It began with my drive into work this morning, where all too often I was forced to contemplate the social dynamics of middle lane hoggers (they seem to cut across all social divisions); questioning my increasingly violent turns of thought I began to think about violence more generally; its pervasiveness and insidiousness. Having parked, I began to walk to Livesey House and was witness to a motorist deliberately swerving in order to hit a Herring Gull on Moor Lane – there was an almighty thwack but somehow the gull righted itself and flew off, the driver, sadly, had gone before I was able to offer a few words of advice...
Teaching, on a diverse range of subjects today, all seemed to come back to the issue of violence; hate crime, rape, bullying (and not always at my instigation, honest!), and two conversations led to unexpected, heartfelt revelations of violent encounters/relationships.
And so to relax, I catch up with missed episodes of Ripper Street, a nice piece of dark and brooding period drama is just what I need, or maybe not –it’s permeated with crass stereotypes: the ‘tart with a heart’; the Hardyesque grief-stricken wife who turns from the marital bed into the arms of the church (virgin/whore dichotomy a-go-go) and the exotic ‘other’ (Fanon 1967, Said 1979) in the form of the Jewish patron of the orphanage. And the dialogue is dreadful – every other character talks like Russell Brand (see Grace Dent’s very entertaining rant about Ripper Street). Almost every week we are confronted with images of the various ways in which women (often prostitutes) suffer violence at the hands of men. I hear the cries of ‘lighten up Meg, it’s just a bit of Sunday night entertainment, and they were violent days’. Just because they were violent doesn’t mean we have to watch it in glorious technicolour detail – there are plenty of other unpleasantries which are not shown on our screens. As Hall and others show us so convincingly, representations are powerful; they help shape our thinking, our responses. Here, we are presented with thinly veiled messages that women’s sexuality is subversive and should be punished, and all of us are in danger of becoming a crime statistic (if we’re lucky, given the rate of attrition). Research by Amnesty International last year revealed that more than a 3rd of people believe that a woman is totally or partially responsible for being raped if she has behaved in a flirtatious manner. 26% of adults believed that a woman was partially or totally responsible for being raped if she was wearing 'sexy' or revealing clothing. 22% held the same view if a woman had had many sexual partners. 30% said that a woman was partially or totally responsible for being raped if she was drunk.
In the press we watch the media circus surrounding the Oscar Pistorius case and follow the progress of Cameron’s moves to push the bill for same sex marriage through the House of Lords (and we should not forget this is the man who acted as adviser to Thatcher, who was successful in getting Clause 28 passed). Comments such as David Jones’s about same-sex parents, are comments which deliver a message of hate and violence. I agree with Tatchell, that the current two-tier system is an apartheid one, yet I am bemused by the fervour with which so many LGBT couples demand marriage. In my research I have come across many lesbian and gay couples desperately wanting to marry, to present publicly as 'normal' (see Warner's The Trouble with Normal). We are all called upon to participate in weddings, marriages, civil ceremonies and to celebrate relationships that are already recognisable in normative, legitimate ways - would it not be more just, more radical, to demand rights for all citizens, irrespective of whether they are in a relationship? But more significantly, given the ways in which feminists over the years have critiqued the institution of marriage for its role in enabling and perpetuating violence and abuse, should we not be questioning/resisting this establishment?
And so we look forward to International Women’s Day on 8th March, a day that also seems be losing its political edge, another victim, perhaps, of the commodification of political movements, as various companies are moving in, seeing the day as an opportunity to sell so-called women’s therapies such as spas, massages, cosmetic treatments and the like – with gender reduced to an invitation for women to pamper themselves. Yet Kat Banyard rightly reminds us of shocking statistics such as worldwide:
- 64% of illiterates are women
- Two thirds of the children denied education are girls
- Gender-based violence causes more deaths and disabilities among women aged 15-44 than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war
- 75% of civilians killed in war are women and children – ‘It is now more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in modern conflict’ (UN peacekeeper Patrick Cammaert).
In the UK, specifically,
- 1 in 4 women can expect to be in an abusive relationship
- Equal pay is almost as distant as it was when the Sex Discrimination Act was passed in 1975
- Conviction for rape cases hovers at around 6-7%
- 12% of the company board members are women
- There are more people in the government called Dave and Nick than there are women MPs
Just as I post this, I realise Helen had added an article on violence earlier today...
Violence is often presented to us as random and evil but, as Stanko suggests, often it is far more complex than this. Or perhaps it’s just my fault for listening to Rage Against the Machine in the car. Mazzy Star tomorrow. Sweet dreams!
