How Do We Make a Change?

‘A person commits rape if they intentionally penetrate the vagina, anus or mouth of another person with their penis without consent’.

 

There we go, the definition of rape, it took me a matter of seconds to get that from the internet. We can safely assume that Justice Patrick McCarthy knows that one – it’s his job to know this stuff. And yes, Magnus Meyer Hustveit, he is most certainly a man who knows what rape is. Hustveit has admitted to being guilty of this crime in an email to his victim. He stated that he raped his sleeping girlfriend up to ten times during their relationship.

We put our faith in a system that we hope can at least allow the victim to feel like some kind of justice has been done, and yet in this circumstance the criminal justice system has completely failed.

Hustveit has now walked away from court with an entire seven year suspended sentence. His work place are more than happy for him to return and even gave a character reference noting what a great guy he is. The Judge also believed that the suspended sentence should be given noting “In truth this case comes here today out of his own mouth”. The rapist believed that he was committing a victimless crime as his girlfriend was in a deep sleep due to medication at the time, and that she was also uncomfortable with him watching pornography, so his actions seemed a fair response.

When I read about this I wanted to take to the streets to march. A rapist is basically being applauded, it just reads to me as “Oh well, you know, this poor lad, she didn’t let him watch porn! And he is punctual at work, a team player – and I mean, she was asleep right?? And he ADMITTED IT!! Why are we even wasting the courts time?! He’s not a jot of bother!” Depressingly, this take on it can be found in the comments section lurking below reports on this case. Sympathy for rapists rears its ugly head again with people questioning ‘yeah – but can she reeeally have been asleep through this?’.

We know that most instances of rape never make it to court and for those that do, well, the prosecution rate is extremely low. The police and some amazing charities have campaigned to get women to reach out after this horrific crime, assuring them that they will be heard and helped. How can we ever expect to move forward in bringing more of these attacks to light when the result of this case is the message we are sending out there? Admit to being a rapist and it will all be ok??

Recently the brutal attack on Majella Lynch appeared in the news when she tragically died following an infection due to a sexual assault. Majella was found to have a shampoo bottle inside her abdominal cavity, the result of an attack by David McBride. He was known to view extremely violent pornography.

I think that generally we assume that as the years go by things will get better. This is a common argument regarding female representation for instance, when discussing female only shortlists we often hear a resounding no to them, the point given that surely as time passes the ratio will even itself out, (The fact that at the current rate we’re looking at around 60 plus years for equal representation is quickly swept under the carpet) and I think this has been the feeling out there regarding rape and male violence towards women, we think it will just magically work itself out of our society. It pains me to say that I don’t think this is the case, I think it could be getting worse. Again I will repeat the statistics that 1 in every 4 women will suffer from domestic violence and 1 in every 6 from sexual assault and rape. How will we change these figures? It is not going to happen organically and with results like that of Hustveit sending out the signal that these really are crimes you can get away with, where is the deterrent?

Caroline Lucas wrote an article in the last couple of days about the importance of sex education in our schools. With children and young teens able to access pornography on their phones at a click of a button, impressionable brains are learning that in sexual relations a man is always firmly in charge of a woman, there is no regard for female pleasure, they are never shown as equal partners – a woman must always succumb to a man. Lucas made an argument for discussion over real relationships, somebody taking time to explain that these images on screen do not/should not represent real life and that pressure should never be applied to replicate that. The Telegraph then decided to run this article with a headline saying sex education needed sorting fast due to ‘Slutty, Slaggy Schoolgirls’. Lucas has quickly came out to stress that these words are not her own, her article placed importance on teaching both boys and girls about relationships. You would have hoped we had moved on from the tired old nonsense of girls being slags and a problem that needs to be dealt with whereas the boys, well, they’re just lads having a laugh right, we can let them get on with it.

Change needs to start happening, and it needs go from the education of our children right the way through to the Judges in the law courts. People, women, need to start shouting loudly about this. Already shouting? Then shout louder, shout more! Do you have any ideas on what else we can be doing? I don’t have the answers to this huge problem but I don’t want to sit here watching more rapists walking free and more women dying.

So you have something to say about our bodies eh?!

ANGER. Frothy, boiling anger running through my veins has prompted me to write this post. I mean, I’ve (we’ve, all of us) know that the world out there has A LOT to say about our female bodies, how much space we take up, if we’re smooth where they’ve decided we should be, if our manes are glossy, abundant and feminine so we are ready for show. This is every day kind of business. BUT. Today two events have tipped me over the edge and brought me to dragging out the ol’keyboard to share this rant with you (you lucky devil).

The first event was actually last night but it didn’t really sink in until today, by way of the second event. Yesterday evening I was happily walking with my friend through Bristol, I was having a good day and actually feeling a tad more confident than I have of late being out and about around people – anxiety and lows have had me out of the running for a while. Two men were walking towards us, I could see one already looking at me while a self-satisfied grin appeared on his face. ‘Well, you’re a BIG OLD FAT GIRL, aren’t you?’ he declared with absolute delight. His friend looked proud as punch as they walked on by and went on with their day. I wish I had reacted, especially if it could have been  with one of the many now rehearsed amazing come backs I have played over in my head, but I just stopped in my tracks pretty dumbfounded and actually squeaked to my friend ‘did you hear what he said?!’. Some days this would have crippled me instantly, and don’t get me wrong, ask me in ten years and I will still remember this moment because my brain kindly likes to keep these things stored right at the front of the filing cabinet for constant re-examination.

Yesterday the comment kind of washed over me, I wasn’t surprised in any way that a stranger had felt he could comment about me, I mean it has been happening since I was 12 when I walked back to my house from a friends, that walk takes me past a warehouse & some of the guys there shouted out comments about my sexy school skirt. I. WAS. TWELVE. Only last year I had a guy tell me I made his balls dry and shrivel up as I went on my merry way to see Katniss kick some Capital ass (I have a feeling she would have responded in a much more exciting way than I did).

So for the last 24 hours or so I have been obsessing over the ‘why’ do people do this, just what do they gain from it? The anger hadn’t really arrived, I think I was mentally pushing this one back to stop it from hurting too much.

Then today, well, today I went on Twitter (oh twitter, my love, my portable hell on my phone) and saw the now infamous comment to J K Rowling about Serena Williams and how her body is basically that of a man. That was it, you know when a kettle starts the rumblings, water turning over and over, faster and faster until, SHRIEK, steam is pouring out and it is trembling violently where it once stood calm? That was me with my rage, from 0 to 60 in around 10 seconds.

This guy thinks that Serena has the body of a man, and this is what allows her to win titles. Women, we are being told again, are only allowed a certain type of body, the *right* kind of body, as deemed by this wonderful gentleman in this instance. If your body doesn’t fit into this one kind of mould then you are obviously a man, or a lesbian, or somebody who shouldn’t be out on the streets because you don’t belong here.

Serena is a women, and athlete, it doesn’t need saying but here we go, her body is FEMALE, it isn’t ‘like a man’s’, she isn’t a masculine woman playing out there against all the feminine women. That is her body, she has trained and worked her magnificent ass off to make it the tennis machine that it is – just because it doesn’t fit in with your standard of what a female body is does not make it male or anything else- IT JUST MAKES YOU STUPID.

There is so much more to talk about on this topic and I will probably come back to it again as I feel like this is just stating the blummin’ obvious and not going into any depth but the rage had to come out, so there we go!

Have you have any experiences where somebody has spoken to you about your body when uninvited too? Would you like to share your amazing retort you came back with at the time, or if you are like me, the several witty, razor sharp responses you came up with later when it was way too late? Share away dear reader, rant with me!

My Angry Brain (in a rambling post)

I tend to go through fits and starts with my relationship with the world at large – often this has a huge correlation to how much media I am allowing access to my brain at any given time. Obviously when I am suffering from problems with my bipolar then there is a whole different spectrum of how I view the goings on around me, but for this piece I am writing please take it as given it is all coming from when I am ‘sound of mind’ (now that is a phrase we could debate over for some time right?!)

There are moments, although they tend to be brief and are certainly becoming few and far between, where I almost hit Pollyanna mode in my being. The world is beautiful, everything glistens, STOP – look at that bird tweeting and that puppy frolicking. I see the good in everything and I have hope for humanity, remembering there is more good people out there than bad. I remember after the Boston bombing being so upset by the devastation and somebody saying to me that when such an event happens, yes, you will look on the one or two people who have carried out such an atrocity, but you need to focus on all of the other people who are running into danger to help others, all the good souls raising their hands to help. So the Pollyanna times are excellent times, happy Dan floating about in her bubble, then I’ll go ahead and do something stupid like turning on Question Time…

Question Time, well, that tends to bring about a mood all of its own making, I don’t know of many things that make me feel the way Question Time can. It is like a cocktail of emotions, rage, laughter, despair, frustration, endless question over Dimbleby’s inability to rain some voices in and of course – each week – who will be sitting in the c*nts chair this time? (WHAT?? It’s Nigel Farage again you say? Never! That would be cynical tactics for viewing figures and they wouldn’t do that) It seems sad that one program can have such an immediate effect on my feelings on the world at large but there we go, it can do. I have now taken to avoiding it most weeks, why self-harm?

There has been a lot of research carried out regarding how desensitised we have now become as an audience to world news/violence/shocking events. In the past the banner appearing on your TV screen with ‘BREAKING NEWS – school shooting’ would have stopped all in their tracks, although we still pause to read the headline and think how awful the situation is, it is often followed along with the thought of ‘oh, another one’. I would like a button to control some of my own emotions, I am one of those annoying people who seem to *feel* everything, I can’t cut off very well. Your friends sisters aunty has just recently lost her dog? My gut will wrench with sadness and I will go to bed that night upset and worried about how she is feeling. Due to this I sometimes avoid the news, it’s a lot to go through and there seems to be periods when it is like a relentless storm, one awful story raining down on us after the other. I will then go to the other end of the scale from my Pollyanna mode, I see no hope for the world, I don’t know why people bother trying as everything is clearly going to the dogs. I see apathy everywhere when I want to see people up in arms fighting against – well, what do I even pick at the moment, the government has provided a long, long list of topics for us all to be mad about.

This is how I started turning apathetic myself, it was a slippery slope, until recently a new feeling has been rising within me. ANGER. Real, burning anger. The kind that will have me awake until 3 a.m. having imaginary arguments in my head with people I have never even met. Anger that has had me getting kicked out of a taxi because I couldn’t let an ignorant comment lie. Anger that will have me lecturing friends about the inequalities I see around me.

I had a conversation today with a friend that has led me to writing this. Luckily no lecture was given, I was not climbing onto my high horse, it was a discussion over mutually held beliefs. There are many things making me angry at the moment, I won’t go into them all, hey, we can save that for another entertaining read right? But here is what is making me boil over at the moment, here is what is making me want to stop strangers in the street and ask ‘have you been thinking about this?’

Violence towards women. HAVE you thought about it lately? You know what, a lot of you may well have done because there is a huge, huge chance a reader will have suffered from it. You might not have thought about it but you might have took preventative measures because of it, how many women leave their friends of an evening with a parting ‘text me when you get home please’ and then make the journey with their keys clutched between their fists just in case they need the self-defence. How many times have we watched a report on the news about another woman being attacked, and while the attacker remains at large women are advised to remain in doors on an evening for their safety. HEY – how about asking men to remain in doors for once and work harder on making the outside world a safe place for both of the sexes?

At least two women a week are killed by a partner or former partner, this amounts to a third of all female homicides in a year. One in every 4 women will suffer from domestic abuse, one in every 6 women will be raped. When you truly think about these figures they are beyond shocking, every person in this country will have come into contact, work with, have a friend or family member who has been abused or raped. You will often hear people complain that these women didn’t ask for help, that they stayed with these people – well yes, that is all part of the abuse, that doesn’t mean we stop trying to do anything about this. And yes, there will be the argument out there of ‘not all men..’ to dismiss this, but my god, it is a LOT of men going out there and committing these crimes. Sometimes given in response is the point ‘these things happen to men too’, yes, they do, that doesn’t make the above ok. The men who this happens to should be given help and be supported also, but there is no denying that this is, by a large margin, an act of male violence against women. Just look at the recent statistics given on female genital mutilation, over the last couple of months it has become practice to record cases of FGM in hospitals. Every month for the last three months over 500 young women have suffered from this barbaric tradition.

This violence is out there and happening every single day, and it makes me boil when I hear people say how we are there now with equality, how women have took it too far and we have it peachy. REALLY?? Because to me, when half the population have a one in six chance of being sexually assaulted by a member of the other half, it is not equality as I know it. When one in four women will go home, the place we are meant to feel safe, and be beaten and psychologically abused, when each week two of those women will be killed, tell me then how we have no further to go with women’s rights.

Something has gone horribly wrong out there, and I don’t claim to be an expert by any long shot of the imagination, I don’t have the answers, I just think that surely instead of just trying to mend the broken bones, catch the abuser and stop the torment, we need to look at the root of the problem. We need to educate, we need to find out how to stop this being a problem we almost seem to accept as having to live with, we need women to get ANGRY and demand their right to live free from fear.