by Laura Bates
An organization that judges women on how sexy, thin and attractive they are to men has publicly humiliated and degraded its own winner for going on a television programme all about being sexy, thin and attractive to men. When these women are passive objects, the pageant revels in and profits from their sexual attractiveness. But heaven forbid they should actually live a real life or follow through on that titillating promise. The idea of them taking ownership of their own bodies and desires is apparently unthinkable, unless it is done in secret.
It all plays into the double standard that sees young women facing enormous pressure to be as sexy as possible, yet lambasted if they dare to step outside the realm of the watched object and into the role of the self-possessed woman. Looking attractive is all well and good, but dare to engage in actual sexual activity and suddenly you’re a slut, a slag, a whore, while your male peers mysteriously become studs, lads or players. It is often the court of public opinion that disgraces and shames women for sexual activity: a pattern replicated in the Miss Great Britain statement, which makes it clear that it is only after receiving feedback that they decided Holland could not be promoted as a role model – a decision based on other people’s judgements rather than her own actions.
The move is particularly ironic given that the pageant only recently updated its rules to allow married women and mothers to take part (they were banned from entering until 2013). So having had sex in the past is clearly acceptable, just not in the future.
Of course, Miss Great Britain isn’t alone in its double standards – they were also on full display on Love Island itself, where fellow contestants described Holland as an ‘absolute idiot’ and a ‘stupid girl’, while Bowen was reported to have escaped ‘unscathed by scandal’. In this case, as in so many, others benefitted richly from a young woman being torn down: ratings rocketed after Holland was dethroned.
Stripping Holland of her title is further proof that no matter how hard women try to play by society’s sexist rules, they still can’t win.
Originally published 21 June 2016
SHOUTING BACK
Often, an interviewer will ask me to name a woman who inspires me. They expect, I think, to hear famous names. But whenever I am asked that question, I immediately think of names that are unlikely to be known to the general public. Names like Rowan Miller. Or Seyi Akiwowo. Or Ellie Cosgrave. These are not famed media figures. They are not being showered with awards. They are unsung heroes. Women at the coalface – women who are working tirelessly, often thanklessly, day after day, to make the world better for other women in their own unique ways. That might mean, respectively, running a regional sexual assault support service, fighting against a wave of vile racist and misogynistic threats to represent their community as a councillor and campaigner, or working tirelessly as an academic to support other women in science and engineering.
I am inspired by the grit and determination of the women who dedicate their lives to making other women’s lives better. The Rape Crisis staffers whose professional lives are an endless cycle of uncertainty as they scramble to find next year’s budget from an ever-shrinking pot of public funds. The charity workers who face heckling and abuse as they raise their voices about new inequality research or point out the unpopular reality of the crisis in refuge provision or social housing. The campaigners who dedicate their own lives, unpaid and un-thanked, to fighting for the rights of refugee women and those in detention. The clinic escorts who endure threats and loathing to support women exercising their right to reproductive healthcare.
I draw strength, too, from the hordes of people speaking out about these issues in their daily lives, whether sharing their stories with the Everyday Sexism Project, raising issues at home or work, or boldly putting their heads above the parapet on social media. Those who suggest it is lazy or ineffectual to speak out online have clearly never experienced the barrage of abuse that this so often brings.
But among the hate and the harassment, nothing makes me smile like the stories from women and girls who are taking matters into their own hands. At one school I visited, girls had noticed on Twitter that the students at the local boys’ school, who were due to join them for my talk, were resistant to the idea of a discussion about sexism, and planning to be as disruptive as possible. Determined to see a productive session go ahead, the girls left their lessons five minutes early and, arriving at the auditorium ahead of the boys, spaced themselves out so they were sitting in every other chair. Forced to sit interspersed between the girls and denied the dominant dynamic of a dissenting bloc, the protesters had the wind taken out of their sails and even found, to their surprise, that there was far less to object to than they had anticipated.
What’s even more exciting is the ever-increasing number of young people, including boys, who approach me after school talks to ask for advice in combatting sexism and setting up school societies to tackle the problem. Reports suggest that over 200 new feminist societies have been set up in the past few years alone at UK schools and universities, and ever more young people feel comfortable associating themselves with the label.
And for anyone who honestly still wants to argue that we no longer need feminism, I no longer spout endless statistics to try and convince them, I simply present them with these two quotes about women.
‘It is the law of nature that woman should be held under the dominance of man.’
CONFUCIUS, CIRCA 500 BC
‘I think that putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing . . . When I come home and dinner’s not ready, I go through the roof.’
DONALD TRUMP (NOW PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES), 1994
Clearly, we still have a long way to go.
SHARING STORIES OF SEXISM ON SOCIAL MEDIA IS TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY ACTIVISM
Tweeting about sexism could improve women’s well-being, according to a new study published in the British Journal of Social Psychology. The study suggests that a sense of ‘collective action’ may be at the root of the benefits. Participants were divided into groups: some were asked to tweet publicly, some privately and some not to tweet at all. According to the abstract, ‘only public tweeters showed decreasing negative affect and increasing psychological well-being, suggesting tweeting about sexism may serve as a collective action that can enhance women’s well-being’.
Since launching the Everyday Sexism Project in 2012, I’ve seen first-hand the positive impact that sharing stories via social media can have. I’ve seen women tweet their experiences of street harassment and receive support, understanding and solidarity from others all over the world. I’ve seen a woman tweet a story of workplace discrimination and receive a reply from an HR manager in a different city, offering to lend their expertise to help. I’ve received messages from men explaining that they’ve come across these tweets unexpectedly, and feel that their eyes have been opened to a problem they hadn’t previously been aware of.
So the results of this study do not come as a surprise to me. But they may come as a surprise to those who argue that using social media to try to advance social justice amounts to lazy ‘clicktivism’ by futile ‘keyboard warriors’.
It is often argued that the recent wave of online feminism is somehow lessened by its medium, or that sharing experiences online weakens victims, giving them an ‘easy’ way out instead of reporting incidents elsewhere. This line of thought fundamentally fails to recognize the very nature of gender inequality, which is often subtle, cumulative and deeply ingrained. Not every instance of everyday sexism is something that could be reported elsewhere, but having a forum to share these grievances can help victims to take back a sense of power and control – a sense of protest over powerlessness. Don’t underestimate the catharsis and empowerment that can come simply from telling your story and having it accepted and believed, in a world where it is so often ignored or brushed off.
Those who argue that sharing these stories online prevents justice being done couldn’t be more wrong; indeed, the opposite is true. We live in a world
in which many victims of sexual violence or discrimination are made to feel guilty, or blamed for their ordeals, or simply do not believe they will be taken seriously. It is this that holds them back from reporting, not the fact that an online forum is available to share their experiences. The women who share their stories online aren’t doing it instead of an official report they would otherwise have made; they are doing it to break what would previously have been silence.
Hundreds explicitly mention in their tweets or posts that they have never felt able to share their story with anyone before – even partners or family – let alone reporting it to the police. What’s more, a great number of women have written in to Everyday Sexism to reveal that they have found the courage to report an assault to the police, or workplace harassment to their employer, precisely because the stories of other women online have given them the strength to realize they are not alone, and that they have the right to stand up.
One student told me that it was only after seeing a feminist video shared on Twitter that she realized what she had experienced could be classified as sexual assault. A runner wrote that when a man assaulted her in the street, it was the other women’s stories she had read online that gave her the strength to stop, take down his car number plate and report him to the police. A teacher wrote that after she shared the stories with the girls in her class, they started their own feminist society and began to stand up to sexism at school. What happens online doesn’t stay online. Its impact can be far wider.
Of course, social media isn’t perfect – perhaps no single form of activism is. For a start, it excludes those without access to the internet or electronic devices, which is a major problem, so it needs to be used in conjunction with other efforts. In addition, social media users posting on topics such as sexism may face vitriolic abuse from trolls. But its capacity to spread an idea to millions of people around the world is undeniable and unique, as hashtags such as #YesAllWomen, #YouOKSis and #WhyIStayed have proved. And while activism shouldn’t start and end with the internet, the point is that different methods can combine together to effect change. Social media can be one starting point from which wider efforts grow.
At Everyday Sexism, for example, we take many of the stories shared with us online and use them to create real change offline; using them to start conversations around consent and healthy relationships in schools, for example. That way, those who might not have accessed the project online are still included through outreach in the community. We use the thousands of entries we receive from women in the workplace to provide politicians and businesses with an idea of the kind of abuses women are still facing in their careers, from maternity discrimination to sexual assault. We used the stories we had received from women on public transport to inform our work with the British Transport Police on Project Guardian, which included the retraining of 2,000 members of staff around victim-centred principles, and has raised reporting of sexual offences on London transport by 35 per cent.
Writing a tweet isn’t the same as going on a march, or writing to a member of parliament, but it is valuable in its own right. As we battle to shift deeply ingrained sexist norms, it matters that millions of people are able to stumble across the feminist message and see those norms challenged on social media. It is a new way to reach those who might not ever deliberately seek out the message elsewhere.
Just as it is frustrating to see feminists constantly told that they are fighting the ‘wrong’ battles, it is equally reductive to suggest they shouldn’t be using the ‘wrong’ platforms. Why shouldn’t twenty-first-century feminism make use of every tool at its disposal?
Originally published 6 February 2015
FEMINISM ISN’T DEAD, DESPITE ALL THE ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS
Feminism is dead. Long live feminism. The front page of the Spectator and a spate of other articles would have us believe the battle is won and we can now ‘move on’.
I can’t be the only one who thinks this is wonderful news. We highly strung, hand-wringing, oversensitive, perpetually offended wilting violets can hang up our suffragette-coloured hats, stop combing Twitter in desperate search of minor criticism to weep about and finally stop hating all the men for long enough to get boyfriends. Rejoice!
Except . . . there are still just a few minor issues to sort out. As kind as it is of the Spectator (that great bastion of equality, which recently brought us a blow-by-blow comparison of the looks of the female Labour leadership contenders) to let us poor weary feminists off the hook, there’s a bit of a catch. Women are still being murdered by their male partners every week; 85,000 of us are still being raped each year and 400,000 sexually assaulted; while 54,000 of us lose our jobs each year because of maternity discrimination. British women earn about 19 per cent less than men overall, there are fewer of us running FTSE 100 companies than there are men named John. We are the majority of low-paid workers and the domestic and caring work we do is unpaid and undervalued. At school, one-third of us will suffer unwanted sexual touching, also known as sexual assault, between the ages of sixteen and eighteen. One in four of us will experience domestic violence. But you already know all that. You’ve heard it all before. The Spectator and others are terribly thoughtful to offer us a break, because it is a bit tiring, really, to repeat these statistics over and over again. It’s difficult to keep banging on about a problem that remains unsolved, while a vocal section of the population sticks its fingers in its ears and sings: ‘Nah nah nah nah naaaah, I can’t hear you!’
There is a bit of a glitch in their plan though, because angrily denying that a problem even exists tends to be one of the clearest indicators that a society has yet to get to grips with it.
So what is the source of this growing angst about feminism? If the movement truly were fading to an obscure death, as so many commentators suggest, you might think that front-page articles declaring its proponents ‘feminazis’ and trumpeting its demise would hardly be necessary. The real clue is to be found in the articles themselves, which fixate on objections to wolf whistles and urge us to get a grip and admit that the real reason for the under-representation of women in politics is women’s own gooey fixation with babies. (Don’t worry, there’ll be an emergency feminist meeting where we can get together and work out what to do now the secret ovary-aching truth has been revealed.)
Both arguments suggest a stricken, defensive desire to deflect any sense of blame from the majority of men. If we maintain that there might be some connection between the treatment of women’s bodies as public property in the street and the fact that they are discriminated against in the workplace, we’re suddenly suggesting wolf-whistlers might have to reconsider their behaviour. If we foist the burden for discrimination on women’s own uncontrollable hormones, there’s no longer any public responsibility to do anything about the problem, because it’s perfectly natural.
Some are also keen to remind us that we once had a female prime minister and the Queen is a woman, so what on earth can we still have to make a fuss about? And there’s a feverish desperation to portray modern feminism as obsessed with body hair and lipstick, issues that weren’t exactly top of the agenda when Sisters Uncut staged their protest at the Suffragette premiere, objecting to deep cuts to vital domestic violence services.
What’s really happening here is an increasing anxiety among those in positions of power about the growing impact of feminism. So, there is a defensive attempt to undercut it by painting feminists as wailing whingers crying about nothing, or humourless harpies attacking innocent men. We saw this in the Sir Tim Hunt case, when the scientist gave a speech in which he advocated sex-segregated laboratories, saying: ‘Let me tell you about my trouble with girls . . . three things happen when they are in the lab . . . You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticise them, they cry.’ As a result, UCL took the independent decision to discontinue his relationship with the university as an ambassador, an outcome subsequently portrayed as the brutal destruction of a noble, misunderstood man
by an influential, furious online mob. But all this falls down a bit if you stop to take a quick look at the actual online feminist response, which focused largely on a humorous and positive campaign by female scientists to raise awareness of their diverse work.
So I hope you’ll forgive me if I decide, on reflection, to forgo the first part and just stick with the second: long live feminism.
Originally published 25 October 2015
THE BEST COMEBACKS TO SEXIST COMMENTS
When you experience sexism or sexual harassment, it’s common to feel a wave of emotions wash over you – fear, anger, embarrassment, shame, and often shock or panic. It’s often incredibly difficult to respond in the heat of the moment, and victims frequently report the frustration of feeling frozen. Sometimes you think of a witty comeback hours later and wish you’d had it at the tip of your tongue in time.
Let’s be very clear – it is never a victim’s duty or responsibility to shout back. We won’t solve any kind of sexism by telling the people experiencing it to react in a certain way; we’ll only stop it by preventing the perpetrators from doing it in the first place. Often, it’s not safe to respond, particularly if you are isolated, or fear the situation could escalate. But for those times when you do wish you had a quick comeback, the Twitter followers of the Everyday Sexism Project shared a deluge of wonderful, witty responses this week.
Some were delightfully cunning.
@KariAnnSpriggs: when I get harassed I always pretend I didn’t hear & say ‘What?’ The more they have to repeat the sillier they sound.