Misogynation Read online

  For all the unsung heroes,

  with deepest gratitude.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Ridiculous Sexist Arguments Busted

  Everyday and Insidious

  Rape Is Not a Romp

  Handy Guides for Confused Dudes

  Harassment vs Free Speech vs Banter

  Women Are People, Too

  Our Bodies, Our Battlegrounds

  #NotAllMen

  What Women Are Still Putting Up With at Work

  Facepalm Fails

  Shouting Back

  Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  INTRODUCTION

  This book is not a labour of love. In many ways, it would be more accurately described as a labour of frustration, or of anger. I am angry at the fact that women face an epidemic of sexual violence. I am frustrated by the routine discrimination they suffer in the workplace, and furious that almost a third of them are groped against their will before they even leave school. I hate the sexual harassment that pursues them in the street and on to public transport, the misogynistic way in which they are portrayed in the media and the gender stereotypes that force many of them into low-paid, part-time work with little chance of promotion. I am shocked that women still bear the vast burden of unpaid caring work, enabling the economy to flourish while going unnoticed and unrewarded. I’m outraged that 86 per cent of the cost of austerity has come from women’s pockets, with vulnerable and poor women worst affected.

  But perhaps most of all, it frustrates me that we fail to join the dots. We treat these and so many other problems as if they are entirely separate and unrelated issues. As if it is complete coincidence that a husband’s murder of his wife, a man jailed for stalking and a woman whose hijab was ripped off in the street are reported on the front pages the very same day. We fail to see the pattern that is right in front of us and, in so doing, we fail its victims, over and over and over again.

  When police warn women not to walk alone after a spate of assaults, when yet another new product pops up demanding women buy it to protect themselves from attack, when a politician is decried for having the audacity to complain about rape threats, all this is connected.

  When we learn that women are dramatically underrepresented in our parliament and businesses and then see our prime minister and the Scottish first minister on the front pages under the headline ‘Never mind Brexit, who won Legs-it!’, these things are related.

  When a newspaper runs an article describing rape as a romp or a jury acquits an accused rapist because of the previous sexual history of the accuser, these are not isolated incidents.

  When a black woman is asked where the toilets are by a male attendee of the conference she is due to speak at, when a woman in a wheelchair is physically pushed aside by a man in the street, when a trans woman is bullied in the workplace or an older woman is completely ignored by a shop assistant, these are interconnected, not separate issues.

  Until we join the dots, we haven’t any hope at all of stopping misogyny. We can’t tackle any one of these incidents in isolation. We can’t improve the representation of women on FTSE 100 boards or in our government without tackling the mindless, racist gender stereotyping that sets girls’ sights lower and constrains their ambition before they even reach primary school. We can’t resolve the scourge of domestic violence or female genital mutilation without also taking on the societal norms that see women routinely spoken about, and to, as if they are second-class citizens whose sexuality exists solely to satisfy and be policed by men. We can’t address the enormous gap in pay between men and women, or between white women and women of colour, without recognizing the overt and unconscious bias that exists at every level of the job market.

  Nor is any of this coincidental. It is deliberate, systematic and ingrained. It is built into the systems, the institutions and organizations that make up our society. It is revealed in the fact that our senior judiciary is overwhelmingly dominated by white men; that our criminal justice system remains institutionally saturated with prejudice; it is evident in the pitiful statistics that reveal women make up less than a quarter of professors at UK universities and that, at the time of writing, no black academics have worked in senior management in any British university for the past three years. That no woman has ever held the position of chancellor of the exchequer, BBC director-general or governor of the Bank of England. That in the five years leading up to 2015, just four black women appeared on the flagship BBC current affairs programme Question Time. That there is just one female editor of a major UK daily newspaper and over three-quarters of front-page articles are written by men.

  What’s more, the cycle of acceptance is perpetuated by the fact that women are groomed their whole lives to consider these experiences inevitable, and society is conditioned to see them as normal. It is consolidated by the silence of those who witness the behaviour of men like Harvey Weinstein (accused of sexually harassing, raping and assaulting dozens of women over decades) and choose to turn a blind eye, complicit in their silence. It is enabled by the culture of workplaces, from Westminster downwards, where sexual harassment is dismissed as ‘high jinks’ and women who dare to complain are branded troublemakers. And it is cemented by a media that responds to the first tentative allegations of such behaviour in decades with reports of a ‘witch hunt’ gone too far.

  We are so often told that these are unrelated problems. ‘Lone wolf’. ‘Domestic affair’. ‘Isolated incident’. These are the terms used to excuse and erase the crimes of middle-class white men. Yet to anybody paying any attention at all, day after day, week after week, the bigger picture is maddeningly apparent.

  These columns grew out of frustration, out of a need to bear witness. To try, week after week, to say: ‘Look! There, and there, and there again! See the pattern? See the similarities?’ They grew out of a hope that perhaps, by documenting as many as possible of these incidents of the type that are so often instead ignored, there might be a chance of the bigger picture emerging. And they grew, too, out of a sense of awe and admiration of the women who fight on, tirelessly, in spite of everything, striving to join the dots and change the picture.

  So this book is a labour of anger, yes, and of frustration. But perhaps it is a labour of hope as well.

  RIDICULOUS SEXIST ARGUMENTS BUSTED

  Being a feminist means listening to a lot of really stupid arguments. It simply comes with the territory. People’s efforts to justify, excuse or deny sexism are so numerous that you can even divide them into different categories.

  There are the self-defeating trolls: ‘There’s no such thing as sexism . . . you stupid bitch.’

  The anti-feminists, who don’t realize the answer is feminism: ‘Why should I support women’s rights when men still have to pick up the bill at dinner?’ (Answer: because feminism fights for women to have the financial independence required to split the cheque.)

  And then there’s the downright ludicrous. I once genuinely encountered somebody who argued that women in Saudi Arabia were lucky not to be allowed to drive because it meant they were involved in fewer car accidents.

  It’s no coincidence that a lot of these arguments aren’t logical. They don’t spring from carefully considered reason, but from panic – a knee-jerk terror that feminists, in fighting for equality, must be hell-bent on taking something away from men. Each and every small feminist advance, from recording misogyny as a hate crime to putting the image of a woman on a banknote, is met with a backlash. The irony is that these responses, which allege hysteria and ‘PC gone mad’ are often far more hysterical and out of proportion than the developments they seek to criticize.

  The widespread normalization of these arguments is what makes them so pernicious. We have all heard it s
aid that women should take care walking alone at night, or that maternity leave puts an awful strain on businesses. These opinions are so frequently recycled that it is easy for them to become mistaken for facts. In an unequal society, much goes unchallenged because we are so used to hearing the ostensibly reasonable justifications that help to maintain the status quo. But when we begin to unpick some of these commonly recited mores we start to realize that the arguments we’ve accepted for so long are actually full of holes.

  WOMEN SHOULD NOT ACCEPT STREET HARASSMENT AS ‘JUST A COMPLIMENT’

  Walking down a quiet street at around 7pm a few nights ago, I noticed, without thinking anything of it, that there were two men coming towards me in the opposite direction. It being dark but for the street lamps, it wasn’t until they came quite a lot closer that I started to notice the telltale signs. As they neared, the men were overtly looking me up and down, eyes lingering on my breasts and legs, before turning back to one another, saying something I couldn’t hear, and sniggering. My heartbeat quickened, the hair rose on my arms and I felt the usual emotions flood through me. Fear. Anxiety. Impotence. Anger. Frustration. Misplaced embarrassment and shame.

  This is one of the things I think some men don’t understand, the men who ask you what the big deal is about street harassment, say they’d love it if it happened to them, or suggest you just ‘take it as a compliment’. It’s not a simple, one-moment experience. It’s a horribly drawn-out affair. The process of scanning the street as you walk; the constant alert tension; the moment of revelation and the sinking feeling as you realize what is about to happen. Countless women have written to me about the defence mechanisms they put in place – walking with keys between their knuckles just to feel safe – wearing their earphones so they can keep their head down and ignore it. The whole process of going out, particularly at night, can become fraught and difficult.

  Why don’t you just take it as a compliment?

  Too late to cross the street, I braced myself for the moment of passing, muscles tensed, cold fists involuntarily clenched. I understand that this must sound like an overreaction. But it isn’t. Because the way we think and behave is shaped by our previous experiences. Too many times, in my own experience, this situation has turned from leering to aggressive sexual advances, from polite rebuttal to angry shouts of ‘slag’, ‘slut’, ‘whore’. Once, I was chased down the street. Once, I was trapped against a wall. Once, my crotch was grabbed suddenly, shockingly, in vitriolic entitlement. So yes, my muscles contracted and I drew into myself as they passed.

  For a moment, they paused, and one glanced at my breasts before turning nonchalantly to the other. I was expecting the usual. ‘Look at the tits on that’ or ‘I wouldn’t say no’. But what he actually said took my breath away:

  ‘I’d hold a knife to that.’

  The other man laughed, and they walked away without giving me a second glance.

  And that, in a nutshell, is why I don’t take it as a compliment. Because it’s not a compliment. It’s a statement of power. It’s a way of letting me know that a man has the right to my body, a right to discuss it, analyse it, appraise it, and let me or anybody else in the vicinity know his verdict, whether I like it or not. It’s a power that is used to intimidate and dehumanize members of the LGBTQIA community, who suffer disproportionate levels of street harassment. It’s a ‘right’ that extends even to the bodies of the 11- and 12-year-old girls who have written to the Everyday Sexism Project in their thousands, describing shouted comments about their breasts and developing bodies as they walk in their uniform to school. Street harassment is no more about compliments than rape is about sex. Both are about power, violence and control. That’s why, when women have the temerity to reject the advances of street harassers, they so often turn, in a moment, to angry outbursts of abuse. Because that rejection disrupts their entitlement to our bodies, which society has allowed them to believe is their inherent right.

  This doesn’t mean the end of compliments. It doesn’t mean you can’t flirt, or be attracted to a stranger, or make a polite approach and strike up a conversation. Those are all completely different things from commentary about your body that is directed at you, not to you; the dehumanized discussion of your parts by a group of passers-by, not caring that you can hear, or a scream of ‘sexy’ or ‘slut’ or ‘pussy’. Those aren’t compliments. They’re something else. I believe that the vast majority of people know the difference. If you’re really not sure, err on the side of caution.

  This is not to suggest that every woman is a cowering victim, or that we’re all too scared to go about our business on a daily basis. Just that it would be nice if those people who think street harassment is ‘just a compliment’ recognized the very real and enormous impact it has on victims’ lives – not just in the moment, but day in, day out. A compliment doesn’t make you rethink your route the next time you walk down the street. Many women, including Doris Chen, who grabbed hold of a man on the underground after he ejaculated on her, have bravely confronted their harassers. But the point is that they shouldn’t have to. Nobody knows how they will react in that situation until it happens. Often, victims report feeling frozen with shock. Sometimes it isn’t safe to respond. Instead of telling victims how to react, we should focus on preventing it from happening in the first place. And we can start by debunking the myth that street harassment is just a bit of harmless fun.

  Originally published 28 February 2014

  TEN MYTHS THAT BLAME WOMEN FOR SEXISM

  When you’re a woman who spends a lot of time talking about sexism, you start to notice that about one in ten of all the replies you receive begins with the same two words: ‘Yes, but . . .’ Whether you’ve just outlined economic disadvantage or structural oppression, described workplace discrimination or discussed harassment at school, there will always be somebody who tries to argue that, in fact, it’s women themselves who are to blame for the problem. This ‘yes, but’ phenomenon happens so frequently that you start to recognize the same arguments being trotted out again and again; so often, in fact, that you start to wonder if it would be useful to have the responses to them all in one convenient place . . .

  1. ‘Yes, but girls just aren’t that interested in science’

  Take a baby, bring it up in a world that screams at it from every angle that it should be interested in certain subjects and not in others. Then, at the age of fifteen or so, ask it what subjects it would like to study, and shriek excitedly that society was right all along – girls just aren’t that into maths or science! QED.

  2. ‘Yes, but if a girl’s wearing a short skirt, she’s asking for it’

  The first flaw in this argument is that it implies the parallel assumption that every man is an animal with such uncontrollable urges that he’s unable to prevent himself assaulting a woman who is wearing a particular piece of clothing. The second is that it’s not backed up by facts. Most victims are already known to their rapists, debunking the theory that it’s a random act provoked by a piece of clothing. Support charity Rape Crisis explains: ‘People, and especially women and girls, of all ages, classes, culture, ability, sexuality, race and faith are raped. The perceived “attractiveness” of a victim has very little to do with sexual violence. Rape is an act of violence, not sex.’ Oh, and the third flaw? Women should have the right to wear whatever the hell they want without fearing assault. That’s setting the bar pretty low.

  3. ‘Yes, but women go off and have babies – why should companies pay the price?’

  It’s amazing that this still needs addressing, but some people still see pregnancy as some sort of selfish little jaunt at an employer’s expense. The argument goes that small businesses in particular can’t be expected to suffer the financial consequences if a woman wilfully flounces off to procreate, leaving them in the lurch. The glaring omission in the argument, however, is that – contrary to popular belief – there tend to be men involved somewhere in the process as well. Women aren’t gleefully knocking themsel
ves up for a nine-month ‘holiday’ – they are continuing the human race. As such, it isn’t unreasonable to expect society, including businesses and other workplaces, to share the financial cost. Where this is problematic for businesses, it’s because we haven’t yet sufficiently provided the necessary financial and organizational infrastructure to facilitate the process, not because greedy women are causing them trouble.

  4. ‘Yes, but it’s women who buy and write the women’s magazines you criticize’

  This is a classic chicken-and-egg situation. We bring girls into an image-obsessed world, where they’re taught from birth that their inherent value is mostly in their looks. We raise them in a society that bombards them with images of thin, blonde, long-legged, smooth-skinned, tanned, large-breasted women, and implies that these women are ‘better’ than the 99 per cent of human females who don’t happen to look that way. Then we deride them for buying magazines that promise to teach them how to lose weight, smooth their skin and perfect their looks. If we changed the culture – the way we treat women, and the expectations they grow up with – we might find that media supply and demand would change, too.

  5. ‘Yes, but women make different life choices’

  Usually used to counter evidence of gender imbalance in top business positions, the problem with this argument is that it stops there. The point shouldn’t be that women ‘choose’ family over career, but that we still live in a society that forces them, in so many cases, to make that choice at all – while men are able to enjoy high-flying jobs and have children without sacrificing either. Yes, women may choose to have children, but they don’t choose the structural set-up of a society in which few options (shared parental leave, flexible working hours, childcare) are widely available enough to allow them to do so without compromising their careers.

  6. ‘Yes, but women objectify men, too’