Feminists aren’t losing their way at all, Victoria

Today Victoria Coren asks “Are slutwalkers losing their way?“

In short: No. Though it has to be clarified that there is a kind of conflation between ‘feminists’ and ‘SlutWalkers’. They are not necessarily the same people. Pedantry aside, there are several things I have an issue with in the piece – I’ll pick out the two most obvious bits that I disagree with.

Firstly, she mentions Ken Clarke and his proposals to cut sentences in half if rapists plead guilty early on:

That’s why Ken Clarke is right to want slashed sentencing for early pleas of guilt and such a shame the argument disappeared in the row over his sloppy language.

I see an issue with Clarke’s proposed reform in terms of the direct effect of imprisonment on those who rape – rehabilitation (longer explanation as to what prison is supposed to do but largely I’d say rehabilitation and integration back into society is key). If the average sentence for a rapist is 8 years (though the figures seem to suggest it is longer than this – there is no alternative figure put forward, though) then under these reforms the sentence would be 4 years. Is this enough time for effective rehabilitation? I did see some figures somewhere about rehabilitation only being effective over a certain amount of time – I don’t have them to hand right now, and I can’t remember where they came from (were they to be trusted? Perhaps not).

From what limited discourse I saw – the justification for Clarke’s reform proposals were not really robust enough. Sure, it would spare the victim the horror of reliving their experience. But in the interests of justice being carried out – ie preventing rapists from raping again, will halving sentences (and thus halving time in which to rehabilitate) help at all?

On the Playboy Club protest:

I am a feminist; I think feminism is about free choice, independence and solidarity; of course I believe that women should wear whatever they like and I say that only a hypocrite would march in hotpants one day and rail against croupiers in rabbit tails the next.

She’s missed the point here. It’s not about the clothes, it’s about the fact that most of the women who work there will not be doing so in absolute free choice as we would assume. No, of course they aren’t being smuggled into the club, but there is a culture of supposed ‘free choice’ in terms of womens’ choices, propagated by those who would benefit, ie. men and the sex industry. Young women today grow up feeling that the only way to succeed is through using their bodies, seeing themselves as sex objects. And what’s worse is it’s sold to these women as “empowerment”. Empowerment is only found where you make your true choices. As far as I’m concerned it is a false dichotomy to suggest that women would go into the sex industry or do that sort of thing out of pure free choice – ie without some pushing agenda that has forced them to. What woman would willingly choose to face the threat of sexual harassment, degradation and even violence, on a daily basis? A woman who has the self-confidence to achieve whatever she wants? Or a woman who has nothing to lose because she feels like she is worthless anyway?

How do I know that this is more or less a universal truth? Because I have grown up feeling like this. I am not the way that I ‘should’ be, so I am worth nothing. Why would anyone want me when they could have someone who is skinny, blonde, has beautiful skin and doesn’t argue back or (seem to) resist? Why would you want someone who is un-mouldable, when you have hundreds of thousands who are – by virtue of the fact that they epitomise ‘womanhood’; what it means to be a woman, in society’s view?

People like me have been told their whole lives that they are worth nothing – because we dare to stray from what is socially acceptable behaviour. This is what SlutWalk was about. Women should be free to do what they want – and honestly, if they genuinely want to be a playboy bunny or whatever (when given other options and the self-confidence and self-esteem to feel they can make a valid choice!), then that’s their prerogative – but I don’t think that half of them would be there if they had some other aspirations other than what the cult of celebrity helps trot out: “Be famous” “Bag a footballer” “Everyone’s got dodgy old pornographic photos so it’s fine” “Boob jobs are essential for getting ahead” “Men want tits and arse” “No pain, no gain” “Women are good for looking at and not much else”…

I didn’t protest at the club. I didn’t even go to SlutWalk in the end – partially for semantic reasons – but mostly due to unavailability. I am against the Playboy Club in itself; not the women who work there. There’s a false dichotomy at play here, that those who work there do so out of choice, and to be empowered. I’m quite disappointed that Victoria is buying into the same old arguments trotted out at every given opportunity. Empowerment is achieved through doing things for yourself, out of your own free choice – not through doing what other people have told you you are only useful for.

International Anti-Street Harassment Day

If you didn’t know it, today is International Anti-Street Harassment Day. I can’t take part in it physically as this is the first year and as is to be expected, there’s not much going on near me, so I thought I’d participate the best way I know how!

What is ‘street harassment’?

Street harassment is a piece of the huge jigsaw that is rape culture and it happens to loads of women everywhere, every single day. I don’t think the term ‘street’ is literal (or at least it isn’t to me); more a reference to generally being out and about in public places. It can happen in the street, but it can also happen in clubs, pubs, at house parties, at concerts, or in the shops. It’s where any form of harassment is carried out – though the focus of Anti-Street Harassment Day tends to be sexual harassment. So you’ve got inappropriate touching, being shouted at, being stalked, and the list goes on.

It’s a feminist thing, but men are not excluded

On IWD, a lot of men chimed up ‘what about us?!’ and not only is there an International Men’s Day for you, but you’ll find that concepts in feminism – even rape culture and street harassment – can apply to men too. As an example, I went out clubbing with my housemates to a gay bar. My male housemate was accosted in the toilets by a gay man who wanted him to keep the toilet door open so he could see. When politely told no, the man went to the cubicle next door, pulled himself up in between the two cubicles and confronted him again. Luckily, he didn’t see anything, and my housemate was polite and told him to go away. Yet for the rest of the night, every time he went to the toilets, he was followed by the same man. Eventually, he decided he would go into the ladies’ toilets (for the club’s rules stated that men were allowed in the womens’ toilets but not the other way round) and ‘pretend to be gay’ in order to get away with being there.

He had to change his behaviour in order to avoid being harassed – and this is exactly the conundrum I and many other women are faced with every single time we go out. We want to look good, but we need to make sure that we don’t look so good that we’re ripe for the taking. If we wear a low-cut top, short skirt or anything slightly more revealing than a nun’s habit, we are to expect to be ogled and shouted at, maybe even approached, by men who think that they somehow have the right to say or do anything to a woman if they see enough flesh.

Street harassment is essentially ‘unwanted attention’

For as long as I’ve had a social life, I’ve been harassed by men when I’ve been out; even just walking along the street. One of my first memories of this is when I was about 14. I was walking home in my school uniform minding my own business. I don’t think I had an MP3 player then (nowadays I am never seen without one, because it works as a barrier to stop people from talking to me) so I could hear every single word. Three young black men who were standing on the other side of the road to me, or walking along, noticed me and started calling me a “white prostitute”, “slag”, “whore”, “fucking white bitch” and other variations; you name it, I was called it.

And for what? Walking home. In a school uniform. By this time I was past any shops that I could walk into, so I had no choice but to carry on, trying not to react to promote further shouting, or worse. I then realised that they were following me. My heart was racing, but all I could think was that if I could just make it home, I’d be safe. I got home okay, but they had followed me, right up to my doorstep, and rang on the doorbell. I remember crouching on the floor, hiding under the door window, hoping that they would get bored and go away. They did, eventually. But I refused to walk home alone from school after that, and for a few weeks I lived in fear that now they knew where I lived, they would come back.

Of course, that is probably an exceptional occurrence. You’d think, anyway. The most recent form of harassment I had was in Brighton at a Hurts gig. I’ll keep it short – there was a man stood behind me, crotch touching bum, breathing down my neck. He was much taller and of a bigger build than me and all of my friends, and when I politely asked him to move backwards he started shouting incoherently at me. I thought he was going to physically hurt me. Is it really that unreasonable to expect personal space when you’re a woman?

More subtle forms of harassment take place on a daily basis. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been touched, grabbed, or approached in an aggressive way by men, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one. These are just a couple of my stories. If you want to find out more, there’s more information on street harassment at the Stop Street Harassment website.