Violence Against Women
This week the issue that has dominated the news was the shocking murder of Sarah Everard who was walking home at 9pm on a weekday in London. Why does this case in particular trigger such a strong response, for as Jess Phillips reported in the House of Commons, 188 women were killed in the UK in this last year. 57% of those women knew their murderer, usually a partner or an ex-partner. Sarah was successful in her career, with a warm and personable character. She represents any young woman just going about her life, which perhaps heightens the collective shock and outrage at her becoming yet another victim of male aggression.
Thankfully the media coverage has matured to the extent that it can discuss the problem as residing in male attitudes towards women rather than in women needing to protect themselves by altering their behaviour in some way.
One of the advantages of being an older woman is that I have become invisible on the street. I no longer receive disrespectful or frightening male attention. However, like most women I endured instances of fear when I was targeted as a younger woman. One time when I was 22 years old, I was with a friend in a pub and two young men sitting nearby were staring at me. I ignored the stares and one of them came over to offer to buy me a drink. I refused politely and said I was with a friend. I was aware that they were both drinking heavily, As we went to leave the pub, the same young man rushed towards me and grabbing me by the shoulders shouted in my face that I was a bitch, that he had a knife on him and that he was going to rape me. I screamed and pushed him off me with a strength I somehow found and very quickly other people came to my aid and the men were thrown out of the pub. I didn’t report it, neither did the publican, but I have lived with that vivid memory of his ugly, contorted face a mere inch away from mine. Just one of many experiences of male aggression and like so many other women I left it unreported, unrecorded and it became just a part of my life experience as a woman.
Last year there was the lowest level ever of rape convictions when it is so clear that our society is even more misogynistic than it was in the seventies when women started to organise themselves and the ‘Reclaim the Streets’ movement was born.
Why has this society become ever more misogynistic? There are many factors but I think the easy availability of porn on the internet is a major factor in the warping of people’s minds with regard to the nature of sex and relationships. It normalises sexual aggression and presents sex in such a way as to be indistinguishable from a rape scenario. This complicates young women’s notions of what is sexually acceptable and so the issue of consent to certain behaviours is influenced by what is normalised through repeated pornographic images that men and women are exposed to.
More importantly is the fact that boys and girls are also exposed to these images and practices that normalise unhealthy, disrespectful and violent representations of sexual relationships. Young minds are being warped by easy access to pornography which has moved on from the days of top shelf mags. It is far more impactful to see and hear videos than to look at a static image.
Just as we saw in the era of Trump, if a lie is repeated often enough, many people will start to believe it to be true. So it is with sexuality, if practices are witnessed often enough they start to be seen as ‘normal’ and acceptable.
We need to tackle this problem by making it much more difficult for young people to access this damaging material, legislation may be needed. We also have to think much more about how to help young people to engage in healthy relationships.
It seems to me that healthy sexual relating will be a natural progression for young people if the foundation of healthy relating generally is firmly embedded before they reach sexual maturity. Of course this starts in the home with warm, empathic and respectful attitudes, with the capacity to resolve disagreements through discussion, but sadly, that isn’t enough because too many parents aren’t positive role models. Schools and the media have to take up this challenge, men have to challenge other men when they act or speak to diminish the worth of women and mutual respect between men and women has to be actively promoted by those who have a voice in our culture. We need much more research on the personality profiles of men whose behaviour escalates into sexual violence. In a recent search of the psychological literature I discovered that there is very little known about the sorts of behaviours that are likely predictors of later sexual offending. This is a gap in our knowledge base that needs urgent attention. We need to prevent male aggression by intervening early, to do that we need to know far more about how to identify males who are likely to become dangerous sexual predators.