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Refusing to accept sexism
When a Canadian police officer commented that the
way women dress contributes to rape, he triggered an international
outcry. Predominantly young women took to the streets in ‘slutwalk’
protests around the world. In Britain, this new generation fighting for
women’s rights is also up against coalition cuts and right-wing
reaction. ELEANOR DONNE reports.
EARLIER IN THE year, thousands of women, and many
men, took to the streets in Canada, the US and Britain to protest
against rape. The spark for their anger was a Canadian police officer
who, during a safety talk to students at a law school in Toronto,
advised women to reduce their risk of being raped by "avoiding dressing
like sluts". Students and staff complained, and the officer apologised.
This off-the-cuff remark by a law enforcement
officer underlines the huge barriers which women face in reporting rape
to the police. Is it any wonder that only a small proportion of rapes
ever comes to their attention? The attitude of the police reflects and
reinforces a wider reactionary view among a large minority in society
that a woman who dresses ‘provocatively’, gets drunk or has a lot of
sexual partners is, at least partly, to blame if she is attacked.
But women students in Toronto did not let the matter
lie. Turning the sexist comment on its head, they organised a ‘slutwalk’,
which over 2,000 attended. The message of the demonstration was summed
up on placards: ‘Whatever we wear, wherever we go, yes means yes and no
means no!’ The idea spread via facebook, and ‘slutwalks’ against rape
took place in London (attended by around 5,000), Bristol, Newcastle,
Edinburgh, Cardiff and other smaller towns in the UK.
Rape: the Victim Experience Review, commissioned by
the Home Office as part of a review of rape and the criminal justice
system in 2009, found that some police officers were often sceptical of
rape and sexual assault victims. This was for "numerous reasons, such as
when the victim had been drinking, had made previous allegations, were
from a certain area, had an offending history themselves, or simply
because they did not behave in the way they would expect a victim to
behave". The review highlighted how the attitude of the officer can
affect the case and even a "raised eyebrow" can deter a victim from
pursuing the claim.
However, a public display of solidarity and
defiance, such as the slutwalk demonstrations, does not only build the
confidence of the people taking part. It also has the potential to raise
public awareness and consciousness far more than any number of lengthy
reports.
Woefully inadequate support
IT WAS NOT just the police who came under fire. On
the demonstrations in Britain there were calls for Tory justice
secretary, Kenneth Clarke, to resign after his comments in May, on BBC
Radio 5 Live, which implied that ‘date rape’ was not ‘serious rape’.
Clarke managed to show both ignorance of the existing laws on rape and
incredible insensitivity, in particular to a caller who had been raped.
Under pressure from David Cameron, he eventually issued a grudging
apology to the caller but refused to resign, saying it was a just a
wrong choice of words and he did not mean any offence!
Clarke may have mistakenly been using the phrase
‘date rape’ to describe ‘unlawful sexual intercourse’ – ie consenting
sex with someone 13 or over but below the age of consent. However, given
the importance of language on an issue such as this, and given that
Clarke is a highly paid, legally trained representative of the
government, this ‘mistake’ was inexcusable. It will only have reinforced
the view that ‘proper’ rape means being attacked by a stranger in a dark
alley. In fact, the majority of people who are raped know their
attacker, and in more than half of rapes the attacker is a partner or
ex-partner. (British Crime Survey, 2005/06)
The government has made a big splash about
committing £10.5 million over the next three years to rape support
services, but this is just to stand still. Support services for rape
victims are woefully inadequate. In 2009, only one in ten local
authorities had a centre offering support to victims of rape. The Home
Office is unlikely to meet their commitment to provide a Sexual Assault
Referral Centre (SARC) in every police force area by the end of the
year.
SARCs provide one-stop services, medical care and
forensic examination following assault/rape, counselling and sometimes
sexual health services. They are acknowledged as ‘victim centred’ and,
where they exist, have helped to increase prosecutions for rape.
However, with cuts in NHS and police budgets causing pressure on all
frontline services, this commitment may be quietly shelved.
Rape is still the most underreported crime in the
UK. Only around 15% of rapes and sexual assaults are reported to the
police. Of these, only a small percentage gets to court. Baroness Stern,
who carried out a review of how public authorities handle rape
complaints in 2009, maintains that of those that do get to court, around
58% now result in a conviction. However, this includes cases where rape
is reduced to a lesser charge of sexual assault. According to Rape
Crisis, fewer than 7% of reported rapes result in a prosecution in
England and Wales. The figure is even lower in Scotland.
Obviously, there are particular factors which make a
rape conviction difficult. Usually, the only witness is the alleged
victim. Even the best forensic evidence gathered at a state-of-the-art
referral centre cannot always confirm if consent was given or not. And
giving evidence in court can be extremely traumatic for the rape victim
as intimate details about her private life may be laid bare. The Sexual
Offences Act 2003 helpfully clarified that consent to sex cannot be
given if you are asleep or unconscious (!), and put the onus on the
accused to show not only that they believed that the women consented but
that this was a reasonable belief in the circumstances.
However, lawyers, judges and juries are not immune
from the prejudices in wider society. Given that the Crown Prosecution
Service will have even fewer resources to prepare every case fully,
women are rightly concerned that they still will not get a fair hearing
and feel on trial themselves.
Anonymity
SINCE 1976, THE media in Britain have been prevented
by law from identifying a person who makes a rape complaint. This
safeguard has been important in persuading women to pursue a case to
trial, without the trauma of having details about their personal lives
revealed in the press. Fear of this added humiliation was a huge barrier
to women reporting rape to the police.
However, some tabloid papers, upholders of truth and
justice that they are, have alleged that this leads to women making
false accusations of rape with impunity. In fact, false allegations are
rare, and no more common for rape than any other crime. Women withdraw
rape allegations for a number of reasons, mostly when they come under
intense pressure, either through threats and intimidation or emotional
blackmail from the perpetrator or their family.
This is not the same as a false accusation but often
the figures are conflated to give that impression. In 2007, more than
30% of rape cases recorded by the police as ‘no crimes’ were found to be
incorrectly recorded. As the report states: "There is no incentive for
the police to record a crime as it looks like failure if they don’t then
prosecute".
Support for lifting this anonymity for victims also
comes from an unexpected quarter. Naomi Wolfe, the American writer and
journalist who describes herself as a feminist, said that the need for
anonymity stems from a bygone era when rape was seen as a ‘fate worse
than death’ and that it is no longer necessary. She argues that it is
patronising and leads to rape victims not being taken seriously.
Women’s legal rights, expectations and status in
society have certainly changed since the mid 1970s and this has probably
been just as significant as the right to remain anonymous in encouraging
women to come forward. Women are now more likely to recognise rape and
sexual assault by a husband, partner or boyfriend than in the past – it
was not until 1991 that the law lords finally ruled that rape within
marriage was illegal. The numbers of rapes being reported to the police
have increased over the years because of this. But in a society where,
sadly, 37% of rape victims never told anyone at all that they were raped
(British Crime Survey 2000), how is it possible to argue that there is
no longer any stigma attached to being a victim of rape?
The rights of the accused
UNDER CURRENT LAWS, the alleged victim’s details are
not withheld from the accused and their legal team, the judge or the
jury but are just not to be published outside the court. To remove an
existing legal right to anonymity would put even more women (and men)
off reporting rape as they would fear massive press intrusion into their
lives, digging the dirt on their sexual history, etc.
Protecting women’s anonymity in rape and sexual
assault cases was one important measure to try to redress the systematic
disadvantages they face in the criminal justice process. There are
others, such as being able to give evidence behind a screen or via video
link, under certain limited circumstances, and the right not to be
cross-examined by the accused (if he is defending himself). All of these
have been criticised by some as undermining the rights of the accused.
Socialists take the rights of defendants in any
trial seriously and are acutely aware of the need for openness and
accountability in the legal system. However, most of us do not inhabit
Wolfe’s ‘post-feminist’ world. We cannot rely on an abstract ‘equality
in law’ which takes no account of structured inequality and prejudice in
society at large, and effectively denies proper access to justice. This
abstract ‘equal treatment’ argument was used by the coalition government
which was considering changing the law to introduce anonymity for those
accused of rape (a Liberal Democrat policy, incidentally), arguing that
potentially innocent defendants need to be protected from the stigma of
being accused of rape.
The government was not proposing to allow anonymity
for those accused of other crimes, such as child abuse, which would
carry even more stigma. To do so in rape cases sends a damaging message
that rape complainants are to be trusted less than others and could
undermine their credibility still further with juries and the police. It
could also be a barrier to proper evidence gathering. John Worbuys, the
taxi driver convicted of raping several women in London, had his details
made public when charged, and several of his previous victims realized
who he was and contacted police. The government may have thought that
this would be a ‘populist’ act but, faced with opposition from
campaigners and scepticism from the police, has backtracked.
Deep-seated inequality
IT WAS STRIKING and impressive that many of the
organisers of the slutwalks were in their teens, a new generation of
young women prepared to challenge reactionary attitudes. These were the
women, born towards the end of the 20th century, who were told by media
pundits and even veterans of the women’s movement of the 1970s and 1980s
that they were living in a post-feminist world, with equality just
around the corner. Socialists argue that this is not the case.
Of course, there have been significant changes in
the workplace and in the family over the last 30 years. ‘Traditional’
values have been undermined to some extent and women feel freer to
acknowledge and express their sexuality. In the context of a capitalist
society, however, women, and young women in particular, are under huge
pressure to conform to a limited idea of sexual attractiveness which is
plugged relentlessly by multibillion-pound cosmetics companies, the
music and entertainment business, and an increasingly mainstream porn
industry.
Women may have achieved ‘formal equality’ in terms
of legal rights but, for the majority, this has clearly not brought
actual equality in the workplace or the home. Even those women who have
succeeded in economic terms, breaking into more highly paid, skilled,
‘male’ careers, are not immune from other aspects of women’s oppression.
The fact that rape and domestic violence are still
so common has reinforced the mistaken and pessimistic idea that men are
sexual predators because they evolved that way – it’s their natural
state. This is a view put by evolutionary biologists Randy Thornhill and
Craig T Palmer in their book, The Natural History of Rape. Their advice
to women includes how to dress so they do not give off ‘receptive
signals’ to men. But what evidence there is from very early human
societies and surviving hunter-gatherer societies shows that they were
based on co-operation not coercion and that aggression is rarely seen
among men or women, still less sexual coercion.
Oppression of women is socially constructed, not
natural, and came much later, as society became divided into classes.
The family as a social and economic institution developed to serve the
interests of a system based on private property. Over time, women lost
power and status in society and they and their children became the
property of the husband. Men got ‘conjugal rights’ on marriage. This
sense of entitlement to sex still prevails, hence the level of rape and
sexual assault by partners and ex-partners.
Demanding change
WHETHER THE SLUTWALKS were a one-off event, or the
start of a longer running campaign against rape, they reflect a growing
anger and frustration among women and, particularly, a willingness to
take to the streets to demand change. Many women are facing increasing
material problems in all areas of their lives. Cuts in housing benefits,
tax credits and pregnancy benefits have hit women hard. Domestic
violence support services are under threat of closure as the government
and local authorities implement austerity programmes.
With the abolition of education maintenance
allowance, massive hikes in tuition fees and cuts in funding, especially
for arts courses, many young working-class women in particular will find
further and higher education closed to them. Jobs in the public sector,
up to 70% of which are currently filled by women, are being cut to the
bone. In a blatant ideological attack, existing abortion rights have
been threatened, with attempts by Tory MP, Nadine Dorries, to reduce the
time limits and, more recently, to make pre-abortion counselling
compulsory and to hand it over to Christian anti-abortion groups.
However, at long last the trade union movement is
moving into action. On 30 November, local government workers, health
workers, civil servants, teachers, lecturers and fire-fighters are
likely to strike together to defend their pensions. Hundreds of
thousands of women will participate on picket lines, marches and
rallies. This action will send shock waves through a weak and unpopular
coalition government. The trade unions have a vital role in defending
jobs and public services. They have rightly taken up wider issues, such
as abortion rights, domestic violence and rape (supporting the ‘reclaim
the night’ marches). To make real progress on these issues, the movement
must also take up the challenge of political representation for the
working class.
On issues such as rape and domestic violence that
affect women of all classes, there is the potential for women to come
together in campaigns across class lines. However, if these campaigns
are to be far reaching and effective, they must link in to the wider
struggle to change society. A genuine and permanent end to women’s
oppression, including rape, is only possible after fundamental changes
in the way society is structured. This requires a conscious movement of
the working class, women and men, and drawing in layers of the middle
class, to get rid of the current system based on exploitation, class
privilege and inequality.
What’s in a name?
THE NAME ‘Slutwalk’ was chosen by the Toronto
organisers as an ironic twist on the police officer’s comment that
sparked the protest. They have also said they want to ‘reclaim’ the
word ‘slut’, seeing this as a way of challenging sexual double
standards and misogyny. The use of ‘slut’ has been the subject of
debate among feminists and some in the wider movement. London
Feminist Network and Julie Bindel, from Justice for Women, for
example, acknowledge the success of the slutwalk protests (although
Bindel chose not to participate), but are critical of the name.
Bindel and others have argued that it reflects a lack of
consciousness about women’s oppression. However, while language is
important, taking action is the key for socialists. The slutwalks
have brought a new layer of women into activity and challenged some
of the reactionary ideas of the press, judiciary and police.
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