by Laura Bates
1. Being openly treated as sexual prey
For female students starting at Emmanuel College, Cambridge this month, a depressing welcome awaited. Student newspaper The Tab reported on a leaked email encouraging members of an all-male drinking society to ‘smash it (/the girls)’. A student at a different university reported to Everyday Sexism that they had overheard a student halls rep telling a fresher: ‘I’m going to treat you like a dolphin, segregate you from the group until you give in to me.’ Others from different universities report ‘points systems’ for games such as ‘fuck a fresher’, ‘seal clubbing’ or ‘sharking’ – where older male students win points for sleeping with first-year girls. (In some cases, extra points were reported for taking a girl’s virginity or keeping their underwear as a trophy.) In many cases, these are the people supposed to be looking after freshers as they settle in.
2. Sexism from sports clubs
The term had barely started at the London School of Economics before the rugby team was disbanded for distributing a homophobic and misogynistic leaflet calling girls ‘mingers’, ‘trollops’ and ‘slags’ and describing female athletes as ‘beast-like’. This came after a Durham University rugby club’s ‘It’s not rape if . . .’ drinking game and Aberystwyth University’s cricket team going out wearing shirts bearing slogans such as ‘casual rape’.
3. Misogynistic chants
At the University of Nottingham, a video has emerged showing a crowd of first-year students singing a chant including the lines:
These are the girls that I love best,
Many times I’ve sucked their breasts.
Fuck her standing, fuck her lying,
If she had wings I’d fuck her flying.
Now she’s dead, but not forgotten,
Dig her up and fuck her rotten.
It echoes last year’s video of students at Stirling University chanting on a public bus about sexual assault and miscarriage.
This certainly isn’t just a British problem – it follows the story of last year’s ‘frosh week’ chant at St Mary’s University in Canada, which included the words: ‘Y is for your sister / O is for oh so tight / U is for underage / N is for no consent / G is for grab that ass.’ And a fraternity from Yale University that hit the headlines for marching through campus chanting ‘No means yes! Yes means anal!’ this year announced plans to expand to UK universities.
4. Freshers’ week sexism
One student present at the University of Nottingham event told The Guardian: ‘I was angry because it was the first night of my university experience, which I’d been looking forward to for a long time. I was upset that I was already experiencing misogyny on my first night.’ And it’s not unusual for freshers’ week to see a spike in sexist incidents – last year, a freshers’ week event was advertised to students at Cardiff Metropolitan University using a poster bearing the words: ‘I was raping a woman last night and she cried.’
5. Sexist initiations
Female students wanting to get involved in clubs and societies often find themselves pressured or coerced into highly sexualized and often degrading initiations, from simulating oral sex to giving lap dances or taking their clothes off.
6. Being photographed without consent
After the recent proliferation of online ‘spotted’ and ‘confessions’ pages dedicated to specific universities, female students can find themselves photographed unawares in the library or elsewhere on campus, with their pictures widely commented on and rated. Those who aren’t photographed might be treated to the joy of comments such as:
‘To the hot girl sitting opposite me on level 3, do you mind if I have a cheeky danger wank whilst looking at you?’
‘To the sexy brunette on the 4th floor, will you be my girlfrien? I didn’t add the D because you’ll get that later.’
‘The fat bird standing by the printers on the first floor. Don’t want to shag, but could really do with a cuddle.’
7. Being told to ‘get back in the kitchen’ or ‘make me a sandwich’
Recent years have seen a depressing return to retro sexism, particularly at schools and universities. As I’ve visited institutions up and down the country, countless students have reported coming up against ‘old school’ sexist comments like these, not just in social situations but also when trying to contribute in academic sessions or lectures. Rape jokes are also commonly reported.
8. Sexual assaults on nights out
A recent National Union of Students (NUS) study revealed that 37 per cent of female students had experienced ‘inappropriate touching and groping’ – acts defined as sexual assault under UK law. But so great is the social acceptability of these experiences that very few students would consider reporting them and many describe them as the norm.
9. Sexism in academia
It’s not just club nights and initiations – female students come up against sexism in the classroom too. Two world-class debaters faced sexist abuse about their appearance and cries of ‘Get that woman out of my chamber’ while participating in a competition at Glasgow University union last year. And another recent NUS report found that female students were experiencing sexism across campus, including venues such as lecture halls and the gym.
10. ‘Banter’
Perhaps worst of all, when female students try to challenge this litany of misogyny, they often come up against the defence that it’s just ‘banter’, it’s all just an ‘ironic’ joke. It’s hilarious to rank women out of ten and laugh about raping them and post anonymous public judgements of their appearance online because nobody really means anything by it! The defence is an incredibly effective silencer, branding anybody who dares to complain as uptight or lacking a sense of humour. But the truth is, it shouldn’t be possible to write a ten-point list of the abuse women have to brave in the process of learning. There’s nothing funny about it at all.
Originally published 10 October 2014
SEXISM IS STILL SEXISM WHEN IT DOESN’T MAKE THE NEWS
A Texas advertising company, trying to show how realistic the stickers they make for the backs of trucks could be, decided that the best possible way to prove it was to create one that appeared to show a kidnapped woman tied up and lying in the back. Owner Brad Kolb told Texas news station KWTX that: ‘It was more or less something we put out there to see who noticed it.’ Because, really, what is violence against women if not a hilarious, attention-grabbing gimmick?
KWTX later reported that Kolb burned the sticker after an angry public response, which can only make one wonder at what point people are finally going to realize that this level of sexism is unacceptable before they go through with it, rather than after taking it round the block a few times and gauging the response. There shouldn’t need to be a backlash every time an incident like this occurs for people to realize that violence against women isn’t a suitable marketing tool.
Examples such as this show just how ingrained sexism is in our society. Over at the Washington Post, Richard Cohen produced a column whose title alone pretty much says it all: ‘Miley Cyrus, Steubenville and Teen Culture Run Amok’. Yes, that’s right folks, he did indeed conflate girls dancing and ‘teen culture’ with the brutal rape and subsequent online abuse of a teenage girl. He goes on to discuss the New Yorker account of the Steubenville rape, saying ‘Cyrus should read it’ and later adds, ‘acts such as hers not only objectify women but debase them’. Reading the piece, you can see that Cohen actually means to criticize the misogyny of teen culture, and the inhumane treatment of the Steubenville victim. But by laying the blame for this at the door of Cyrus and, implicitly, other teenage girls who choose to be confident in and explore their sexuality, he himself does exactly what he accuses Cyrus of – he deals a serious blow to the women’s movement or, indeed, any movement towards justice for victims of rape.
And these were just the more high-profile sexist moments of the past seven or so days. This is without even going into the online columns tearing down Kate Middleton because, the Da
ily Mail complains, ‘Since giving birth, the Duchess’s hair has looked rather worse for wear.’ Without even mentioning the advert for HGV drivers that appeared on the massive online job website Reed, which not only precluded the possibility any woman might have the audacity to have the relevant licence and apply for the position, but was also entitled: ‘NEED TO GET MORE TIME AWAY FROM HER INDOORS??’ It’s without even going into the fact that attendees at the TechCrunch conference in San Francisco had to sit through a presentation extolling the virtues of a new ‘Titstare’ app. (Does what it says on the tin.)
Yes, Reed removed the job advert after a barrage of complaints; yes, TechCrunch issued an apology, but once again the public acceptability of sexism meant these measures only came after the damage had already been done – when really these incidents shouldn’t be happening in the first place.
Bear in mind that these are just the stories you hear – the ones that make the news – they don’t even begin to scratch the surface of the individual, daily battles women and girls are facing against insidious, normalized sexism. The stories that are reported to the Everyday Sexism Project in their thousands every single week. Like the woman who was excused from jury duty on a rape trial this week, only to have the barrister ask her to stay behind because it’s ‘nice to have attractive ladies in court’. Or the girls who simply wanted to walk home from school in their uniform, the youngest aged just eleven, only to face beeps and catcalls and men shouting thoughtful advice such as ‘get back to school, slag’. The woman who struggled to get on her plane at the airport because she had entered her title as ‘Dr’, and the booking system had automatically converted it to ‘Mr’. The 16-year-old who was told ‘girls can’t do science’ in her chemistry class, and the woman who wanted to apply for a PhD but was told to ‘focus on getting your MRS degree first’. And, most ironic of all, the woman who attended an oil conference that had both a stand to attract more women into the industry and a bevy of ‘bikini babes’ wandering around aimlessly to attract male customers.
Originally published 13 September 2013
THIS IS RAPE CULTURE – AND LOOK AT THE DAMAGE IT DOES
What do we mean when we say ‘rape culture’? You may have heard the term used recently. It describes a culture in which rape and sexual assault are common (in the UK over 85,000 women are raped and 400,000 sexually assaulted every single year). It describes a culture in which dominant social norms belittle, dismiss, joke about or even seem to condone rape and sexual assault. It describes a culture in which the normalization of rape and sexual assault are so great that often victims are blamed, either implicitly or explicitly, when these crimes are committed against them. A culture in which other factors such as media objectification make it easier to see women as dehumanized objects for male sexual purposes alone.
It’s part of rape culture when ‘I’m feeling rapey’ T-shirts are put up for sale on eBay. It’s part of rape culture when a child victim of sexual abuse is accused of being complicit and somehow ‘egging’ on her abuser in the court case against him. It’s rape culture that makes it so hard for male victims to speak out, too, because hand in hand with the dismissal of rape as a hilarious joke goes the stigmatization of male rape victims as effeminate, impotent or non-existent.
Sometimes it’s hard to recognize or understand rape culture without hearing real-life examples of how it impacts on everyday lives, starting from an incredibly young age:
@JillNicholls01: #followed home from primary school by gang of boys saying they’d rape me – didn’t know what it meant but was scared – ran.
@TashaHugs: Overheard young boy on bus saying – ‘I’ll rape your mum so bad she can’t walk’. Sickening!
@ShrutiSardesai: Can’t go out for walks around my house bc routinely harassed, called names, and told that I need to be raped. Lovely stuff.
@Lethal_Brows: My co-worker was walking me to my car after my closing shift, I thanked him and he laughed & said he could rape me right now.
And the idea of rape becomes fair game for public jokes:
@AngelaBarnes: Genuine chat up scene unfolding on this train:
Boy: do you have a rape alarm?
Girl: yes
Boy: shame
I despair for humanity.
Rape culture suggests that men have a ‘right’ to women’s bodies, thus undermining the concept of consent:
@TheUrbanDryad: Guy I used to go out with decides he wants to restart stuff between us. When I decline he threatens to rape me #ShoutingBack
This leads to common misconceptions about women ‘asking for it’ or ‘wanting it’, even if they explicitly say otherwise:
@chazzyb31: At a party with bf, met his friend & pregnant gf. Friend follows me into toilets & says he’s going to rape me bcs I want it.
@Twinklecrepe: I was raped by a co-worker. I told my boss about it; she said it wasn’t rape and implied I actually wanted it.
This leads to public speculation about whether victims’ dress or behaviour could be to blame for their own assaults:
@wyvanekk: two girls in my class were talking about how you’d only have yourself to blame for getting raped if you wore a short skirt.
@Scathach_81: A former magistrate blames short skirts for rape on #bbctbq Welcome to 21st century Britain. #VictimBlaming
@Wolf_Mommy: When a man told me breastfeeding my baby in public is going to get me raped.
This shifts all the focus on to victims, while perpetrators are not addressed at all:
@Sarah_Watsons: ever since I was little my mum told me how to not get raped but I have never heard her once tell my 2 brothers not to rape.
Rape culture can permeate every area of a woman’s life, from the pavement:
@grrumblecakes: And FURIOUS that there are people alive who think threatening to rape me on my way to work is a funny joke #everydaysexism
To the workplace:
@adorrissey: upon hearing I was 19 and a virgin, my co-worker suggested I ‘needed to get raped’.
From the classroom:
@EllenSteenkamp: At age 11 classmate on school trip stated that ‘no one would rape me anyway cuz I’m too ugly’. Others only laughed at that.
To our own homes and families:
@kyleisonline: bought an open back t shirt for a concert a month ago; my father told me the shirt screamed ‘rape me’.
As the word starts to lose its meaning, it becomes harder and harder to object to rape culture:
@charliecat82: #LadCulture being told by an ex-boyfriend that he’d like to rape me and then he didn’t get why I was angry.
Worst of all, the widespread and normalized nature of rape culture makes it increasingly hard for victims to speak out, as they learn to believe they won’t be taken seriously, or are dismissed when they do:
@AmandaLouDT: On a nearly empty metro 4 men shouted they wanted to rape me. Scary but we’re not meant to make a fuss so didn’t tell anyone
@Frostbite___: I was 15 & my rape happened at a party. Never reported it because I knew I would get blamed & no would believe me. #RapeIsRape
@chitranagarajan: #ididnotreport because I thought I was overreacting – when being followed by groups of men and threatened with rape.
@Vidyut: the usual. RT @THELOUDERMOUTH: When I told friends I was raped, they said I ‘should have been more careful’. #shoutingback
The cycle is perpetuated as victims are silenced and blamed, the crime normalized and perpetrators completely ignored.
This is rape culture.
Originally published 14 February 2014
WOMEN ARE BEING ASSAULTED, ABUSED AND MURDERED IN A SEA OF MISOGYNY
Leighann Duffy, twenty-six, has died in hospital after being stabbed in front of her 6-year-old daughter. A 64-year-old woman has been stabbed multiple times at a support centre for care workers in south London. An 82-year-old woman has been beheaded in a north London garden. Pennie Davis, forty-seven, has been found stabbed to death in the New Forest. Suhail Azam has been jailed for sta
bbing his estranged wife, Kanwal Azam, to death. These reports are from the past couple of weeks alone. You probably haven’t seen them all listed one after another like that. But when we start to connect different pieces of information, or even just consider them side by side, we begin to see patterns and links between them.
For example, the Evening Standard reports that domestic abuse is on the rise, with Metropolitan Police figures showing 28,000 recorded offences in the twelve months leading up to June 2014. Meanwhile, the charity Women’s Aid has been forced to issue an emergency appeal as the number of specialist refuges has declined from 187 to 155 since 2010. Frontline women’s services are at ‘crisis point’. On one day alone in 2013, 155 women, with 103 children, were turned away from the first refuge they approached.
The news is peppered with reports of women being assaulted, abused and murdered. The campaigner Karen Ingala Smith reports that so far this year, the rate of women killed through suspected male violence has been one every 2.38 days. We know that on average two women a week are killed by a current or former partner – 51 per cent of all women murdered in 2011 and 2012, according to the Office of National Statistics. Yet we continue to report these crimes, if they are reported at all, as if they are isolated incidents. We don’t look at the bigger picture.
The reason we don’t consider the abuse and murder of women to be a newsworthy epidemic is because we are used to it. We don’t connect it to the backdrop of sexism and gender inequality. We continue to think of it as something ‘other’ and unusual that happens to women somewhere else; women who are victims of strangers and monsters, not men like the ones you know. Even though women are most likely to be assaulted in their own homes or workplaces. Even though there’s a 90 per cent chance a victim already knows her rapist. Even though, statistically, one in four of the women you know has been or will be a victim of domestic violence.
