree. I find it quite concerning that people seem to struggle to see the difference.
You mean Convicted Rapist Brock Turner, now going by the name of Convicted Rapist Allen Turner, who was sentenced to six months but only served three for what his father called (and I quote) “twenty minutes of action”? That Convicted Rapist Brock Allen Turner?
[I awaken as a shadow of my former self, a figment of the late-night scroller you met so long ago. I return to you now, humbled and broken by time and nature, and in my defeat I must profess that In my state I find myself unfit to take up the weight of the banner which I swore to bear.]
Yes, the very same Brock Allen Turner, convicted rapist of an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, who only served three months.
