Will Society Ever Wake Up To Rape Culture?
October 2017 isn’t a month that Harvey Weinstein will want to remember: in the space of just a few weeks, he’s lost his career, his wife, his reputation, his friends and he’s headed for a severe sentence. He has truly got what he deserves. But I feel no sense of satisfaction: it’s impossible to feel satisfied. A prison sentence can’t delete the memories of the innocent women who were attacked by this skid-mark of a man.
Above all else, I am unsatisfied because this is not the end of sexual harassment and sexual assault. The media may have exposed the issue in the Hollywood film industry and women who work within it will undoubtedly receive better protection in the future. But what about the thousands of different industries and companies around the world that women work for? This media storm lives inside the teacup of the Hollywood film industry: it will have zero impact upon the average woman. Looking at the problem on a global scale and identifying its source is the only way to end it.
Sexual assault and sexual harassment are normal. Writing those words broke my heart. Rape is of course still relatively uncommon, but lower-level assaults (such as chest groping and hands up skirts) and sexual harassment have become painfully normal in all walks of life, not just Hollywood. I know several women who have had unwanted hands actually inside their pants in nightclubs, and have left crying. None of them reported the incidents.
On a night out recently, someone put their hand up my skirt and felt my bum — one of my female friends saw it and encouraged me to not make a scene. I have lost count of the number of times that men have felt my chest in clubs, and I have been left speechless, unable to find the words to hurl back at them. Thousands of these assaults happen every single day.
And how does the world respond? It decides that source of this harassment and assault is the woman. Parents shame their daughters for wearing short skirts: we are warned to cover up, as if we are somehow complicit and aren’t entitled to wear what we want. And I almost understand — they don’t say it to hurt us, they genuinely have good intentions and want to protect us. They fear something far worse than a grope — they fear us being raped.
Unfortunately, as noble as these intentions may be, they do not have positive results. Firstly, it’s crucial that people understand that THERE IS NO LINK BETWEEN WHAT WOMEN ARE WEARING AND THEIR CHANCES OF BEING RAPED. Spreading this myth does not put an end to instances of rape — it is victim blaming, which contributes to rape culture.
A simple Google search will tell you that there is almost 100% consensus on this issue: rape has got nothing to do with the appearance of the female (or indeed, male), or the attacker finding the victim sexually attractive. Rape is not about sex, rape is about power.
My own experiences would suggest that the same rule can often apply to sexual harassment. I am more likely to be shouted at in the street if I’m wearing short shorts, but to quote a previous article I have written: ‘I can go out in trackies with no make up on, with greasy hair and men will often still hoot their horns at me purely because I have a vagina.’ It doesn’t matter who you are, what you look like or even how old you are, you can still be a target of sexual harassment — the first time a man hooted at me from his car, I was 13 years old.
Society has got it completely wrong: women, their appearance and clothing choices are not the source of sexual harassment and sexual assault. So what is the source?
I would argue that the source is instances of low-level misogyny which either go undetected, or are considered so low-level that they aren’t nipped in the bud. But these low-level examples are toxic: they lead to slightly higher-level examples being tolerated, and those to higher still, and those to sexual harassment, those to gropes on the dance floor and those to rape.
Here is an example of this “low-level” misogyny:
I frequently ask myself the question: how is it that there are so many words to describe a girl who “sleeps around”? Slut, slag, hoe, sket, easy, whore, tart, tramp, hooker, hussy, floozy, bimbo, minx, village bike.
To my knowledge, the only words used to describe a man who sleeps around are “player” or “ladies man” — both of these terms have positive connotations, these aren’t insults.
Woman has sex: filthy
Man has sex: legend
I can remember boys using these words to describe girls as young as the age of 11. These girls hadn’t even started their periods yet, and boys were already sexualising them and deeming them inferior.
I am in no way suggesting that men who use these words are guilty of sexual harassment or sexual assault — in most cases, they are just copying the behaviour of their peers and superiors. But it would be totally naive and wholly incorrect to say that use of these words has not created an environment in which it has become easier for men to sexually harass and assault women — it is language which breeds rape culture. The term “village bike” is particularly chilling: its connotations suggest that women are merely objects, devoid of sentience, which men can just pick up, use and then pass on to the next man. As a literature and language graduate, I find the connotations of gang rape unavoidable, but most won’t read that deeply into it because the term has become normal and everyday. There is a blatant connection between this type of language and sexual harassment, even if we are not conscious of it, and this paves the way for sexual assault.
Everyone uses this language, even my friends, my family and people that I respect — someone used the term “village bike” in front of me last week, to describe a woman who had a one night stand. The man in the story was of course, not criticised. The man who used this term has a wife and a daughter and wholly condemns sexual assault, but still could not see the problem with his linguistic choices.
Let’s not make this a case for blaming all men. Firstly, I am aware that not every man uses these offensive terms. But more importantly, women use these terms too — growing up, I used to call girls sluts all the time. When I was at school, as early as age 14, my group of friends referred to another group of girls as “the slags”, purely because they had shorter skirts than we did. It seemed harmless, but it has ramifications.
We need to stop telling girls to dress a certain way, to have less sex or to accept minor (and of course, major) cases of misogyny, sexual harassment and sexual assault. We need to tell them to stop calling each other slags. We need to tell boys that the simple use of the word “slut” can have horrific consequences, that groping someone in a club isn’t a joke and that women are as valuable as they are.
The Harvey Weinstein allegations will not end sexual assault, but there can be an end. We need to raise a future generation of decent human beings and we need to stop breeding rape culture. Misogyny should always be called out, even at the lowest level, if we are to put an end to sexual harassment and sexual assault.
I would like to finish by remindind the reader that this article is about misogyny, which is why cases in which men/boys have been raped are not mentioned. This does not mean that they were not considered and it does not mean that they aren’t equally as horrific. More must be done to end instances of rape against both male and female victims.
