The Ched Evans case and rape myths

The recent jailing of Ched Evans has brought the worst out in many people, and Twitter has given them the perfect platform to air their views. The #justiceforched hashtag has, in particular, seen some very familiar rape myths put forward.

Most of the people dismissing the case against Evans are doing so on the basis that the victim was a ‘moneygrabber’. I’m not sure where they think this money is coming from however. She has not waived her right to anonymity, and has not sold her story to anyone. There’s no indication that she ever intended to. There’s no payout coming her way anytime soon as a result of being raped.

Confusingly for many the other defendant in the case, Clayton MacDonald, was acquitted. Some cannot seem to grasp the idea that she could have consented to sex with one man without consenting to him calling his friends to come over and have sex with her too. Similarly I’ve seen tweets along the lines of ‘obviously what ched evans did was wrong, but I don’t think the girl is entirely innocent, so many girls beg it off footballers its unreal’ (grammar is the tweeter’s own). So, since loads of women want to sleep with footballers this woman should, what? Have wanted it? Have expected it? Count herself lucky that not one, but two footballers slept with her whether she wanted it or not?

Some writers have picked up on these tweets and referred to ‘rape culture’ but even on sites like The Guardian’s Comment is Free, the mere phrase ‘rape culture’ has been dismissed in the comments. There’s a refusal to accept that just because some ‘idiots’ on Twitter are making these comments that there is a ‘culture’ at play - but I honestly don’t see how you can argue it’s any other way. The sheer volume of tweets in support of Evans speaks of nothing else. The hatred towards the woman who accused him is tangible, not least because she was tracked down and named online, and subsequently accidentally named on Sky News. Her legal right to anonymity has been trampled on by the very people who accuse her of being fame-hungry and publicity seeking. The hypocrisy is staggering and there’s a clear trend towards people refusing to believe that having sex with a woman too drunk to consent is rape. 

Similarly many of the tweeters saying she should have been responsible for her own actions in getting drunk are the self-professed ‘lads’ - the same types who frequent sites like Unilad that actively encourage preying on drunk and vulnerable young students. If you perpetuate a lad culture where the aim of an evening is to get a girl drunk so you can have sex with her, then don’t be surprised if she passes the level where she can consent to sex with you and you’re later accused of rape. It’s not because she’s a slag/whore/bitch. It’s because that’s what you’ve done. 

A large number of tweets have also accused the woman of merely regretting having sex with these men and therefore accused them of rape. She would have been subjected to lengthy questioning by police, a physical exam, the stress of testifying in court, cross-examination by the defence and at all stages had her version of the night queried while everyone wonders how drunk she was, how had she behaved and could she be trusted. All that just because she regretted having sex? Really? Surely just trying to put it out of mind would’ve been a lot easier. And people wonder why so few women do report rape. They’re not believed when they do and they’re vilified if there is a successful conviction.

Nita Dowell, senior crown prosecutor in Wales, said “It is a myth that being vulnerable through alcohol consumption means that a victim is somehow responsible for being raped. The law is clear: being vulnerable through drink or drugs does not imply consent”. It’s about time this message go through to young men. 

Image above is from Rape Crisis Scotland’s campaign working to end sexual violence and can be found on their website.

Why men need to drink less

Don’t drink too much, you can’t guarantee your safety. 

Watch out for your friends. 

Don’t let friends get too drunk and make sure they get home safely, alone.

As a woman, these are messages I’ve been hearing since I was young. At Christmas we’re reminded that it’s our responsibility not to be raped and to keep ourselves safe by not drinking too much. The media constantly reinforces the idea that a woman who was drunk was in some way responsible for being raped (if in fact it was rape at all). Earlier this year Alison Saunders, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service commented that 

If a girl goes out and gets drunk and falls over … they are almost demonised in the media, and if they then become a victim, you can see how juries would bring their preconceptions to bear.

It’s no wonder then more than a quarter of people (30%) say that a woman was partially or totally responsible for being raped if she was drunk.

Men however are expected to drink. It’s only a bit of fun. They’re legends if they can drink vast amounts of alcohol and stay standing. Any ill behaviour is just ‘boys being boys’. Rowdiness is part of the package. A rape case in the courts this week however showed exactly why the ‘don’t drink too much’ messages are being aimed at the wrong people. 

Yesterday Zack Thompson was jailed for six year for raping a 17 year old woman. For two and a half years he stuck to the defence that he had been sleepwalking - he didn’t deny having done it, but he said he couldn’t remember it. He had however, drunk 7 or 8 pints of lager that evening. When investigating his sleepwalking defence an expert in the field found that 

Thompson’s memory loss began around half an hour before he went to bed, and concluded his memory loss was highly likely to have been the result of drinking excessive amounts of alcohol, and not sleepwalking.

When the sleepwalking defence was disproved he then claimed insanity, which was also disproved. Eventually he admitted to rape. 

In a recent case in Ireland another man admitted raping a woman under after having

drank 13 cans of beer, three pints, six shots, three double vodkas and smoked a cannabis joint before the incident. 

In this case the Judge, Justice Paul Carney said

it was the “experience of the court” that a young man taking the amount of drink that he had, along with a cannabis joint, could wake up the next morning unaware that he had committed homicide or rape.

Interestingly, in the Irish Times report on the case, they still made sure to point out that the victim “had drunk a large amount and went to sleep in one of the bedrooms at about 3.30am.”

So why is it that women are still the ones being told not to drink too much? The consistent message sent is that if they do, they won’t be able to consent to sex and are at risk of being raped. Surely the message should be to men. Don’t drink so much that you cannot control your behaviour or gain consent. Don’t drink so much that you can’t remember what you’ve done.

When the Reclaim the Night marches were relaunched in the UK it was largely a response to women being told not to go out at night as they were at risk of being attacked by the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’. But if a man was the perpetrator and women the victims, why weren’t men being told to stay at home? Reclaim the Night followed.

Whenever I’ve seen these kinds of issues raised before the response from many men is that all men are not rapists so why do they need to be told not to behave like one. And yet, it’s perfectly fine to tell all women to modify their behaviour because some men are rapists. In the Irish case the man convicted was genuinely remorseful and told the court “I’m sorry, I’m not a bastard. I have feelings”. He wouldn’t see himself as ‘a rapist’ and probably would’ve raised objections at being targeted by anti-rape messages before this happened.

Drinking to excess isn’t good for any of us. Drinking to the extent that you don’t know what you’re doing or can’t remember it the next morning is just not healthy and a lot more needs to be done to tackle drinking culture generally in our society. But targeting women in these campaigns is misguided. Women are constantly told to protect themselves but we now need to tell men to control themselves instead. If you are at risk of behaving violently when drunk then you’re the one who needs to drink less - not us.

No Makeup Day?

Today is apparently No Makeup Day. I’m struggling to find out who declared this and to what end but Twitter seems to confirm that press releases have been issued and it’s been accepted that today’s the day. The aim isn’t clear but it seems to exist to pull women out of their usual routine and make them think critically about why they wear it and whether they can live without it.

Women have complicated relationships to beauty, fashion and their bodies. The influence of fashion mags and a celeb-obsessed culture are clear as we’re bombarded with messages about who is attractive (skinny white women), and what it takes to look like them (vast amounts of airbrushing and Photoshop) as well as ‘circles of shame’ showing us just how unspeakably horrific cellulite is on an otherwise perfect-looking celebrity. Let’s not even contemplate how awful it must look on the rest of us. 

So what about makeup. Are we really trying to live up to an impossible ideal? I find it hard to swallow this argument. I like to think that women are clever enough to know that some expensive, big-brand foundation isn’t going to give them the flawless skin that the magazine ads and cover photos show you.

So what is it for? For most of us, it’s for fun. Sure, I wear foundation to cover up my spots and even out my skin tone. But when it comes to mascara, eye liner, blusher, lipstick it’s because I like the way I can slightly change my face to look different and suit my mood - the same way I do with clothes. I think I look better with a bit of colour on my face but I’m a well-educated, 35 year old woman so I don’t think it’s going to make me suddenly look like someone else. I don’t want it to. I just want to look like a slightly different version of me sometimes. I’m also not afraid to walk out the door with no makeup on. 

A the recent Women of the World Festival I attended the Body Politics - Skin and Hair session and The Guardian Weekend Magazine’s beauty columnist Sali Hughes was on the panel. She’s a vibrant and successful woman and as a writer her column on beauty is just one aspect of her work. She spoke brilliantly about what makeup and beauty meant to her and how the pursuit and ritual of beauty can be beneficial and genuinely life-enhancing for some women. She countered the idea that women are somehow stupid if they enjoy something shallow and that an interest in the shallow does not mean that you are intrinsically without depth (I loved her phrasing). This is completely true. As she went on to note, we don’t think people are stupid just because their interests include football, food, wine or any other hobbies. Why do we dismiss women who take an interest in how they look? 

We, as women, do need to critically look at the images we’re bombarded with every day. We need to recognise that it’s okay to be who we are, lumps and bumps and all. But we also need to give ourselves enough credit to know that we can combine being smart, successful, opinionated and driven with getting sheer joy from playing with how we look.

Image above is by Stuart Miles downloaded from FreeDigitalPhotos.net It is reproduced here with permission. 

Twitter abuse

I was interested to read this week that police had arrested Liam Stacey, a 21 year old man who had posted horribly racist tweets after the collapse of footballer Fabrice Muemba. His comments were openly racist and he continued in that vein when challenged by others on Twitter. As his comments spread the high profile anti-racist campaigner (and footballer) Stan Collymore saw them and was one of several people to report them to the police. They acted quickly and Stacey was arrested the day after posting the offending tweets. He was charged on Monday and admitted incitement to racial hatred. 

The police, in my view, were absolutely right to charge him and take the complaints seriously. However I couldn’t help but notice the different response that women I know (online at least) have had when making complaints. In two cases I know of women attracted rape threats on Facebook or Twitter and reported them to the police. In one case the man said they’d find her contact details and put them on 4Chan so she could be made ‘to pay’ for what she’d said and in the other case a man said if he met her ‘I wouldn’t hesitate in raping you, I would have to kill you first tough.. so you didnt struggle’ (sic).

In both cases the police did take it seriously but it took several days for them to have a meeting with the women and several more days before they could make their ‘formal statement’. That was in early February and to date I haven’t heard that arrests were made or the culprits found. In a more general sense the Unilad website and Facebook page actively promoted violence against women.

Incitement to racial hatred is a specific offense but there is no gender equivalent. Liam Stacey was arrested and charged, and could concievably face jail time, for spouting racist comments online. There was no threat to murder or assault anyone. The Unilads and others can however make specific threatening comments against women online and at best the women can expect weeks of sitting around, having appointments and the police slowly looking into things. In fact, I was discussing this on Twitter this week and someone told me that they had report comments aimed at her which ‘were gender specific. Some about us splattered in blood and other sexual explicit. It’s all bad.’ Having investigated her complaint the police came back with a report of ‘no crime’. Others on Twitter had successfully gained a restraining order against people who had threatened them online but many had just chosen to ignore it and hope it went away. 

Racism in football is an issue, as is racism in our society in general and I don’t begrudge Stan Collymore putting his weight behind any campaign or action to stamp it out. I can’t help but feel cheated that when women complain about this kind of abuse though, they’re told that they’ve no sense of humour and it’s all ‘banter’. It’s hard for even high-profile women to speak out and tackle this as they’re dismissed in a way that people woudn’t dare challenge Collymore for tackling racism. They wouldn’t expect him to laugh it off and excuse it as banter.

Harassment is a legal offense in the UK and covers the following

In this legal guidance, the term harassment is used to cover the ‘causing alarm or distress’ offences under section 2 of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 as amended (PHA), and ‘putting people in fear of violence’ offences under section 4 of the PHA. The term can also include harassment by two or more defendants against an individual or harassment against more than one victim.

Although harassment is not specifically defined it can include repeated attempts to impose unwanted communications and contacts upon a victim in a manner that could be expected to cause distress or fear in any reasonable person.

Closely connected groups may also be subjected to ‘collective’ harassment. The primary intention of this type of harassment is not generally directed at an individual but rather at members of a group. This could include: members of the same family; residents of a particular neighbourhood; groups of a specific identity including ethnicity or sexuality, for example, the racial harassment of the users of a specific ethnic community centre; harassment of a group of disabled people; harassment of gay clubs; or of those engaged in a specific trade or profession.

So while the women I mentioned above should have been able to have their cases addressed under this law, they still wait or have been told that there was no crime committed. However the general hate speech perpetrated by sites like Unilad is not covered.

I’m all in favour of the swift response that Stacey received to his tweets but I’d love to see women afforded the same protection and members of the public getting the same treatment as celebrities. Gender hatred is not banter. Rape and murder threats are harassment. Social networking sites need to make it easier to complain - Facebook rarely react or take weeks to do so and Twitter’s complaints page is buried on their site. Crucially police need to take complaints regarding gender hatred as seriously as they do racial hatred, and not just when someone famous gets involved

Mother’s Day

This Sunday is Mother’s Day, which brings me neatly to a year since I started my blogging journey. This time last year I had just finished reading Half The Sky and couldn’t let Mother’s Day go without acknowledging the suffering of women in childbirth in parts of the world. I emailed all my female friends and family a plea to give to organisations like Amref or the White Ribbon Alliance and my friend and fellow blogger put it up on her site as a guest post. My first blogpost! Shortly afterwards I started my own.

A year on and I’ve had so many discussions with my friends about how to raise boys and girls in a culture of respect. So much of it is down to parenting. One friend, who recently had her second little boy - and therefore has little in terms of spare time on her hands - said she was going to change the world two little boys at a time. Raising her boys to be respectful of people and especially women, is important to her.

The influence of our parents is hugely important to who we become. At the recent WOW Festival I attended the Rallying The Troops session where women who had launched campaigns of one kind or another discussed what drove them. June Sarpong credited a lot of her drive to her mother (forget Tiger Moms - try Ghanaian mothers for pushing you to succeed!). Similarly Shami Chakrabarti mentioned that her parents’ expectations of her were part of what drove her to do well.

I think that’s also true of me. My parents placed enormous value on a good education. I didn’t appreciate at the time what a privilege it was to receive it but looking back I see how much of my confidence and success comes from it. However my parents always taught me to be me and respect who I was. They supported any career choice I mentioned as long as I was willing to work hard at it and would help me in any way they could. As a teenager as I embraced feminism and I remember never being sure if my parents understood what it meant to me or why I was so passionate about it, but I remember how proud they were to see my letter about Riot Grrrls and young feminists published in The Irish Times. 

They also taught me, above all else, to respect people. To show respect in how I spoke to others and how I dealt with people around me. If I did this, I would be shown respect in return. This is a message that we desperately need to teach young people. The winning entry in the ‘what would you do to change the world’ WOW Den (presented by Manju Nair) had a simple message that we should teach young boys and girls how to deal with each other in school. Done well this would be of enormous benefit going forwards. It’s a real shame that the recent ad campaign addressing teen rape was screened on television but not promoted in schools for instance. Teaching young boys how to accept ‘no’ and what consent means is crucial. Treating young girls to respect themselves and each other (no slut-shaming for instance) is also invaluable.

We are all open to a range of influences in our lives but as girls our first role model in how to be a woman is our mother, supported by aunts, grandmothers, our mothers’ friends and teachers. Gandhi famously said that we need to ‘be the change we want to see in the world’ so this Mother’s Day let’s all remind ourselves to be the role model we would want to see. Be the example you would like your daughters, nieces or other little girls in your life to grow up seeing. Let’s stop talking about our weight and dieting. Let’s stop using words like ‘slut’ altogether. Let’s talk about the successful women we’ve seen (and there are many). Let’s celebrate our own successes and those of our friends. Let’s also thank our mothers and the other role models in our lives who made us who we are. Happy Mother’s Day.