Roll up, roll up and gawp at Jack's victims

Yesterday, the local news reported that another young woman had been fatally stabbed in my home city of Bristol. 

Today, another local news source – this time in East London – reported another story about violence against women and girls. Except this time, it’s a story that celebrates? commemorates? explores as a historical curiosity? one of those things anyway, and it does it for a serial killer. I’m talking about the new Jack the Ripper museum that has opened on Cable Street. 

Of course, in one way nothing links those two stories. It just hit me, rather hard. How at the same time that men are killing women at a rate of at least two a week, a museum has opened inviting people to gawp at, discover and explore the story of one of history’s most notorious killers of women – exit through the gift shop if you please. 

As if fatal male violence against women and girls is confined to history. As if it’s nothing more than a historical curiosity. As if it’s not happening today. 

And it struck me how, across popular culture, across our society, over and over again the killing of women is just reduced to a cult story – not something that happens to us everyday, and happens to us today for the same reasons as it did in the 1890s. It happens because these are gendered hate crimes. It happens because some men hate women. Because some men believe women have no human feelings, have no right to humanity. 

It’s hard to decide what I’m most horrified by, when it comes to this Ripper museum. Is it the souvenir glass, that reduces women to a smudge of red blood whilst the killer is given a body, some movement, a sense of a personality? The logo, that once again reduces women to a smear of blood, whilst the killer is a full human being? Is it Mr Palmer-Edgcumbe explaining how the museum will look at ‘how and why the women got into the situation in the first place’? (because that’s how fatal male violence works, right? Women get themselves into these situations where men kill us. The men, well…let’s not give them any agency in this one instance, how about it?)

Or is it the fact that this museum was originally designed to celebrate women’s lives? That’s right. It was supposed to be a museum dedicated to telling herstory – to coin an old phrase that could have featured in the museum. In a grotesque subversion of its intention, it has now become a gory re-look at the man who kills women. Instead of a celebration of what women do, we now have a museum reminding us of what some men choose to do to women. 

Yes, I think it’s that last one. 

Imagine, for a moment, what that museum could have been. A look at the lives of London’s women throughout the ages. Okay, I only did A-level history and so the gaps in my knowledge are woeful, but bear with me. We could have had information about the women who campaigned with the Chartists, the women who disguised themselves as men to fight in wars, the women who dared to write, to paint, to sculpt, the working class women whose history has been ignored and silenced, the suffragists, the women of Cable Street in 1936, the abolitionist women, the suffragettes, the anti-racism campaigners, the women who have worked and shouted and created and fought and demanded that all women are taken seriously. We could have had feminists across the waves and politicians and activists and writers and creators and workers and trade unionists. We could have had a real celebration of everything that women have done throughout history – everything that women have spoken out for and contributed to and built for their sisters. 

And instead of women whose lives were defined by what they lived and did, we have women who – thanks to the actions of a violent man – have had that life stolen from them, so that they have become defined instead by their deaths. 

We have women robbed of their lives, robbed of their humanity. 

We have women who have become the sideshow to a man’s story. 

At the centre of it all, stands – quite literally – the man who killed them. 

And we are reminded – once again – that as women, we’re more historically interesting when we’re a silenced, dumped body, than when we are raising our voices and campaigning for liberation. 

And we are reminded – once again – that as women, we’re only interesting when we are props in a man’s story. Even better when it’s a violent man’s story. 

Why celebrate women, after all, when you can celebrate a man? Why give women a space, a history, a voice, when instead you can celebrate the man who kills us? 

Why do we show rapists empathy, and not their victims?

It’s a mark of how much our society struggles to see women as fully human who deserve respect and who have a right to bodily autonomy when we, as a society, continue to express more sympathy for rapists than rape victims.  (#notallmen etc. etc. to ad nauseum)

I’m talking in this instance of a case in Ireland, where a man admitted to raping his partner in her sleep multiple times. The woman was taking medication to help her sleep, medication that pretty much knocked her out. For nearly a year, her partner regularly raped her when she was in this unconscious state. 

One would imagine that a man who admitted raping his partner around ten times – assaults that led to the woman experiencing post-traumatic stress, assaults that led to her suffering anxiety, assaults that led to her suffering nightmares, assaults that led to not one but two suicide attempts – you would imagine that a serial rapist found guilty of these crimes would now be locked up where he could cause no more harm to any more women.

But you would think wrong. This man got a suspended sentence of seven years. He walked out of that courtroom with a guilty conviction and no prison time. He pays no cost for the violent crimes he repeatedly committed. His victim pays the cost in mental health and trauma. 

How can an admitted serial rapist walk free from court? Because the judge had sympathy for him. And why did the judge have sympathy for him? Because we endow men with humanity in a way we still don’t for women. We just don’t. If we did, we would recognise that a man who has violated a woman’s bodily autonomy deserves the full force of the law, not the empathy and compassion he so spectacularly failed to extend to the woman he repeatedly assaulted. We would recognise that it is she, not him, that deserves our sympathy and kindness. If we cared about women, then the judge would not have rewarded a rapist for being an “open and honest” guy who admitted what he did. The judge would not believe that this “admirable” admission of guilt meant he did not have to face justice for the crimes he repeatedly committed. 

Apparently without his admissions it would have been impossible to prosecute. It sends a message doesn’t it? You can rape a woman. You can repeatedly rape her. But so long as you say so, and say sorry, you won’t have to go to prison. So long as you say so, and say sorry, you won’t have to really face any consequences. So long as you say so, and say sorry, people might even start to feel sorry for you. 

You just need to read the comments made in response to this case to see how little we value women’s humanity and how willingly we can be to defend a rapist. Commenters quoted in Emer O’Toole’s article in the Guardian write:   

‘Is the judge supposed to treat him like a case where a house is broken into and a woman is raped by a stranger holding a knife to her throat?’

Well, yes. The judge should treat a rapist like a rapist. He should sentence a serial rapist appropriately. Rape is rape and repeatedly raping your partner is against the law. 

‘This is the low end of the scale. When was the last time you asked your partner for consent? Never. No one asks for consent when they’re living with a lover. So we must all be rapists then.’

Firstly, if you have sex without consent then you are a rapist, yes. If you have sex with a woman who is unconscious and unable to consent, then that is not sex. It is rape. If you cannot tell if the woman you are having sex with is consenting, if you don’t recognise consent, then please refrain from speaking to or approaching any women in the future. 

And secondly, ‘this is the low end of the scale’? Repeatedly raping a woman over the course of the year is the ‘low end of the scale’? A woman suffering anxiety, PTSD and enduring suicide attempts is the ‘low end of the scale’? I’m sorry, but what? What would be the high end of the scale? How many times should a man rape a woman before he deserves jail time? How much must a woman endure before she deserves justice? 

‘Maybe he needs medical help and treatment instead of fifty lashes…Maybe think more compassionately about this.’

Well, he didn’t actually get 50 lashes, did he? He didn’t even get a jail sentence. So if you don’t mind, I’ll reserve my compassion for the survivor, who he raped, who bravely went to the police, who bravely went to court, who bravely spoke out, who bravely waived her right to anonymity, and who now has to see her rapist walk free, his actions defended, compassion for him demanded. I won’t give my compassion to a man who respected women so little, that he refused to acknowledge his partner’s absolute right to bodily autonomy and instead made the deliberate choice to repeatedly rape her.  

Yesterday the Irish Independent reported a radio debate that focused on this case. On the ‘Right Hook’ show, the presenter argued:

‘So now you are sharing a bed with someone and obviously a sexual congress takes place on a regular basis, because you’re living with somebody. Now is there not an implied consent therefore that you consent to sexual congress?’

NO. 

Consent is not some kind of open door policy. Consenting to sex once does not mean my vagina is then at someone else’s disposal for as and when they want to have sex. Sleeping in the same bed with someone is not an automatic consent to sex, having a relationship with someone is not an automatic consent to sex, having sex with someone previously – even on the same night – is not an automatic consent to more sex. 

Sex without consent is rape. You always need consent. And an unconscious, sleeping woman cannot consent to sex. 

IT’S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE. 

And once again, with this quote, we see where the empathy lies. The perplexed tone suggests that we should side with the man – after all, what else could that man expect? She shared his bed, surely that meant she was now his to do what he liked with? Surely we should feel compassion towards him? After all, isn’t consent a bit confusing? After all, she was in bed with him? After all, what else do women expect?  

It’s classic victim blaming territory. And it’s an example of how willing we are as a society to attempt to let the man off the hook, whilst placing at least some of the blame on the woman. We are constantly finding excuses for men’s criminal behaviour in a way we simply don’t for women. The compassion, empathy and understanding extended to rapists – admitted, serial rapists – is just another way in which we grant men full humanity, and deny it to women. 

Is there another crime where we demand such compassion for the perpetrators? If he were a serial burglar would we be expected to show him empathy? If he went out and repeatedly beat up other men, would we blame his victims for walking along the street? Isn’t it telling that it is only when a man rapes a woman that we’re supposed to ‘see it from his perspective’? Isn’t it telling that it is only when a man rapes a woman that he is rewarded for honesty? Isn’t it telling that it is only when a man rapes a woman that we are asked to show him, and not her, compassion?  

This story is not uncommon. Take the Steubenville case. Here, the violent treatment of the victim was forgotten as journalists wrung their hands in despair about the impact the assaults would have on the ‘promising athlete’s careers’. Take the Oscar Pistorius case, and the concern about his ‘ruined life’ – as if it weren’t his own actions that sent him to the courtroom. Take the Ched Evans case, where she was blamed for ‘ruining his life’ as if it weren’t his own choice to rape. As if he weren’t wholly responsible for the violence he committed. Take the Bill Cosby case, where over 40 women came forward with the same story and still society shrugged and refused to believe them. Take the Jimmy Savile case, where those brave enough to speak out were dismissed as ‘just the women’. 

Why do we extend our empathy and our belief to rapists? Why do we choose to believe men over women? Why do we hear men’s voices louder than women’s? Why do we think a man who repeatedly raped his partner deserves our compassion, and not his victim? 

The only conclusion I am ever able to come to is that we don’t see women as fully human. We don’t value women’s bodily autonomy and we don’t value women’s voices. Because if we did, we would not ‘debate’ whether her rape was real rape. We would not ‘debate’ whether she had given up her right to consent, or that consent is something that is dependent on context. We would not demand compassion for her rapist. And we would not reward her rapist for the honesty that he never extended to her.  

When men get to be fully human, and women are just objects to use and abuse

Oh no! I hear you cry. Not you too. You're not weighing in on *that* video are you? 

Well, take your oh noes with you. Yes I am kind of weighing in on that video, and no I’m kind of not. So much has been written about it in the last 48 hours there’s nothing I can really add or want to add to commentary on the video in particular. But I do want to talk about one trope used in the video and what that *specific* trope tells us about sexual violence and women’s humanity. 

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then first, don’t you live on Twitter like I do? I’m talking about the new Rihanna music video that landed with a bang online on Thursday night and has been intensely debated ever since. The video tells the story of Rihanna’s row with her accountant who has ripped her off. She decides to get back at him by kidnapping his (white, rich) girlfriend, stripping her, stringing her upside-down, forcing drink and drugs on her and basically enacting a whole heap of violence on her. Rihanna then kills the accountant.

The video has caused a lot of controversy and a lot of debate. But as I say, what I specifically want to talk about is the suggestion in the video’s narrative that the best way to get at a man, is to symbolically attack him by physically or sexually attacking *his* woman. 

Because to me, that is so key to this video, it’s what is going on in many more narratives in our popular culture, and it is, horrifyingly, the reality of far too many girls living in the world today. 

Rihanna isn’t the first person to use this trope. As Helen Lewis pointed out in the New Statesman, this is the standard Liam Neeson movie plot of the last decade (along with being screen married to much younger women…). It is a staple of our cultural landscape - from the rape of Lucrece and Lavinia to countless movies where men are forced to watch as men rape their wives (also mentioned in Lewis’ article). 

What this portrayal of violence against women is telling us is that an effective way to bring a man down, to hurt another man, is to attack his “property” - AKA “his” woman. And this gives us an interesting insight into how we view men and women. 

In these narratives, men are allowed full humanity. They are allowed to feel rage and anger and despair and sadness. We watch those emotions drive men forward. The kidnappers intent on wreaking revenge on Liam Neeson’s character in every-film-ever taunt him with what they’ll do to his female relative because they know he will emotionally react. Rihanna strings up Ms Accountant because she knows that hurting her will be recognised as an attack on the man she loathes. 

Because men get to be human with human reactions and human emotions. 

And women? Well, we don’t get that. Instead, we get to be the objects that the violence is enacted on. 

That’s what makes me angry about this cultural trope - from Shakespeare to Rihanna. Women are not allowed to be fully human. We are just the objects. We’re the property of men and by violating that property, the men get emotionally hurt. Meanwhile, the physical and sexual violence done to women to emotionally hurt that man matters less. We’re just pawns in the fight between (usually) men. We’re an object; we don’t get to feel. Our physical suffering becomes his emotional suffering. The actual physical and sexual violence done to our bodies becomes secondary to the symbolic violence suffered by the men. 

As I say, this is nothing new. Even when you think of the etymology of the word ‘rape’ you see how women’s bodies are objects to be swapped between men - how the crime is against the man because his property has been violated, not against the woman who has been directly attacked. 

Of course, if this was just something that only happened in action films, Renaissance plays and music videos it would be one thing. But this isn't just a cultural trope. This is happening to women and girls in real life every single day. It is happening around the world, and it is happening in the UK. 

Perhaps this issue is a little close to my heart because I recognise it as something that happened to me - on a far, far less violent scale but still an act of male violence. I wrote about it here and here. I’m not going to rehash it all but suffice to say, I very strongly believe that what happened to me was an act of aggression against a male relative using my body (or, to be more exact, my hair) as the cipher. 

Please note I am not comparing this small act of violence against me with the horrific violence against women I’m about to discuss. But different scales aside, the motivations behind the violence share a commonality - the desire to symbolically attack or send a message to another man via physically or sexually attacking a woman who is somehow attached to him. And that is allowed to happen because we as a society allow men full humanity, and don’t afford the same respect to women. As we continue to treat women as objects, as the property of men, then the symbolic violence is done to the man whose property has been violated. The horrors enacted on the woman are secondary.

This is something that we know about from the use of rape as a weapon of war. Here, women’s bodies are weaponised. Raping women is seen as a way to emasculate and shame the community. 

Last year I did some research on violence against women in Guatemala where this kind of act is frighteningly common. I read page after page of women being beaten, raped, mutilated and killed - left in places where rival gangs would see the violence and “get the message”. These women were completely denied their humanity. They were treated as objects to be used and abused in order to symbolically attack other men. If you can find the Amnesty report from 2006 on the killings (my link is broken for some reason) then it makes grim reading. It’s a litany of horrific violence. It’s a demonstration of what happens when women are seen as objects and not fully human. 

But we don’t have to go so far away as Guatemala to witness women’s bodies being used to attack other men. Gangs in the UK are increasingly raping girls who are seen as ‘belonging’ to rival male gang members. As Carlene Firmin told the Guardian last year: 

“young women connected to gangs were viewed as "currency" by rival outfits and attacked accordingly,”

The Guardian reported:

“London gangs are drawing up and disseminating lists of teenage girls whom they consider to be legitimate rape targets, as sexual violence is increasingly used to spread fear and antagonise rival groups.”

That word, currency. That’s interesting. That shows just how little we value women. We’re not people. We’re objects to be exchanged. To be passed around. 

And look at that second quote. Where sexual violence is not seen as a horrific violent act done by men to women. Instead it’s seen as a weapon to symbolically attack other men. 

That’s what made me cross about the Rihanna video, what makes me cross about all those action movies, what makes me cross about any cultural event that treats women’s bodies as objects to use and abuse, and treats men as the ‘real victims’ as they get to be fully human people.

Because this is our lives. This is women’s real lives. And so long as we are happy to treat women as non-human, so long as we are happy to accept that women are objects and men are people, then men will continue to treat women’s bodies as weapons - whilst the actual harm done to women is seen as secondary to the ‘symbolic’ harm done to men. 

Playboy Feminism TM isn't feminism, it's the same old misogyny

No one wants to be ugly. No one wants to be the unsexy one. No one wants to be rejected. 

And that, I think, is what makes this weird phenomena of ‘Playboy Feminism TM’ so attractive. 

Okay, if like me you read the phrase ‘Playboy Feminism TM’ and went WTAF, I thought Playboy was rather antithetic to feminism seeing as it involves Hefner’s insistence on being flanked by much younger women and the magazine’s 50+ years history of treating women as disposable objects for male consumption, then you have my sympathy. 

But no! It’s 2015 and let go off your anti-porn hang ups ladies, because apparently these days Playboy is totes feminist. In fact it always was, and the proof is that they got a bloke to write an article telling all us boring women feminists how we’ve done feminism wrong, and Playboy-reading men have done feminism right (sorry guys who read Playboy thinking they were sticking it to the feminist movement. Turns out you were feminists all along! Oops!).

Of course, Playboy has always tried to claim itself as feminist. Which is weird because I just can’t believe their reading demographic has ever cared that much about feminism? Hefner once claimed he was a “feminist before feminism was invented” (soz Mary Wollstonecraft. But he is a man you know…). He based this claim on the idea that feminism was (in part) about liberating women’s sexuality (true) and Playboy was a key player in the sexual revolution (which did very little to liberate women). Because, you know, Playboy’s aim was to free sex from the confines of strict Victorian morality. That he and others like him tried to free sex from the confines of Victorian morality only to trap it back into a big box marked CAPITALISM is better left unsaid… 

The problem was, Hef, that despite your protestations that you totally “get” feminism, you kept on insisting on saying really shitty things about women. You know, how the perfect woman was like a bunny rabbit with a clean mind, not like those ‘filthy’ women with their ‘lace and satin underwear” (yes, I know this doesn’t make any sense but he said it – check out Female Chauvinist Pigs for the full quote). 

To be fair to Playboy (the only time I will EVER say that), the magazine did donate money to pro choice and other feminist campaigns. But that doesn’t take away the fact that throughout its history, Playboy has made money by treating women as disposable objects displayed for the male gaze (sometimes without their consent – see Marilyn Monroe. Which kind of tells you all you need to know about how much they respect women’s “choices”…).

So anyway, back to the present and Noah Berlatsky – the man who wrote this latest article on why Playboy is feminist. As Meghan Murphy says in the New Statesman today: 

Indeed, Playboy’s foremost “feminist” writer is Noah Berlatsky, whose work exemplifies their longstanding approach to feminism: men know what’s best for feminism, regardless of what feminists say. His political philosophy appears to be “equal objectification for all”, which fits perfectly with the brand. It’s the idea that the more women we can view as “fuckable”, the more women will be liberated.

Today, Playboy and writers such as Berlatsky emphasise “choice” and “consent” in their writing on female sexuality – the objectified are meant to be eager about their objectification, not forced, not begrudging. 

It’s a type of “feminism” (not feminism) that embraces the male gaze and sells women the lie that being treated as always and only an object is an act of liberation. It's an argument that goes that women who oppose or challenge male defined ideals of beauty, and the idea that all women must spend time, money and energy on trying to match them, are being cruel to the women who “choose” to do this. He thinks that seeing as it’s a woman’s "choice" to conform to beauty standards she didn’t create, any criticism of those standards is a personal attack on each individual woman. 

But this is such bullshit. There’s no other word for it.

It’s a completely libertarian approach (which is not surprising coming from a magazine that treats sex and sexuality as a performance to sell for profit – hel-lo capitalism!) that tells women that their “choice” to be objectified by men is a free one. It’s not. We live in an unequal, patriarchal and capitalist society. The choices women make to survive in this society are informed by that inequality. 

That’s not a nice thing to think. Of course we want to believe that we make free choices – that our choices are not impacted by the gross inequality women live through. But in a society where women’s value as human beings is so often predicated on their ability to meet the Patriarchal Fuckability Test (PFT), our choices aren’t free (both metaphorically and in monetary terms – conforming to the PFT ain’t cheap). This doesn’t mean each individual woman is bad or wrong for making these ‘choices’. We do what we can to survive in this society. But to say that all the choices we make are free and equal is simply untrue. Otherwise why is it only in the last 10 years that so many UK women have ‘freely chosen’ to spend a fortune waxing off their pubes? Or having bits of their labia needlessly lopped off?

Again, this is not about judging the women making these choices. It’s about looking at the pressures society puts on women to make these choices and changing that society to end patriarchal oppression.  

Unlike Playboy Feminism TM’s claim, women won't be liberated through being objectified – through making the “choice” to be treated as objects. Because that is not a choice women can freely make in this unequal society. We are treated like objects whether we consent to it or not. We may be objectified in a way that meets male approval. And we may be treated as an object that greets male derision. It all depends whether we pass or fail the PFT. Neither of those are choices women freely make. Neither of those things represents freedom. Neither of those things gives women any power. 

And Playboy is part of that problem – it props up a culture that judges women and predicates women’s value on their fuckability. It is not part of the solution. That’s why – for all its bigging up of its feminist creds – Playboy would never publish an article that discussed the impact of mass capitalist sexualisation of women on young girls’ self esteem. That dared to talk about how young girls grow up pressured to act out what their boyfriends saw in porn. That looked at how treating women like dehumanised objects on the page and on the screen might link to the treatment of women like dehumanised objects in “real life”. Because Playboy Feminism TM isn’t concerned with the rights of women to be treated as fully human. They just want to reassure men who worry that looking at the centrefold makes them look sexist. ‘We’re not sexist!’ Playboy cries. ‘And neither are you! Women love being objectified! They chose it! It’s feminist now!’

It’s bullshit, is what it is. 

Playboy Feminism TM wants us to agree to our dehumanisation and treat it as liberation. It tells us that the hatred we may feel towards our bodies is the result of second wave feminists telling us to reject a culture that treats us as objects, not the culture that treats us as objects itself. It tells us that our liberation, our freedom, our happiness, our health, our rights, all depend on men finding us attractive. On men liking us.

And that brings me back to the start of this post. Because we all want to be liked. We all want to be found attractive. We don’t want to be called the names that men use to mock, deride and silence women. 

But, to paraphrase Levy, you can be the woman the Playboy Feminism TM men like. But so long as they see women as lesser – which they do – and so long as they see women as objects and not fully human – which they do – then you will still be lesser to them.

And that’s too high a price for me to pay, I don’t know about you. 

Women’s liberation does not rest on men finding us attractive. Women’s liberation won’t be achieved by us meekly accepting our status as objects of the male gaze. Women’s liberation is about fighting back against the oppressive structures that uphold gender inequality – that mean woman as a class are oppressed by men as a class. Women’s liberation recognises that we are subjects, not objects. Women’s liberation is about giving women real choices and real power. 

Playboy Feminism TM wants us to accept this particular manifestation of women’s inequality as our liberation. It reduces everything down to individual choice, slags off the gains of our feminist sisters, and ignores structural power and inequality. It demands everything of women and nothing of men.

That’s not feminism. It’s just the same old misogyny.


Update:
Such feminism! This account of life in the Playboy mansion makes grim reading.