by Laura Bates
Two wrongs don’t make a right. And there’s a reason why the people who voice this argument nearly always cite the Diet Coke advert . . . because there are far fewer memorable examples of male objectification to choose from. Yes, men are objectified, too, but not to such an extent, so frequently, or to the exclusion of their other attributes – as is the case for women. So it doesn’t have the same wide-ranging negative impact on society’s view and treatment of them. (Not to mention that two wrongs don’t make a right . . .)
7. ‘Yes, but women are their own worst enemies’
This argument seems to hold that, because some women are mean to some other women, we shouldn’t have the audacity to tackle structural oppression until we’ve sorted out our own individual differences. But saying we should all be treated equally regardless of sex is very different from saying everybody should be nice to each other. This is a classic attempt to deflect attention away from ingrained inequality and instead on to women themselves, and leans heavily on the sexist stereotype of ‘catty’, ‘bitchy’ women.
8. ‘Yes, but women are bad role models’
Blah blah blah, Rihanna, blah blah, Miley Cyrus . . . It’s not a coincidence that so many female singers perform extremely sexualized routines or wear very little clothing. They’re women operating in a world that lets their male peers sing fully clothed and tells them they’ll only sell records if they flash the flesh. It’s another example of blaming and shaming women, focusing on the symptom and ignoring the cause.
9. ‘Yes, but women just don’t make good bosses’
This one always makes me laugh. It’s invariably based on the speaker’s own experience of three or four female colleagues, from whose individual failings they extrapolate the unfitness of the 3.5 billion or so other women on the planet. We’ve all had bad bosses, but we’d never look at a disorganized male colleague and assume that every other man in the world would have the same managerial style. Why do the same for women?
10. ‘Yes, but why didn’t she leave?’
Probably the most pernicious of all, this argument is usually directed at victims of domestic violence. It’s a variation on a theme, which also includes such gems as ‘Why does she always go for bad boys?’, ‘Why did she provoke him?’ and ‘Why didn’t she see it coming?’ It shows a deep lack of understanding of the psychological components of domestic abuse and the control an abuser can exert, but, most of all, it betrays a stubborn refusal to focus on the perpetrator instead of the victim. The best answer is the simplest: ‘Yes, but why did he do it?’
Originally published 7 August 2014
WHY IS TRAVELLING ALONE STILL CONSIDERED A RISKY, FRIVOLOUS PURSUIT FOR WOMEN?
Women around the world have spoken out about their experiences of travelling after two young Argentinian women, María Coni and Marina Menegazzo, were killed while backpacking in Ecuador. In the wake of their deaths, online commenters seemed to blame the women for what had happened, asking why they were ‘travelling alone’.
But, as Paraguayan student Guadalupe Acosta pointed out in a Facebook post that has been shared more than 730,000 times, there is an enormous double standard in asking questions like this of female travellers. It’s the equivalent of asking women who have been subjected to unwanted sexual attention or violence what they were wearing, instead of focusing on the wrongdoing of the male perpetrators.
In response to the furore, the phrase #viajosola (I travel alone) trended on Twitter, with more than 5,000 women using the hashtag to discuss their experiences. One woman poignantly wrote: ‘Travelling is freedom. Freedom has no gender.’ Another wrote: ‘I want to . . . travel alone without the fear I’ll be punished for it.’ Another said: ‘For women to stop travelling alone would be admitting we are to blame and have to be careful, when it is the world that has to change.’
Many people also rightly pointed out the irony of criticizing the two women when they were, in fact, travelling together. To suggest that women shouldn’t travel even with female friends takes victim-blaming a step further still – implying that women shouldn’t stray from home at all without male chaperones.
The truth is, women do experience a large amount of harassment and abuse while travelling alone, but they also experience danger in their local communities. To suggest that any woman shouldn’t travel alone is illogical when no country has successfully tackled, and stopped, gender inequality and sexual violence.
The tragic case of the two backpackers, 22-year-old Coni and 21-year-old Menegazzo, is by no means the first of its kind. When 33-year-old New Yorker Sarai Sierra was killed in Turkey during her first trip abroad, online commenters questioned her common sense and asked why she was travelling without a male companion.
But Sierra’s case (the man convicted of murdering her said the attack began after she rebuffed his attempt to kiss her) was strikingly similar to that of Mary Spears, for instance, shot and killed in Detroit in 2014, having rebuffed a man’s advances, and to that of another woman who had her throat slashed by a man in New York (but fortunately survived) after she turned down the offer of a date.
The exact same fate might just as easily have befallen Sierra at home, but it didn’t protect her from judgements and criticisms of her decision to travel. In this sense, there is also an element of racist stereotyping in our readiness to condemn crimes against women that happen abroad as representative of wider violent attitudes towards women. Meanwhile, we fail to make the same generalizations about attacks that happen at home.
To put things in perspective, according to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), in 2013–14 there were 106 reported rapes of British nationals abroad and 152 reported sexual assaults. ‘An Overview of Sexual Offending in England and Wales’, released by the Ministry of Justice, Home Office and Office for National Statistics in 2013, revealed that 85,000 women are raped in England and Wales every year, of whom around 15 per cent report the incident to police. In the same way that confining women to women-only carriages on trains doesn’t solve the problem of harassment, but restricts women’s movements while tacitly condoning perpetrator actions, the same could be said about telling women to solve the problem of harassment and violence by staying at home. It unfairly curtails women’s freedom, and suggests that violence against them is simply inevitable.
Yet the restriction of women’s solo travel remains a curiously acceptable form of victim-blaming. When Sierra was killed, for example, one headline read: ‘American’s death in Turkey puts focus on solo travel’. Compare this with a headline about the death of Harry Devert, a 32-year-old US citizen killed while travelling alone in Mexico: ‘The untimely death of world traveller Harry Devert’. When Australian Lee Hudswell died after an accident while tubing down a river in Laos, the press reported: ‘Fatal end to Lee’s overseas adventure’.
Female travellers have long been subjected to restrictions and double standards, with their gender emphasized over their capability and strength. Female travellers are much more likely to be categorized into reductive stereotypes – such as the glamorous adventuress – than their male counterparts. Think H. G. Wells in Warehouse 13, sexy Lara Croft or the film portrayal of Adèle Blanc-Sec versus that of Tintin. When men travel in films, they are usually just travelling, but when women do, they are often running away from (or towards) a male romantic partner. (Compare The Holiday, Wild, Under the Tuscan Sun, Eat Pray Love to The Motorcycle Diaries or Into the Wild.) There are, of course, welcome exceptions (take a bow, Dora the Explorer).
Travel has historically been, and to an extent still is, seen as a natural, bold activity for men, and a risky or frivolous pursuit for women. And as with so many other forms of low-level sexism, the knock-on impact is enormous. At a local level, curtailment of travel can prevent women from accessing healthcare, visiting family or taking job opportunities. When we inhibit women’s wider freedom, we also limit their ability to broaden their horizons and acquire valuable language skills. The impact on women’s careers can be clearly seen in the response
s to female journalists who experience assaults while reporting abroad and face not only immense victim-blaming but also the curtailment of foreign assignments as a result.
When CBS correspondent Lara Logan was assaulted in Cairo in 2011 while reporting on the uprising, for example, one Canadian newspaper ran an article entitled: ‘Women with young kids shouldn’t be in war zones’. The (male) writer asked: ‘Should women journalists with small children at home be covering violent stories or putting themselves at risk? It’s a form of self-indulgence and abdication of a higher responsibility to family.’ Another commentator asked: ‘Why did this attractive blonde female reporter wander into Tahrir Square last Friday? What was she thinking?’
All travellers should take safety precautions, regardless of age or sex. Nobody is suggesting that women shouldn’t make the same sensible preparations as their male peers. But any attempt to constrain women’s movements solely on the basis of gender not only feeds into the idea that violence against them is inevitable, instead of tackling it, but also ignores the very real threats they face at home.
Originally published 21 March 2016
TEN FREQUENT COMMENTS ON FEMINIST BLOGPOSTS – AND MY RESPONSES
Journalist Helen Lewis wrote in 2012 that ‘the comments on any article about feminism justify feminism’. In my experience, she was right. But it’s not just the outrageous threats, misogynistic abuse and so on that emphasize the importance of the movement. It’s also the more subtle responses; the denials and challenges, often repeated over and over, that prove the points that feminist writers are making. In the interest of satisfying some of these heroically persistent critics, here are the answers to the ten most common ‘below the line’ responses I’ve received.
1. ‘This is not specific to any gender’
I like to think of these commenters as sweetly naïve rather than deliberately obtuse. Because, of course, were they to look at just a smidgen of the statistical evidence (often cited in the articles beneath which they are commenting), they would realize that these issues – harassment, sexual abuse, workplace discrimination – are very gendered indeed.
2. ‘Well done. You have identified a problem that has been identified a million times. Now what is your solution?’
I feel awful for foisting another article about sexism on this poor beleaguered reader. As tough as it is for him to keep reading about it though, he might want to stop to consider what it’s like to live with it day in, day out. Sure, articles highlighting a problem aren’t necessarily a solution in themselves. But when I first started Everyday Sexism, I met the same response again and again: ‘Sexism doesn’t exist any more.’ It’s impossible to begin to tackle something without first raising awareness that the problem exists.
3. ‘Why are you whining about this when there are more important things in the world?’
It’s amazing how this criticism is so rarely levelled at football writers, say, or people writing light-hearted pieces about DIY or dog walking. Curiously, in fact, it’s almost exclusively women who are policed with the shouts of ‘It’s worse elsewhere, so think yourself lucky’. The existence of rape and other forms of sexual violence don’t invalidate the experiences of those who are discriminated against in the workplace or harassed in the street; nobody tells the police to stop investigating fraud until they’ve solved every murder. The presumption that women in the UK have nothing to complain about is simply false: 85,000 women are raped in the UK every year and over 400,000 sexually assaulted. An average of more than two women are killed by a current or former partner every week. And perhaps most importantly of all, this argument fails to see the links between these different forms of oppression and violence. If we aren’t allowed to challenge the more ‘minor’ forms of harassment and discrimination, we set a precedent for the treatment of women as second-class citizens that has a direct impact on the more serious crimes.
4. ‘I don’t know if these people can ever be changed’
It’s probably true that people who are sexist or commit acts of abuse are unlikely to be swayed by a Guardian blogpost. Revelatory. But I’ve heard from a lot of men who say reading these articles has made them rethink sexist behaviour that they had previously considered to be harmless. And it’s my belief that there’s a critical mass of people out there who wouldn’t dream of carrying out such abuse, but also aren’t aware that it’s going on. If we can engage them, and open their eyes to the problem, they will be more likely to take action and become part of the solution. Maybe a dad will read one of these articles and be alerted to the importance of talking to his sons about respect for women. Maybe a woman who has been groped will read one and realize that she has the right to report the incident to the police.
5. ‘If any man tries to grope me, they’ll get a foot slammed somewhere they really don’t want it to be’
I understand the impulse to comment on an article about harassment or groping with suggested reactions, I really do. It’s frustrating to read about people experiencing abuse and it’s a natural human response to offer advice. But these comments utterly fail to recognize the emotional and physical impact of being accosted or assaulted. More importantly still, focusing on responses fails to put the blame squarely where it really belongs – with the perpetrator.
6. ‘We can all say “Men should not do that in the first place” but this is the same as me leaving my car door open with keys in it and saying “People should not rob” ’
No, it’s not. First, there is no good way to avoid assault – 90 per cent of rapists are known to their victims, so those old chestnuts about not wearing short skirts or going out late at night are nonsense. Second, we have to tackle perpetrators, not tell victims how to behave. Third, if you leave your car door open and your car is stolen, you’re not likely to be widely shamed, to encounter a justice system consequently predisposed against you and jurors who are inclined to sympathize with your attacker while stigmatizing you.
7. ‘What about cleaning adverts portraying men as clueless idiots?’ . . . ‘Does Laura Bates really believe no man has ever been propositioned or felt up at work?’
Nope. In fact, the Everyday Sexism Project accepts and publishes entries from men. Yes, there are isolated examples of adverts and media that make negative and sweeping generalizations about men. But most of the articles I write are about women and their experiences of gender inequality. Why? Women experience gender inequality vastly more frequently than men. The inequality women experience tends to be much more severe than that faced by men. And because of the structural, ingrained inequality in the society we live in (economically, professionally, socially), incidents of sexism experienced by women tend to have a much more far-reaching impact on their daily lives.
8. ‘I don’t know anyone in my office who behaves that way’ . . . ‘I just can’t believe that happens regularly’ . . . ‘I’ve never worked anywhere where these attitudes would be tolerated’
It’s not hugely surprising that many male commenters may not have witnessed sexism or discrimination first-hand. Harassers and abusers often take advantage of moments of isolation, whether in a deserted tube carriage or an empty office. The silencing of victims means that many never tell anybody about their experiences. This is a problem that disproportionately affects women, so of course men are less likely to have seen it happening, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. You can keep trying to suggest the problem isn’t really there because you haven’t seen it, but there’s a pesky amount of evidence to the contrary. Wouldn’t it be easier just to believe us?
9. ‘I don’t think demonizing all men is going to help’
It’s amazing how quick some men (yes, #notALLmen, don’t panic) can be to jump to the conclusion that any article describing the actions of a minority must somehow be attacking them. It’s not. But by jumping in to shout that not all men are like those described, you are becoming part of the problem. It’s this kind of defensive response that makes it so hard to speak out about sexism. One great way to
make the point that ‘not all men’ are sexist is to get involved in taking a stand – you can start by not derailing articles about the problem.
10. ‘This is just another example of the feminist conspiracy at The Guardian’
Busted.
Originally published 4 September 2014
WHY DO THE POLICE STILL TELL WOMEN THAT THEY SHOULD AVOID GETTING RAPED?
‘Women warned after Gainsborough assault.’ ‘Police warn women walking alone after riverside incident.’ ‘Serial sex attacker strikes again as ninth victim is assaulted and police warn women to be on their guard.’ ‘Police issue warning to women not to walk or travel alone after woman grabbed in latest incident.’ ‘Fugitive rapist: women urged not to walk alone as chilling footage at Manchester airport released.’ These headlines represent five cases in one month alone where UK police have reportedly warned women to adjust their routines or behaviour because of crime in a particular area.
Many people reading these articles would nod approvingly and suggest that this is simply a common-sense measure, given the risk. Of course the police are also doing all they can to catch the perpetrator in each case – they aren’t suggesting women should take sole responsibility for dealing with the problem. And yet, how absurd it would seem if we were to apply similar logic to any other type of crime . . .
‘Police warn motorists not to drive after speeding drivers cause crashes in local area.’
‘Police warn residents not to have garden sheds made out of wood after spate of arson cases.’
The idea of advising women not to walk or travel alone in an area where there has been a sexual assault might seem straightforward at first glance, but not everybody has the luxury of a car. Many people are dependent on walking, whether for their whole journey or to the nearest bus stop. As simple as it might sound to suggest travelling with a friend or family member, the reality of women’s daily lives means that it would be near-impossible for most to arrange this and keep to their own busy schedules.
