Can you donate and support Bristol Women's Literature Festival?

Dear blog readers,

As some of you may know, I am putting on the brand spanking new never been done before Bristol Women's Literature Festival next year. It's going to be a weekend of inspiring talks and panels all focused on discovering more about women's writing, past and present.

The main programme will take place at the Watershed on the 16th and 17th March and will be chaired by Bidisha. The programme so far includes:

Women’s Writing today: contemporary women writers discuss their fiction

Feat: Stella Duffy, Helen Dunmore, Kate Williams, Beatrice Hitchman (more TBC)

Out of the Ivory Tower: writing feminism for a non-academic audience

Kat Banyard, Kristin Aune, Debi Withers and Josephine Tsui

Bluestockings and Muses: a history of women’s writing

Prof Helen Hackett, Dr Marie Mulvey-Roberts, Dr Charlotte Crofts (more TBC)

Bringing women’s issues to a mainstream TV audience + film

Emilia di Girolamo plus film

As you can see it's a fascinating programme with a whole host of amazing speakers.

BUT. Putting on any event like this costs money. Venue hire, expenses - it adds up. And that's why I'm hoping you, my lovely readers and commenters, will help me today and make a donation to support this important and fascinating event. If everyone donated £2, or whatever you can afford, then that could go towards covering the costs and ensuring that any profit is split equally between the speakers and a women's rights charity. I should stress here that I won't keep any money from this event. All the money raised will be spent on venue, publicity, speakers' expenses, and any leftover will be split equally between the speakers and a women's charity.

You can donate to support the festival using paypal here

Tickets for the festival aren't free, so donations wouldn't mean you could have free tickets if you want to attend. But your donation will help so much in making sure this event is as amazing as it should be.

Thank you so so much for your generosity.

Please donate today.

Men talking about women's right to choose

In his controversial New Statesman article on Sunday, Mehdi Hasan wrote that he believed you could still be lefty and anti-choice (I refuse to use the term ‘pro life’ as it’s a lie). He wrote:

‘Abortion is one of those rare political issues on which left and right seem to have swapped ideologies: right-wingers talk of equality, human rights and “defending the innocent”, while left-wingers fetishise “choice”, selfishness and unbridled individualism.’

He argued, like Christopher Hitchens before him, that the pro-choice stance of ‘my body, my choice’ is individualistic and more akin to right wing notions about the importance of individual choice, than the left wing aims of equality and giving a voice to those who are silenced. He goes on to clarify this with:

‘Isn’t socialism about protecting the weak and vulnerable, giving a voice to the voiceless? Who is weaker or more vulnerable than the unborn child? Which member of our society needs a voice more than the mute baby in the womb?’

The decision to have an abortion is an individual decision. But that doesn’t make it a selfish one. In fact, I believe that Hasan has made a huge mistake in his argument in that he has conveniently forgotten that being anti-choice is an individual decision too, and it’s a decision that’s inherently selfish. Because it’s that decision, if taken to the anti-choice aim of no abortion (Hasan doesn’t actually call for a ban on abortion, I should make that clear), that has an impact on the lives of half the world’s population, silencing women’s voices and denying women the basic right to bodily autonomy. Isn’t that more selfish? To think an individual, personal belief is more important than the human rights of 3.5 billion living women and girls? 

In my view, the decision to be anti-choice is to make the decision that an individual, personal belief on abortion is more important than the universal human right to bodily autonomy and a woman’s right to have control over her own body. Therefore deciding to call women’s bodily autonomy ‘selfish’ only makes sense if you don’t think women’s rights over their body matter, if you don’t think that women’s rights count.  

Since the article was published, Hasan has complained that he has been the victim of sexism, as women reacted with anger and upset over his words. He bemoaned that it showed how men aren’t allowed to talk about abortion, that the reaction wasn’t fair. He seemed to not understand that the anger arose because once again, men are telling women what they should and shouldn’t be allowed to do with their bodies. And I for one am sick of men telling women what they can and can’t do with their bodies – from telling us we can’t walk outside at night, to telling us we can’t drink, to telling us we can’t decide for ourselves whether to have a baby or not.  

And anyway, despite both Hasan and Dominic Lawson complaining about the fact that men aren’t allowed to talk about abortion, they seem to be doing a jolly good job of getting their views aired. Men are so much allowed to talk about abortion that the Today show even had two men and no women debating the subject a couple of months ago. As it stands, I don’t mind men talking about abortion per se. What I do mind is having women’s voices erased from the conversation. 

What I object to is the lack of consideration taken for our bodies, our rights and our views on the subject. I’m sick of abortion being reduced to an ethical debate as left and right wing men treat our bodies as a ping pong ball to score points off. I’m fed up of our bodies being talked about in abstract terms, as ethical battlegrounds that deny us our voice and humanity. And I’m pretty pissed off that our right to our bodies is being framed as a selfish choice, and not as a basic human right. 

Men can talk about abortion if they want to. But to be honest, I’d rather they just listened. Because, fundamentally, it’s selfish for anyone to tell anyone what we can and can’t do with our bodies based on a personal opinion. 

Men like Jimmy Saville will get away with it until we listen to women and girls

Trigger warning – discussion of rape and child abuse

Yesterday I caught a little bit of Newsnight talking about the Jimmy Savile horror, and they showed a clip of Nick Clegg, asking in disbelief how Saville was able to get away with abusing girls for so long, without it coming out. To quote:

“I just keep asking myself why did this remain buried for so long…There must have been just so many people who knew what was going on in hospitals, the BBC, maybe in the police. The only explanation I can come up with is what we are seeing is the dark side of the culture of celebrity, and actually in this case it wasn't a culture of celebrity it was the cult of celebrity. I get the impression people felt that with all that glitter and shine there can't be a dark side, there can't be a seedy side”

It’s a question many people have been asking over the last week and a half since the revelations came out. It’s a question that has evolved from “why are the women only speaking out now” (answer, they weren’t) to “why did the BBC/police/hospitals/government do nothing?”

Maybe, as Clegg seems to think, it was something to do with the cult of celebrity.

But I think it’s a lot, lot simpler than that.

It’s to do with the fact that when women and girls come forward with allegations of rape and abuse, the default position in a rape culture is to not believe them.

When the revelations first broke, it felt a little bit like screaming into an echo chamber, as commenters on CIF etc. demanded to know why the women were only speaking out now, when Saville was dead.
‘They didn’t!’ we who had bothered to listen to the women shouted back. ‘They told at the time and no-one believed them!’ In fact, in some cases the then girls were punished for “telling lies” about Saville. And once you’ve been called a liar once, and seen the power and respect your abuser commands from everyone, then it would be hard to speak out again, I imagine. It would be hard to go against the huge tide of public opinion, when you know that speaking out again means more punishment, more disbelief. When you’re a child, and no-one believes you, no-one listens, and everyone calls you a liar.

It’s becoming increasingly clear since last week that it was the silence of his victims that Saville counted on. And in this, he is like every other abuser. But he was also counting on a rape culture that doesn’t listen to women and girls. And again, in this way he is like every other abuser.

There’s been a lot of comforting talk about how this culture was just something about the seventies, when we had a ‘Life on Mars’ attitudes towards sexual politics, and harassment and violence simply wasn’t taken seriously. Thanks to our sisters in the Women’s Liberation Movement, our society now at least pays lip service to the idea that violence against women and girls should be taken seriously. But we’re kidding ourselves if we think we have moved on so much that sexual abuse on this scale could not happen today, that today we’re more enlightened and would listen to girls, and would make sure the violence stopped.

Because a couple of weeks before the Saville story broke, the Guardian gave a comprehensive report on the failings of multiple services to protect girls in Rochdale, where girls as young as 13 were repeatedly raped and abused for profit by a vicious gang of men who hate women. The right wing press tried to push the notion that the gang remained unchallenged for so long because of ‘political correctness gone mad’. But I find this hard to believe. I believe, and the Guardian report reveals, that this was nothing to do with ethnicity and everything to do with rape culture, where we simply don’t believe girls who come forward to report violence. Suzi, the fifteen year old who was brave enough to tell the police what had happened to her, was deemed ‘unreliable’, and the rape and violence continued for four more years. ‘Unreliable’ is the ‘liar’ branded on Saville’s victims by the authorities back then. Just as Saville was able to get away with it for so long because no one believed the accusations made against him, so the Rochdale gang, the Derby gang, and the hundreds and thousands of rapists that never get caught, were able to get away with it because as a society we simply fail to believe women and girls when they tell us that men are violent towards them.

Even when we do listen to the women, and a rapist is found guilty in a court of law and fails any appeal to have his rape conviction over turned, too many people still don’t really believe the women. The case of Ched Evans earlier this year proves that. With a conviction rate of 6.5% (that rises to a higher number when the case reaches court), proving anyone guilty of rape still seems to be pretty hard, so when someone is found guilty I tend to believe that yes, they’re guilty. But that guilty conviction wasn’t enough for the thousands of men, and some women, that came out in support of Evans. Even when the evidence was there to convict, they still held strong to the idea that the woman was lying, that she was a liar, and he was a wronged hero. So hard it is for our society to accept that men rape, and women tell the truth, that even when there seems to realistically be no other conclusion to draw, the conclusion is still that she lies.

Across the channel, and again we see another case where women are simply not believed when they report the violence committed against them. In the tragic and horrifying case of Nina and Stephanie, who were repeatedly gang raped and terrorised in the Parisian banlieues, they have seen their attackers get away with it. In the case of Nina she was gang raped every day for six months by between 6 and 25 men, who would cue up to abuse her. Her rapists threatened to kill her family if she reported them. But she found the courage to, taking her abusers to court. Unfortunately the French Justice System did not share Nina’s courage, they did not have the courage to believe what the two young women were telling them. They instead chose to believe the men who told the court that the girls wanted it, that they consented, that they were lying. The court acquitted six of the accused, four were given a suspended sentence and one went to jail for one year. One year between 11 men for terrorising and repeatedly raping a 16-year old girl.

Nina and Stephanie now have to live in the banlieues with the men who raped them. The men who threatened them with more and more violence if they ever told.

So when Nick Clegg and his fellow politicians and his fellow commentators wring their hands and ask how, how, HOW did Saville get away with it for SO long, he doesn’t need to look into the past for his answers.

The answer is because in the seventies, eighties, nineties, noughties and today, our society didn't and doesn’t believe women and girls who report rape. The Met are launching their investigation into the Saville case, at the same time as they wrap up the investigation into an officer who repeatedly falsified rape reports because he chose not to believe the women who came to him. That’s how ingrained this culture is.

Until we start believing women and girls, really, really believe them, then we’ll still continue to ask the same question over the next Saville, the next Worboys, the next Huntley, the next gang.

Because to me, living in a rape culture means living in a culture where we find the reality that men rape and abuse women and girls so hard to cope with, so hard to accept, that we will do anything to make it not seem true. And that results in us refusing to listen to women and girls when they tell us that truth.

So, Clegg, and everyone else. Start listening. It’s our refusal to listen that lets abusers get away with it. Stop hand wringing and start listening.

Rape Crisis Number: 0808 802 9999

Pimps, hoes and the university campus

On Tuesday, I had the always dubious pleasure of being invited on to BBC Bristol to discuss with their Breakfast Show team the forthcoming ‘Pimps and Hoes’ party organised for the city’s students by Carnage. 

Anyone with a glancing familiarity with this blog can imagine my reaction to Pimps and Hoes parties, a frankly pathetic attempt to glamorise an “industry” that, globally, is responsible for the trafficking, rape and murder of hundreds of thousands of women (a claim that Steve LeFevre disputed but I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt and deciding that he didn’t understand I was talking global figures). If we just take trafficking into the sex industry as one example, according to Stop the Traffik up to 800,000 men, women and children are trafficked over international borders each year – 80% of which are women and girls – and many of whom will be trafficked into the sex industry. These men, women and children will be raped every day.  Further, a study quoted in The Equality Illusion found that of a survey 1500-ish deaths of women in prostitution in the US, 50% were as a result of homicide. A study quoted in the same book in Canada found that 79% of women asked had been raped. 

So yes, my argument on the radio was that Pimps and Hoes parties glamorise an industry that fundamentally hurts all women and gender equality. An industry where, in my own city where this party will take place, a woman was gang raped by ‘punters’, chucked off a building and left for dead, and she still had a fight on her hands to get criminal compensation because she was seen as just a prostitute, and juries don’t understand that women in prostitution have the right to consent and bodily autonomy too. The right to live free from violence. 

I had a lot I wanted to say on the radio about pimps and their often violent attitudes towards women, but the discussion veered more into whether it was the party-goers’ choice to wear skimpy clothes on a night out. Which of course it is. I couldn’t care less about what women wear when they go partying. What I care about is the normalisation of sex industry, which the bandying around of words like pimps and hoes as something fun and glam does.

But it did make me think a little bit about what exactly the attendees would be wearing – particularly the men. What do they think pimps wear? Because, the reality? Those gangs in Rochdale and Derby? They’re pimps. It’s not sharp suits and trilby hats. It’s ill-fitting jeans and anoraks, worn by men who sexually exploit women and girls for profit. There’s nothing cool here. There’s nothing aspirational and desirable. There’s that guy from Punternet, complaining because the woman he bought didn’t seem to find him attractive, didn’t seem to want to have sex with him. Is that really who you want to identify with, to dress up as on a night out? 

The Pimps and Hoes party seem to be part of increasingly sexist and misogynistic entertainment on university campuses. 

Now, I was at university in London between 2003-2006 and I honestly don’t know if it was the same back then. My university social life consisted of three-day long house parties, drinking in the local pub and going clubbing at drum n bass nights. Me and my friends drank at the union but being a bit of a party snob, I would never go to the Union Party Nights which seemed to be boring people dressing up and doing belly-button shots. I know there was a ‘chav’ party which outraged me and my friends, and I think there might have been a Playboy night. I did go to a party in Oxford where men and women were dressed in their underwear (not a pleasant experience, I left when a bloke in just y-fronts started trying to grind-dance with me) (FTR I didn’t just wear my underwear, I wore a short knitted black dress). 

So perhaps it was the same back then, I just wasn’t interested to see it. 

But whether it’s new or old, Pimps and Hoes parties are just one aspect of campus social life misogyny. This week I’ve also been reading about Slags and Drags parties, and CEO and Corporate Hoes gatherings. All of these parties use sexist and degrading language to identify the women who attend. All of them rely on men keeping their clothes on, whilst their women counterparts have to take theirs off. 

There’s something I find particularly chilling about the CEOs and Corporate Hoes party. Because the message is clear – despite girls doing great at school, despite young women doing well at university, the men still get to be bosses. It doesn’t matter how fantastic her analysis of Milton’s depiction of God, the woman shouldn’t aspire to CEO, she should just be a hoe. 

And when you consider how unequal gender representation is on company boards, and the prevalence of business deals done in strip clubs, this kind of party sets a depressing tone for how women aspiring to be big in business will be treated. We don’t have the power. The man will be the boss, and keep his clothes on. The women will be the hoe, and take her clothes off. 

I find it unutterably depressing that in 2012 student parties are upholding and strengthening the idea of sexism in the city in the guise of “fun”. 

Another uni-life phenomena doing the rounds at the moment is known as ‘slut dropping’. Now, to be clear, there’s only one example of this actually known, so it might not be a phenomena so much as a group of total dickstands who hate women being allowed driving licenses. But one thing I noticed about slut dropping, that I haven’t seen mentioned elsewhere, is that it’s an abuse taken straight from a strand of porn, where men pick up a woman, have sex with her and then dump her miles from no-where. I don’t think the slut dropping incident involved sex, but it does involve the humiliation and cruelty that makes that porn series so popular. 

And at its core, that’s what so much of this horrible, misogynistic behaviour is about. It’s humiliating and shaming women, characterising us as hoes and sluts whilst men get to emulate those with power. It’s the lads at Unilad writing hideous little articles about why you should try and have sex with a ‘slut’ because she’ll be good, but don’t forget she’s a ‘slut’ and so is therefore disgusting and dirty. 

All of this disturbing misogyny is existing in the context of young men growing up thinking that no doesn’t mean no, and neither does being pushed away, or a girl crying, or a girl being asleep.  It’s existing in a world where 1 in 7 women students report experiencing sexual assault and violence. 

So, hoes, slags, sluts and more hoes. It isn’t a pretty picture is it? 

University is a wonderful time of life. It’s a time when you learn a lot about yourself, and the world, and that six pints on no food isn’t the best diet for getting to a 10am lecture the following day. But this awful misogyny and violence is not what university should be about. It’s not acceptable that university life teaches women that whilst her male housemates can aspire to be CEOs, she can only aspire to be a corporate hoe. It’s not acceptable to pretend that a pimp is a cool thing to want to be, when the reality is that a pimp beats up women in order to intimidate them into making him more money. It’s not acceptable to tell young women that the best thing they can be is a hoe. 

And it’s not acceptable to silence the millions of women in the so-called sex industry, the women who are treated violently by pimps and clients, by making-believe that the way they are treated is something cool. It is, quite frankly, pathetic. 

Remember when you were 15?

Do you remember what it was like when you were 15?

A raging ball of hormones who thought periods were the worst things ever, who loved your parents but found them awfully embarrassing too, who had a taste in music that you deny now and who really really thought you knew everything to do with boys, but were really so emotionally stupid that you still probably don’t admit how stupid you were even now? Just the thought of 15-year-old me makes me want to curl up in a ball of sheer embarrassment at just how embarrassed I was.

The last few days have made me really worry that there’s a very troubling disconnect in the minds of us “grown-ups” about how we think 15-year-old girls are, and what the reality of being 15 is.

When we hear the moral panic talk about the sexualisation of young girls, we see headlines about pole dancing kits and padded bras. But there’s something else going on with that debate that doesn’t make the headlines. And that’s how we, as adults, sexualise teenage girls by refusing to believe that they are anything other than victims of sexualisation. We are so caught up in this panic (and, don’t get me wrong, there is reason to panic), that we have stopped believing that 15-year-old girls today are like the 15-year-old girls we were. And yet, likely as not, they are. Sure, different cultural references and god knows they are under different pressures to act sexual, to be sexual, before they feel ready for it, but really they are still, more often than not, the hormone-raging, embarrassed, naïve children that we were. We forget that, I think.

One of the things I find frustrating about the mainstream, non-feminist sexualisation debate is how we don’t separate out teenagers’ very natural and normal sexual curiosity, and sexualisation. The former is part of growing up, and might be fulfilled by bad snogs, fumbles or consensual sex with a partner. There isn’t anything wrong with teenagers having pleasurable, mutual consensual sexual activity. But there is something very wrong with the pressure on girls to be sexual all the time, the sexualisation of girls. Because that isn’t about want, or desire, or pleasure. I talk at length about this here - about silent bodies and the disconnect between embodied and performed sexuality. It all too often leads to abuse, rape and exploitation. The problem is that the idea of sexualisation of young women has meant that we forget to separate out the two, and so when we see a young woman in trouble, being forced into sexual situations she doesn’t want to be in, we shrug and think that’s just what teens do. In Emilia di Girolamo’s Law andOrder UK episode ‘Line Up’ she captures this perfectly, when the judge and defence lawyer accept that a gang rape is just how teens have sex in today’s modern world. We think they’re different from us. We treat them like aliens. And we don’t hear the cries for help.

In the Guardian today, they revealed the extent to which the police and social services failed the girls who were victims of the Rochdale gang. Girls like the 15-year-old, known to Social Services as Suzie. She was repeatedly raped by the gang for years, drugged and exploited by adult men. And when she and girls like her asked for help, they were ignored. They were disbelieved. In the end, looking for help seemed hopeless because no-one listened to the stories of these girls. They were called chaotic and unreliable and were blamed for this – as if a child who has been so horrifically abused might not feel and act troubled.

The CPS chose to dismiss the case, believing the girl to be unreliable.  No-one acted on the 83 NHS referrals about girls they worried were being sexually exploited between 2004-2010. No-one acted on the 44 referrals the Crisis Intervention Team made to the police in the same period. These girls were judged to be “making their own choices” and “engaging in consensual sexual activity” when they were being repeatedly raped.

Making their own choices?

Or, as Oborne put it on Question Time, ‘sold their innocence for a bag of crisps’.

As I say, I believe that our society has become so overwhelmed by the idea that teen girls are sexualised with padded bras, that we’re ignoring what can happen when children are sexualised – abuse. We believe the panic, and process it to believe that this is what teen girls do, this is what they’re like. We decide that it’s their choice, and ignore the glaring obvious exploitation because that would mean focusing our attention on who is actually to blame.

The men.  

This terrible human tragedy has been a classic case of victim blaming that has ignored the role the men played in grooming and exploiting very young women. Girls of 13, 14, 15. Children. Instead, services blamed the girls, shrugged at their ‘choices’ and let the abuse continue. It took four years between the initial report, and the girls actually being listened to. How many rapes in that time? How many lives ruined?

Blame is one aspect. Not believing is the other.

And not believing, not acting on the words of girls, is part of another case this week. The police, the school, even Michael Gove were warned about the 30-year-old maths teacher Jeremy Forrest. They were starting to act, but too late. Now he’s in France with a 15-year-old girl. Another 15-year-old that too many media commentators are blaming, are saying ‘made a choice’ – as if the adult is not responsible for his behaviour and a fifteen year old girl is.

The media doesn’t help of course. They call these abusive crimes ‘affairs’ and ‘relationships’ to cover the fact that they’re adult men choosing to sexually exploit a child. This builds a blame culture where a child is seen as being as responsible as the man – that it’s really mutual, really consensual, that despite being a child she has the same maturity as an adult man, sexually and emotionally.  

By focusing all our attention on the girls’ behaviour in these cases, and across so many other cases of child sexual exploitation, we ignore the role their abusers play. And that’s rape culture, right? It’s the culture where it’s easier to blame a child for their rape, than to acknowledge that there are men who rape.

If as a society we believed women, if we truly and honestly and really believed women and girls when they say they have been raped and abused, then these cases would have been resolved when they should have been. At least four years earlier in the case of Rochdale. Before Forrest reached France in that case.  

And for as long as our society refuses to believe women and girls, then men who choose to rape will continue to choose to rape.

Because we will have let them. 

Rape Crisis Number: 0808 802 9999

Rich and famous men who beat women - Madonna song included!

I've written about this issue before, here, mainly. But I wanted to write about it again, mainly because yesterday one of my favourite eighties Madonna songs came on to my iPod.

It's called 'Til Death do us Part' and it's an album track on that wonderful record 'Like A Prayer'.

The lyrics are a thinly veiled reference to her marriage with Sean Penn, and contain the lyrics:

'The bruises they will fade away
You hit so hard with the things you say
I will not stay to watch your hate
As it grows
...
He takes a drink
She goes outside
He starts to scream
The vases fly
He wishes that she wouldn't cry'

It's a song about a relationship breakdown, but it's also a song about a violent relationship - Madonna tells us that she's being hit, even though the words hurt more than the physical bruises. It's well documented that Sean Penn beat up Madonna, he was charged with domestic assault and pleaded guilty to misdemeanour. And he isn't the only one. What makes this song so powerful is it's honesty. OK, the beat is hopelessly cheesy and it's very eighties, but it's a really strong speak out about her experiences of violence. And perhaps I find it all the more powerful because now so much talk about male violence, particularly of celebrity men, is silenced. We're not supposed to remember that Oscar-winner and human rights campaigner Sean Penn beat up his former wife. We're supposed to forget the crimes of men, particularly famous ones.

Last week, stickers started to appear all over Chris Brown albums, warning people not to buy his album as he beats women. We all cheered. He did beat up Rihanna, horribly, and he is still lauded as a popstar, his fans defend him ferociously and he's well-protected by an industry that sees themselves as the victims of his crime as it meant he couldn't perform sometimes. Some people say we need to stop 'picking on him' but, quite frankly, we shouldn't. We should keep talking about what he did, a horrible horrible crime that he doesn't seem that sorry for (tattoo anyone?). Anyway, as I say, he's pretty protected by the industry, normal people like you and me condemning his actions aren't exactly halting the juggernaut of publicity and radio play that man gets.

However, we need to stop *just* picking on Chris Brown. We need to talk about the others too.

When the 'Warning don't buy this album: this man beats women' stickers started appearing on John Lennon albums, a man who very openly spoke about how he hit his wife, the reaction was a lot more muted, a lot less 'yes, tell it like it is!'. Most right thinking people don't like Chris Brown. He behaves badly and his music is pretty crap. But everyone likes John Lennon and he's responsible for some of the best music of the last 50 years. It isn't comfortable to think that he hit his wife. It doesn't fit with our image of him.  Having named him their Biggest Icon Evah or whatever, NME merely called the story about the stickers 'interesting'.

But should we forget that John Lennon was abusive towards women? Should we forget Norman Mailer? Roman Polanski? Shouldn't we talk about the allegations against Fassbender? What about David Soul, Ike Turner, James Brown? We do talk about OJ I guess, but like there's some debate to be had. After all, whether or not he killed Nicole, he beat her up when they were married. Mel Gibson - who as well as anti semitism beat his wife - Nicholas Cage, Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee, Axl Rose, Bobby Brown? There's a long list here. Shouldn't we at least mention it? Or should it just be forgotten, or excused as rock n roll behaviour, or that's just what happens.

And that's before we even get on to Charlie Sheen, whose drug antics may have ended Two and a Half Men, but whose abuse of women is apparently funny enough for him now to be starring in a 'comedy' called Anger Management.

People can change. John Lennon acknowledged what he did, as far as I know Sean Penn hasn't hurt any other women. Lennon made great records and Penn was good in his films. I'm not saying that men who beat women can't change, can't go on to do other things, to be defined by other things.

But I do passionately believe that there is something wrong when we don't acknowledge what happened, when it's just forgotten and treated as something that doesn't matter. We brush the crimes under the carpet and pretend they didn't happen. Meanwhile, crappy sentences are handed out that don't reflect the gravity of the abuse - Gibson only got a probation for punching his wife so hard he broke her tooth. Did you know that?

The crimes of men against women rarely get mentioned, and nine times out of ten, when a famous man commits a crime against women, public and publicity will jump to the man's defence. Even when, as in the case of Tyson, Polanski and Ched Evans, the man has been proven guilty.

That's what I find troubling. It's the silence. Because when we stay silent about men who are violent towards women, then we make that crime ok. And when that perpetrator is in the public eye, we say to society that we think that crime is ok. When we defend and excuse men in the public eye, then we declare as a society that we think domestic abuse and violence against women and girls is ok, isn't that bad.

I don't want Penn or Lennon or Gibson or Oldman or Brown or whoever to be branded, to wear a scarlet letter. I just want to know that we don't think it's ok for men to beat women, no matter how famous or talented they are. I don't want the voices of women to be silenced. I want an acknowledgement.

And that's why, although musically Madonna has produced better tunes, that song is so powerful. It's an acknowledgement that this thing happened to her, at a time when her voice as a survivor was drowned out by those defending the man who beat her.

Words but no action? The government's change to domestic abuse laws.

After much campaigning by VAWG charities and organisations, including fantastic research conducted in my home city of Bristol by the Centre for Research on Gender Based Violence and the NSPCC, the government has extended domestic violence laws to include children – i.e. teenage relationships. The law now recognises that teenagers experience domestic abuse in partner relationships that is separate from child abuse. 

And it’s about time. Research suggests that girls aged 16-19 are the age group who are most likely to experience domestic abuse – with 12.7% of women reporting some kind of domestic abuse last year (6.2% men – source BCS quoted in Guardian). 

The research from 2009 conducted by the NSPCC and Bristol University surveyed teenagers about their experiences of intimate partner violence with shocking and frightening results. 75% of girls surveyed reported emotional abuse, 33% of girls had suffered sexual abuse including rape, and 25% reported physical abuse from their boyfriends. The rate of physical abuse rose to 75% for girls with partners who are more than two years their senior. 

I still find those numbers hard to stomach. 75% of teenage girls with a partner over two years older than them has experienced violence from that boyfriend. 75%. 

Along with the high rates of violence in teen relationships is an acceptance that this kind of behaviour is normal. This is backed up by findings from Haven who surveyed young people to understand their attitudes towards sexual assault (a summary of the full findings are quoted in this post).They include that 43% of young people asked did not believe that if their partner said ‘no’ to having sex, and they had sex with them anyway, that this would be rape. On a more anecdotal level, I have spoken online to rape counsellors who have told me that girls simply accept violence because they believe it’s what you have to do to have a boyfriend, to have someone ‘love’ you. Let’s not forget in context of this that teen media tells girls having a boyfriend is the most important thing in the world evah. 

So in the face of what is an overwhelming crisis in the levels of violence against girls, it’s good that the government are standing up and saying that it’s a crisis that must be recognised. 

But in essence, that’s all they’re doing. They’re simply saying it should be recognised. 

Because the domestic violence sector has already been cut by around 31%,  and those cuts are going to get worse. In fact, the introduction of universal credit could lead to every refuge being forced to close its doors, domestic violence charities have warned. Already 230 women are turned away from refuges every day because they’re simply aren’t enough places to protect women from a crime that affects a quarter of us in our lifetimes.  According to the British Crime Survey, 1.2 million women experience domestic abuse each year in the UK, and that’s not including the teenage girls that the law now recognises as victims of the crime. As refuges close, as support services close and lose their funding, where are women and girls supposed to go to get the help and care they so desperately need? 

It’s no good for the government to say that they care about domestic abuse of teenage girls when their administration is allowing the dismantling of a system that will protect them from the impact of violence. It’s just words, again. 

Another facet to this is that we all know that one of the best ways to challenge the attitudes and beliefs that allow and excuse violence in teen relationships is through education. But just as the last government was finally about to push through mandatory sex and relationships education that would include a focus on consent and respect, as well as the biological side, progress under the Coalition in the this area has stalled. There’s a squeamishness about sex education and a stubborn refusal to accept that all children need to be taught about consent. In fact, in this area we seem to be taking steps backwards, with proposals from Gove last year to use sex ed to focus on marriage as the superior form of relationship.  And let’s not forget Dorries’ failed proposals to tackle teen violence through abstinence education for girls.  So again, whilst the decision to recognise violence in teen relationships for what it is – the crime of domestic abuse – is right, we need to see action taken to ensure the causes of that crime are tackled in schools through education. 

Back in 2010, Theresa May addressed the Women’s Aid conference to say that the Coalition would bring actions, not words to the fight against domestic abuse and violence against women and girls.

But all I’m seeing are words. Words in law books, words at conferences, words from the dispatch box. 

And the only actions I’m seeing are those that are devastating a sector that is dedicated to saving the lives of women and girls. Actions that are ignoring the voices of women and girls who need help, who need support. Those aren’t the actions we want. 

One final thing. Since the 1^st January this year, over 78 women and girls have been murdered as a result of gender-based violence.