Status? Nah, I just fancy you

The last few times I’ve read comments under feminist articles on CIF and the New Statesman, I’ve seen the misogynistic old chestnut raise its hoary head again that women choose sexual partners based on social status whereas men choose sexual partners based on whether they think they’re hot. I can’t remember where I read these comments now, which is annoying. But I promise you they exist.

I am so tired of this really stupid and – yes – misogynistic and homophobic and biphobic argument (hmm, Word not recognising biphobic as a real word. Bad biphobic Microsoft!).

Firstly, I think it is vital to understand that it is completely fine for a woman to choose a partner based on status. Some women won’t and that’s ok too. Is there anyone in the whole wide world that is attracted to the same qualities as someone else? We don’t know and cannot assume what leads to one person choosing to be with another. Not all women fancy Brad Pitt, and not all men lust after Angelina Jolie. Just as I will go on to argue that it’s ok for a woman to find the physicality of a partner attractive, it’s also ok to find the status of that person the key definer of what’s attractive about them. But what we must understand, and what is problematic about the view that women choose a male partner because of status, is that this is not the only thing women can, do and should find attractive. To argue, as some do, that women are only after status is to ignore and silence the multiplicities of women’s sexuality in a way that is offensive and, potentially, dangerous.

Anyway. I’ll focus on the homophobia and biphobia first. Basically, the argument that women as a homogenous group who choose to partner with high status men (and by high status these comments tend to mean “choosing a mate” who has money and can provide for a family) renders gay and bi women invisible. It’s making a generalisation that all women want one man who can provide for them and their children. As we all know, not all women want a man. Not all women – straight, gay or bi – want to have children. It frustrates me that this trope of what women supposedly want is so heteronormative and focused on an old-fashioned idea of what men and women are and what men and women do. It’s lazy and it’s offensive. 

The homophobia and biphobia overlaps with the sexism of this idea too. 

Whereas our culture allows and accepts the idea that men fancy their sexual partners, the myth that women choose their partners based on socio-economic reasons suggests the opposite for us. It completely ignores and devalues the idea that women might feel sexual desire, that we might choose to have sex with someone simply because we think that person is hot. I think this is what we mean when we say the gaze is male. We are comfortable with the idea that men might be visually attracted to a partner in a way that we are not for women. It’s why we say that ‘men are visual’ and women are ‘about feelings’. Again, women can be all about the feelings but we can also be about the visual too. And sometimes we can be both. Or we can be about the visual, feelings, senses, status and everything in between all at once. No woman is the same, no human sexuality is the same. How can we pretend we all find the same element attractive based on our chromosomes? It’s absurd.

This whole trope is, to me, based on an old and sexist fear of female sexuality. From Jezebel and Potiphar’s wife, to witch hunts and slut shaming, the idea that women feel sexual desire for another person has been criticised, repressed and used to persecute ‘wayward’ women down the centuries. Millenia even. The idea that a woman might just simply see another person of whatever gender and fancy them, feel desire, agree consent and go to bed with that person is used to judge women in a way that it has never been used to judge men. It’s the whole, he’s a stud, she’s a slut thing. 

Of course we all know that women fancy other people. Of course we do. But because the gaze is male, the idea of a woman gazing at a man is seen as somehow subversive. Far easier to say that women choose partner based on credit card size than allow us to have our own autonomous, subjective sexuality. 

This idea that women are interested in just one thing suggests that women aren’t allowed to feel that undefinable, unintelligible spark of meeting someone and knowing, just knowing, that you want them. It filters women’s wanting through a prism of what society thinks women should want – security – and what society thinks men should want – sex. But individual men and woman want so many different and varied things – for themselves and for their relationships. Not only is it offensive to women, but it’s hugely offensive to men to suggest otherwise. So why do we do it?

Further, it presents sex as a bargaining tool as opposed to something a woman might engage in because she wants to. It suggests that for women, sex is something they give in exchange for security and status rather than something they want, desire, consent to or take pleasure in. This clearly has dangerous implications to what we mean by consent. It also silences women’s bodies – saying that women can’t feel desire without material ulterior motives. 

Sexuality and attraction isn’t something that can be put into boxes labelled ‘men like looking at women who look like X’ and ‘women like to know that a man is respected in society’. Human sexuality is, as Shakespeare would say, a many splendored thing. It really bothers me that misogyny, homophobia and biphobia still conspire together to silence women’s desires in order to maintain a single minded and potentially repressive impression of what women might or might not want. 

It’s important to understand as well that when online commenters write that women are only attracted to status, they are usually doing so to slag us off. It’s generally within the context that women are selfish and shallow, that we just want men to buy us stuff and, most importantly, are not interested in men like them. So not only is it, perhaps unintentionally, misogynistic by refusing to recognise that women have varied and interesting and valid sexualities, it’s also intentionally misogynistic in that it suggests women just want to gold dig. 

Finally I would argue that in a world where poverty has a female face and where women are frequently left holding the baby and never see a penny from their ex-partner, no woman can be or should be judged for choosing a partner based on status and security. 

I want this offensive trope to end. I want a world where women’s sexuality and desire isn’t silenced and where we no longer make ridiculous, single statements about what women and men want from sex. We’re all too different, human sexuality is too varied, for you ever to look like anything but a ignorant numpty on the internet when you say women choose men based on status, when they truth is we might just really fancy someone. 

Scapegoating single mums on benefits and unpaid child maintenance

In Laurie Penny’s article on CIF yesterday about the crisis in masculinity, she writes about the scapegoating of single mothers on benefits by those who prefer to blame women instead of focusing on issues around male unemployment, disenfranchisement, violence etc. In the article, she writes:

There is no creature more loathed and misunderstood in modern Britain than the single mother on benefits. She is blamed both for the financial crisis and for the attendant collapse in men's self-esteem. The academic Geoff Dench was among those who attacked her, complaining that "the taxes of working men pay for [single mothers'] benefits". The taxes of working women, presumably, are spent on shoes and lipstick.

This article was published online on the same day as a data blog analysing the DWP’s publication of child maintenance payments and their subsequent claim that most non-resident parents are paying maintenance – a claim that is strongly refuted by charities, including Gingerbread. 

The DWP claims that ‘81% of maintenance cases were being paid’. However, this number is potentially misleading as the DWP ‘define a parent as ‘compliant’ and a CSA arrangement as ‘effective’ if any proportion of any maintenance payment is made.’

What this means is that a non-resident payment can pay 1p for one month in a quarter towards their child’s maintenance and still be considered ‘compliant’ and ‘effective’ by the DWP. This leads to some seriously fudged statistics – as you can see. 

The article goes on to explain that in March 2012 only 58% of non-resident parents paid their child maintenance in full, 21% paid part and 16% were ‘not paying’. In June 2012 the numbers were 60%, 20% and 15%. However, Gingerbread believes that even this 58% figure might be misleading, ‘as the DWP definition shows, it includes all maintenance direct payments and assumes that these were paid in full’. 

Quoted in the Guardian data blog, Gingerbread Chief Exec Fiona Weir said:

The DWP itself predicts that as more families set up direct payments, once the new child maintenance service starts charging to collect, only one in four (28%) of these arrangements will be paid in full and on time. The department cannot therefore claim to believe that all existing direct pay arrangements are compliant, and it seems extraordinary that it would continue to over-claim in this way.

I’ll get to my point soon but it’s important to understand the numbers. 

Moving on to the Gingerbread website, the charity believes that unpaid child maintenance soared by £25 million to £3.87 billion in the last quarter of 2012. According to Gingerbread:

The new statistics show that the proportion of parents paying child maintenance has declined for the second quarter in succession [5]. This is despite a generous definition of ‘paying maintenance’ used by the CSA, in which a parent is counted as ‘paying maintenance’ if at least one payment, of any amount, has been made in the last three months.

Not only has unpaid child maintenance jumped, today’s statistics also show that in the last nine months the Child Support Agency has taken less enforcement action against parents who don’t pay – this can include deductions from earnings and sums taken from bank accounts. 

So, what does this have to do with the original quote taken from Laurie Penny’s article?

As Laurie points out, single mothers on benefits are the scapegoats for so many of society’s problems. They’re blamed for everything, from a crisis in masculinity, to the benefits bill. Unlike the married mums the Tories are so desperate to woo back into the home, single mums are told to get back to work – regardless of the costs of childcare. And yet, whenever the finger of blame is pointed at single mums, it is pointed away from the other person that really matters. The dad. 

Of course there are thousands and thousands of dads who are awesome and who want to spend time with their children and who support their children yet for whatever reason, the relationship between parents didn’t work. 

But as the stats from the DWP and Gingerbread clearly tell us, there are also lots of dads who are simply not there. They might not be there emotionally or practically, and they’re certainly not there financially. 

When Geoff Dench grouches that working men’s taxes are paying single mums’ benefits, does he not consider that single parent families could be £3.87 billion better off if their exes paid the money that is owed to their children? (I should qualify here that obviously not all non-resident parents are mothers and 8% of single parents are dads) 

Whenever we talk about single parenthood, three issues are generally raised. The first is that single mums on benefits are responsible for the crisis in masculinity. The second is court bias towards mothers – a bias that has been shown not to exist. The bias is towards the primary caregiver and in a patriarchal capitalist society with unequal parental leave and a belief that women are naturally nurturing, that tends to be mothers. 

The third is the very rare cases where a woman divorcing a very wealthy man agrees a large maintenance payment. The fact that these stories become news shows how rare they are and is perhaps best typified by Heather Mills and Paul McCartney. 

But I have long believed that the real issue, the true scandal, is the huge amount of money not paid in child maintenance. It is a scandal that thousands of men clearly feel they should take no responsibility for the financial welfare of their child (I focus on financial here because it is perfectly possible that a father still sees his child without paying maintenance). It is shocking that across the UK billions of pounds are denied to mothers trying to bring up their children. And, of course, this lack of income can then contribute to poverty (of course not all single parents are poor) and then single mothers on benefits are blamed for that poverty. Let’s not forget either that these billions of pounds are not for helping single parents to live a life of riley, but to feed, clothe and care for children. 

Put simply, it’s cruel. We blame those single mums living in poverty for all societal ills. We blame them for their own poverty. And yet we don’t look to the fathers that refuse to support their child. I don’t want to play a blame game but it’s surreal that we don’t seem to blame them for anything. 

Single mums are painted as feckless and lazy – even though they’re raising a child or children alone, with shrinking support from the state and often without support from their ex. They are the ones who stayed but we portray them as irresponsible. Isn’t there something very wrong with that picture?

I am not advocating here for all men to have access to their child. There are often good reasons on the mother’s side if the father is never seen again – for example survivors of domestic abuse. This isn’t about women raising children on their own away from the father but about the way society talks about single mums. 

What I want is more recognition that £3.87 billion of child maintenance is not paid by non-resident parents, the majority of whom are men. I want more people to understand that this is scandalous. And I want an end to a blame game that scapegoats single mothers on benefits and ignores the responsibility of absent fathers who have an obligation to financially support their children and who are left to get away with not meeting their responsibility. 

Fiction: Anna's Interlude

I wrote a short story. I used to write a lot of short stories, and then I started writing about feminism and forgot about stories. But with Greta and Boris being published, I've tried my hand at writing short stories again. 

This one is set in WW2 and is about a woman who doesn't know if the man she had an affair with has died, been captured or simply left her. And without knowing, she doesn't know what to do. 

She had married too young, thought Anna, as she threaded different colours through her tapestry. She had married too young and he had married too old and now, here they were, in this big house where she felt lonely all the time, with no hope of escape and with no hope for change, just a lot of old hopelessness to look forward to. 

The post girl walked past the window, her coat done up warm against the grey wind and sky. Anna quickly turned her head away. Since she had stopped bringing her letters from Andrew she could not bear to see her jaunty walk, tip-tapping along the road. 

If only she knew why the letters had stopped. If only she knew for sure whether he was alive or dead. If only she could know why. If he was dead then at least she could grieve for him. It would be hard, of course. It would be hard to grieve alone, in silence, hard to explain the sadness, to justify it. But at least she could find it in her to say goodbye. At least she could know to say goodbye. If he was a prisoner then one day he would be free. He would be free and a letter would arrive, followed by him. And if it was simply that he had decided to leave her, if he had found someone else and distance had palled her charms, then she could safely hate him. It was the not knowing. It was the not knowing that hurt. 

She had met Andrew at a party for her husband’s office. He was young, young like she was. He had worked with her husband but then of course the war had come and the path of his career was changed forever. She had danced with him at the party and he had made her laugh with all his talk about the intrigues and politics that went on in the day-to-day of office life. He had made her laugh and she could see that he liked how she looked when she laughed. It had made her realise that her husband didn’t know how she looked when she laughed. Really laughed. 

He had gone then, after that first meeting. He had gone to train for the war and although sometimes she turned the memory of their laughter and conversation in her mind, really that would have been that. He would have been filed in the corner of her mind labelled fantasies, to be taken out from time to time as an image of what life could be if she had not married too young and her husband had not married too old. Or, that's what would have been if she hadn’t run into him one day when she was shopping. When then, all of a sudden, there he was. A solid figure standing, waving, on the street outside the shops. He had called out ‘Anna!’ and she had drank in the sensation that he was glad to to see her standing there too. And so then it seemed rude not to see if he was free for lunch, and then a drink and then, in a way that was so unlike her, so unlike anything she had ever imagined herself doing except in her most secret, secret thoughts, she had followed him to a hotel and they had made love the whole afternoon. 

That was the beginning. She wished now that she could remember more of the detail of that first afternoon. She wished she could remember what they had had for lunch, and what drinks they had ordered. She remembered the hotel of course, she had found excuses to walk past it for months afterwards, hugging the memory to her chest. But she had forgotten what song was playing as they drank their cocktails; she had not kept in her heart the colours of the wall in the bedroom, the pattern of the sheets. It had seemed so unnecessary at the time to pay that much attention to the detail of the thing. Because of course this was a beginning and the thing about beginnings is we never think that there will follow an ending. We never think an ending will come, an ending where it would suddenly have become so important to treasure those details. 

She remembered the touch of his hand on her skin and the look in his eyes as he gently pulled her down to him on the bed. But her memories were really just a combination of the dozen or so other times they were together – the times during that first week and then when he was back on leave. 

Added up together the time was so short. Too short. Too short compared to the seconds and minutes and days and weeks and months and years that made up her relationship with her husband. Such long, long days. And yet in all those long days she never felt the intimacy, the knowing, that she felt with Andrew. 

She didn’t even have a photograph, she thought, and the beginnings of a sob caught in her throat. Oh damn it, if only she knew! If only she knew whether to grieve or to hope or to hate. 

There had been that weekend when her husband had gone to his old aunt’s and she had made an excuse about going to see her old school friend Elsie. ‘She’s such a dear old thing,’ she explained to her husband. ‘Haven’t seen her for years and she was so sad to miss our wedding – she’s been out in India you know. So now she’s back and I just can’t not go see her, you don’t mind do you darling, the house will be fine without us both in it.’ He hadn’t minded. He never minded anything. He would never bother to check Elsie’s existence and so she and Andrew had gone to Minehead and stayed in a funny little bed and breakfast where every morning they had eggs fresh from the chickens in the garden. 

They went swimming. The sky was the colour of a tern’s wing over the quilted sea. But it was warm for all that, and Andrew had wanted to go in and she couldn’t resist the joy and enthusiasm on his face. She had played the lady a little, brr-ing at the cold and dipping her toe in overdramatically. He had chased her down the beach and grabbed her by the waist, his strong arms lifting her high up around him and she had squealed with excitement and just the pure, unadulterated joy of their youth, together. He had dived headfirst into the sea and she had splashed behind him. 

And then it wasn’t funny anymore. The sea was swirling grey when he dived. When he dived, and didn’t come up. She couldn’t see him. She swam over to where she thought he was but he simply wasn’t there. She called his name but the roar of the sea that just moments before had been an inviting purr swallowed up her voice. The screeching of the gulls silenced her shouts. 

She had never been one to keep calm. She was useless in the war, she thought, irrationally. She was scared by everything, nervous of everything. A wave hit her back and pushed her forward as she floundered to get upright. She gulped and choked and spat out the water that had flooded into her mouth, coughing, spluttering. As she splashed her hands ineffectually through the water she thought madly how ugly she must look, her eyes wide and red, her hair flattened to one side of her head, her nose streaming from where a wave had taken her by surprise and shot into her face.

The panic rose in her chest like the tide would soon be rising on to the beach. She felt herself fighting the water as she tried to swim in circles, circling the spot where he had dived, planting her feet on the ground and pushing her way through the waves. She couldn’t believe she had lost him. He had been there. He had been there, laughing and diving. How could he not be there now?

She started to scream. A scream that was deeper and more violent than the sea around her. It was a scream for Andrew, but afterwards, when it was safe again, she felt it had been a scream for her too. If he went then she knew she would drown too. She screamed and salty tears mingled with the saltiness of the sea on her face. 

She swore then that if Andrew was safe she would leave her husband and be with him. If the sea didn’t take him then the sea-tide that for too long had carried her life without considering her wants, her desires, would no longer take her with it. Nothing else mattered but Andrew. She would not live a lie anymore. 

And then, once more, the scene changed. There he was, running down the beach to her. How had he got out? His face was scarred with anguish, with worry at her pain. He was running towards her and with all her energy she pushed herself out of the sea, her body refusing to be dragged back by the current of the waves. She fell, weak, into his arms, her body wracked with sobs, filled with a pain he didn’t understand. He held her up and kissed her hair and told her it was ok, he had dived and then floated to the shore, he hadn’t meant to frighten her, it was a game he and his cousin had played as children, he had really only been gone for two minutes. She regained control and nodded and smiled weakly and told him she was sorry, she was being ridiculous. They found a spot behind the rocks where even on the deserted beach they had even more privacy. He licked her body clean of salt. 

The rest of the weekend they avoided the sea. 

Sometimes Anna dreamt of that moment. She dreamed herself screaming in the shallows and it is as though she is still there, the circling gulls menacing overhead. But in the dream Andrew doesn’t run down the beach to her. There are no hugs and kisses and reconciliations, no returns to the hotel, no hot toddy and subsequent walks along green paths. In the dream she stays screaming alone. 

I would have kept the vow, she thought. I would have kept it. Except then he had to go back to the war and there was nothing to do but wait. How can I keep it when I don’t even know if he is here to keep it with?

If only I knew, she said out loud to the empty room. Her voice sounded harsh and old as it hit the space. If only I knew, she thought silently. Whether to grieve, or hope, or hate. 

Rape avoidance advice on Facebook just upholds rape culture

TW: rape and sexual assault, abduction, victim-blaming

Has anyone else seen this thing going around Facebook called ‘through a rapist’s eyes’?

It’s basically a list of so-called safety tips for women to ‘help’ us avoid getting raped – and as a result is a load of victim-blaming bullshit that is incredibly dangerous. 

I’m not going to re-produce the whole horrible mess here, as I think it would be irresponsible to do so. However, to give it a little bit of context, this viral document purports to report conversations from convicted rapists about the women they target and how, if you want to ‘avoid’ being raped, you should avoid the kind of behaviour they describe. To quote: 

"THROUGH A RAPIST'S EYES" (PLEASE TAKE TIME TO READ THIS. It may save a life.) Click Share Button to share it on your Wall.

THOUGHT THIS WAS GOOD INFO TO PASS ALONG...

Through a rapist's eyes! A group of rapists and date rapists in prison were interviewed on what they look for in a potential victim and here are some interesting facts:

The rest of the article plays it pretty fast and loose with the word ‘facts’ in a way that is at best, naively irresponsible and, at worst, worryingly dangerous. 

You can see just how bad it is from one of the first pieces of ‘advice’ that informs women that attackers target women with long hair. Mind-bogglingly, the writer claims that ‘women with short hair are not common targets’. This is so offensive, so silencing and so blatantly stupid. It’s offensive to say that women should change their hair to avoid rape. And it’s wrong to suggest that short hair can somehow ‘protect’ you from being attacked. More, it is silencing of survivors and perpetuates the myth that only a certain type of woman is a victim or survivor of rape. 

The ‘facts’ continue – ranging from how women should dress and conduct themselves on the street (don’t look through your bag on the street – vulnerable!) to the dangerous and silencing suggestion that ‘most attackers’ will abduct women from grocery stores, parking lots and public toilets. 

There is of course no mention that the majority of women know their attackers. In fact – and this is a real fact by the way as opposed to a viral fact – 97% of callers to Rape Crisis knew their assailant prior to the attack. 2005 research by Kelly backs up the claim the majority of perpetrators are known to their victim. 

The advice in this viral is dangerous. It tells women that we can and must take action to reduce our risk of rape as if rape is some kind of natural hazard that just happens. It doesn't consider the truth that the only thing that causes rape is the rapist. This advice expects women to put our lives, our personalities and our freedom of movement on hold in order to not get raped. All the advice demands that women don’t do X, don’t do Y – none of it talks about the fact that rapists shouldn’t rape. 

It isn’t right to tell women not to go food shopping, not to answer our phone in the street, not to wear our hair in a certain way so we won’t get raped. Not just because instructing anyone to not live their lives because of fear isn’t ok, but because none of these things actually cause rape. Grocery stores and hairstyles don’t cause rape. There is nothing that women do or don’t do that causes rape. The only thing that causes rape is a man choosing to rape. 

The advice gets worse. It encourages women to put up a fight if we’re attacked, to convince rapists you’re – and I quote – ‘not worth the effort’.

This is perhaps, in a whole shitstorm of dangerous so-called advice, the most dangerous of all. Which is saying something.

The idea that women should fight back if they are attacked completely ignores how women – in fact all people – respond differently to threats. The first important point to emphasise is that fighting back might not be safe course of action. Physically fighting back might lead to an escalation of violence. 

The second important point is how it’s a common myth that when attacked, everyone will respond with ‘fight’. But many people respond with ‘freeze’ – and this is a completely valid and normal response to danger. To say that there is a correct way to behave – i.e. to fight – is to silence the experiences of women and, fundamentally, fuels a victim-blaming culture. 

The CWASU website explains it better than I can: 

"If women really want to, they can always say no"

Many women do indeed say no, but rapists do not listen. Some resist physically, try to get away - some of these women do manage to prevent further assault, others suffer greater injury. Other women are terrified and they freeze. Each of these responses should make it very clear to the man that the woman is not freely consenting to, or desiring sex. If a man is determined to have sex, and there is no easy way to escape, it is hard to imagine what difference saying no would make.

"To be raped is the worst thing that can happen - so you would resist to the utmost"

Many women assess their attacker, and make moment by moment decisions about their survival. In many circumstances, women being sexually assaulted fear for their lives. When rapists have a weapon, or threaten the victim, most will strategise for their own survival by not unduly alarming or aggravating their attacker; they follow his instructions in order to stay alive, and this may include not making a noise or resisting. Being raped is not worse than being dead or permanently injured - opting to submit is a rational decision, made in a context where there are very few choices or options.

Telling women that there is only one correct way to respond to being attacked is to say that if women don’t respond that way, then they are somehow at fault. The insistence that women would and should always fight back can lead to women blaming themselves for not fighting hard enough. It also gives space for the patriarchal culture to then try and say that if the woman didn’t behave in a certain, ‘correct’ way then no rape happened – leading to a low conviction rate and a society which harasses alleged victims. I talk about this at length in my interview with screenwriter Emilia di Girolamo so I won’t rehash all of it here.  

This viral teaches women to live in fear – always looking over our shoulders. It is about policing women’s behaviour – telling women where we can and can’t be, what we can and can’t do. It has no respect for our bodily autonomy, our right to freedom of movement and our right to live free from fear and violence. And by creating a climate of fear, it silences the indisputable fact that most rapists aren’t bogeymen hiding in alleys. 

The advice on this viral Facebook list is victim-blaming. It tells women that we should police our own behaviour to ‘avoid’ rape and abduction. It then tells women a ‘correct’ way to respond to an attack – even though there is no correct way to respond. To say there is leads to women blaming ourselves for not ‘doing more’ to stop the attack. This victim-blaming is part of a rape culture that denies women justice and focuses all of the responsibility to end rape on to women. 

It is not up to women to stop rape. It’s horrible to understand that there is nothing we can do to stop rape. It’s comforting, in a strange way, to believe that if we cut our hair and never go grocery shopping we will somehow be safe. That if we just follow the rules, we’ll be ok. But it’s not true. A woman could follow every rule on this viral and still be attacked. She could fight back and still not see her attacker convicted. And part of the reason why that could happen is because of advice like this – advice that absolves the rapist, creates reasons to blame women and tells women that we have to take responsibility for the actions of men who choose to rape. 

Even if a woman never left her house and lived on her own and did everything this viral tells her to do, it won’t reduce the incidents of rape – simply because this advice won’t stop a rapist attacking someone else. So long as the advice, the guidance, and the hectoring, patronising, patriarchal tone focuses on women’s behaviour then it will never stop rape because it will never be directed at the cause of rape. And that cause is rapists, not women. 

The only person responsible for rape is the rapist. They are the ones who choose, consciously choose, to commit a violent crime. And one way to stop some men making that choice is to end rape culture, which is propped up by this viral.

I don’t know what motivates men (and it is men) to create these advice lists. In my kinder moments, I can believe they are doing it because they honestly, mistakenly and naively believe it will help keep women safe. But really, it’s so easy to tell women what to do and what not to do, it requires no effort to prop up a victim-blaming rape culture that doesn’t actually care about stopping rape. What would be really helpful, really radical and really make a difference would be to improve justice for rape survivors and stop rapists from raping. 

Telling women not to go grocery shopping will never achieve that. Talking and educating men and boys – as well as women and girls – about bodily autonomy, respect and consent – that might. 

The CWASU website is a really valuable resource on victim-blaming, rape culture and proper facts. /

Rape Crisis Helpline: 0808 802 9999 

National Domestic Violence Helpline: 0808 2000 247 

The Stuart Hall case should put to rest the debate on anonymity for rape defendants

Having strenuously protested his innocence just three months ago, veteran BBC broadcaster Stuart Hall yesterday admitted he sexually abused girls – one of whom was as young as nine.  The CPS described him as an ‘opportunistic predator’ who abused girls over two decades. Having dismissed the complaints against him as ‘malicious and pernicious’, Stuart Hall has now pleaded guilty to 14 counts of indecent assault. 

As the list of celebrities accused of rape and sexual assault gets longer – and more and more survivors are given the confidence that now, after years of being silenced they will be listened to and believed – the argument about anonymity for rape defendants has risen its ugly head again. 

But the Hall case shows more than ever just how vital it is that we continue to name men accused of rape and sexual assault. Because it is this naming that can give survivors and victims the confidence to come forward. 

In Hall’s case, the police and CPS have been vocal in their argument for naming defendants. They have explained how naming Hall helped lead to his guilty admission. As survivors recognised that they were not alone, that he had attacked others, the police were able to gather the evidence they needed to charge and eventually prosecute. The victims did not know one another, and their accounts of the assault were strikingly similar. Without naming Hall, the police might not have learnt this and might not have had the evidence to charge - a charge that led to the guilty plea. 

Perhaps not naming Hall would have still led to this. But it is highly unlikely. With little forensic evidence, naming Hall meant that more victims and survivors felt able to go to the police, who were then able to see patterns in Hall’s behaviour and actions towards his victims – building up the evidence that was needed to charge him. 

We see the same pattern over and over again. Serial rapist John Worboys is a key example in how naming a defendant helped lead to his conviction. After he was named, it became impossible for the police to ignore the weight, the sheer amount, of women coming forward to name him as their rapist. Naming leads to evidence which helps lead to convictions. 

Some argue that if we name the accused we should name the alleged victim. But why? Naming the victim isn’t going to help lead to convictions, it’s not going to help secure justice for rape survivors. People cry ‘false accusations’ but if a woman is charged with that specific crime, then of course she will be named as she will be a defendant herself. The case of Ched Evans shows what can happen when you name the survivor. His victim was victimised all over again when she was subjected to horrific abuse to the point that she had to change her name and flee her home. How can we have ended up in a situation where some treat rapists with more sympathy and respect than their victims?

When criticising the policy of naming defendants, I think people confuse two different issues. The first is the legal issue and the indisputable, mounting, continuing evidence that naming helps convict rapists. The second is media behaviour.

The cheerleaders for anonymity seem to believe that our priority should be to protect the reputations of allegedly violent men, not to collect the evidence to convict. To me, this is part of the rape culture that leads to the sympathetic reporting of even convicted rapists that we saw in Steubenville and, to an extent, with Hall. Suddenly we’re expected to feel pity or sorrow for men who have shown no empathy to their victims because of the way they may be treated in the media.

Whenever I write about this issue, people raise the cases where men have been tried in the media – a ‘trial’ that has ruined their lives. Interestingly, when I write about this issue, people use examples where men have been falsely accused of murder in the press - but no one appears to be asking for anonymity for murder suspects. They instead seem to believe rape is a special case. 

But the fact that the media convict people in their pages and often seem to tread a very narrow line between reporting and contempt of court is not a reason to end the policy of naming defendants. It is too important a policy, too important in bringing justice to victims and survivors, to be dropped because the press behave intrusively. Press behaviour is an issue for the press. If they harass and taunt and wrongly convict men in their pages then that is not the fault of a sensible law that helps bring justice to rape victims. If the press break the law, then that should be dealt with appropriately. It won’t be dealt with by doing away with another law. 

The treatment of named defendants in the press is an issue for the press. It should not be used as an excuse to end a vital and important policy in ensuring justice for rape survivors. In the Stuart Hall case, naming the defendant led to him admitting his offences – something his victims have waited decades to see. The result of the Hall case proves once more just why it is so important to name defendants to empower women and girls to come forward and provide evidence needed to convict. Put simply, bad behaviour in some sections of the media is not a reason to deny women and girls up and down the UK justice. 

I might be glad about the return of Spare Rib – but let’s not pretend online feminism isn’t vital

When I heard the news that Spare Rib was making a comeback I have to admit I was a bit nervous. On the one hand – hurrah for a funded feminist magazine that would provide some relief from the glossy ‘Sex tips for girls – how to give your man the perfect blow job’ headlines that currently dazzle my newsagent's shelf (point 1. Women not girls, point 2. Can we have sex tips that focus on women?). On the other hand, I always am wary of anything that focuses money and energy on reminiscing about something historic instead of supporting and inspiring what’s going on in the present.

I grew up with a framed copy of Spare Rib in our upstairs hallway however (Cagney and Lacey gracing the cover – awesome!) so decided that really, my heart is with the Rib Revival.

However, today in the Observer I read a really nasty, spiteful and vindictive article by Sophie Wilkinson which basically seemed to read that we need Spare Rib to come back to sort out us feminists today. We, apparently, value re-tweeting over activism and as a result feminism is turning in on itself.

Well, I call bullshit on that one. Firstly, because it is not true and, secondly, because it is not true.

Let’s deal with the first element of untruth in her article.

Feminism today categorically does not exist just online. There is a thriving, active, exciting and inspiring feminist movement changing the world for the better out there, offline. What’s more, we’re working with no money, little time and sheer determination to change the world. I should know, after all, I’m part of it.

All over the UK, grassroots feminists are setting up rape crisis centres, campaigning against the cuts, gathering evidence of the Government’s marginalisation of women, lobbying politicians and councillors, marching for our freedom to live free from the fear of rape, challenging anti-abortion rhetoric, speaking out against FGM, domestic abuse, forced marriage, cultural femicide. We are putting on festivals and putting on demonstrations and writing reports and we are doing it without £20,000 raised by prominent feminist writers (money raised to get Spare Rib back on the printing press). We are here and we are doing. We are gathering in rooms and sharing our experiences, we are gathering in conference halls and shouting ‘we are feminist’ from the rooftops, we are going into classrooms and talking to young women and men about feminism and sexuality, we are putting together packs about improved sex education. We are campaigning for (and increasingly within) an intersectional movement.

We are doing all of this with no money, little time and very, very little coverage from the mainstream media. The grassroots feminist movement is, after all, far, far less interesting than feminist catfights. We’re too busy doing actual stuff.

That’s just in the UK. All over the world women activists are taking, well, action. Women in Afghanistan are setting up domestic abuse refuges at huge risk to their own safety and lives, women in the DRC speaking out about the experiences of rape, women in the States turning their back on Romney and voting for bodily autonomy, women in Nicaragua campaigning for abortion rights, women in India marching against rape, women in Bangladesh marching for better working conditions – women marching and acting and speaking and not getting their tits out (the only international activism the mainstream media seem to notice at the moment).

But apparently none of this is as important or newsworthy as spiteful articles about how feminism today is doing it wrong.

As someone who has spent the last six years running one of the biggest feminist networks in the country,  I can’t help but feel incredibly annoyed and frustrated when the work of groups like Bristol Feminist Network,  and there are loads like us, are ignored in favour of this narrative that one way of doing feminism (in this case the Spare Rib model) is better than any other way of doing feminism. There’s room for all the sisters under my feminist umbrella after all. I want Spare Rib back, I want to work with all women, but I don’t want them to ignore the work we women outside the media are doing. I also get frustrated when, once again, mainstream media reporting of feminism focuses just on one or two high profile organisations and ignores the multiplicity of voices in the UK movement, such as Black Feminists UK, Integrate and GAPS.

Anyway, that’s enough about untruth number 1. Let’s look at untruth number 2.

Online feminism is far, far more than ‘re-tweets replacing debate’ and ‘lazy clicks equalling approval’. To say this is to silence, ignore and mock the incredible galvanizing effect the internet has had on feminism in the UK today – and across the world. However, because my experience is of the UK I am going to stick to that.

The online feminist movement has brought together people of all genders to discuss and make feminist activism happen. It levels the playing field. It gives women from all backgrounds the chance to share their experience – it gives us a platform. When BFN plan an action we try to have an online element so that people who can’t attend an event can still take part. The internet has given women a space to speak out about their experiences, it has allowed us to share petitions and letters and research and reports. For younger women, isolated in a world where they think they are the only feminist, the feminist blogosphere gives them endless resources to explore and discover.

Thanks to online feminism I have met women from all over the UK and I get the chance to talk to them about gender inequality and rape culture, FGM and VAWG. Online feminism taught me about intersectionality – a concept I had never heard of before encountering it on the F Word. The internet has made me a better feminist.

Of course, it is not perfect. There is bullying and unpleasantness and we have seen a lot of that in recent months. There are also issues around accessibility and who has access to the online world.

But there is so much more to the online feminist world than lazy RT-ing. Not, of course, that RT-ing is lazy by definition!

Without online feminism, for example, I would not have been able to organise the Bristol Women’s Literature Festival. I would not have been able to gather signatures for my letter to MPs about violence against women and girls.I would not have had the solidarity and love of my sisters when I was attacked by men over the Hooters debacle.

And that’s just me – one small activist in a small city with a small blog.

What perhaps summed up the attitude of the article towards the online world was the snarky dismissal by Sophie Wilkinson of the Everyday Sexism  (and that’s what it’s called, not Everyday Feminism!). She writes that it is just a site ‘which simply holds a magnifying mirror to the regular, dull throb of misogyny so it can be identified and extracted like a thick whitehead’ is so ignorant and rude and dismissive of the importance of that site as to be almost laughable. Everyday Sexism is about giving a voice to thousands and thousands of women about the horrors of misogyny when they didn’t have a voice before. It’s about bringing together women’s experiences, giving us a safe space to speak out about the things we thought no one wanted to hear about, no one wanted to listen to. It’s about multiplicity – the voices of many to many not the voices of few to many.

Feminism has always been about, to me, raising our voices. It’s about the power of women’s voices. How dare anyone tell women that a space where our voices are finally heard doesn’t matter? That it’s just a waste? This is our space, for our voices, talking about our experiences. Some of the things I have shared there are things I hardly dared speak before. I am sure this is the case for many who use that site. There’s a real power in cataloguing these experiences. They give us undeniable, irrefutable evidence that this misogyny, this hatred of women is real and happening and happening every single fucking day. It is not to be mocked. It is not to be silenced. In this, Everyday Sexism is symbolic of much of online feminism – a bringing together of women’s voices to speak out and document and fight against misogyny.

I’m glad Spare Rib is coming back. But not if it is going to happen by silencing other women and privileging the voices of women who have a national media platform. There is so much happening in the UK and global feminist movement today that needs to be celebrated and respected in the mainstream media. It’s happening online and offline. Instead of silencing and mocking these movements – as to me this article so callously did – let’s use an incredible force like Spare Rib to raise the movement’s profile and celebrate its many, many wonderful and important achievements.

Clare's Law - will it really help women fleeing violence?

Trigger warning: discussion of domestic abuse and violence against women, including some common scenarios

At the weekend, I read an article in the Guardian about the one-year trial of Clare’s Law.  For those who don’t know, Clare’s Law is designed to give women and men the chance to check with the police to see if their partner has a history of domestic abuse. 

It was really heartening to read in the article that some women in violent relationships have used Clare’s Law and felt able to leave their abusive partner. It seems to have been a positive force in these women’s lives. One of the women interviewed said ‘it probably saved my life.’

However, I remain concerned about Clare’s Law. Although it has undoubtedly helped some women, there are two areas where it feels to me to be another example of the Government making noises about ending violence against women whilst not taking real and effective action. 

I should note here that both men and women can access information about their partner’s history however I will just talk about women in this post. That is not to silence the experience of men survivors.

My first worry is that Clare’s Law puts the responsibility on the victim or potential victim to ‘avoid’ the violence of her partner. It says to women that if they have concerns, it’s up to them to act on those concerns by going to the police. To me, Clare’s Law skirts over the issue that to tackle violence against women we need to be looking at the behaviour and actions of perpetrators. It also raises questions about rehabilitation and sentencing of abusers. 

Clare’s Law tells women who think their partner is violent, or have a partner who has been violent towards them, to take action and find out if he has a history of violence. It is then assumed that, armed with this knowledge, women can (and should) leave. As the article shows, some women have felt able to do this. 

But what if you don’t?

What if you confront your partner with what you’ve learnt, and he promises to change? What if he blames his ex, and says that you are different to her and he will never do that again? 

Or, what if you don’t confront him because you believe he loves you and he won’t do it again? 

My worry with Clare’s Law is that it will be used – both maliciously and ignorantly – to blame the victim. If we tell a woman that her partner has a history of violence and she stays with him and then he is violent towards her, will people find it even easier to say ‘why didn’t she just leave?’ And, considering we already live in a victim blaming culture, what will this mean for trying to convict? How would this impact on getting justice for survivors? 

As I say, it is clear that Clare’s Law has been positive for some women who have left their partners after finding out about their past violence. But I can’t help but feel very concerned that it will be used to blame women who don’t leave. It puts the responsibility on women to find out about their partner’s past and act on that knowledge in an ‘approved’ way. It doesn’t seek to prevent violence; it puts no emphasis on men’s action. To me, the law doesn’t seem to understand or even consider why women might not feel able to leave a violent partner. 

However, my concern about Clare’s Law isn’t just about women who don’t leave. It’s also about the women who do 

Clare’s Law has been enacted at a time when the domestic violence support service sector is being destroyed by Government cuts. Women’s Aid estimates 230 women are turned away from refuges every day.  At one point, the National Domestic Abuse helpline was reportedly advising women fleeing violence to sleep on buses, in occupy camps – anywhere but home, because they had no refuge spaces to offer them. 

It’s one thing to tell women that their partner has a violent history. But what is a woman supposed to do with this knowledge if she has no-where safe to go?

Leaving a violent partner is incredibly dangerous. Women need to know they have somewhere safe to go to – alone or with children if she has them. Somewhere he cannot follow her and hurt her. It probably isn’t safe to go back to her family (if she has a relationship with them) or to a friend’s house. The safest place is a refuge, staffed by experienced women who can offer support, advice and care. 

Imagine a woman with a young child whose partner is violent. She goes to the police and discover through Clare’s Law that he has a history of domestic abuse. She decides to leave. Telling him this provokes more rage and violence. She knows she can’t go to her parents because he knows where they live. It’s simply too dangerous. She feels isolated from her friends because his behaviour has been controlling. She calls to find a refuge place for her and her child and there are none. 

Where does she go? 

At this point in time, where refuges are closing and the support for victims and survivors is losing funding, Clare’s Law seems almost cruel. What’s the point of telling a woman that her partner is dangerous and she should leave, if you have taken away all the safe places she could go to? 

It makes me so, so angry. Because I want Clare’s Law to work. In a world where every woman –  and there are 1.2 million women experiencing domestic abuse each year – got the support she needed to leave a violent partner, Clare’s Law would be a help. 

But in a world where Clare’s Law tells a woman her partner is violent whilst taking away her options to safely leave him? That’s a taunt. 

It’s great that women have used Clare’s Law to help them leave violent relationships. I worry though that, with the cuts continuing, many women will find they have the facts, but no-where to go. 

It seems to me that once again, the Government has found a way to say it is taking action on violence against women whilst ignoring how their policies across the board are actually causing far more significant harm to women trying to flee violence. 

Domestic violence helpline: 0808 2000 247