Saturday, December 22, 2012

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

We are taking a break…

Posted: 21 Dec 2012 10:55 AM PST

…and will be back online on 7 January.

 

We hope all our followers have a peaceful break.

 

 

Turkey, tinsel – and rape culture

Posted: 21 Dec 2012 08:42 AM PST

Christmas time, and the continued refusal to place responsibility for rape where it belongs – with the perpetrators.

Guest post by Julia Hilliard, from Eaves.

As the festive season begins in earnest, women will be presented with a slew of messages on rape.

Some will be on how to avoid being raped – like a campaign in Plymouth that is distributing bottle stoppers so women can guard against having their drinks spiked, while failing to address the issue of who it is who might choose to spike them.

Since if it's a woman's responsibility to avoid being raped, it follows that it's her responsibility when she doesn't manage to avoid it.

Some of these messages for women will be on how their rape is funny.

The Hobgoblin in Brighton, for example, has decided to advertise the Christmas season at their bar using the slogan "Festive Frape".

"Frape" for those who don't know, stands for "facebook rape", the act of posting on facebook using the account of someone who has left themselves logged in or who has not kept an eye on their phone.

Tellingly, "frape" generally takes place due to a lack of vigilance from the person whose facebook account is 'violated', a clear indictment of the attitudes that spawned the term.

Virgin posted on their blog an image showing a man giving a woman a surprise gift with his hand over her eyes, and the slogan "Necklace, or chloroform", and another showing a picture of Santa Claus with the caption "Sees you when you're sleeping, ladies".

They took it down after complaints – but we had to complain…

Some of the messages women will receive are about how a man's reputation is more important than an act of violence committed against a woman.

Reg Traviss (apparently Amy Winehouse's ex boyfriend) was recently cleared of raping a woman last New Year's Eve.

Press coverage dwelt gushingly on his mediocre film career and his smart suits, while quoting him on how relieved he is to have been cleared, and how he had initially felt pity towards his accuser, because "she's nuts", but now he is "phenomenally angry towards her".

He also said that the justice system that has just freed him is "faulty" – presumably for allowing him to come to trial at all.

A view that I imagine his accuser shares, but for different reasons.

Some of these messages will tell us that you can't be telling the truth if you're not the right kind of victim; that is, sober, innocent and suitably distraught.

You had better make sure that if you are raped, you don't go "out clubbing" the following night, or on holiday the following week, as it is mentioned (though hardly relevant), that Reg Traviss' accuser did.

In fact, it has been established that the less credible a victim you are likely to be, the more likely you are to be attacked.

Some of these messages will tell women that even if you do speak out, and even if your rapist is found guilty, you shouldn't have said anything.

Don’t forget Ched Evans, whose football career was – and is still – considered to be more important than the young woman he raped.

That young woman has now been given a new identity and moved out of the area because of the amount of harassment she received – including being named on twitter - for bringing a case against him.

Meanwhile, the police are trying to encourage more women to report their rapes.

They state that only 20-25 per cent of raped women do, which seems to be an overestimate, as the Stern review estimated that only 11 per cent of rapes come to the attention of the police.

And they have launched a woefully titled 'My Decision' website.

As Zoe Williams points out, surely the only one making a decision in a rape is the rapist.

The website focuses on guiding you through getting in touch with support services, and the process of how to report your experience to the police, when you have been raped.

It is to be applauded that the police are trying to make support services more accessible to women who have experienced sexual violence.

But the site initially went up without including the contact details of one of the country's foremost rape counselling services, Rape Crisis.

And it would probably encourage more women to come forward if they felt that they would be believed – like the woman wasn't who called 999 during a sexual assault and was told "you don't need the police".

Sadly, she did need the police, and went on to experience a two hour rape with her children in the next room.

It would probably also encourage women to come forward if they felt they had more chance of their case being handled correctly, and their attacker being prosecuted.

One 15 year old girl’s case was badly mismanaged due to officers being told they should prioritise car crime over sexual violence.

My festive message about rape is this: unless we start listening to women, unless we start treating women's voices as if they are as credible as those of men, and their reputations and lives as if they are as important as those of men, we will continue to live in a rape culture – a culture where men rape with impunity and women do not get justice.

 

Julia Hilliard works for Eaves, a London-based registered charity providing support and associated services for women who have experienced violence to enable them to recover and regain independence.

Eaves aims to give women their lives back; to make them independent, and give them the skills they need to take their rightful places back in society, contribute to the economy and the communities around them, and live happy, fulfilled lives.

Eaves also carries out extensive research which provides crucial evidence of the nature and scale of violence against women.

England team stars of kabaddi world cup

Posted: 21 Dec 2012 06:01 AM PST

England stormed to world cup semi finals of popular south east Asian sport kabaddi.

Both the sport and the team are almost completely unknown in the UK, but England's women's kabaddi team caused a sensation during the sport's world cup in India.

During the tournament, held in Punjab last week, they played in front of crowds of 40,000, signed autographs for schoolchildren, and were chased by reporters.

Kabaddi is hugely popular in south east Asia, and England's play was worthy of the attention: they trounced the USA and Turkmenistan to reach the semi-finals, where they fell to eventual champions India.

Last year, in the inaugural women's world cup, they finished runners-up, also to India.

Team captain Rosie Haigh told the BBC she found the attention "weird".

“You look up in the hotel room, you’re on telly. I opened the paper the other day and I was on the same page but a bigger picture than the Indian cricket team. There I am above Lionel Messi…”

England's world cup success is even more impressive given that the players rarely get the chance to train together, because of their careers.

The team is made up of army personnel, teachers, police officers and a pig farmer. The world cup was science teacher Sally Tidswall's first kabaddi competition.

Kabaddi originated in India. A circular field is divided between two teams, who take turns to enter the other's territory, tag a player, and return to their own half without being stopped.

The sport can be rough, and the many of the England team benefit from their background in rugby.

Outside south east Asia, kabaddi tends to be overshadowed the popularity of mainstream sports such as football and rugby, but according to the BBC, it is played in 30 countries.

In some, such as Denmark and Norway, participation is on an amateur basis, but in the UK at least, the sport is fairly established. There is a professional league, run by the England Kabaddi Federation, with teams in Coventry, Southall, Telford and Leicester.

According to the England team, kabaddi is gaining popularity in the UK, and media coverage of the world cup would suggest that other countries are also gaining an interest.

The competition was covered not only in India and Pakistan, but Iran, Canada and the USA.

This success has led to calls to include kabaddi in the Commonwealth and Asian games.

The England team wants to see it become an Olympic sport in 2020.

US activists in ‘consent pants’ campaign

Posted: 21 Dec 2012 02:40 AM PST

American feminists have been making news with a – fake – line of Victoria’s Secret ‘consent pants’.

Their latest campaign was a new line of underwear promoted as being part of Victoria’s Secret’s PINK range.

Their ‘consent panties’ featured slogans such as ‘NO MEANS NO’ and ‘ASK FIRST’, in a sharp juxtaposition to the current slogans on the real Victoria’s Secret PINK range, which include ‘SURE THING’, ‘UNWRAP ME’ and ‘Yes, No, Maybe’.

The fake Victoria’s Secret website they set up, ‘Pinklovesconsent.com‘, became an instant hit, with hundreds of women liking it on Facebook and tweeting on the hashtag #lovesconsent, all in the belief – at that stage – that Victoria’s Secret really had launched a new line of underwear aimed at promoting consent.

The group behind the stunt is FORCE: Upsetting rape culture, who describe themselves as ‘a creative activist effort to upset the culture of rape and promote a culture of consent’.

When it was revealed that it was not Victoria’s Secret, but FORCE that had made the fake ad campaign Victoria’s Secret demanded that the website be taken down.

And there was a collective sigh of disappointment from people who had been so encouraged by the ‘consent’ panties.

Although the website was initially taken down, FORCE were able to reinstate it after checking where they stood legally.

And their campaign hasn’t stopped there.

In the past couple of days the group organised ‘operation panty drop’  in Victoria’s Secret stores, distributing their line of consent pants in among the real PINK range.

FORCE explained in an interview why they picked Victoria’s Secret (VS) for the prank.

“Fighting rape would be a major shift for Victoria's Secret. Though they are a woman-focused company, VS has never taken a stand on any women's issue.

“In fact, their current designs seem to lean more toward rape culture than consent.

“Their PINK brand, marketed at high school and college-aged women, sports thongs with the slogan "SURE THING" printed right over the crotch.

“Young women across the country are wearing underwear with "SURE THING" literally printed over their vaginas. We can think of one circumstance where a vagina is treated like a "SURE THING": rape.

“PINK is specifically marketed towards younger and younger girls, and like the rest of Victoria's Secret, PINK is selling a specific brand of sexuality.

VS PINK has co-opted the idea of sexual freedom and twisted it into an image of sexuality in which the woman (or girl) is not really in control.

The "Sure Thing" and "Yes No Maybe" and "NO peeking" underwear promote the idea of limitless availability, or on the other hand, leaving the choice up to the (presumably male) partner.

“The brand teaches girls to be coy instead of vocal and makes it seem uncool and unsexy to say no and mean it. By re-enforcing that sex is about an image, that looking good is more important than feeling good, PINK promotes rape culture.”

Given the hugely positive response to the campaign, when people thought it was real, Victoria’s Secret seem to be missing a trick.

Instead of demanding the website be closed down and distancing themselves from the prank, they could have embraced the range – and probably made a lot of money out of it, while at the same time also sending a much-needed message that ‘consent is sexy’ to the world.

Perhaps though, the message of consent flies too much in the face of their brand image, which very much sells the idea of constant sexual availability.

Victoria’s Secret is often used as shorthand in popular film and tv culture as essentially ‘easily accesible masturbation material for men’.

Their advertisements certainly seem designed to appeal more to men than women (do a quick Google image search for Victoria’s Secret if you don’t believe me!), and include sexy stripteases and women straddling chairs and pouting and panting at the camera, while we are told ‘THIS IS WHAT SEXY FEELS LIKE’ – along with the blisteringly obvious, implied message to anyone watching ’This is what sexy looks like’.

FORCE said: "The outpouring of support for Love Consent on facebook, twitter and tumblr wasn't from "confused customers".  It was mostly from a lot of young women, like us, who know and are saying exactly what we want.

“We want a company and a culture that promotes health, safety, pleasure and real love for our bodies.

“We want to live in a world where sexual pleasure and empowerment displaces sexual violence and coercion.

“And we want to see the end of rape.

“If Victoria's Secret does not get this message, perhaps they are the ones that are 'confused'."

There are no plans at this time for the consent panties to actually go on sale, but given the demand, perhaps there is a gap in the market for any budding entrepreneurs.

FORCE has, however, posted instructions so you can make your own ‘consent pants’: click here.

And on the Pinklovesconsent website – which is now live and kicking again - women are invited to create their own slogans for future Consent Pants, which can be seen in their ‘Panty Parade’.

I asked some female friends what slogans they would come up with.

Here are a few of their suggestions:

‘If Asleep – NO’

‘STOP, Look & Listen’

‘Just Married - Still ask’

and

‘Read my face – not my knickers’

FORCE describe rape culture as “the things that allow rape to seem normal and prevent survivors from being able to speak up and out.

“Rape culture is silencing.

“In a rape culture, people are surrounded with images, language, laws, and other everyday phenomena that validate and perpetuate rape.

“It includes jokes, TV, music, advertising, legal jargon, laws, words and imagery that make violence against women and sexual coercion seem so normal that people believe that rape is inevitable.

“Rather than viewing the culture of rape as a problem to change, people in a rape culture think about the persistence of rape as "just the way things are."”

Rape culture is all around us.

And whether we see it in a line of underwear, a remark made by a police officer, an attitude expressed by an MP, a lyric in a song, an advert by a household name company, an image on a T-shirt or any of the other countless ways rape culture is normalised, we should – really must – do as FORCE have done and challenge it.

We should disrupt the idea that it’s ‘just the way things are’ and take a stand and begin to dismantle the rape culture that surrounds us.