Gay marriage, Pussy Riot and that guy from the Big Bang Theory

Pussy Riot masks. Maria Alyokhina has received death threats in jail in Russia. And the colour coding here is super cute.

For the widespread delectation of all, here is a final round-up of stories from my time at Gay Star News.

'Celebrating' the publication of The Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Bill last Friday (25 January), I wrote a feature laying out the the differences between gay marriage and civil partnership. There are actually a surprising number of distinctions. Seven, to be precise.

More importantly, a Pussy Riot member incarcerated in a Russian jail is receiving death threats for her activism there.

Back on the never-ending train of stories about equal marriage: The Tory Defence Secretary Philip Hammond says UK gay marriage will threaten religious groups. He's probably right. But as comedian Wanda Sykes once pithily said, 'if you don't believe in same-sex marriage, then don't marry somebody of the same sex'.



Oh, then there's another story about gay marriage. Go on, you can stomach one more. This one has the low-down on a wildly attractive, mysterious businessman named Ivan Massow: Gay millionare to run as Tory MP in area split by gay marriage row.

Broadcaster and performance artist Amy Lame being awesome.

In other news:

Amy Lamé takes revenge on 'lezzer' white van man (this one is actually pretty cool)

Gay Big Bang Theory star Jim Parsons develops child prodigy TV show

And finally, if you don't read this last one your life won't be complete:
Mayor apologises for banning gay signs from family fun day 

"Justice" for Dominique Strauss-Kahn? Don't make me laugh.

Oh hey! Do you like knowing you're right? Me too! What about justice? Hooray for justice! How about demonstrations of blindingly ignorant privilege coated in the faux-language of 'objectivity' or 'reason'? Wait, what..?

Privilege Denying Dude: he's always right

I didn't study gender at school. My school syllabus was based on the theories white English guys made up about the world for the past thousand years. At school, some things were up for nuanced interpretation, like English literature (a girls' subject). Sometimes, at most, we were asked to consider 'the role of women in...' But hard, manly subjects like science and maths, defined as fact, could not be disputed.

Apparently there's a major branch of theoretical thought called 'feminist epistemology', or something. Most people don't know about it, because we only learn white-guy-theories at school. One of the great things it does is to challenge the idea that what a culture thinks of as "knowledge" is objective, or neutral. Here's a quote that summarises the central point nicely:

"One cannot survey the human race from a great and learned distance, proclaiming loudly that one has found the truth for the good of all the nameless faceless abstractions that one has never bothered to take seriously." (Elshtain, 1981)

And here's another:

"Reflection on how social phenomena get defined as problems in need of explanation in the first place quickly reveals that there is no such thing as a problem without a person (or groups of them) who have this problem: a problem is always a problem for someone or other." (Harding, 1987)

In other words, feminist epistemology focuses on the roles of real people in abstract theorizing. When we're talking about knowledge, it matters who is doing the knowledge acquisition, and who the knowledge is being acquired about. The people involved - their positions as members of oppressed or privileged groups - affect what facts get churned out, and who gets to decide what counts as fact.

What falls out of feminist epistemology is the extent to which "knowledge" generally reflects the perspectives, not to mention the will to power, of the people in charge. How do societies come to believe that we are most threatened by those who are worst off: the Jews, the immigrants, the blacks, the gays, the benefits scroungers? As a direct result of the taken-for-granted "knowledges" made up by those with more power, that's how. And we believe it. We read the newspapers, we absorb the prejudices handed to us.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, despite facing (or rather, evading) repeated allegations of rape and sexual assault, gets to speak at the Cambridge Union debating society because of these power imbalances in the process of knowing. Facts about "the law", "justice", "innocent until proven guilty" are taught to us year in and year out. These are the representative tenets of our great liberal democratic society. They are the mighty principles of the fair society, we must uphold them, free of nuance, free of interpretation, lest we become a Stalinist Soviet Union! Innocent until proven guilty! That's an objective fact! You don't get to decide the law, the law does, and the law is defined as not-wrong!

But there are other facts here that don't get heard, or taught, or learned. These are the facts about the crimes of those with more power against those with less power, and the proportion of the time that the law fails to uphold justice when the victim is a woman, or a person of colour, or someone defined as 'vulnerable'. Could a black chamber maid ever prove a rape case against the white male leader of a political body? I doubt it, whatever the evidence was.

Do I need to quote, again, the attrition rate for rape cases in the UK? It's less than 6% Do I need to mention that 1 in 7 women experience sexual or physical violence whilst students, that about 1 in 4 women are sexually assaulted as adults? Is it worth pointing out, again, how many cases there are, how few of them reach the police? What about the figure for the number of cases reported that are simply dropped due to what dominant knowledges say about false allegations?

I'm so bored of talking about these facts, but no one from the "innocent until proven guilty" camp considers this to be valid knowledge, worth using to interrogate Dominique Strauss-Kahn's free pass to propound his views. Instead, we hear "innocent until proven guilty" repeated over, and over, and over, like a cult mantra. That's the only knowledge that counts, the justice that protects the rights of the guys in charge.

What about the "innocent until proven guilty" that should have been upheld for Nafissatou Diallo and Tristane Banon? Instead we had the "guilty, just guilty" treatment meted out to Diallo, and the "you have a case, but the law is designed to stop us from pursuing it" reaction to Banon. Given that the law did nothing for them, I reckon Cambridge should give them the benefit of the doubt. I'd suggest that we should believe that they aren't just vindictive, pathological liars - but of course that's not the kind of justice that we're used to.

For what it's worth, I agree with "innocent until proven guilty". It just doesn't apply here. We don't have a fair process for finding people guilty. Dominique Strauss-Kahn isn't going to court on these charges - he got let off. 

The case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is damning: Diallo and Banon are just the women who have come forward. Their heinous treatment at the hands of the law, in the name of "justice", suggests to me that Dominique Strauss-Kahn will go on to rape and to assault with impunity. And all the while student debating societies will invite him to chat about economics. After all, it's a much more important subject, rooted in facts and objectivity. That's the stuff that really counts.

To sign the Disinvite Dominique Strauss-Kahn petition, click here: http://www.womens.cusu.cam.ac.uk/campaigns/strausskahn/

A well regulated press would also be a freer press, if it could do anything to end media sexism

Not another picture of Pippa Middleton's ass

The Leveson inquiry drags on, akin to the 1000 pages in the middle of The Lord of The Rings where the hobbits do nothing but walk across a cliff. We're still only on the first half - the bit of the inquiry in which press culture, ethics and practices are vigorously talked about. In fellowship terms, we're barely out of the shire.

Lord Justice Leveson is now indicating that he is unlikely to consider any government regulation. That may not be so disappointing, given the government's seeming view on regulation, otherwise expressed as 'we hate regulation'. But this does leave us to speculate on exactly what actions Leveson may be intending. In a manner quite dissimilar to that of Tolkien's oeuvre, the inquiry does not seem to be leading to any massive inexorable conclusions. 

At the end of last year coalition of mainstream feminist groups (the End Violence Against Women coalition (EVAW), Eaves, OBJECT and Equality Now) submitted to the Leveson inquiry that it should address press sexism as part of a full investigation into the relationship between media and society.* How unbelievably heinous; it takes a country-wide media culture overhaul to enable official challenge to media myths of the alien species, 'women', who do nothing but lie about rape, wear clothes, or not wear clothes.

In this video, a Sky News commentator speculates - ever so insightfully - that the inquiry's outcome may be a 'tougher, beefed up, testosterone fuelled regulator.' Sexist language aside (and the identification 'good=masculine' could be one of the first things to go, if you ask me) a proper independent press complaints commission would seem to be one highly logical outcome of the inquiry. We already have one, after all, giving it teeth would be relatively easy. 

The problem is that enabling it to take action against sexism would take greater ovaries than Leveson could ever countenance. The culture is too longstanding, and it runs too deep in the national psyche. The suggestion of any anti-sexist regulation stronger than 'um, guys, can you please play nicely?' is invariably met with the outraged cry: 'FEMINIST CENSORSHIP!!!!' or 'A FREE PRESS IS THE SOLE HALLMARK OF A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY!!!' or, as with Clare Short's campaign to end Page 3, you are clearly just 'fat and ugly' and 'jealous of beautiful young women'. 

Here is what will (probably) happen instead. Between now and the announcement of a new PCC, the bit of the inquiry that was about countering media misogyny will get lost. Or looked over. Or watered down so much that it will become irrelevant. Some concession may be made to not displaying 'inappropriate' materials pre-watershed, 'where children can see'. But the banal onslaught of everything that is idiotic in our culture, the four hundred pictures of Pippa Middleton's bum, the appraisal of women politicians on the basis of their clothing choice - all this will continue.

Those who get on the high horse about the inalienable right to free expression forget that in practice this has meant the unabated reproduction of unsubstantiated ideologies about less powerful groups who, non-coincidentally, have less press control. The people who read rape reports focusing mainly on 'false' accusations, skirts, and alcohol consumption, are the same people who comprise juries who sit in on rape cases from which rapists repeatedly walk free. That's the very definition of a vicious circle.

To mandate that women should be represented as people who partake in the public sphere in roles which are not primarily aesthetic is simply to mandate representations closer to the truth. An end to the barrage of boobs and bimbos would make life a lot freer for the women who would like to be assessed on the basis of their actions rather than for the shape of their behinds. I hope Lord Leveson is brave enough to say so.


*Disclaimer: I don't agree with everything that was put forward by all of these organisations, but implementation of anything vaguely anti-misogynist would be better than what we have now. 

Mad Women on the March

Alicia would probably be a better Prime Minister

Write up of Fawcett Society's 'Don't Turn Back Time March' - published at openDemocracy: http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/ray-filar/mad-women-on-march

A thousand feminists, a million acts of violence

A piece about the UK Feminista 2011 conference and Violence Against Women and Girls. Published at openDemocracy: http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/ray-filar/thousand-feminists-million-acts-of-violence

The problem with sexy children

This look: correct in women, totally perverse in children

Sexualisation: a buzzword for feminists, Christians and conservative party leaders. Most people agree it's a Bad Thing, particularly when it happens to our delicate little children, who must be protected. If sexualisation is impacting upon children, says everybody, then, and only then, must we take rigorous measures to oppose it. In particular, we must complain about Rihanna dancing on X-Factor in her too-risque undies, and make sure that schoolgirls wear trousers so that they don't invite sexual assault. In case you were face-palming there, let's just say that the latter policy clearly springs from the same mind that wrote the hilarious joke: 'what's the leading cause of peodophilia?'... 'sexy children'.

A desultory review of the internet literature on sexualisation reveals that it's affecting children everywhere. It pervades our culture through magazines, 'pornstar' slogans on children's clothing, under-wired bras for little girls, music videos (though the fixation is on female pop stars, not the male hip hop artists who use naked-gyrating-women as legal tender), television generally, and so on. These impressionable young minds see it, take it in, and start acting like sexy adults far too young. The solution, therefore, apparently, is to stop our children seeing sex-related things. 

Of course it would be totally fine if she was a bit older..

The most recent governmentally commissioned research on this, the Bailey Review of the Commercialisation and Sexualisation of Childhood, deliberately fails to define sexualisation. That's because it was written by a man whose agenda is not anti-sexualisation, but anti-sex. For Bailey, 'sexualisation' is just convenient modern jargon to slip a right-wing agenda under the policy radar.

Let's stop pretending that children and young adolescents don't have sexualities. Don't you remember your furtive childhood wanks? It's simply ridiculous to believe that sexuality rightfully gets switched on when we reach the age of consent, as if the benchmark 'sixteen' represents anything other than an arbitrary regulatory decision of the state.

The problem is not sex but its cultural implementation, and an aspect of that is the difference between sex and sexualisation. Part of me doesn't want my figurative children to find out just how limiting, sexist, racist, homophobic, etc, adult women's cultural sexual representation is, but I'm not going to sit around acting as if stopping them from seeing the images does anything to stop the images-as-messages from being there.

Girls are not sexualised because they develop and experience their own sexualities, nor are children-who-must-be-protected generally sexualised because they have sex. Girls are sexualised, rather, because women's and girl's sexualities are still culturally defined in a way that detaches genuine sexual pleasure from the body, replacing it with a narrow, limiting appearance of (submissive) arousal. Ariel Levy was saying something similar to this six years ago, by the way. Why is it considered sexy for women but not men to wear make-up, heels and lingerie? (I personally think men in make-up, heels and lingerie are incredibly sexy, but I seem to be the perverse minority)

The Bailey Review correctly identifies sexualised products, but doesn't really pick up on the other problems that comprise sexualisation: the normalisation of a particular kind of sexy-woman standard that all women are held up as wanting against. Sexualisation is a horrifically gendered thing whereby men sexually consume agency devoid women-commodities. The extensive possibilities for and variations in peoples' sexualities are denied except where they match the man-fucks-sexy-woman standard. I recognise that some women get off perfectly well under the popular narrative, which is great for them, but even as much as sexuality reflects society, many still cannot fit the box.

There is a fundamental problem with the idea that sexualisation is terrible up until the age of sixteen, at which point it's all fine and normal (The Bailey Review uses the term 'premature sexualisation'!) It's sad that girls will have to resist everything the sexualised society tells them about themselves, their desires and their bodies, in order to have fulfilling sex lives. Yet I would almost prefer that they learn about it early so that they can start developing the critical tools to call it out for what it is - a fabricated belief system of the misogynist imagination. Perhaps children should know their enemy. 

Give abortion counselling responsibilities to Justin Bieber

*29/8/11: This entry has been edited to correct a mistake pointed out by 'Anonymous'*

Dear Nadine Dorries MP (and Frank Field MP, and the "up to 80%" of MPs who supposedly back you),

I am writing to commend you on your most recent attempt to obstruct women's access to abortion, specifically, the amendment on the health and social care bill stripping the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, Marie Stopes, and other abortion providers of the right to offer women abortion counselling.

The decision to force abortion providers to offer counselling with alternative, "independent" providers - defined as non-statutory bodies who do not offer abortions - shows a level of regard for women's mental health and bodily autonomy which is genuinely staggering.

I would also like to make some suggestions for some alternative, genuinely independent counselling providers. I know (though your tolerance towards the distinction between truth and pure fantasy may lead you to deny it!) that your intention is to gain enough influence over reproductive rights policy to give counselling permissions to fundamentalist Christian 'charities'. It's a shrewd decision. After all, why assault the right to abortion openly when you can sneak restrictions in around the edges! I certainly do not want to think that women considering abortions should be allowed to speak only with people who believe in reproductive rights - we don't want fickle little girls having their heads turned by abstract notions like 'choice' or 'you have a legal right to an abortion, if you want or need one'!

On the other hand, I wonder if it might not be the case that Life, etc, are not really independent enough to take proper responsibility for the lie-filled shaming service that you think should be offered to women? If those who know about abortions are to be stopped from advising or supporting women, it shouldn't be done by half measures. Instead, why not contract out abortion counselling to Dawn French in this video? (1.00 onwards)



As you can see, Dawn French's advice is just as accurate and helpful as the more conventional fundamentalist Christian options. This is a women's rights issue, after all. As someone who might, conceivably, one day be considering abortion, I want to know that my access to correct information is being chipped away at by the state's caring paternalism. Being offered counselling with Dawn French would do just the trick, don't you think? And she's so lovely about it! She could reel women in, get them to trust her, and then make them too scared to even consider abortions! (Silly, easily frightened women).

Alternatively, I recognise that in this particular video Dawn French argues for abortion (though I'm sure she could be persuaded to argue the exact opposite with very few changes needed - the sledgehammer idea could be used as a good anti-abortion scare tactic?). If you prefer, how about instead offering women abortion counselling with this bloke I met in a club yesterday? Or I hear that Justin Bieber is considering a move into the charity sector? You guys totally have all the same opinions.

Oh my god! Do you know who would be awesome as an anti-abortion counsellor? That baby elephant Dumbo from the Disney animation Dumbo ! I don't remember him speaking much but he's really cute and would definitely switch on the natural maternal instinct that every woman always has at all times. I mean, fictional characters, fictional non-information about abortion, things that actually exist, charities with abortion expertise, it's all quite similar really isn't it?

How about letting me advise women on abortion? I'll lay out the 'facts'. Like this. "Stupid little girl: you sluttily opened your legs in the first place, so now deal with the consequences. I don't care what happened to you or what your situation is. Abortion always causes cancer. Abortion makes you evil and bad. Abortion will send you to hell. Don't kill your unborn child. Look, it's probably crying 'mummy!' in the womb right now. Yeah, it's fully formed right now, after two weeks of pregnancy. Have the baby, then you're on your own. What do you think we are, some kind of nanny state?? What do you and your scavenging kid want now?! Welfare? Daycare? Jobs? Child benefits? That's not really the state's problem, soz!"


Please let me know what you think of my suggestions.

Yours, in eternal hope that you will retire from politics,

Ray Filar



In all seriousness, here is the link to email your MP with a real letter: http://www.abortionrights.org.uk/content/view/422/110/

And some news coverage: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/28/anti-abortion-lobby-reforms?CMP=twt_gu

A rape culture 101, for the unsure.

'Men have defined the parameters of every subject. All feminist arguments, however radical in intent or consequence, are with or against assertions or premises implicit in the male system, which is made credible or authentic by the power of men to name.' - Andrea Dworkin

Word


I am pissed off, fucked off, at having to write this. This is about rape culture. It's about the ability of powerful and less powerful men to rape with impunity, whilst worldwide everybody looks on and says, 'ah yes, but it's "he said, she said"/it has to be innocent until proven guilty' or just *stereotypical rape apologism here*'.

I am sick and tired of having rape discussions that start from the premise, 'it is terrible for a man to be falsely accused of rape'. Yes. Of course it is terrible to be falsely accused. Can we stop pretending that we currently have a fair system which simply and rightfully attempts to make sure that innocent men aren't convicted?

More to the point, it is terrible to *be raped* And, putting this out there, MANY MORE PEOPLE ARE RAPED THAN ARE FALSELY ACCUSED OF RAPING. THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS MORE. Stop catering to the Daily Mail's victim-blaming mythologies. Can you, for once, put it into perspective??

Shall we talk about the ways in which rape victims are sometimes treated in court? Shall we talk about the victim-blaming preconceptions of jury members? Can we have a discussion about misogyny and how this might affect cases, for fuck's sake? Or do we have to keep acting as if that none of this other stuff happens, that the only thing at stake is deciding upon a legal principle: innocent until proven guilty?

I have lost count of the amount of conversations I have had about rape which have not been about how thousands of people get raped and don't bring convictions, but that instead centre around the tiny minority of cases where a false allegation is brought. Conversations about rape should not start with me having to reassure your fragile ego that in general, *women don't lie about rape*. Any woman (and I'm focusing on woman because men do not face the same kinds of prejudices) who makes a false rape accusation, and who has half a brain cell, knows what she is getting into. She will be disbelieved, mocked, denigrated, shamed and shamed and shamed. People will simply not believe her. People will sympathise with her rapist, not with her. There is nothing so stigmatising as being a rape survivor; except maybe talking about it.

If in conversation you find yourself defending those who are accused of rape on reflex, ask yourself why. Is it because you are scared that one day you may be falsely accused? If the latter, maybe you need to start thinking about what consent is. Are you having sex with people you aren't sure are consenting? The absence of a 'no' is not enough for consent. You need an enthusiastic yes, and if you aren't sure, ASK. It is highly unlikely that you will simply encounter a vindictive psychopath who puts herself through the hell of a legal rape claim just to get at you. It could happen, but equally, you could get struck by lightening.

Or do you sympathise with the accused because you think that in most cases of rape, it is one person's word against another and the most important thing at stake is innocent until proven guilty? (Aside from the rant about to follow, please see Zoe Williams' point here, that as a false allegation of rape is also a crime, the only reasonable presumption is that you don't know .)

What is rape culture?

Rape culture is one in which the default position in a rape case is not just innocent until proven guilty, but I'm sure that *something happened* but it was probably consensual and she just changed her mind or she was probably drunk and regretted it or she was wearing a short skirt and asked for it or she had some reason to blackmail him or she was walking alone at night and shouldn't have been or she's a bit emotionally unstable anyway or she's a sex worker or she got into his bed or they've had sex before or she isn't credible anyway, look, one time she took drugs, or she's into group sex so how can we tell or she's a member of the BDSM community and that's what happens if you get into that kind of situation or she's a slut anyway or he seems like a nice guy, why would he do something like that, or she has lied before in her life or it wasn't that violent so it can't have been that bad. ETC ETC ETC.

Rape culture is where only 6.5% of reported rape cases lead to conviction. (Thanks, The Guardian, for reconfirming that fact here)

Rape culture is where women and men feel too afraid to go to the police when they have been raped or sexually assaulted. They know there is every likelihood that police treatment will be belittling, denigrating and unsupportive. They know that their word will immediately be put on trial. Rape crisis centres and refuges, at least, often *believe what the survivor is saying* - oh, except most of their funding has been cut.

Rape culture is where being a crime victim leads to your credibility being destroyed in any way possible. You'd better have a 100000% perfect memory of the rape, the events before and the events after - if you mix up the details at any stage of the million recountings you'll have to do, you're clearly lying. In fact, you'd better have lived a saintly life, because if you've ever done anything wrong, you're legally unrapeable.

Rape culture is where the media can spread a lie about the survivor across the world in the pursuit of destroying her credibility. See Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Rape culture is when every major news outlet tells this story: 'charges expected to be dropped', 'prosecutor says charges will be dropped, and accused may rejoin presidential race in spite of other rape allegations', 'prosecution says witness unreliable'... can you see a pattern here? I can, it's one in which powerful white men are allowed to rape powerless women of colour.

Rape culture is where sex, in general, is seen as dirty and bad and only to be done in hetero-monogamous marriage. It's where women are shamed for having sex, or for not having sex. It's where men are taught to aggressively pursue potential sexual partners; to see sex as something to be acquired from the initially resistant (dehumanised) target. It's where sex education doesn't really happen. It's where we don't know, or don't care, that yes means yes and no means no.

Rape culture is where media coverage of rape fixates on, amplifies, hypes, endlessly reports on the small percentage of women who (a law enforcement body has decided) made a false allegation.

Rape culture is where rape coverage relays every grisly detail of an attack.

Rape culture is where falsely retracting a rape allegation can land you in jail. (Supposedly Keir Starmer has now put a stop to this)

Rape culture is when women are invariably represented as devoid of subjectivity, sexually submissive, and acquiescent to forceful sexual overtures.

Rape culture is the fact that a husband could not legally rape his wife until 1991.

Rape culture is where copies of soft porn magazines are seen as appropriate reading material for juries waiting to be called into cases. Possibly rape cases. (I'm not making this up, Snaresbrook Crown Court has copies of FHM in the jury waiting area).

Rape culture is where rape is accepted as an inevitable part of male sexuality. Please see Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Rape culture is where the onus is put on women (men aren't ever seen as victims) to prevent their own rape. Ignoring the fact that preventing yourself from being raped is impossible, however you act. Ignoring the fact that not calling an illegal minicab doesn't reduce the risk of you being raped if your partner, friend or acquaintance decides to rape you.

Rape culture is where you can't withdraw consent after you've given it.

Rape culture is where fucking someone whilst they are asleep, who therefore *cannot* have given consent, is not seen as rape. Rape culture is where preventing someone from using protection is not seen as rape. Please see Julian Assange.

Rape culture is where you can't discuss rape without ending up, or beginning, in a discussion about false allegations.

This list could go on forever. Please feel free to add to it.


What can I do to oppose rape culture?

Make sure you know what rape is and then don't do it, look at these websites, challenge rape apologists. Also give all your money to Rape Crisis:

http://www.scarleteen.com/

http://www.object.org.uk/ (Caveat: I have heard a lot of criticism of OBJECT. They take an explicitly anti-porn and anti-sex work position. You may or may not agree with this, but what they say is nevertheless very much worth your time and thought.)

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/crime/call-end-violence-women-girls/government-stern-review?view=Binary

http://www.rapecrisis.org.uk/

http://www.thehavens.co.uk/advice.php

http://www.aswaterspassingby.org/sexualabuse.html


I leave you with another quotation from Andrea Dworkin, who said some good, invariably misrepresented stuff:

We are very close to death. All women are. And we are very close to rape and we are very close to beating. And we are inside a system of humiliation from which there is no escape for us. We use statistics not to try to quantify the injuries, but to convince the world that those injuries even exist. Those statistics are not abstractions. It is easy to say, Ah, the statistics, somebody writes them up one way and somebody writes them up another way. That’s true. But I hear about the rapes one by one by one by one by one, which is also how they happen. Those statistics are not abstract to me. Every three minutes a woman is being raped. Every eighteen seconds a woman is being beaten. There is nothing abstract about it. It is happening right now as I am speaking.

Let's not get derailed in discussing violence against women

Originally published at Liberal Conspiracy: http://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/06/24/lets-not-get-derailed-in-discussing-violence-against-women

It’s the same every time. A feminist politician or campaign group proposes a patently sensible idea, and the derailing begins.

The End Violence Against Women (EVAW) report is a comprehensive study on the massive prevalence of violence against women and girls, calling on Michael Gove to make a priority of educating against sexism in schools.

Great stuff. Simple common sense, even; unless you are generally in favour of violence against women. But developments like these are a starting horn for discussion derailers.

Here’s one we’ve heard before, ‘but men are victims of violence too!’ Another derailer chips in, ‘and what about female perpetrators of violence?’ We might even hear a bit of, ‘Why focus on women? Shouldn’t we just be educating children about violence generally?’

I recently saw a column by the Somalian women’s minister derailed in this way. It was outrageous, apparently, that a women’s minister should dare to write about the abominable problems specific to women in her country.

When the derailers get going, the debate takes a sudden turn to the right. Instead of discussing the part of the proposal which calls on Gove to develop schools in which girls are not subject to abuse, rape, sexual harassment, bullying or shaming, we are arguing about whether it is right to take gender-specific actions at all.

For the last time, YES, people of all genders perpetrate violence. YES, people of all genders are victims of violence. YES, there is domestic violence between same-sex partners. Now can we go back to EVAW’s proposals?

The derailers are univocally, universally missing the point. Education about violence against women cannot be simply subsumed under education about violence against people generally, and to suggest it should be deliberately ignores the scale of the problem of violence against women.

Consistent evidence demonstrates that it is disproportionately men who enact violence, and disproportionately women who are subject to it. If you want to contest this, go away and do some research.

So don’t get it twisted. The fact that other kinds of violence happen doesn’t negate the need for feminist education to combat the virulent combination of institutional misogyny, equation of masculinity with violence, and culture of sex negativity which makes sex a commodity that boys ‘get’ from girls, not something that all parties enter into consensually.

Violence against women is normalised and perpetuated when sexism goes unchallenged, but if young people are taught better across the board I’d be willing to stake my right arm, left leg and favourite hat that we will see cultural change.

No one denies that men and boys are also victims of violence. But do you know how it feels to be a woman, or a girl, where the sexual harassment, abuse and shaming starts at school and carries on into adulthood? If you don’t, talk to your girlfriend, female friends, mother, sister. They’ll put you on track.


More to look at:

http://www.endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk/