Misogynation

by Laura Bates

  Joining the dots between these incidents matters because it is only when we see the problem as a whole that we can effectively work to tackle it. It also matters that we acknowledge a widespread and serious trend of women being killed by men, and that we set this trend within the wider context of normalized and ingrained sexism and misogyny.

  When I started the Everyday Sexism Project, people asked why I included incidents of rape and violence alongside testimonies of street harassment or media sexism. The answer is simple. They demonstrate a spectrum. Women aren’t killed in a bubble. They’re killed in a world that disenfranchises them, positions them as other and disadvantages them. They’re killed in a society that sends the message, clearly and repeatedly, that they are sexual objects for men’s gratification and possession. The cultural elements that help to create these messages aren’t the cause of violence against women, but they are the context in which it happens. They help perpetrators to see women as objects. They frame violence against women as titillating, funny or excusable. They help us to blame victims when they come forward. They hamper justice.

  While we fail to join the dots, women are dying. This sounds like an exaggeration, but isn’t. These are not isolated incidents. You know that two women a week on average are killed by a current or former partner, but here’s another statistic you might not have heard. Every day, according to the charity Refuge, almost thirty women attempt suicide as a direct result of experiencing domestic violence. Every week, three of them die.

  Originally published 12 September 2014

  RAPE IS NOT A ROMP

  In 1995 Private Cheryl James was found dead at Deepcut Barracks in Surrey with a gunshot wound to her head. She was just eighteen years old. A coroner later ruled that the wound was ‘self-inflicted’, and described the atmosphere at the barracks as ‘sexualized’. Reporting on the inquest, The Sun published an article entitled ‘ “Suicide” Army girl locked in for romp’, in which it described how: ‘Deepcut soldier Cheryl James was locked in a room and chased by a sergeant trying to “have his way” with her.’ This headline is part of a much wider problem of Carry On-style, titillating depictions of sexual violence.

  When a US teacher was in court accused of raping an underage student in 2017, US news outlets reported on the case with headlines like: ‘Married middle school teacher, 27, arrested for sex romps with her underage boy student’. In another case, a newspaper covered a story about rape and human trafficking under a sensationalist headline about a ‘sex slave’, placing the story on pages 4 and 5 next to a picture of a topless woman on page 3. When singer Kesha made an accusation of sexual abuse against a producer, American talk-show host Wendy Williams discussed the case on her show, saying: ‘If everybody complained because somebody allegedly sexually abused them . . . then contracts would be broken all the time.’

  After Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was accused of sexual harassment, assault and rape by dozens of women, The Times ran an article by Giles Coren that reduced the issue to PC gone mad, lamenting the fact that putting kisses at the end of emails could now ‘end my glorious career’.

  In December 2015, Daniel Holtzclaw was convicted of multiple counts of rape, sexual battery and other charges. A police officer, Holtzclaw had preyed on thirteen black, mostly low-income women, deliberately targeting those with criminal records or a history of drug use or sex work. But this didn’t stop sports outlet SB Nation from publishing a 12,000-word apologia for Holtzclaw some two months after he had been found guilty. The article was titled ‘Who is Daniel Holtzclaw?’ The subheading answered not ‘Rapist’, but ‘Linebacker’. The piece, peppered with self-aggrandizing quotes from Holtzclaw himself, painted him as a tragic figure who lost everything, describing him as ‘quiet and reserved’, a ‘workhorse’ with a ‘keen sense of humour’. Despite Holtzclaw’s conviction, the profile followed in a long tradition of similar media coverage, deliberately encouraging reader sympathy for the perpetrators of sexual violence and entirely glossing over the impact on victims. Part of the problem is the overwhelmingly white, male lens of front-page reporters – an internal report into the Holtzclaw debacle by SB Nation revealed its editorial staff to be 89 per cent male and 87 per cent white. Women write just over one-fifth of UK front-page newspaper articles and 84 per cent of those articles are about male subjects or experts. And when women do make the news, it is more likely to be because of their appearance or love lives than their achievements and opinions. So it is little surprise that our media continues to perpetuate sexist stereotypes, to belittle and blame victims of discrimination and to depict sexual violence irresponsibly.

  When it comes to feminism, the media, which could play such a positive role in advancing gender equality, too often deliberately stands in its way. Women who try to create change are branded ‘feminazis’ in front-page headlines, feminist campaigners are mocked as humourless harpies and television ‘debates’ are set up to provide a national platform for known misogynists in the name of ‘balance’.

  Such treatment of misogyny risks sending the message that it is subjective and defensible, making the uphill battle for equality feel just a little bit steeper.

  A CYCLE OF VIOLENCE: WHEN A WOMAN’S MURDER IS CALLED ‘UNDERSTANDABLE’

  I can think of many words to describe the murder of a woman by her own husband. ‘Understandable’ is not one of them. Yet this is the word that Dr Max Pemberton chose to use when he weighed in on Lance Hart’s recent murder of his wife, Claire, and their 19-year-old daughter, Charlotte. Writing in the Daily Mail, and referencing the recent breakdown of the Harts’ marriage, he said:

  ‘Of course, such men are often motivated by anger and a desire to punish the spouse. But while killing their partner as an act of revenge may be understandable, for a man to kill his children (who are innocent bystanders in a marital breakdown) is a very different matter. I believe it is often a twisted act of love, as the man crassly believes that the crisis in their lives is so great that the children would be better off dead.’

  In this short extract, Pemberton describes the ‘understandable’ murder by a man of his own wife as a ‘very different matter’ to his killing his child – an ‘innocent bystander’ – implying guilt on the part of the wife. He seems to suggest that, by ending their marriage, Claire had – at least in part – brought her death upon herself. Later referring to men who kill their own children, he goes on to use the phrase ‘act of love’, implying that perpetrators of such crimes are overtaken by passion – that such men should not necessarily be held fully responsible. Pemberton admits that ‘there is often no evidence that men who kill their children have an identifiable mental illness’, and yet later writes: ‘And while it is, inevitably, hard to sympathize with such men, psychologists are divided as to whether they can be held truly culpable for their actions.’

  Meanwhile, the Telegraph ran an article that opened: ‘A father of three who gunned down his wife and 19-year-old daughter before killing himself had been upset following the breakdown of his marriage, it was claimed last night.’ The article went on: ‘Friends of the pair said they believed Lance had been struggling to move on with his life following the breakdown of the marriage, but they were still deeply shocked by the incident.’ Those little words ‘but’ and ‘still’ suggest, powerfully, that the circumstances might somehow make Hart’s actions more understandable, or even expected.

  What’s more, the piece went on to praise Hart, featuring vox pops from neighbours saying what a ‘very, very nice guy’ he was, describing him as ‘full of the joys of spring’ and giving irrelevant details about his DIY skills. The article contained no such quotes praising Hart’s victims, Claire and Charlotte.

  This is not just a matter of semantics. The way our media reports male violence against women can have a huge impact on societal perceptions of the problem. As Polly Neate, the chief executive of Women’s Aid, says: ‘The reporting of this case is deeply irresponsible because it minimises the culpability of Lance Hart, portraying
him as an equal victim in a tragic case, rather than a man who chose to kill his wife and daughter. The phrase “twisted act of love” is particularly harmful, and shows why journalists need robust training on domestic abuse and homicide. Unless the lives of Claire and Charlotte are considered more important than some of the so-called “reasons” Lance killed them, we will never move to a culture that values women’s lives enough to make them safer.’

  Perhaps most worryingly of all, media responses such as those described above actively relieve perpetrators of responsibility and, by failing to set such incidents like this within a wider context of male violence, erase the societal problem they represent. In his Daily Mail article, Pemberton concludes: ‘After any such incident, questions are inevitably asked about whether anything could have been done – if someone could have spotted the signs or intervened. Tragically, in most cases, experts agree that the answer is “no”.’

  Having completely divorced an incident from the systemic violence men inflict on women and girls, this is an unsurprising conclusion to reach. Which is why such narratives must be challenged, and why they are so dangerous. We must identify examples of male violence as just that: male violence against women. We must hold perpetrators fully accountable, and we must report responsibly on these cases. Only then will we as a society be able to recognize that, in fact, there is so much more that could be done.

  Originally published 26 July 2016

  RAPE IS NOT A PUNCHLINE – OR A WAY TO SELL CHRISTMAS PRESENTS

  Thirty-eight per cent of adults in the UK hear jokes about sexual assault or sex offenders regularly, according to a new survey by OnePoll. The nationally representative study of 1,000 British adults found that a quarter of men and 11 per cent of women said they had made this type of joke themselves.

  The poll disproves the notion that these attitudes towards sexual violence are dying away. It found that 71 per cent of 18–24-year-olds have made a rape joke or flippantly used the word rape, and 88 per cent of respondents in this age group were familiar with the term ‘frape’, or Facebook rape, which is usually used to describe the act of logging into somebody else’s Facebook account and posting using their profile. Thirty-six per cent of people aged 25–34 reported that they frequently hear the word rape used to mean ‘beat in some form of competition’.

  The results come amid a flurry of recent high-profile cases where companies have been forced to apologize after using rape, or appearing to allude to sexual assault, in festive advertising. A Singapore-based online retailer, SuperGurl, acknowledged it had ‘made a mistake’ after advertising its Black Friday sale with the slogan ‘rape us now’. The department store chain Bloomingdale’s apologized for its holiday advert, which featured a young man creepily eyeing a laughing young woman beside the slogan: ‘Spike your best friend’s eggnog when they’re not looking’. This follows on from controversy last Christmas about a rape-themed Christmas T-shirt available for sale online, and a reference to chloroforming your partner in a 2012 Virgin Mobile US Christmas advert.

  It isn’t a coincidence that these cases seem to spike in the holiday season, when consumer culture reaches fever pitch. Such adverts, alongside the use of female bodies to sell unrelated products, promote the idea of women as consumable objects, there for the taking, with their own autonomy and choice conveniently left out of the picture. The fact that rape is seen as an acceptable topic to joke about, and use as a hook to sell products, reveals our social normalization of the concept – a phenomenon also described as ‘rape culture’.

  It is a difficult topic to discuss. Objections to rape jokes are frequently dismissed by those who argue that they represent a form of free speech, or those who point out that there is no evidence to prove a direct link between objectifying or sexually degrading images of women and sexual violence.

  In fact, there is evidence of some links between the portrayal of women as sexual objects and attitudes that underpin violence against women and girls. The government-commissioned Sexualisation of Young People review found evidence to suggest a clear link between consumption of sexualized images, a tendency to view women as objects and the acceptance of aggressive attitudes and behaviours as the norm. And the 2010 report by the American Psychological Association Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls detailed links between sexually objectifying images of women and girls in mainstream media and significantly higher levels of acceptance of rape myths, victim-blaming, sexual harassment and interpersonal violence.

  One particularly problematic aspect of the widespread and flippant use of the word ‘rape’ is that it contributes to the idea that sexual violence is an acceptable topic about which to joke. Jokes in which rape victims are treated as a punchline are especially significant in a society in which only about 15 per cent of victims feel able to report serious sexual assault to the police. But while 87 per cent of those surveyed by OnePoll said they would never make a rape joke in front of somebody they knew to be a survivor of abuse, nearly a quarter of respondents said they felt it was acceptable to make these types of comments among friends. Yet when you tell a rape joke, statistically one in five women who hear you have experienced or will experience some form of sexual assault, whether you know it or not.

  The idea that those who object to rape culture represent a threat to free speech is, ironically, a form of silencing in itself. There is a significant difference between expressing concern about rape jokes or images objectifying women and suggesting that all such content should be ‘banned’. Indeed, it is unlikely that any kind of censorship would be particularly successful, as the problem lies as much with underlying attitudes as it does with the adverts or jokes themselves.

  The feminist endgame is not to publicly punish everybody who makes a rape joke, or ban every advert that uses rape as a titillating way to sell products. It is to create a society in which it would never occur to anybody to do either in the first place.

  Originally published 8 December 2015

  WOLF-WHISTLING IS NOT THE STORY HERE – OUR REACTION TO SEXUAL HARASSMENT IS

  A 23-year-old digital marketing co-ordinator has reported a group of builders to the police for sexual harassment. Every morning on her way to work, Poppy Smart faced gestures, disrespectful comments and wolf whistles – the builders would even come out of the site to whistle as she passed them and, on one occasion, one of the men deliberately blocked her path. Smart described the behaviour as ‘incredibly intimidating’ and said it had led her to consider changing her route to work. After a month, she reported the behaviour both to the firm who employed the men and to the police. The police investigated, but dropped the case when Smart was satisfied it had been handled internally.

  This week, the case hit the headlines, sparking a wide range of responses. Though many later spoke out in support of Smart’s decision, the initial response on social media seemed to be predominantly ridiculing or criticizing her. Elsewhere online, trolls made predictable contributions: ‘What she needs is a bit of cock. That’ll sort her out!’ These responses have perhaps in part been elicited by the way in which the story has been covered. Although most articles made it clear that Smart involved the police only after experiencing a range of harassment every day for a month, the headlines pushed the wolf-whistling to the foreground.

  BBC’s Newsbeat reported the story under the headline: ‘Woman goes to police over wolf whistles’. The Metro headline stated: ‘Woman calls the police after being wolf-whistled at by builders’. The front page of the Daily Mail read: ‘Girl calls in police after wolf whistles from builders’. One article even opened with the words: ‘Police were called in to investigate a construction firm after a 23-year-old woman accused builders of sexual harassment – for WOLF-WHISTLING.’ Several radio and television shows, including Channel 5’s The Wright Stuff and ITV’s Loose Women held debates on whether or not wolf-whistling should be made a crime.

  Many of the discussions involved commentary on Smart’s looks. One article highlighted the fact that she was childless
and unmarried. Some news outlets used pictures that seemed to have been taken from Smart’s social media accounts, showing her posing for selfies wearing a low-cut top – a decision it’s difficult not to interpret as a snide suggestion that she might have somehow been ‘asking for it’.

  What all this seems to suggest is that, as a society, we are more concerned about, and outraged by, a young woman’s audacity in standing up to sexual harassment than we are about the month-long, everyday campaign of verbal abuse she endured on her walk to work. The very fact that a story like this is set up as a juicy back-and-forth debate suggests that a woman’s right to be treated as a human being is still being called into question. We have still not conclusively agreed that women have the right to walk the streets, wearing whatever they choose, without being shouted and whistled at.

  Sarah Green, acting director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, questions the media’s ‘cynical framing’ of ‘a story with lots of detail and angles’. ‘Some of the newspapers have wilfully misrepresented what happened and created an impression of someone who responded disproportionately to something she should just ignore – that isn’t what happened. She was left with few alternatives. [People] want to look at the victim’s behaviour, not the abuse she endured,’ Green continues. ‘This denial goes with every form of violence against women, including domestic violence, rape and female genital mutilation. We have to ask: what does that mean? Because [the response] isn’t comparable for other types of crime.’